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by johnchristopher 2025 days ago
Something's off but I chalk it up to beefy config and some specific games. None of my games run on my laptop (hd 520 igpu) I can play games like the witness on windows, hl2, the cave, the talos principle, portal 2, dead cells, etc. and none runs easily on Linux. Except Dott and kentucky route zero.
2 comments

Could be Intel's graphics drivers. I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't properly optimized on Linux. Out of curiosity, what distro did you try?
I am on Kubuntu 18.04.

Quite frankly I don't expect much from gaming on Linux regarding ease-of-use and I am okay with that. I am sure all those games could run but when I want to play a game I don't want to fiddle with config files so I either boot a console or reboot into windows. It's been my experience for years that ubuntu/Linux isn't as versatile and as accommodating as windows regarding gaming but it doesn't mean that those games couldn't run with a bit of elbow grease (they most likely would but it's not pain-free).

I always try to stick to Intel IGP because I read (and I suppose it's still true) that they have the best support for desktop usage. I don't want to fight nvidia or ati drivers, I don't even know wwhich's the darling of gaming GPU for Linux these days. Been there, done that.

The Talos Principle has had a linux version for years, never had any problem running it.
Good for you.

But I re downloaded it and it still doesn't work: https://postimg.cc/TygMLfX8

That's interesting...

On this end, it looks this way, when windowed: https://imgur.com/hlrBFc9

And it's not even Xorg session, it is under Wayland -- Wayland won't allow to set a display mode to apps, and for Xrandr it is faked using overlays with correct density.

I looked a bit and:

> I guess your videocard does not support Vulkan. Open game properties, Betas tab, switch to "legacy" version. Beware, it will download several gigabytes from internet. Legacy version has support of OpenGL unlinke modern one, which uses only Vulkan.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/16409152...

But this option is behind a beta and I need a code to activate it (what ?).

edit: Digging a bit more https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/6/17422272...

This did the trick:

    apt install libvulkan1 libvulkan1:i386 mesa-vulkan-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386
It now runs. I only did it because you lured me into it though :)p. My point still stands ^^.
Sorry for vasting your time :P

I actually run Steam inside flatpak - I installed Steam from flathub, launched it, downloaded the games and almost (see below) everything worked. Flatpak runtime has all the necessary Mesa drivers (for AMD and Intel, not sure how Nvidia and flatpak works). The only thing I had to configure myself in the host system was udev rules for Dualshock gamepad. That one breaks the otherwise nice experience of everything working out of the box.

And wrt the Vulkan requirement: that's why I bought The Talos Principle originally. It was one of the first games with Vulkan renderer and I was curious, how well it works.

Ah, I remember trying the Flatpak version of steam but the performance difference was huge (Dead Cells and the dishwasher - vampire smile) with the Steam version of the official site but it was two years ago with an HD4000. Now that you mention it I also remember not wanting to deal with DS controller setup (for games that need it).

I'd have to do some testing with Talos (vs windows version) but I think that The Cave runs smoother now.