Success with Fedora Gaming

I wanted to take a moment and point out some successes with gaming on Fedora and try to re spark interest in the Fedora Gaming SIG.

Setup

Currently I am running Fedora 35, I had gaming working on Fedora 34 but recently upgraded to F35, on a ThinkPad T480.

Specs

  • CPU: Intel i7-8650U (8) @ 4.200GHz
  • GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
  • Memory: 15870MiB
  • OS: Fedora release 35 (Thirty Five) x86_64

Not the worlds most powerful gaming system, but its getting the job done for what I need.

Pros

So some of the pros that I would like to point out when it came to gaming on Fedora are:

  • When I followed the guide on the Fedora Magazine, Gaming on Fedora It was easy to get Steam up and running using proton in no time.
  • Controller Support, both my PS4 and Xbox 1 controllers work out of the box plugged in to the system. PS4 works wirelessly via Bluetooth. All you need to do is enable controller support for both controllers in the Steam settings.
  • Most games in my Steam library just work with Proton, no jumping through hoops, just Download and play.
  • Resources, As stated above not the most powerful system, but when I am playing games I never seem to hit a resource limit, never had a game crash, never seem to hit a thermal limit.

Cons

While there have been some good, their have been some pains as well

  • While some games will run, i have a couple games I have that when I try to play them they get locked in an odd resolution that are half cut off and cant resize.
  • Xbox 1 controller only works when it plugged in directly to the system, which my work for some users but I prefer a wireless controller for some games.
  • anti-cheat, Some online games see Linux gaming as a player may be using some cheating software and might get banned from online game play.
  • computer paraphernalia software, There is no native support for programing my Keyboard, mouse, headphones, etc… in Fedora currently, my workaround is a Windows 10 VM in KVM where I can setup Profiles for different games that I am playing.

Summary

In short Steam gaming on Fedora 35 for me is working fine, not often do I have to jump through the hoops that I mentioned above. Most things work directly out of the box once Steam, Lutris, and q4wine is installed. The real only step that I have to do is check protondb to make sure that the game I want to play is playable.

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