Recently Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere of Linus Tech Tips mentioned on their weekly podcast “WAN Show” that they were going to doing a Linux challenge, where they would install Linux as their daily driver on there personal systems. They had a few goals that they wish to accomplish one of the main ones is gaming. Yesterday the first video in the challenge was released to YouTube (Linked Bellow). I wanted to share with you all as it seems that Linux gaming is starting to come into its own but we still have a long way to go, and also get some feedback as what we (the Fedora community) to make gaming on Fedora better not just for ourselves but everyone
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I watched the video yesterday, and it was a pain to watch, personally. I have been playing games on Fedora for 5 yrs. Steam and Lutris have always worked. Getting the games to work specifically has always been an issue of what version of proton or Wine you are using.
Fedora has all ways had the latest F-Audio and other programs for out of the box functionality while other distros have lagged behind. The esync issues from the early days on other distros hasn’t been a big issue on Fedora so I can’t comment on that. I keep my installs pretty clean, so maybe I’m not the best example of a typical gamer. My work and personal projects have been containerized for a very long time, so having games native has been no problem.
Fedora is constantly overlooked in the Distros for these use cases for being a “Cutting Edge” distro, but this is actually the best reason why Fedora is perfect for them because they are ahead of the curve. To each their own.
I have to agree, watching Linus nuke his install hurt, and for the brief moment the error was on the screen I was like “That looks like that’s going to remove things that it shouldn’t”
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Yeah, the small dialog box and his hesitancy really was an Uh-Oh moment. Pop!_OS has been the darling of gamers for a year or two now, Garuda didn’t fair as well either from a video Linus made this past weekend. Unfortuantely, the rules of the competition, and the concept were a perfect storm for this.
The other thing that is wild, going back to your point about no one pick Fedora, Is I know they are running CentOS on there servers cause that’s what 45 Drives ships with the Storinator line of products. So if they can run that effectively then running Fedora on a desktop should be no problem.
I wouldn’t have done it but I understand why he did. If he hadn’t, he still would of had to change distros to install Steam. Assuming he wanted to just install from Gnome Software anyway. I personally don’t think it really matters what distro is used. All modern distros should be able to handle what they need. System 76 did an update to prevent someone from breaking their system. However I’m confused as to how Pop OS didn’t test Steam. I thought they advertised their system for gaming. How did they not notice?
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I think that’s the most damning statement in the whole video 'paraphrasing". Pop!_OS was the darling of the Linux Gaming Community for some time now, 2yrs maybe… Garuda was a close 2nd with Manjaro a close 3rd. All fell to the LTT sword in less than a week.
I personally think this is a “Good” thing for Linux as a whole.
- Linux distribution maintnance is not as easy as people think
- package maintenance is equally difficult and time consuming
- Niche distros and just that, Niche.
- Community toxicity and elitism is a thing and it should GO AWAY in all circles
- Stop recommending Niche, Hobby Distros to New Linux users
There’s so much more Linux Distro maintainers, Package Maintainers, Community as a whole can take away from this, lets hope lessons are learned, because the wave is come… Windows and New users though specific hardware implementations are joining Linux, recognize and learn and love !
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I’ve been using Fedora since last year and absolutely love it. I think in the gaming realm, it is actually ahead of many of the Ubuntu and Debian based distros owing largely to newer kernel and packages. But I think it does fall behind in some of the ease-of-setup things that new users coming in might be looking for.
Specifically, my recommendations would be that Fedora focus on making it easier to obtain non-free things like codecs and proprietary nvidia drivers. I know, I know… FOSS and licensing. While I appreciate FOSS and try to promote that first, the reality is that often new users just want things to work and they don’t want to have to relearn a bunch of new things. And I don’t think we’d need to fundamentally change how things work or break any licensing to get there (bc we wouldn’t need to include the software directly, only offer to setup RpmFusion if the user chooses to. It could even appear as one choice of many unofficial repos, similar to how things are done with Flatpak or Podman repos).
Those familiar with Linux Mint might have seen a checkbox in their installer (I believe they use the Ubiquity installer but it’s not really relevant) which allows installing media codecs as part of the install process by simply checking said checkbox. Knowing that Fedora doesn’t want to include non-free sw in the default install, I think a something of a middle-ground could look like this:
In Anaconda installer, include an Optional / Extras section. In this section, give the users a couple checkboxes that if selected, will simply add the RpmFusion repos (one for “free” and one for “non-free” - although, I think it would be better to use less ambiguous verbiage such as “Libre / Open Source” and “Proprietary” instead of “Free” which many confuse to mean “no cost”). If selected, the installer would simply add that repo (e.g. “RpmFusion (Libre)” checked == sudo dnf install -q -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm etc).
Similarly, checkboxes corresponding to dnf’s meta package groups could also be made available (e.g. as shown in output of dnf grouplist). Especially the “Sound and Video” and “Development Tools” groups but I think there might likely also be an audience interested in installing multiple DE’s based on what I’ve seen on reddit and elsewhere.
Now, some of you might point out that none of these things are exactly rocket-science. And you’d be correct. But most tutorial sites (and even RpmFusion itself) typically have the users typing out the commands from the terminals for both adding repos and for installing package meta groups. Doing it from Anaconda, I believe would lower the barrier of entry by allowing it to be done via GUI and also provide consistency between Fedora Workstation and Spins. I’ve seen some users over on reddit mention adding repos via Gnome Software, but Cinnamon Spin does not have “Software” anywhere in the menus. I haven’t tested all the other spins but would wager that at least a few others have the same problem. IIRC Anaconda uses a config which could have any new additions merged to all of the spins fairly quickly (please correct me if I’m mistaken), which would eliminate needing to have uniform software on all spins.
IMO this would improve the on-boarding process for many, especially those coming from non-Linux backgrounds. 
I’d also recommend adding GParted to Workstation and all spins as many users are more familiar with it than Gnome Disks and according to dnf remove gparted, it takes up a whooping 8.6 M (which would be compressed on iso anyway). Better to have both Disks and GParted than not have the one that they’re looking for. And having a fully ready live disc for doing repairs can get Fedora a foot in the door and make it more viable to keep an iso handy… which couldn’t hurt for increasing installs and would make things less frustrating for Linux users coming over and expecting the tool.
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On Fedora 35 you can enable third-party repos at install, which includes the Steam repo and Nvidia drivers. Also they are now able to be enabled via Software. So that is a big help, if you (or anyone) want to make a Pull Request on setting up the Nvidia drivers that would be helpful for our guide. The goal is a plan simple, up-to-date guide, on getting gaming on Fedora setup from Steam, graphic drivers, controllers, and other items.
As odd as it sounds we are trying to minimize terminal usage for gaming, as a lot of people are turned off by the idea of using a terminal so if we can make documentation and user experience as best as we can, I believe more people will start coming over.
Re: GParted
I recently put Fedora on my old work computer (a dell 5510) after Pop!_OS refused to boot. When I went to reclaim the flash drive, windows refused to mount it in its partition tool. When I went to my Fedora laptop, I typed part at the launcher and it came up with Disks. I was able to use it to solve my problem (flash drive is now reformatted).
Is there some advantage to GParted over Disks, or just more familiarity? If the latter, I’m fine with it being available in the software app/dnf.
On topic: I did the same challenge, ran into the aforementioned issue with pop, and installed Fedora. I didn’t know about the proton setting until recently, so I got slightly frustrated that steam would only show me certain games as runnable on Linux. Once I got that sorted… I still can’t play all my games. Some run great (rimworld), some crash constantly (gloomhaven).
So I found this video (Debian & PopOS Finally Fix Crippling Apt Bug) and it gives very good information of what happened, how it happened, how they have a workaround, what they are doing to fix it up stream. The one big take away I like is he never says that it one one individual or organizations fault, that it was the perfect storm that slipped through the cracks and made its way out to the public.
I think they are more or less the same, Gparted was first, Disks is the future for Gnome. At least that is my take on them, their functionality is the same in any case.
Gloomhaven runs with Proton 6.19.GE ( You can get that specific Proton build on Github)
https://www.protondb.com/app/780290
Rimworld is native.
I think you are missing the point of @kiaulen comment. The point is to not care if it is running native or proton. The question is does the game run well with minimal work. In the case of window games, you ideally want to just turn on proton in the Steam UI.
If your recommendation is to download a specific proton version from github, most people will just switch back to windows if that game is important to them. I’m a programmer and a packager for Fedora and I wouldn’t want to go through the effort of getting proton like that.
Edit: Not to mention it is worth considering that the success of Proton 6.19 may also depend on the graphics card. I know people have run some games I have successfully with Proton but they haven’t worked for me.