I believe it, Windows bloat these days is so bad. I keep telling my friends Tarkov runs better on Linux if they’d just let me play the goddamn multiplayer I’d be golden
Tarkov runs on Linux!? I thought they had kernel anticheat that didn’t work
Pvp doesn’t work yeah, everything else does
I’m really curious to see what kind of performance gains the Xbox-mode or whatever they’re calling it is going to provide. I don’t know if it’ll reach SteamOS levels, but it does legitimately look like they’re taking the bloat’s hit on gaming seriously with the Xbox-branded ROG Ally.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
While I mostly agree with this, every time I see this mentioned it reminds me that
MS-DOSWindows was not very popular, until a Microsoft employee offered to port Doom toDOSWindows, because he saw that if games ran on a platform people would use it and migrate naturally, that employee was called Gabe Newell. So I do have some hope that there’s some bigger migration, and in fact we’ve seen the numbers steadily rising, and these sort of things tend to be exponential, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up speed.DOS was the most popular OS for gaming at the time and Doom was released first on DOS by id.
Gabe Newell and team ported it to Windows 95.
Oops, thanks for the correction I’ll update the post
They’ve promised that exact same thing for like at least three major windows versions.
And Windows 10 was clearly faster.
Than Windows 11, that is.
I think this time actually does have the potential to be different. They’re co-launching an Xbox-branded handheld PC designed to go head-to-head with the Steam Deck while downplaying the future of dedicated consoles.
Microsoft’s gaming division is going all-in on PC, so it matters more than ever.
They said all those exact corporate blowhard promises when the introduced the gamebar and the Xbox windows store and a “gaming mode” lol.
Yeah, but they were also still making new standalone gaming boxes with a dedicated OS, and they didn’t have the Xbox division take the lead on game mode.
Linux and Mac gaming also weren’t a threat, and the solution to a bloated Windows installation was more horsepower, which was relatively cheap.
Now the market is completely changed. The Xbox Series S and X have had their lunch eaten by Playstion and Switch. Linux gaming is exploding because of the Steam Deck, while more-powerful Windows handhelds are performing worse with worse batteries than the Deck because of Windows bloat.
Mid-range GPUs cost more than an entire high-end gaming rig from 5 years ago, so high-end gaming PCs are rarer than ever.
Microsoft has to do something. And what they’ve chosen, for now, is to partner with Asus to launch a true Xbox-branded competitor to the Deck. To do that, they have to actually be competitive. There’s 2 keys to that. One is Gamepass, and the other is moving Windows out of the way of the game experience.
I think we’re beginning to see a serious shift about how people view Linux. I do think valve being on Linux will significantly legitimizes it, and drivers will become much more accessible for it. In the next decade I think we will see a big migration of gamers to Linux. Being on Linux myself, the experience is even more streamlined and less glitchy than just a year ago, just because of the widespread adoption of OS’s like steamOS and bazzite.
Linux will never be mainstream while it’s controlled by nerds. I mean there is no uniform interface (there’s so many guitar options) and when people want to learn it, the support is from people who think “it just works”.
Yeah, three is the limit on control panel flavors within an OS
Windows was for nerds in its early days
Games run faster on SteamOS with proton than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
FTFY. I hate all these articles that downplay the heavy lifting proton (and all the tools that make it up) are doing. But “Proton makes games run better” doesn’t get the same attention.
Proton is amazing, but it’s entirely overhead translating library/system calls to Linux. It’s accurate to say they run better on SteamOS, not to say Proton is making it run better.
Now maybe Proton makes them run better than a janky but native Linux port, but that’s a separate statement about games being better optimized on Windows.
Hogwarts legacy, which is a exe, runs on proton but not on windows 10. I’d say proton runs better than windows.
That’s hilarious, but not really the same thing.
Proton is amazing, but it’s entirely overhead translating library/system calls to Linux.
That is not at all true.
but that’s a separate statement about games being better optimized on Windows.
Is that though? You can’t say X is better than Y when you’re changing multiple variables. If windows had a proton equivalent and both games ran through it then yes that would be a direct comparison. But you can’t say X + Y is better than Z (by itself)
DXVK is a part of proton that also is available on windows. DXVK alone can get you double digit performance improvements on games. And that’s not getting into all the one off tweaks users can do to proton to optimize the game. Enabling pre compiled shaders gave a huge performance boost for Elden Ring.
How is running an extra compatibility layer not overhead?
The compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance.
The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there’s less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there’s also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that’s usually thanks to vulkan.
Vulkan isn’t magic, its power comes from the flexibility it gives developers in its API. If developers are using DirectX, especially older versions, then they’re not utilizing that flexibility.
If DirectX code performs better through a Vulkan translation layer than on Windows, it means the driver implementations or OS bloat are what’s causing it.
With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
Yes, from what I’ve been told that actually does improve performance in many games.
entirely
It’s not just overhead.
In the same way that talking to a presidential translator is faster for a diplomat than talking to Trump. The translation layer can communicate more concisely and effectively.
Shh just let him wear himself out.
I’m not sure it’s a Wine/Proton thing, it’s quite likely to be suboptimal at some things because it’s reverse engineered (not to diminish technical marvel that it is and decades of effort). Regular desktop Windows has just way too much overhead coming from everywhere.
As a side note, back in the day when Nvidia released drivers for FreeBSD using Linux binary compatibility layer was even faster than Linux for gaming.
Would love to see tests like this attempting to use DXVK etc (as part of their testing on Windows) to better isolate more factors
Take aways:
- Sample set is of 5 games
- Lenovo drivers are much slower than Asus
- There are 2 games where windows is neck to neck or better, 3 where SteamOS is far ahead
Some doubts:
- Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation. 99%ile would be helpful.
- I wonder if it makes sense to test DirectX10, 11 and 12 games separately to better understand where Proton has an edge.
- I wonder what all settings can be tweaked in Windows to find potential fixes (core isolation, cpu boost, power profiles).
Point is Microsoft and OEMs need to do better, however not every game or subscription services work on Linux, so in the interim time users should know what they can do to close the gap better.
This is really not surprising to anyone who has used modern windows and Linux recently. Windows is so incredibly bloated, whereas Linux is a true real-time OS basically out of the box.
Unless you use an RT kernel, Linux is not a realtime OS and certainly not a true one.
Because, you know, terms have a meaning.
While the bloat exists, even debloated windows wouldn’t match proton because that’s not the only reason. Despite bloat there are two games in this test the actually do similar or better than SteamOS. This means there’s a confounding reason for the difference, not the bloat.
I recently switched from windows (with a debloat scrpit ran on it) to linux mint and I was shocked at how much faster it booted. When I turn my pc on I usually get up and do something else for a bit (not because windows is THAT slow but because I could spend the minute it takes to turn on to make lunch or something) and linux booted before I was out of my chair.
Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation.
Why should the author rule it out? Honest question. If shader compilation leads so worse real world experience for gamers on Windows than SteamOS, it is a valid point to include.
Because I’m more curious about why things are the way they are just like the author, and would like to understand this with more data points, only making the comparison more helpful. I’m not saying author “should” consider impact of shader compilation, but I’m saying had they done, we’d understand the difference better.
They added asus vs Lenovo drivers data points, which alone tells us that driver optimization is responsible to a great extent. All I’m saying here is more data is more helpful.
Maybe even after taking care of that, the difference is huge, which will tell us its not enough to have precompilation of shaders. Maybe it does reduce the gap, telling us that potentially dx11 games might tend to do similarly.
Saying “RTX 5060 is better than 9060 XT” with 5 games tested is one level of comparison, but if they are grouped into RT and non RT games, games with 8gb and 16gb VRAM requirements, games with and without nVidia partnership, isn’t that just more detailed and an even better comparison point?
Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation
Really grasping at straws there, eh? I’m no big fan of Ars but I hope we can assume they’re not quite that incompetent.
Methodology is important to a robust result. It’s weird that you take issue with their considerations there.
It’s not a slight, as I said it’s a doubt, not criticism. I’m not saying “did the author EVEN …”
Your other doubts and concerns seem slightly biased, e.g. wondering what settings could be tweaked on only one of the systems being tested and then reminding us all that there do still exist some things that won’t run on SteamOS. It’s only that one that is outright ridiculous.
Biased to what? Point of comparison is to figure out why things are the way they are and use that information to get the best of both worlds? It’s not very helpful if the conclusion stops at “x is better than y”.
Going deeper into “why” Proton is doing better in 3/5 games but not in 2/5 will only help users of both operating systems to make better informed decisions and get everyone closer to root cause other than “bloated windows” or “just use linux”, potentially even leading to improvements to both sides.
Look… Regardless of metrics saying one is faster, Linux is where everyone should be. I say that knowing full well the anger it’ll cause.
These corporations do not respect the user. They shovel ads, AI, spyware and half baked software down our throats. They restrict what you can do with your own hardware with artificial barriers. They force reliance on “industry standard” bs when they’re the industry benefiting. The only power we have is our money and our choices, and choosing to take the abuse because of fucking Fortnite or Photoshop is as pathetic as it comes.
Preach. Studios that make games with anti cheats and what not should reconsider how they handle Linux as they’ll only get even more players, who’ll probably be even more loyal due to their Linux compatibility. I know cheating is a big issue in online games, but adding invasive kernel level code to detect that is just adding system level vulnerabilities just to prevent cheaters from cheating seems like an overkill. It’s not like cheating mouse and keyboards don’t exist and cheaters have evaporated entirely due to anti cheat.
That’s still without NTSYNC patches, right?
I heard they are irrelevant for Proton as it has its own fsync.
Wow, some of these are showing huge gains with Steam OS
Windows runs better on Linux than on Windows…
Linux runs better on Windows than Windows.
Oh dear Microsoft, you had everything and you pissed it away again
I last checked in December. At that time Linux had an all time high usage rate of 5.6%. For a platform that’s existed since the early 90s, 5.6% is the highest they’d ever achieved.
So I wouldn’t exactly say microsoft EVER pissed it away. They still have, and always have had, dominant market share of users. And they do so by charging hundreds of dollars as opposed to a free alternative.
They had internet explorer dominance, they pissed that away
They had PC gaming OS dominance, they’re now pissing that away
The closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn’t uninstall internet explorer.
But actual usage? Everybody used Netscape.
People who knew what they were doing with computers used Netscape until it died, those people went to Mozilla suite and then Firefox (well, Phoenix then Firebird then Firefox). But that was a shrinking minority of people on the internet at the turn of the millennium.
Practically everyone else used IE (90%+ of web traffic at its peak) and continued to do so until Google released Chrome and shone a light on how little Microsoft had been doing for nearly a decade.
Dominance was dominance however they got it, and they pissed it away through complacency, somewhat similarly to what they’re doing now.
This is your rose tinted hindsight fantasy.
I like to see this.
This is not my experience out of the box (in debian so not truly a comparison) on legacy hardware. (Which shouldn’t be running win 11 anyways).
We are definitely most of the way there with proton but game devs/publishers have a lot of room of improvement.
And the sky is blue.
