So I’m on Bazzite right now, and while everything works there’s still some stuff that leaves room to be desired.
For one, I don’t know what I should be expecting with various games and HDR. It works in some, doesn’t work in others. I don’t know if I need to tweak any GPU settings (AMD 7900 XTX) but even if I do, I have no idea how to do it.
Steam Remote play is ??? But that was also a problem with Windows.
Multiple monitors and games don’t seem to jive nicely either. And I don’t know if the Free sync 2 is working or how to even test it.
It took forever to figure out how to wire up my Yeti microphone, but I finally did.
hdr works fairly easy now. Not sure about default proton but ge and probably some of the other variants like cachy have it mostly built in. I just use ge-latest for everything via proton plus until a game doesn’t work with it before tryig others.
I only do dual monitor now but whenever a game can’t be on the right screen or does weird sizing shit:
alt+enter/f11 and drag to correct monitor, or
windowed, move to other screen, borderless/fullscreen, or
borderless, taskbar right click and select move then drag to other screen, or
select other monitor from ingame settings
If none of those work it could also be a native linux build which while nice to have tends not to be consistent across games, and forcing proton will redownload as the windows version which I’ve found will have different screen behaviours compared to native in a lot of games.
Freesync should be in monitor settings if its detected by the system. I’ve only confirmed it a few times working with ge proton as I don’t have many games that both have it and that I remembered to check for it. Usually I do the deck thing even on my desktop and find a config that can hold 90/60/45/30 and set the refresh equal or double manually.
The HDR is fairly recent too. Before you had to jump through like 8x the hoops and also had to use gamescope which is another thing that could both improve and worsen the window situation. If you ever encounter a game where none of the other stuff works gamescope can force a monitor and separately force render and display resolutions for up or downscaling, but tabbing out or using other software like browsing to guides or modloaders have been kinda janky in some games.
The multiple monitor thing has been an issue for years. Ive had to disable multi display at times to get games to run. Its just one of those things that will be flakey for another 10 years.
I’m using a QD-OLED monitor and love HDR for movies or tv shows but with gaming I have several gripes that don’t make me enjoy HDR as much, funnily none of them caused by Linux.
A lot of games suffer from pretty terrible HDR implementations so it might just end up looking worse than SDR. Additionally, at least on this display tech, HDR is a trade-off between stable brightness (TrueBlack mode) or peak brightness (Peak mode). I find TB mode to not really pop enough to justify HDR, but peak mode to be too distracting for gaming since turning your camera can quickly change the overall brightness and make the image flicker.
I would say in theory HDR could be a huge increase in immersion for gaming but the tech and execution isn’t really there for me yet.
HDR support on Linux though I find is in a pretty good spot if you’re not opposed to setting a few env variables.
Absolutely. As long as your display is capable HDR and can output 600+ nits of brightness (1000+ preferred) and has high contrast (like an OLED display).
It doesn’t require any effort, it’s a checkbox in the display settings and a command line option in Steam. Assuming you’re using GE-Proton10, you just put this in the command line parameters of the game that you want to play as HDR.
You should pretty much always use the PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND flag*, the default is for wine to use xwindows and unless you’re on a non-mainstream distro then you’re using Wayland and so the display out put has to go through a compatibility layer (xwayland). This can introduce weird frame time jitter and hitching in some games that won’t occur when using Wayland directly.
The game has to support HDR and there are some edge cases where the game won’t detect that your machine is HDR capable so you can’t enable the HDR option.
You can go through gamescope to have it work, but that is a bit more effort (mostly just installing gamescope and using ‘gamescope %command%’ (with some switches for options, like resolution, refresh rate, etc). This is a bit more effort and can have some performance overhead, but is still worth it imo.
*Using Wayland breaks Steam Input. You can still use a controller on games that support a controller, but if you use Steam Input to remap buttons or to play non-controller games with a controller then you’ll have to wait on Valve to write Wayland support into the Steam Overlay.
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what the problem was. If you disable the steam overlay in the game’s options, the controller should connect directly to the game (via SDL) instead failing to go through Steam Input.
For remote play I don’t use steam. I highly recommend. Sunshine / moonlight . Work great to play games from my PC on my phone or whatever else I want. If you want to stream outside of your network you will need to set up something like wireguard or tail scale but that’s just something cool and useful to set up anyway and not to hard. Also Bazzite comes with sunshine already installed.
TBH that’s what I use. I haven’t played around with the settings enough to get a completely smooth experience but it works much better than Steam Remote play
So I’m on Bazzite right now, and while everything works there’s still some stuff that leaves room to be desired.
For one, I don’t know what I should be expecting with various games and HDR. It works in some, doesn’t work in others. I don’t know if I need to tweak any GPU settings (AMD 7900 XTX) but even if I do, I have no idea how to do it.
Steam Remote play is ??? But that was also a problem with Windows.
Multiple monitors and games don’t seem to jive nicely either. And I don’t know if the Free sync 2 is working or how to even test it.
It took forever to figure out how to wire up my Yeti microphone, but I finally did.
Otherwise every game does work.
hdr works fairly easy now. Not sure about default proton but ge and probably some of the other variants like cachy have it mostly built in. I just use ge-latest for everything via proton plus until a game doesn’t work with it before tryig others.
game settings go to launch options and put in:
PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 %command%
monitor settings make sure hdr is enabled.
I only do dual monitor now but whenever a game can’t be on the right screen or does weird sizing shit:
alt+enter/f11 and drag to correct monitor, or
windowed, move to other screen, borderless/fullscreen, or
borderless, taskbar right click and select move then drag to other screen, or
select other monitor from ingame settings
If none of those work it could also be a native linux build which while nice to have tends not to be consistent across games, and forcing proton will redownload as the windows version which I’ve found will have different screen behaviours compared to native in a lot of games.
Freesync should be in monitor settings if its detected by the system. I’ve only confirmed it a few times working with ge proton as I don’t have many games that both have it and that I remembered to check for it. Usually I do the deck thing even on my desktop and find a config that can hold 90/60/45/30 and set the refresh equal or double manually.
Thank you! That covers some stuff I was wondering about. And I was at a loss for how to change the monitor the game was on.
The HDR is fairly recent too. Before you had to jump through like 8x the hoops and also had to use gamescope which is another thing that could both improve and worsen the window situation. If you ever encounter a game where none of the other stuff works gamescope can force a monitor and separately force render and display resolutions for up or downscaling, but tabbing out or using other software like browsing to guides or modloaders have been kinda janky in some games.
The multiple monitor thing has been an issue for years. Ive had to disable multi display at times to get games to run. Its just one of those things that will be flakey for another 10 years.
That’s good to know.
Is HDR even worth any effort? I never tried it.
I’m using a QD-OLED monitor and love HDR for movies or tv shows but with gaming I have several gripes that don’t make me enjoy HDR as much, funnily none of them caused by Linux.
A lot of games suffer from pretty terrible HDR implementations so it might just end up looking worse than SDR. Additionally, at least on this display tech, HDR is a trade-off between stable brightness (TrueBlack mode) or peak brightness (Peak mode). I find TB mode to not really pop enough to justify HDR, but peak mode to be too distracting for gaming since turning your camera can quickly change the overall brightness and make the image flicker.
I would say in theory HDR could be a huge increase in immersion for gaming but the tech and execution isn’t really there for me yet.
HDR support on Linux though I find is in a pretty good spot if you’re not opposed to setting a few env variables.
Not really. It can make the image pop a bit more, but that’s about it.
Absolutely. As long as your display is capable HDR and can output 600+ nits of brightness (1000+ preferred) and has high contrast (like an OLED display).
It doesn’t require any effort, it’s a checkbox in the display settings and a command line option in Steam. Assuming you’re using GE-Proton10, you just put this in the command line parameters of the game that you want to play as HDR.
You should pretty much always use the PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND flag*, the default is for wine to use xwindows and unless you’re on a non-mainstream distro then you’re using Wayland and so the display out put has to go through a compatibility layer (xwayland). This can introduce weird frame time jitter and hitching in some games that won’t occur when using Wayland directly.
The game has to support HDR and there are some edge cases where the game won’t detect that your machine is HDR capable so you can’t enable the HDR option.
You can go through gamescope to have it work, but that is a bit more effort (mostly just installing gamescope and using ‘gamescope %command%’ (with some switches for options, like resolution, refresh rate, etc). This is a bit more effort and can have some performance overhead, but is still worth it imo.
*Using Wayland breaks Steam Input. You can still use a controller on games that support a controller, but if you use Steam Input to remap buttons or to play non-controller games with a controller then you’ll have to wait on Valve to write Wayland support into the Steam Overlay.
I was struggling to figure out why my PS5 controller just wouldn’t work with MH Wilds with Wayland enabled
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what the problem was. If you disable the steam overlay in the game’s options, the controller should connect directly to the game (via SDL) instead failing to go through Steam Input.
I’ll keep that in mind when I buy my next monitor …
For remote play I don’t use steam. I highly recommend. Sunshine / moonlight . Work great to play games from my PC on my phone or whatever else I want. If you want to stream outside of your network you will need to set up something like wireguard or tail scale but that’s just something cool and useful to set up anyway and not to hard. Also Bazzite comes with sunshine already installed.
TBH that’s what I use. I haven’t played around with the settings enough to get a completely smooth experience but it works much better than Steam Remote play
Do you have an OSD for active refresh rate built into your displays? FreeSync / VRR can be managed directly by your DE settings
I might, I’ll need to dig into it a little bit. It’s a recent LG 2k with HDR and 165hz free sync.