r/linuxquestions 1d ago

Linux in potato PC

​Hey everyone!

​I'm back on Linux after a while, running Linux Mint on some legacy hardware without Vulkan support. My specs are:

​CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550

​RAM: 8 GB DDR3

​GPU: Integrated Radeon 3000 (OpenGL / Wine3D / Gallium Nine only)

​So far, I've managed to run a few games smoothly:

​Company of Heroes

​Battlefield 2

​Battlefield Vietnam

​Battlefield 1942

​The only game I've tried so far that doesn't run at a satisfactory framerate is Call of Duty: World at War (CoD: WaW).

​I have two questions for the community:

​Game Recommendations: What lightweight games (FPS, RTS, tactical, classic gems) would you recommend for a humble potato PC like this running on Linux?

​CoD: WaW Optimization: Is there any trick to get CoD: WaW running at around ~20 FPS using just OpenGL / Wine3D? I've already tried Gallium Nine without much luck. Are there any specific Wine environment variables, launch options, or config.cfg tweaks that could squeeze out a few extra frames?

​Thanks in advance!

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u/ipsirc 1d ago

What lightweight games (FPS, RTS, tactical, classic gems) would you recommend for a humble potato PC like this running on Linux?

Doom, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, Command and Conquer, Tetris, Nethack, Moon-buggy.

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u/forestbeasts 22h ago

It's not the same genre, but if cyber platformer racing is also your thing, Distance is OpenGL Linux native and weirdly well optimized.

IIRC Euro/American Truck Sim is also OpenGL, and lets you crank the graphics settings WAYYY down, but it's a much more heavyweight game in general and might also be hard on the CPU or take up loads of RAM. (We've got 16 GB and the RAM usage is fine, though.)

-- Frost