what luck other Linux users had with it. The database itself is
well organized and includes information about when the testing
was carried out and what the specific hardware and software
configuration used was.
>> The level of success of running the game on Linux is rated
from ‘Borked’ to ‘Platinum’. So, if you find a recent, highly
encouraging report about the game running well on a similar
set-up to your own, the odds are good. In addition, ProtonDB
reports contain information on tweaks you can use to make
stubborn games run properly. More on that later.
>> To run Windows versions of games on Linux, visit the Steam
Play settings (Steam > Settings > Steam Play). There are two
options here to be enabled: ‘Enable Steam Play for supported
titles’ enables approved games to run. These are games that
Valve has tested and knows to work properly.
>> Ticking ‘Enable Steam Play for other titles’ enables you
to attempt to run all Windows games that you have access to
through Steam, even if Valve has not tested the game. Again,
examining the entry for the game on ProtonDB will give you the
best idea of what to realistically expect.5TROUBLESHOOTING AND TWEAKING
If you look through ProtonDB, you’ll notice plenty of
references to Winetricks (https://wiki.winehq.org/
Winetricks). So what is it? Winetricks is a helper script that
installs various Windows components that are needed by games.The script pulls through the component and makes it
visible to the Wine subsystem. It is worth knowing about,
even if you’re using Wine outside of Steam. For example,
if you typed winetricks corefonts it would download
the Microsoft Corefonts, a set of fonts often needed by
Windows applications, and install them to a location that
Wine, and therefore Windows applications, can see.
>> Things get a bit more complicated if you want to
apply Winetricks fixes to a specific Proton game, but
not by much. Thankfully, there is a helper script for the
helper script called Protontricks (https://github.com/
Matoking/protontricks) for just this purpose. If you have
a full Python set-up (see your distribution documentation
to install Python) you should be able to install it with
pipx install protontricks.
>> To apply Protontricks to a specific game, you need
to discover the specific game ID of that game, using
Protontricks itself. For example, typing protontricks- s fallout found Fallout and Fallout 4 installed on our
Linux gaming machine. This might seem like a lot of
work, but we have to admit that being able to add all of
the resources that each game might need on a game-by-
game basis is pretty cool.
This is necessary as different games might need
different versions of a resource. You might even find
that this flexibility makes some older games more
viable on Linux than on native Windows, and this
will be increasingly so as time goes by. The syntax is
protontricks [game ID] [Winetrickscommand] , but
most of the time, you’ll simply be cutting and pasting the
needed commands from the ProtonDB entry.
Moving on from Protontricks, some games need
special launch options to be added. The dialogue for
doing this is accessed by right-clicking the game name
in the Library section in Steam, selecting ‘General’, and
then entering the launch options that you have found
on the relevant ProtonDB entry into the box. Most such
options will end with the string %command% at the end.
If you add more than one launch option at once,
remove the extra instances of %command% as it should
occur only once, at the end of the overall option string.
If you have to alter the INI files of the game, you can
browse to the game folder by right-clicking the game
Steam can run games remotely between
two Steam-equipped setups. The way it
works is that the remote computer runs
the game and compresses the video and
audio. It then streams this video and
audio to the other computer while the
client sends back mouse, keyboard, and
controller input.
The two computers you use don’t even
have to be of the same architecture, and
there’s an Android app too. We tested it
out between a Windows computer with
a GNU/Linux one over a home network
and found that it worked well.
The performance-limiting factors
are the speed of the host that’s running
the game and the latency and bandwidthof the network, rather than the power
of the client computer. So you could
have a tricked-out gaming computer
with a decent graphics card hosting the
game, paired with a low-powered Linux
box as the client.
Over gigabit Ethernet, it was possible
to run an action-orientated game with
no noticeable input lag at all while
running the game at 108 0p. There was
some slight degradation of graphics
quality as video compression was in use.
However, we were able to alleviate this
to an extent by increasing the graphics
balance setting (Steam > Settings
> Remote Play > Client Streaming
Options To This Computer: Beautiful).RUNNING GAMES REMOTELY
>> Examining the compatibility reports for Metro 2033 to work
on ProtonDB. It’s a pretty detailed report and looks promising.64 MAXIMUMPC JAN 2022
R&D
>> Streaming from a Windows PC onto
a Linux PC. Hold Escape for the menu.