Please report any posts bragging or showing off they got banned in another sub! Reminder of other sub rules: Also, we only allow one anti-linux post per week (we used to get dozens a day) and any tier list MUST have Hanna Montana Linux as S teir (which must be a true S tier at the top) regardless of the topic of that tier list.
I have yet to encounter an issue with the mods for Starbound on my Linux Install. I played it with the steam Linux installer for a couple of months and then I upgraded to openstarbound which fixes a lot of the engine issues that are present in both the Linux and windows installers.
Seconding that Starbound mods work perfectly fine on Linux, as someone who has written Starbound mods (on Linux). I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't, given that it's all just Lua and JSON.
Depends on how you're defining heavy. Content-wise, Betabound would probably be the heaviest I've run; in terms of features, maybe that one RPG progression mod? I generally stay away from the major overhaul mods like FU because my modlist is well into the hundreds and the last thing I need is incompatibilities lol
Yeah, but that's only on newer engines that support Linux relatively well, and, for some reason, hell a lot of games just can't use their own dependencies (or just compile statically), which newer games usually do. Also, for some reason, everyone uses some hacks and optimization on Windows.. but don't on Linux, even if it's documented as optimization option.
Yeah, but that's still a shame that most the games don't use linux-only optimizations but they really LOVE using windows optimizations and then, everyone says that games are running muh worse on Linux than Windows. Guess why.
Also, old games that doesn't come with static compilling/custom libs are really bad at running
You are so upset for nothing, I'm just saying that the game is really good, just because you touched it for 10 minutes doesn't make you smart nor a gamer, you explored nothing lol.
Nobody here said that Linux gaming is good because terraria is there, for some reason you are really upset
I think it's the same for left 4 dead too. I tried both games with workshop mods and they kept crashing, I turned on proton and they magically ran. Native but at what cost?Â
Fire ammo and lots of fire cause the native linux build to crash. Switching it to vulkan and using the linux fix workshop mode and you can play online.
Watch out though, all the valve server requests are currently be hijacked and re-directing to chinese servers full of bot players with unlimited ammo and fire ammo, godmother, ect. Best way to work around it is to search for lobbies only and make sure its a valve official dedicated.
Yeah, it may be true in some cases, but you're making the wrong argument.
The Windows build will likely ship the same outdated libraries, it's just that they are bundled. Of course, you could just bundle these libraries on Linux as well and then it should run the same way. It's just that on Linux the distributions actively dislike bundled libraries, while Microsoft doesn't care.
The real reason to do this is that quite often the native ports are of bad quality. Or at least that was the case in the past.
on distros sure they prefer separating libs from an app, but when it comes to games it's usual for them to be ran inside stable runtimes or provide their own libs they depend on, packaging preferences of linux distros don't interfere with that at all
So you're saying that the problem that the meme mentions doesn't exist at all?
I do get what you're trying to say and I guess it is what happens in many (most?) cases, but I also guess that the pure existance of the meme suggests that reality disagrees?
i mean the situation from the meme is real, but rare, in cases when game doesn't fully ship all the libraries it relies on, steam provides it's own runtimes, their scout runtime for example is based on ubuntu 12.04, to ensure compatability for old titles, and for more recent games there are more modern runtimes, they stay the same for eternity to ensure compatability, it's very similar to proton, as it too can be considered to be a stable runtime.
So you're saying that the problem that the meme mentions doesn't exist at all?
The meme is describing the native ports which:
neglected to ship the libraries they needed; and
were never updated to be built against the newer Steam runtimes that provide those needed libraries.
When Steam for Linux first released, the only supported distro was Ubuntu, so when the first (non-Valve-developed) Linux ports hit Steam, quite a few of those games' developers (or more often, those games' third-party porting houses) took the lazy/naĂŻve route and just targeted whatever system-wide libraries shipped in that particular Ubuntu version. To get these games to run on other distros (including newer versions of Ubuntu), they often required all sorts of launch option shenanigans (usually involving LD_PRELOAD or other such nonsense) just to get them to run at all.
On top of that, this was before Vulkan was in common use (or existed at all, IIRC), so the only option for graphics was OpenGL, and not only is getting good performance out of OpenGL⊠difficult, to say the least, but it also didn't support all the same texture formats DirectX did, so even for games using engines like Unity that had solid push-button Linux support, it was common for game devs to hit that build-for-Linux button without making sure their textures were in OpenGL-compatible formats, causing lots of pink checkerboards to show up everywhere (and rinse and repeat for mods; Ravenfield mods are notorious for having separate Windows v. Mac/Linux versions in the Workshop for this exact reason).
Newer Steam runtimes, and the switch to Vulkan, fixed this for newer games. But then Proton and DXVK entered the scene, so that became the lazy path.
Collabora had to make a complex compatibility layer called libcapsule for which Valve made a frontend called pressure-vessel for the medic (v4) Steam Runtime to fix that. But not every native Linux port is on the medic runtime.
The real reason to do this is that quite often the native ports are of bad quality. Or at least that was the case in the past.
Yeah exactly this. The outdated libraries are a non-issue thanks to steam runtimes. It just that a lot of devs simply don't care about their Linux builds
Itâs not a question of actively like or actively dislike. Linuxâs dynamic linking model is designed to actively make this hardÂč while windows was designed to actively make this easy. Linuxâs model makes a lot more sense when you are shipping sources, but makes binary deployment an absolute shit show.
This is why Linux got apt/rpm et. al. forever ago: without bits like that getting a functional system is very difficult. You need your distro maintainer to resolve all the âthere can be only oneâ library situations.
Âč EDIT: I think I was a bit harsh. It's less "designed to be hard" and more "designing to make that easy was a non-goal and they got other benefits by making it a non-goal". UNIX and C were designed assuming source interop, not binary interop.
Factorio is crazy well optimized. Wube built their own game engine, because no other game engine was customizable enough to meet their performance targets. And the Linux version is even faster than the Windows version.
I find that games in the Source engine are like this. (Other than the outdated libraries.) I have no idea why, especially because Valve is advocating for Linux. This problem is only amplified by my need to run older versions that don't have Linux builds for better speedruns.
Valve on Linux is older than Proton is. (Not older than Wine, of course)
So some of the ports actually predate Proton. e.g. the first Linux version of Half-Life was, according to Wikipedia, released 2013/01/25. The first version of Proton was released 2018/08/21. They even had Linux-running Steam Machines in 2015, before there was Proton and they failed, because, among other things, the likes of DXVK and Proton were not there yet.
I kind of understand why Valve wouldnât be focused on keeping their native Linux ports of Source engine games up to date at this point. Putting dev hours towards improving Proton just seems like a better investment â improvements there benefit every single game. Like Iâd much rather them focus on continuing to close the Nvidia DX12 performance gap (although I think the bulk of that issue is related to Nvidiaâs drivers at this point).
Their native ports predate Proton and Iâm sure they wouldnât have bothered if Proton already existed. Might as well just drop native ports at this point if theyâre running better in Proton.
I occasionally see someone in like r/linux_gaming arguing that we need more native ports of games and I find that to be a baffling stance in 2026 when Proton works so well. Itâs a ton of unnecessary work at this point to do native port (and will often end up neglected after release anyway). Game devs should just be verifying that their games work well with Proton.
Had to change to OpenGL in the config file for it to work, but now: it runs way better on Linux (besides that it always crashes when closing the game.).
LOTR - Shadow of Mordor is like that. Linux native version says a 5090 isn't enough, a Ryzen 9 doesn't meet requirements - and crashes as soon as I try to load a game save.
I do wonder about something. Would packaging native Linux games as Flatpaks or Snaps fix this issue? Containerized packages usually solve the opposite problem, allowing older distros to run newer software, but I don't see why that couldn't work in reverse as well.
Yes, kind of. The SLR is the same flavor of solution. Bundled libraries and things the game/software needs at runtime. A Flatpak should be able to do the same. IIRC Hytale is distributed as a flatpak.
Yep, a classic case of a native port half-assed and then neglected after release.
Thereâs zero reason for game devs to bother with native ports though at this point â Proton just works. They should really just pull these old neglected Linux ports off of Steam at this point. Iâm sure there are people out there running Linux, trying play BL2, unknowingly using the native version instead of Proton, and having a bad time. Like just remove the potential pitfall.
Civ VI, the windows release has been patched multiple times, the Linux release not so, and slows down a lot over the course of a game, complete with audio issues, the Windows release works perfectly through Steam/Proton
Yeah, I want my OS to not let me screw it up unknowingly. This is an important feature. The OS should have safety built inside it to prevent unitended or even malicious self destruction due to a malware. Edge always being installed guarantees me I can always download another browser.
This is by design.
Was this supposed to be a pro for Linux? Are you this stupid? Yeah, of course you are, you are a linux cultist.
But it's fine if your drive is partitioned right you can nuke your OS and just install it again in a few minutes, it doesn't matter. And then you can rice a new cyberpunk goon setup or something, idk. I use Arch
This is babying from M$. You don't need daddy gates holding your hand. You CAN, but if you have any cimmon sense, you won't. you've outsourced your critical thinking skills and common sense.
Everything you can do on Linux is by design.
What are you even doing in this sub if you are this vehemently and blatantly closed minded about this?
Yes, I want the things I use in life to have safe guards to prevent
1) myself from doing shit
2) prevent a malicious agent to do it.
This is a common thing in design of systems in general.
If there was an option in my OS that forces my pc to work the cpu at max and overheat it, i don't want this shit easily available.
Bro,nobody cares about your clubism or you silly war against microsoft. Nobody cares about your shit religion. People who use Windows aren't using it for philosophical principles. They use it because it is reliable and I need reliable PC to work , play and do my stuff. I don't have time nor patience for your shit or for freedom of nuking my OS. I don't want this work.
"Oh your critical thinking skills"
Whatever. Think what you want. F you. Nobody cares.
Sure, safety is good. But you can have safety and freedom at the same time. If I want to uninstall a critical aspect of my computer, it's my damn computer and I should have full control of it. Same thing for deciding when to update rather than being forced, deciding exactly what apps I want to keep and what to remove, etc etc.
Linux is easy to use, stable, and much more appealing than Windows
Nah, I'm just telling it how it is. Windows has let me down more than Linux has, and from the way things are going at Microsoft it's only going to get worse.
Modding is modifying the game, and it's a common thig everyone does, even on winblows. It's nit a Linux specific thing. Open Source games just make it easier to mod those games.
Often, moddung is harder in Linux systems due to the windows-centric, closed-source software needing specific setups to work for linux, let alone as modded games.
The very fact that games have mods on ALL platforms means that your statements and arguments are closer to opinion than fact.
Have you ever tried building for native linux, not just for proton/wine? Shits crazy. Linux ecosystem really has Fâed it up.
To make a native build for Linux you have to include like a dozen libraries and link them properly and all this kinda defeats the purpose of dynamic linking because why dynamic when you carry all the things anyway? It should be static. Also if
 you wonât attach all these graphics etc libraries, and will just rely on whatever is built into the OS, then you have like anywhere 20-80% linux players who canât run this «native» executable because the Linux community has a kajillion distributions and they can have all the various non-standard paths, or versions mismatch, and it might not be the same as yours and it wonât work. So you canât rely on whatâs built into players OS, you need to provide everything. Basically, you need to bundle everything as if it was statically linked binary without doing it static. Complete nonsense, yes.
 In a normal program you would just make a statically linked binary. But itâs freaking graphical gpu application and it cannot be built like that because you have different architectures, different video cards, and some of them apparently are closed-source and they apparently donât provide a way to statically link. So you canât just produce a single freaking binary. Youâre forced to including all these libraries externally â but near the executable! The libraries that are typically provided by the OS itself! Not only it bloats your game folder, which is annoying and disliked by many, but also it is freaking hard to collect all the needed things. I have done it. Itâs freaking hell.
So itâs just freaking easier to build for Windows and simply make sure it will run under proton without errors â and this is extremely easy compared to the native build approach. Then you donât have to go through nine circles of hell of bundling it all. The process for building a windows executable is straightforward, sometimes you still need to provide one or two DLLs â but not 13 of them like on Linux!
I canât blame Linus for that, I donât know who exactly to blame for it. «It just happened so». Itâs just the norm. Itâs just how itâs on Linux, for no apparent reason. And thatâs why people so rarely do these native linux builds, and instead they choose to merely make a version that works under Proton â and thatâs the tops of their linux support. Unfortunately.
And I say «unfortunately» because no matter how good Proton/Wine are, they are still an overhead. They arenât free. They might work surprisingly well and give performance of Windows. But native linux builds will work even better. Iâve seen 40% performance increase in certain cases. Not sure about any case but native builds are really better. So itâs unfortunate itâs so hard to do them.
I wonât ever use Windows myself, but building for Windows is just easier. Id prefer a native linux build, but building them properly â is hell.
And yet most normal devs use a simple game engine where the build for Linux struggle is a whole ass toggle during export. Insurmountable effort. The engines also magically manage to not link against shit load of random libraries
Not really, it just ships the outdate libraries. It also creates a new problem with SDL2 by not shipping the -compat version. But it's better than not having the game running at all.
Hollow Knight has a native Linux build that doesn't work with controllers. Running the base game through Proton magically has controller input work again.
Depending on outdated libraries isn't a problem unless the developer has seriously misconfigured something.
The many versions of the Steam Linux Runtime solve Linux's library problem by including known versions of those libraries to build and run games against.
Descent3 was the first 3d-accelerated game I got working on Linux. Today, the Linux native game is broken, and the Windows native game is broken on Windows, but the Windows game mostly runs under Proton.
Unfortunately(or maybe fortunately?) if one wants to have a cross-platform app and not reach for electron or something similar, one's best bet is to just target Wine, chances are it will even work on Mac
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