this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Your Windows 10 PC will soon be 'junk' - users told to resist Microsoft deadline::If you're still using Windows 10 and don't want to upgrade to Windows 11 any time soon you might want to sign a new online petition

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[–] plantedworld@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I often play old games that have compatibility issues with windows 10. Most recently FEAR required a .dll from a site for a stable framerate.

People keep saying "gaming works" on Linux but are they talking about modern games? Do old games "just work?" I have very little free time to fart about with fixing too many issues with an old game. How well does this stuff work?

[–] superminerJG@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Old games are likely to work better, as new games are likely to use new features or behaviour which aren't yet handled properly by Wine/Proton.

[–] CeeBee@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

And yet Proton/Wine are able to handle unique fixes for some new games to make them work even better on Linux.

[–] skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Check protondb for reports on whether a specific (steam) game runs.

In my experience, pretty much everything that doesn't have anticheat works. I can't remember the last time a game didn't work fine, from stuff so old it stopped working in Windows Vista to day 1 AAA titles. Even DOS stuff is playable with DOSBox.

Just be aware, Linux is not windows. If you try to use it like windows, you will only experience pain. It's not hard, especially with mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Mint, but you really should invest at least a bit of effort into learning how the system works and how to use it properly.

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

Just be aware, Linux is not windows.

As a funny aside, the reverse is also true. My first IT job that involved system administration I kept trying to treat the windows servers like I would Linux servers and that just doesn't work so well. Especially if you're making heavy use of powershell sessions and the administrative capabilities of powershell it can be really jarring when it works like Linux until it doesn't

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Proton is amazing. There are several games I've played on my Linux laptop that have Linux versions, and they don't run as well as playing it with Proton.

Check out protondb

[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As long as the game isn't a title thats using something bleeding edge, it will work day one. And as long as the game isn't using an non proton compatible anti-cheat, it should work. Unless said devs arbitrarily decided not to tick the "proton compatible" box cause of some hard-headed bullshit.

[–] K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would say old games work better also get Steamtinkerlaunch which makes fucking around easy

If the game isnt steam just add as non steam game and bang steam will handle the rest

[–] Macros@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

I had great experiences with old games on Linux. Mostly they work better than on a modern Windows system. For Example Neverwinter Nights 2. Under Windows movement is jittery on fast CPUs. There is a community patch for that thankfully. Under Linux it just works with WINE (the patch is advisable for other reasons there too). Also loading times are blazingly fast under WINE and Linux. On my HDD PC 1 second vs 50 on Windows. Now with a NVME SSD, Windows also only takes 2 seconds.

Of course Wine/Proton is not perfect, I still have a dualboot system for that. But I boot to Windows very rarely these days. When I do I am hit with so many slow updates, that I don't get to my game. Maybe I should stop doing them and cut of its network access.

Really old games tend to be more difficult. For a relative I set up a VM with Win98 as the performance impact won't hurt the games, some even benefit. (I believe the games where Safecracker and Theme Park) Even older than that DosBox and ScummVM work perfectly.