Thanks to Steam’s proton you can play your Windows only Steam games on Linux. Gaming was the one reason I stayed with Windows but that’s no longer a good excuse. But there can be a few issues depending on the game you are trying to play.
How to turn on Steam’s Proton
Using proton is very easy. Valve has built it right into the Steam client and all you have to do for most games is turn it on.
You will want to go to the top menu and click on the word Steam then click settings in the drop down menu.
After that go to Steam Play and check the box to enable. Then in the drop down menu go ahead and pick the newest version you see.
Now when you look at a Windows game in your Library you will notice the install button is lit up.
Proton’s Performance
Steam games on Linux with Proton works rather well for the most part. But I do notice some FPS and performance drops ones in a while. Some games are worse than others. For example, I can feel the FPS drop in Fallout 76 when I go indoors. But Vampyr is mostly good with just a small drop in FPS ones in a while.
Other games have no issues and I’ve heard some people say they have found games that run better and faster in Linux. I don’t have any examples of that yet but I’ve just started using Proton so maybe I’ll find one soon.
There’s also a handy site called ProtonDB. It tells you if the game runs well and in some cases what custom Proton versions you can use to run the game better.
Custom Proton Versions
Sometimes the default Proton will not run the game or it has some kind of issue like no audio. But the community normally has a fix for this. The main custom version of Proton I’ve seen is called GloriousEggroll. With the help of custom versions, I have not found a Steam game yet that I can not play on Linux!
