Yeah, do it 3 years ago.

How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton?

The speed drop is negative. That is, it’s often actually faster.

Yes, I know it doesn’t seem to make sense.

I got broke by just reading the title.

Apart from other things said here (e.g. AMD GPU), if you are planning on using wifi check that the adapter works well. Intel wifi usually works very well on Linux (although I have read that there are some issues with their newer wifi chips). AMD mobos usually use some kind of mediatek chipset. It might be better supported now, but I ended up replacing mine with another m.2 wifi (intel ax200).

A quick search for general support from the mobo vendor is probably a good idea too.

Go with AMD GPU, be prepared for true happiness.

Some tips for you:

• Check game compatibility using https://www.protondb.com/ this will let you know if the games you want to play run on Linux and how well they do so

• Buy an AMD GPU, support for Linux is great on them, miles ahead of nVidia. If you already had an nVidia card it’s usable, but if you’re starting fresh 100% AMD.

• Don’t fret too much on the distro of choice, not sure how familiar you are with Linux but because of the questions I assume not much. If this machine will also be used as a normal computer prefer a general use distro (my recommendation would be Mint), if you’ll plug it on the TV and use it as a console prefer a gaming distro (I’ve heard good stuff about Bazzite but never used it myself). You can have / and /home be different partitions, this means that you can distro hop and maintain your games, saves, and most configs from one distro to the other, or even when reinstalling the system, I strongly recommend people to do that.

• Linux is not windows, things are done differently and that’s okay. A lot of the frustration of new users comes from trying to do things the windows way and failing miserably, e.g. trying to install programs/drivers by navigating to a random web page and downloading a binary.

Good luck, and ask any more questions you might have.

For the most part you would just build the same machine as if it was a Windows gaming machine. That said, there are a few things to know:

• AMD has historically had better video drivers on Linux than nVidia, though nVidia has made some changes that has improved things quite a bit
• You want a basic, well supported common distribution if you’re not extremely familiar with Linux. Don’t go with some weird niche distro because you heard it will get you 1% better frame rates. Things like Steam and Lutris are well supported on the common easy distros. I would suggest Mint as it is Debian based, and basically everything supports Debian derivatives.
• Not every game will work, but a whole lot will. The things that are most unlikely to are competitive online games with anticheat root kits. If those matter to you, then unfortunately you’re better oft in windows.
• Take a look at https://www.protondb.com/ for a list of what is well supported and any information if they need some trick to run.

How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton? Is it so big or just small?

Honestly, in some cases, proton is faster than games directly on winblows. Microslop even said they’re going to try to make windows faster than proton again.

I am using Bazzite for my gaming pc and am happy that it simply works

I switched from win11 to cachyOS a few months ago and are never going back. For gaming it just works, my only struggle right now is some audio configuration to get a virtual amplifier for my guitar to work.
But troubleshooting on Linux is so so much better than on windows, because 99,999% there’s a solution in comparison to windows were often it’s just “well, we disabled the solution to the problem, so tough luck”.

I’m running 32GB ram, rtx4080 and a 5800x on a dual monitor setup (32" 21:9 and 24" 16:9). Was basically plug and play.

Most games I just click play and they run.

Ryzen 9 x3D, XFX Radeon 9700 XT, 32 GBs RAM, with some flavor of MSI mobo I am too lazy to get the box out to look at.

It took me like a year to build as I was saving for all the parts (and the everything crisis began, at the time called the RAMpocalypse). I think it was around 3K to build then including the 2TB M.2

I’m never going back.

Bookmark this reply for later.

Download protonplus to manage proton versions. Try proton GE 10-34 first, 99% of the time it works.

I get better performance on Linux than Windows.

The significantly lower system overhead more than makes up for the translation layer.

I mostly game on Steam, occasionally Lutris. The only thing that just plain wouldn’t work was Control from Gog - I probably could have gotten it to work if I played with the configuration. But I didn’t really care that much.

Games that run on Linux are about as fast on Linux as on Windows. In fact they tend to run a little faster on Linux.

Use AMD CPU and AMD GPU for the smoothest experience.
AMD CPU is more reliable, and Radeon graphics have the best support for Linux.

It is estimated that around 12000 Games work on Linux, or about 90%. For specific game compatibility you can always check protondb. Notice though that some games that have native Linux versions are also on ProtonDB, so you should check on the steam client first if there is a native Linux version.

https://www.protondb.com/

PS ProtonDB state the number of games that are verified to work as almost 9,900, and playable as almost 30,000 😎
But Platinum or Gold rated games are only 60%.

Personally I generally check ProtonDB before buying a game, but it’s been quite a while since there was something that didn’t work.

Go back in time a few years when it was affordable.