A Windows Gamer tries Manjaro

If you have not tried Steams Fsync patch, I highly recommend giving it a try. I have been playing Greedfall and under the stock kernel it runs at about half the frame rate as Windows , with the patch it run just as fast or faster than windows. if you are running Arch, here is a link to the steam repo with the arch kernels and aco driver packages.

http://repo.steampowered.com/arch/valveaur/


I'll have to try that. Thanks for the info!
 
I've never seen this? So the Fsync patch replaces the standard kernel? Is it safe to use on a daily machine?
 
For DEs I'll continue to stick with KDE Manjaro. The last time I liked anything Gnome was Gnome 2. I wasn't a huge fan of KDE a number of years back either. It definitely was bloated compared to many other DEs and had some serious stability issues as well as other problems from trying to find something "different" to stand out. Since then the KDE guys have done a wonderful job turning that around and it's definitely my goto DE no matter the distro.
 
I've already got cinnamon manjaro writing to a flash drive so I'm going to use that to check out this kernel patch but then I'll probably try out KDE Manjaro and Kubuntu after that. I'll report back with the results
 
if using an Nvidia card, make sure you also download the headers and nvidia-dkms

also, here is the steam discussion thread that also has info for ubuntu kernels.
 
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I've already got cinnamon manjaro writing to a flash drive so I'm going to use that to check out this kernel patch but then I'll probably try out KDE Manjaro and Kubuntu after that. I'll report back with the results

KDE Manjaro is what I run on my Desktop. I really like it. I am very tempted to try KDE Neon, because bleeding edge KDE on LTS stability has me kinda intrigued and I haven't started fresh on a Linux in a while.
 
if using an Nvidia card, make sure you also download the headers and nvidia-dkms

also, here is the steam discussion thread that also has info for ubuntu kernels.

I'll add to this. If you're installing any kind of graphics drivers, or ZFS or whatever. Use the DKMS package if there's one available. It makes kernel/program upgrades less of a hassle.
 
I'll add to this. If you're installing any kind of graphics drivers, or ZFS or whatever. Use the DKMS package if there's one available. It makes kernel/program upgrades less of a hassle.

To a degree, if you're running bleeding edge kernels you can still run into compatibility issues that no amount of recompiling will resolve. Manjaro usually hold such drivers back until compatibility is assured.

KDE Manjaro is what I run on my Desktop. I really like it. I am very tempted to try KDE Neon, because bleeding edge KDE on LTS stability has me kinda intrigued and I haven't started fresh on a Linux in a while.

I cannot recommend KDE Neon enough, an awesome distro that's as based on Ubuntu as it needs to be - Certain commands are slightly different in the KDE sense.
 
I'm starting to think I might just give BSD a shot since it seems like the available games on Linux don't really fit my needs anyway. I've always felt like the BSD license gives more needed flexibility than the GPL. Might be worth a shot.

I really prefer the update/build model of BSD but I find it more limiting to use (despite liking it better) than a major Linux distribution. Once I get my primary desktop up and running again (maybe over the weekend) I'll see if I can wrangle up an empty hard drive to try BSD again (I already have a spare drive for Linux ready).
 
I cannot recommend KDE Neon enough, an awesome distro that's as based on Ubuntu as it needs to be - Certain commands are slightly different in the KDE sense.

I'm in the same boat. As a disclaimer, I've used KDE from before rev 1.0 as my daily driver on my nix dev box. That either makes me biased, or maybe I've found something really good... ;)

With Neon you get a lot of the upsides of Ubuntu, but with a far more sane desktop environment, at least in my opinion. KDE has always made sensible and unsurprising default choices for most people, but you can go nuts and make it do whatever you want. That's the Linux way.

It's good stuff.
 
I'm in the same boat. As a disclaimer, I've used KDE from before rev 1.0 as my daily driver on my nix dev box. That either makes me biased, or maybe I've found something really good... ;)

With Neon you get a lot of the upsides of Ubuntu, but with a far more sane desktop environment, at least in my opinion. KDE has always made sensible and unsurprising default choices for most people, but you can go nuts and make it do whatever you want. That's the Linux way.

It's good stuff.

I've found the KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS, but not.

Some of the commands are different (ie: sudo apt upgrade vs sudo pkcon update). The release model is also slightly different, like rolling release but not as bleeding edge - Just last night I got an update for kernel 5.3, and am always getting AMDGPU and Mesa updates and don't even run an AMD GPU.
 
I never found the hard drive set aside for Linux so I bought a 1 TB SSD and now have the KDE edition of Manjaro installed. (y) For the time being, I'll continue to game on the ASUS laptop.
 
I don't want to derail this thread at all (so tell me if I am and I will create a new thread and remove this). Steam is installed and Proton enabled. I'm currently downloading KOTOR (KOTOR 2 was already enabled for Linux) and UT 2003 to see how well the Windows to Linux runtime works.

Steam already plays Civ V and Beyond Earth on Linux. I'm taking it on faith that it works so haven't tried it yet.

Battle.net with World of Warcraft and Diablo III were a bit of a pain to install (a great Reddit post exists for what to do to prepare Manjaro for the Blizzard transplant). Both WoW and D3 are buggy enough on Windows so I'm not anticipating a seamless journey here but if either have issues on Linux I still have the ASUS laptop running Windows to fall back to.
 
Feel free to keep the thread alive. I got burned out on trying different distros and breaking things for now. Maybe some more posts will motivate me
 
Okay, thanks! (y)

I shouldn't have taken the 'I can install a game on Linux' in Steam as an indication that it would work. The fine print (okay, it just required reading) is that SteamOS will install and run the Linux versions of Civ V and Beyond Earth. To get it to work on Manjaro it requires some playing around. So, I don't have either working yet. With that said, something on the Windows laptop prevents Beyond Earth from running so it's not limited to Linux at this point, lol.

UT 2003 finally downloaded and played through Proton. It's somewhat odd that playing a Windows game via compatibility layer worked better than the 'Linux-native' games. So far I'm not tempted to install SteamOS on this machine yet and I'm definitely not interested in loading Ubuntu either.
 
Battle.net with World of Warcraft and Diablo III were a bit of a pain to install (a great Reddit post exists for what to do to prepare Manjaro for the Blizzard transplant). Both WoW and D3 are buggy enough on Windows so I'm not anticipating a seamless journey here but if either have issues on Linux I still have the ASUS laptop running Windows to fall back to.

In the case of Diablo III all you have to do is install Lutris, search for Diablo III on the Lutris page and download and run the Diablo III install script - Done. In fact you can install Diablo III under regular Wine, but it runs like poo.

Diablo III runs perfectly under Lutris, I play it at 4k high graphics settings not a problem in the world.

I shouldn't have taken the 'I can install a game on Linux' in Steam as an indication that it would work. The fine print (okay, it just required reading) is that SteamOS will install and run the Linux versions of Civ V and Beyond Earth. To get it to work on Manjaro it requires some playing around. So, I don't have either working yet. With that said, something on the Windows laptop prevents Beyond Earth from running so it's not limited to Linux at this point, lol.

The title will install via SteamPlay/Proton, it won't install via SteamOS and you won't be installing any form of Ubuntu to play such titles. The title will simply be using Valve's variant of Wine/DXVK/DX9VK.
 
The title will install via SteamPlay/Proton, it won't install via SteamOS and you won't be installing any form of Ubuntu to play such titles. The title will simply be using Valve's variant of Wine/DXVK/DX9VK.

I installed it before I enabled SteamPlay. Supposedly, based on what I read, it works without modification on SteamOS. It also seems to install and work fine on Ubuntu (not entirely surprising as Ubuntu and SteamOS are based on Debian). Thus why I said I wasn't ready to install SteamOS in Manjaro's place (and I've had my fill of Ubuntu).
 
I installed it before I enabled SteamPlay. Supposedly, based on what I read, it works without modification on SteamOS. It also seems to install and work fine on Ubuntu (not entirely surprising as Ubuntu and SteamOS are based on Debian). Thus why I said I wasn't ready to install SteamOS in Manjaro's place (and I've had my fill of Ubuntu).

The base distro shouldn't really matter. As long as you've got SteamPlay enabled and you installed the correct version of Steam (this is where things get a little confusing under distro's loosely based on Arch), all you need to do is download the title and it should just run assuming it's reported as supported on sites such as ProtonDB. Ubuntu based distro's are Valve's preferred platform, but things should run identically no matter what the distro.
 
UT 2003 finally downloaded and played through Proton. It's somewhat odd that playing a Windows game via compatibility layer worked better than the 'Linux-native' games.

This was only really an issue regarding early Linux native ports, newer ports are much better in regards to performance.
 
Feel free to keep the thread alive. I got burned out on trying different distros and breaking things for now. Maybe some more posts will motivate me

I need to get moved into my new place and get my lab set up -- but getting the 'living room computer' in my signature running Linux full-time is a goal.

Probably going to be booting a number of distros, such as:
  • RHEL 8 / CentOS 8 for work
  • Latest Ubuntu LTS
  • Manjaro
  • Maybe Fedora or other developmental OS
The 8700K / 32GB / GTX970 combo should be fine, though I do wish I had an equivalent AMD GPU to throw in there for distros that require manual loading of Nvidia drivers. Not sure if the RX460 that I tossed in my wife's desktop would have enough 'oomph' for general Linux gaming and not really interested in picking up another GPU just for the hell of it quite yet ;).
 
Main thing that killed my motivation was that I couldn't figure out how to get the kernel posted earlier to work after spending hours compiling it. I think where I failed was something to do with the video card drivers.
 
Main thing that killed my motivation was that I couldn't figure out how to get the kernel posted earlier to work after spending hours compiling it. I think where I failed was something to do with the video card drivers.

I highly recommend keeping it simple where possible. Attempting to fix every problem you encounter on Linux without broad, deep, contemporary knowledge not just of Linux but also of the distribution you're using and the application(s) that you're trying to run is a short route to frustration ;).

I accept that there will be things that I cannot yet fix, and applications that I cannot yet get running. One of my favorites is League of Legends (judge away), and well, getting and then keeping it running on Linux is an ongoing arms race.
 
Main thing that killed my motivation was that I couldn't figure out how to get the kernel posted earlier to work after spending hours compiling it. I think where I failed was something to do with the video card drivers.

What? That kernel provided by Valve?

Meh! I wouldn't worry about it. I can assure you, you'll go through all the trouble of getting it compiled and installed and see a 2 FPS increase.

[EDIT] Although, if you had have been running an Ubuntu based distro it would have been easy to install. ;)
 
The base distro shouldn't really matter. As long as you've got SteamPlay enabled and you installed the correct version of Steam (this is where things get a little confusing under distro's loosely based on Arch), all you need to do is download the title and it should just run assuming it's reported as supported on sites such as ProtonDB. Ubuntu based distro's are Valve's preferred platform, but things should run identically no matter what the distro.

I'm finding this to not be the case with Manjaro. The 'linux' titles on Steam are not running but forcing it to use Proton to launch Civilization V or Beyond Earth doesn't work either. I've gone down multiple rabbit holes trying to get these two games to work and no dice. These plus UT 2003 are the primary games I play so not being able to get these to work on Manjaro is quite frustrating. I'm probably going to install Debian and try my luck.
 
You're better off using the windows versions of beyond earth and civ v anyway. Civ v is such a bad port that it doesn't support AA on linux. Beyond earth is probably the same
 
The problem is that the Windows versions don't work either. Now that I'm old I don't really feel like debugging all of this. :oldman:
 
I'm finding this to not be the case with Manjaro. The 'linux' titles on Steam are not running but forcing it to use Proton to launch Civilization V or Beyond Earth doesn't work either. I've gone down multiple rabbit holes trying to get these two games to work and no dice. These plus UT 2003 are the primary games I play so not being able to get these to work on Manjaro is quite frustrating. I'm probably going to install Debian and try my luck.

Why don't you just use an Ubuntu based distro? I use KDE Neon which is as much Ubuntu as necessary with the KDE DE as a rolling release and I have no issues. I wouldn't recommend installing Debian, you're probably going to encounter more issues than under Manjaro.
 
Ubuntu is a Debian-based distro. I have some experience running Debian as I've used it to host a Mumble/Murmur server a few years ago. Of course, that was Debian 6 before it switched to using systemd...

Through my job I've had to deal with the 'political' side of Canonical and I'd prefer not to have anything to do with a distro that is based on Ubuntu.
 
Ubuntu is a Debian-based distro. I have some experience running Debian as I've used it to host a Mumble/Murmur server a few years ago. Of course, that was Debian 6 before it switched to using systemd...

Through my job I've had to deal with the 'political' side of Canonical and I'd prefer not to have anything to do with a distro that is based on Ubuntu.

Yes, it is, but Ubuntu is the officially supported distro - All support is going to relate to Ubuntu. I'm not too sure why you need to use Debian? You're making this harder than it should be just because of some beef with Canonical?

I don't have a digital copy of UT2003, but I have UT2004 which is essentially the same thing. In twelve minutes I had the title downloaded and running and didn't have to do a thing, installation was no harder than under Windows and performance is fantastic.
 
Yes, it is, but Ubuntu is the officially supported distro - All support is going to relate to Ubuntu. I'm not too sure why you need to use Debian? You're making this harder than it should be just because of some beef with Canonical?

So if I want seamless gaming I should be happy that I can choose one distro or one based on same? Sounds very Windows-ish to me... You can choose to berate me for my choice of distro but that is almost the same as the constant Windows-bashing going on here.

I don't have a digital copy of UT2003, but I have UT2004 which is essentially the same thing. In twelve minutes I had the title downloaded and running and didn't have to do a thing, installation was no harder than under Windows and performance is fantastic.

I already indicated having UT2003 running flawlessly so I'm not entirely sure why you're making a thing of it. Civilization V and Beyond Earth, despite having been flagged by Valve as Linux-compatible, won't run on Manjaro without major hoops being jumped through and have not actually worked for me yet. When I tell Steam to use the Windows-based installers, it won't run them either. So, two of the three most-played Steam titles for me are not working.
 
So if I want seamless gaming I should be happy that I can choose one distro or one based on same? Sounds very Windows-ish to me... You can choose to berate me for my choice of distro but that is almost the same as the constant Windows-bashing going on here.

There's a plethora of Ubuntu based distro's to choose from, the situation is really nothing like Windows. You're not locked down to one UI, there's no forced spyware included with the OS, the performance of the OS and file system is better, the updater is magnitudes better and you can customize until your hearts content. What exactly have Canonical done to make you dislike them so much? Whatever they've done, I can assure you the Gnome devs are worse - They'd love nothing more than to lock Linux down to the 'Gnome way of doing things'.

In relation to UT, the wording of your post was a little open to interpretation. I thought you also couldn't get UT2003 working.

In relation to Civ V, I'm not reading of many issues running it under Linux? Even the Linux known issues page only has two entries on the Aspyr site that don't really amount to much at all? As far as I was aware the port was quite good and the lack of AA considering the title is hardly a deal breaker.

Essentially, you can't expect a developer to support all Linux platforms. They support Ubuntu based distributions and SteamOS, anything else and your on your own. People can complain about 'fragmentation' all they like, fragmentation exists under all platforms - I've experienced software that runs under Windows 7 that doesn't run under Windows 10, likewise I've experienced software that runs under OSX El Capitan that doesn't run under MacOS Mojave (lets ignore the massive issues regarding Catilina). Under Linux fragmentation is a result of the very nature of open source and is what makes Linux so fantastic - Choice exists, but in rare instances you may have to work a little harder to keep things working.
 
Debian 10 and Steam installed. Now downloading Beyond Earth to test...

EDIT: And BE plays with no issues I can see. Downloading Civ V now...
EDIT: And Civ V plays with no issues I can see.
EDIT: To clarify, these are the Linux versions of Civ V and BE.
EDIT: UT2003 Windows Edition installed via Steam and running fine.

Other than some severe wonkiness with Debian's support for my USB NetGear wireless adapter it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Now to install WoW and Diablo III, but probably not tonight.
 
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Debian 10 and Steam installed. Now downloading Beyond Earth to test...

EDIT: And BE plays with no issues I can see. Downloading Civ V now...
EDIT: And Civ V plays with no issues I can see.
EDIT: To clarify, these are the Linux versions of Civ V and BE.

Other than some severe wonkiness with Debian's support for my USB NetGear wireless adapter it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Now to install UT2003 (installing now), WoW, and Diablo III, but probably not tonight.

This is why I don't run or recommend bleeding edge distro's. I still can't see the issue with Ubuntu, but each to their own.
 
This is why I don't run or recommend bleeding edge distro's. I still can't see the issue with Ubuntu, but each to their own.

What's weird is that the Debian 10 installer saw and used the wireless USB device just fine but when the distro was running it accessed the USB device for all of a couple of minutes and then never allowed access to it again. Since the motherboard has an Intel ethernet port I'm using that now. If I care to, I'll hunt down the issue (Manjaro worked with it just fine both during install and when live).
 
What's weird is that the Debian 10 installer saw and used the wireless USB device just fine but when the distro was running it accessed the USB device for all of a couple of minutes and then never allowed access to it again. Since the motherboard has an Intel ethernet port I'm using that now. If I care to, I'll hunt down the issue (Manjaro worked with it just fine both during install and when live).

The wireless USB device will be using a Realtek chipset and therefore replying on reverse engineered Windows drivers, best to ditch it for an Intel or at worst a supported Broadcom solution as it's surprising it worked at all.
 
Debian 10 and Steam installed. Now downloading Beyond Earth to test...

EDIT: And BE plays with no issues I can see. Downloading Civ V now...
EDIT: And Civ V plays with no issues I can see.
EDIT: To clarify, these are the Linux versions of Civ V and BE.
EDIT: UT2003 Windows Edition installed via Steam and running fine.

Other than some severe wonkiness with Debian's support for my USB NetGear wireless adapter it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Now to install WoW and Diablo III, but probably not tonight.

I had a few issues getting Lutris set up and working but that was because I forgot to install nVidia's driver. :banghead: Once I realized my mistake I got the driver installed and the Wine and Vulkan stacks worked correctly. So Diablo III and World of Warcraft are running just fine on Linux.

I initially installed an old legacy driver by mistake and the system crashed when I tried to swap out the old driver for the new one but eventually got it by going into recovery mode and making the swap there. So, unfortunately I'm no longer helping this thread stay on topic which is having Manjaro work with games. Sorry, GhostCow!

And now for no apparent reason whatsoever the wireless network adapter is recognized and working with no issues. :cool:

The only real issue I have now (but not affecting the system) is Wine staging has a broken Debian package so it won't install.
 
I had a few issues getting Lutris set up and working but that was because I forgot to install nVidia's driver. :banghead: Once I realized my mistake I got the driver installed and the Wine and Vulkan stacks worked correctly. So Diablo III and World of Warcraft are running just fine on Linux.

I initially installed an old legacy driver by mistake and the system crashed when I tried to swap out the old driver for the new one but eventually got it by going into recovery mode and making the swap there. So, unfortunately I'm no longer helping this thread stay on topic which is having Manjaro work with games. Sorry, GhostCow!

And now for no apparent reason whatsoever the wireless network adapter is recognized and working with no issues. :cool:

The only real issue I have now (but not affecting the system) is Wine staging has a broken Debian package so it won't install.

Diablo III runs really well, I play Diablo III @ 4k all the time and performance is fantastic.
 
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