[ToucanLoucan]

I'm looking to finally get off Windows for good. My experience with the SteamDeck started me, later I upgraded to a ROG Ally X for beefier performance but found Windows insufferable on a handheld, and installed SteamOS. I was blown away by the performance gains. A few months later I installed Kubuntu for the first time since 2013 or so, Steam shortly after, and while the desktop linux route is definitely more taxing (manually installing things like Mod Organizer 2 instead of Vortex, for instance, and all of that needing to run differently as opposed to Windows where it's all just .exe's) I've been absolutely blown away by the performance gains again. Mind you this machine is no slacker, it's a GE76 Raider from MSI, 3060 under the hood, but games just run smoother in Linux. And the alt-tab experience is untouchable, Fallout: New Vegas hates it and crashes, but everything more modern utterly doesn't care. I can alt-tab in and out, check messages, desktop composing works great no matter what game I'm playing, no more issues in modded games where the game completely locks the machine as Linux just doesn't seem to allow it, it's fantastic.

I have a couple more things to figure, I need XBox authentication to work for Halo Infinite and Sea of Theives, among others, and I need to figure out some solutions for some ancient software I have to run, which will probably end up being a Windows 11 VM. But as for my daily driver OS, I am so excited to get off Windows once and for all.

[mfinelli]

Re: modding with MO2/vortex I had a similar problem in that installing them on linux isn't super straightforward, and then once I did get them installed when I launched the game through them like I used to do on windows the performance was abysmal. I decided to tackle the problem myself and so I wrote this: https://github.com/mfinelli/modctl. It's a mod manager that I wrote specifically for linux. It's not really ready for primetime yet, but if you're willing to experiment depending on your needs it might work for you. The repo might look like work has slowed down, which I guess is true but that's mostly because I implemented all of the main stuff that I wanted to and now I've just been using it instead of building it for the past few weeks though there are still a few rough edges and a couple of bugs that I need to sort out (but nothing game breaking that I've found yet).

[HiPhish]

Have you considered using OverlayFS[1] instead of installing all files into the game directory and tracking them with a database? Or maybe what GNU Stow is doing where it installs each package into its own directory and then uses symlinks which it tracks to "install" the files into the global file hierarchy?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OverlayFS

[2] https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/

[mfinelli]

Ooh overlayfs is quite interesting. I'll have to take a closer look at that. I imagine it's similar to what MO2 was doing on windows with the virtual filesytem to keep the game directory clean.

The stow approach is something that I considered but ultimately rejected for a couple of reasons around handling conflicts of game-installed files as well as how to ultimately handle the symlink lifecycle (eg wrapper to make the "non-running" state always clean or to let it always persist and then need to run manual cleanup/update steps). But if you're interested in that approach when I was applying for Nexus Mods approval I discovered https://github.com/Marc1326/Anvil-Organizer in the overall list of mod tools which I believe uses that strategy (though I haven't really looked too closely)

But basically my original idea to just install the files directly into the game directory stems from the fact that when I switched to linux for gaming and not having success with MO2 that's literally what I was doing. I would download the mod from nexus and unzip/tar it into the game directory manually. When I wanted to uninstall or update I'd find the original archive list the files in it and then delete them from my game directory. After doing this too much I realized that I was basically missing the functionality of a standard linux package manager (eg apt, pacman, etc)

[karlding]

Keep in mind that overlay file systems are designed to treat the lower layer as read only. Changes made in the merged view are written to the upper layer while the original lower files are untouched.

So if you need to persist changes into the lower layers, I think you may need to do tricks like taking snapshots and then swapping the bind mount (maybe with some diffing logic) or some other offline methods.

[mfinelli]

Ah that's good to know. That makes it more complicated than I was thinking because some mods obivously write data (other than cache etc which could be dropped between runs) that they expect to have persisted. Thanks for the heads up; I'll research this some more but I think it might stop there...

[ToucanLoucan]

Interesting! I was modding Fallout New Vegas and 4 if that adds context, what did you have issues with? All the same happy to bookmark it, might play with it at some point, thanks!

[mfinelli]

I've really only tested it with Cyberpunk 2077 (and a bit of WH40K rogue trader). The issues (so far) are with tangential features. For example it's possible to define rules when you extract files (eg the mod author sticks them in a subdirectory or something you can have the tool automatically strip that leading directory) the "preview" feature to see how to rules affect the files before extraction isn't working as expected. But the main loop of create a profile for the game, add/remove mods to it, and have it spit them out into your game directory works without issue.

I should add that it's a CLI tool only (I may add a TUI later but it probably won't ever have a GUI if that matters). Anyway if you check it out and have any feedback whether positive or negative that would be cool

[ToucanLoucan]

It's funny you say that, I've been considering another run through of 2077 and some mods would give it a fresh coat of paint... :think:

[imtringued]

I know that running Vortex is a pain but I never ran into any problems once it was installed. I did this back in 2022.

I don't want to discourage you, but what's wrong with helping MO2 and Vortex get ported to Linux?

[mfinelli]

That's a fair question! When I was on windows I never actually used Vortex, I only gave it a try on Linux when I had problems with MO2. But being an Electron app it's very unappealing to me. As for MO2, well, I don't really know C++ and wouldn't even know where to begin contributing even if I did... just for starters there's the whole question of how the virtual filesystem that MO2 does would work if it were native linux. In any case I know Go and wanted to implement some things that I didn't like how MO2 worked (eg tracking the version of additional mod files instead of just the main one). Plus new stuff like making a portable mod bundle that you can either backup or move to a new machine. Plus I generally like a CLI workflow :)

[MrDrMcCoy]

Vortex at one time did have a native Linux version. IIRC, it had very minimal game support, lagged behind the main branch, and was eventually canceled. I don't think they're interested in contributions for native Linux. A separate app seeking to implement Vortex API and package support would potentially be more free to improve the UX, do Flatpak/Appimage, or use more interesting Linux features like overlayfs and FUSE archive mounting. I have a mind to try my hand at it, would be a good starter project for a new language.

[ToucanLoucan]

MO2 works fine on Linux! It’s a bit slow to start but I found it very usable, a bit less polished than Vortex maybe but it absolutely gets the job done and I got my head around it inside of an hour.

[mfinelli]

I'm familiar with MO2 from when I used windows, but I had a hard time getting it working on Linux. First problem was getting it installed. I found https://github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinkerlaunch which is supposed to let you install it into each game's wine/proton prefix which worked, but when I then tried to launch the game it would run with absolute terribile performance (like even just the title screen would lag and stutter...)

How did you install it? Maybe with a different method it would work for me better (even though now I'll probably just stick with my own tool I'm still curious)

[ToucanLoucan]

I found this install script!

https://github.com/Furglitch/modorganizer2-linux-installer

Download, run install.sh, follow the instructions given. It replaces the game effectively in Steam, which does mean you have to launch MO2 anytime you want to play the game, but I found that at worst, slightly annoying.

[progforlyfe]

Modding will continue to be a challenge, but doable, thing, until more mod devs get onboarded to Linux themselves. If the mod devs enjoy using Linux, they'll probably start building mods with UIs native to Linux.

I would say custom modding and online multiplayer anti-cheat systems are the last real hold outs, and even then it doesn't affect every game.

[not_a9]

Does Wine have any debugging tools with equivalent developer experience to Visual Studio’s debugger?

[beart]

There were specific games keeping me on windows, mostly online PVP. At some point I switched anyway and I don't regret it at all. Now when my friends suggest a game and I'm not able to play it, I just do something else or we choose a different game. There are so many great games out there now, and more release every week. Plus, as I've gotten older, it has become more apparent the fun is in socializing, not the game itself.

My point is, you may find the one or two games holding you back won't be missed much.

[HiPhish]

Regarding mod managers, there is Limo[1] for Linux. I used it for Viva New Vegas[2], but some mods do not seem to work. I don't know if it's due to Limo or if I did something wrong though.

[1] https://github.com/limo-app/limo

[2] https://vivanewvegas.moddinglinked.com/

[Bombthecat]

Limo, last update a year ago :(

[cwel]

RE: Sea of Thieves on linux w/ xb/microsoft auth. I was able to work around it by just removing 2fa from my microsoft acc. Obviously not a great solution. but yeah. You may be able to reenable it afterwards, I never tried, its the only thing my microsoft account is useful for at this point anyways.

[ToucanLoucan]

Orly? I hadn't gotten that far yet but interesting data point. I'd only tried Infinite and the game just wouldn't even really launch, I didn't even get to the main menu, didn't open XBox authentication at all and I just assumed I had to have something installed. When I did some googling I'd heard of something called... my memory fails me, Heroic I think? I hadn't actually gotten around to trying yet though so I've no clue if that's any good.

[cwel]

I can't speak to Halo Infinite, but for SoT that's what worked for me. Another commenter is saying they were able to auth with a passkey (for infinite), which I never tried (for SoT), but id imagine it would work.

Heroic is a launcher aggregate/wrapper I think? for 'Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games' It's either Steam, native/standalone or arr for me. for non-steam stuff I use umu.

* I should add that I am launching a steam purchased copy of SoT, not the one from Xbox store/gamepass or what have you, so the process is likely different, but maybe not cus you are likely going to see the same auth popup served via wine/proton.

[MayeulC]

I ended up being able to authenticate using a passkey, IIRC. Can't remember if that was my yubikey or bitwarden. I was surprised that it worked at all.

It didn't use to be complicated, but an update messed stuff up a few months ago (halo infinite).

[foo12bar]

What do you plan to do about firmware updates?

[cogman10]

Believe it or not, it's actually easier to handle on linux than it is on windows now [1]. Normal caveats apply, it depends on your HW manufacturer. However, a lot of them are participating which makes it pretty slick.

And, assuming your are doing x86, you probably already have an EFI partition so even doing motherboard bios updates isn't much of a big deal. You just drop the update in the FAT32 EFI partition, reboot, and point the motherboard at that location. Some motherboards even support just doing that as part of an online update.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fwupd

[hypercube33]

For a hot moment Windows would just update firmware for big vendors as an update. Worked slick. I think vendors are bailing out on this though.

That said some Linux distros can do the same now though I've used so many the last few months I don't know which.

[isityettime]

All the distros that support it use the same system, fwupd: https://fwupd.org/

It's the same tool the person you were replying to was pointing at via the Arch wiki. It's pretty standard. I'd expect most distros to support it by now.