this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Linux Gaming

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What makes Debian so different from its derivatives that gaming on it is almost an heroic task to achieve? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by qyron@sopuli.xyz to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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A few years ago, almost out of despair, I moved away from Debian in order to be able to play a few games natively.

On those days, the main concern with running games on Debian came mostly from unavailable dependencies or older, incompatible versions.

Fast forward today, returning to Debian, all installers from GOG run smoothly, with no error, but many games report errors on launching.

So, as per the title, what crazy voodoo magic is cast upon Debian to create Ubuntu, Mint and others, making those derivatives gaming-capable but their base distro not?

Can someone enlighten me on this, please?

Out of many games I tried, I managed to run three: Kingdom Rush and the Frontiers sequel and Martial Law.

Other titles failed miserably, including Desperados, Eschalon and even Stardew Valley.

Because it's useful/required info:

system

  • AMD Athlon II x2 250
  • 8GB RAM
  • GeForce G210

It's a very reliable work horse, with maxed out memory. The GPU proprietary drivers are no longer available; running nouveau.

When launching from the console, I get this report (example from Stardew Valley):

start.sh: 7: Bad substitution

start.sh: 9: source: not found

start.sh: 12: get_gameinfo: not found

start.sh: 13: get_gameinfo: not found

start.sh: 14: get_gameinfo: not found

start.sh: 29: define_option: not found

start.sh: 32: standard_options: not found

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[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I run debian as my main and really don't encounter any issues in gaming.

[–] paddycasy@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Same here. Radeon open source drivers. VR is working, too (HTC). Most oft the time what I need to find out is the correct Proton Version (Took me a bit oft time to geht Cyberpunk running). Other than that no problems at all.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Under the Steam client? I've read Steam solved a good deal of issues with gaming on Linux but Steam is not really my thing.

Or do you run your games natively, like I described?

[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I do a variety, as I have a few games on GOG.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Care to share your tricks?

[–] spudwart@spudwart.com 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Wine, ProtonGE, Lutris, and a bit of luck.

If none of those work,

[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

Seems like a 180 from your initial comment.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

Nice. I'll take that in consideration as well.

[–] raef@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A lot of my games on Steam fail to run if I switch from proprietary Nvidia drivers to open, so I wouldn't count on that

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Steam also carries a good deal of top shelf games; I run old and/or lesser known games.

All the games I mention ran under Mint but, because I enjoy making my life complicated, I moved from it to Debian. So...

[–] raef@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Just a warning that Steam doesn't always play nice with open drivers. It's the only thing that keeps me on proprietary

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 0 points 11 months ago

I'll keep that in mind but Steam doesn't cut it for me.