Gaming beginning.

[Mike13Foxtrot]

So I installed Steam on my newer build. With the upcoming launch of the Steam Deck from Valve, lot of talk about Proton instead of Native Linux programming. So I set Steam Play and added Proton. Although Mint Software manager would not install Steam. Error message said I was not online. Hit the web installed Steam from there, then Mint took over to finish all the extras. Just a hiccup.

Have not played anything yet, just got it up and running then updated Mint. Did not Upgrade to 20.2 Uma as of yet. May do so this weekend. Cinnamon is working great.

 

[TheProf]

I've tried Steam on my Fedora install with Proton, works really well. I had to install proprietary nVidia drivers, but aside from that, pretty smooth sailing. Although I have not gamed much in the last few months, I do find that Linux has come a long way.

My personal preference is still Windows for gaming, but I dont see this being the case in the next few years, Linux gaming has improved quite a bit from what I've read and experienced.

 

[Mike13Foxtrot]

I was never an nV fan. Always hed better luck with (ATI) AMD. ATI was always better with Linux.

 

[TheProf]

I was never an nV fan. Always hed better luck with (ATI) AMD. ATI was always better with Linux.

This is what I’ve heard too. Unfortunately for me, as I am coming from Windows, and the fact that I have a 2080ti, I will stick around with this GPU for a while. Sucks with the proprietary drivers, but they work so it’s all good.

 

[f33dm3bits]

With all my time using Linux I have always used an Nvidia graphics card and never had any problems, a couple months ago I bought an AMD graphics card and it runs just as well and I don't notice a difference with performance it's just easier because of being able to use the opensource drivers.

 

[TheProf]

With all my time using Linux I have always used an Nvidia graphics card and never had any problems, a couple months ago I bought an AMD graphics card and it runs just as well and I don't notice a difference with performance it's just easier because of being able to use the opensource drivers.

I assume the open source drivers are installed by default during the OS install, so there’s nothing to do like deploy new drivers manually post OS install?

 

[f33dm3bits]

I assume the open source drivers are installed by default during the OS install, so there’s nothing to do like deploy new drivers manually post OS install?

I'm not an expert but in short:
amdgpu is the driver.
mesa contains the api's which talk to the driver.
linux-firmware contains the firmware of the graphics card.

An explanation of what Mesa is and what graphics cards use it

Since we get a few comments here and there asking what Mesa is and what graphics cards will use it, here’s my attempt at clearing it up for you.

www.gamingonlinux.com