Linux is now FASTER than Windows!! Linux vs Windows - 2025 Gaming benchmarks
Linux is now FASTER than Windows!! Linux vs Windows - 2025 Gaming benchmarks
Tldw: guy tests the RX 6800 at 1080p, 1440p and 4k across 19 games on Windows 11 vs Nobara 41.
Allegedly, nobara beats windows on all games except 2 (witcher 3 and CS2), across almost all resolutions, by around single digit percents.
Also: This was on kernel 6.11, which does not have the new NTSYNC driver (coming in 6.14). It's going to get even better soon.
CS2 was tested on proton, but CS2 runs natively. It's not a useful comparison.
Edit: Someone pointed out that Nobara has already manually backpatched NTSYNC into its kernel.
Nobara uses a custom kernel with lots of performance tweaks and wine-compatibility patches. It has had NTSYNC for almost a year already. Also, NTSYNC is not much faster than FSYNC, that many kernels and distros (including SteamOS) have been using since 2021.
NTsync won't change much for performance compared to Nobara with Proton. Proton has used esync and fsync for many years now which provide similar performance, but with flaws that prevent them from being upstreamable to Wine. NTSync will allow upstream wine to match fsync performance and hopefully fix some bugs.
I used to play CSGO on both Windows and Linux for a while, and Linux always outperformed Windows by a solid margin. It wasn't even close, I never even thought to try running it through Proton.
CS2 was tested on proton, but CS2 runs natively. It’s not a useful comparison.
He said in the video that he tried to run it natively, but it just wouldn't start somehow.
This is what I came for. The fact it's close and reading blows is good enough for me.
I have a steam deck and I've been impressed. Linux gaming has come a long way.
Still, it's quite impressive. A translation layer in between and still it's on par. It would be interesting to see native vs proton versions only.
Whats Ubique about Nobra? Been looking at Linux distros to replace windows 10 since EOL is coming up
Nobara is the oft pointed to gaming distro for Linux. There are three major flavors of Linux as far as I can tell (I did some research for a similar switch, which I haven't completed because I have some stupid digital coins divesting and when that's done I'm coming over). There is Debian, Fedora, and Arch. The easiest and simplest way for me to understand them is scaling them in terms of stability and latest releases. Debian is supposedly super stable but furthest behind on releases because of all the stability testing. Arch is least stable but on all of the latest releases. Fedora is the middle ground, more stable but slightly behind.
Nobara is based on Fedora and is recommended for new Linux users who want to game. The steam deck is on an Arch based distro. Linux Mint, another recommended pick for new comers, is based on Debian.
I am personally porting over to Arch Linux, because I want to have the latest releases and I believe I can sufficiently reduce the instability with a couple of processes. I have it installed on my laptop and it's been seemingly stable for about a quarter.
nobara is more focused on gaming and includes patches and software to play games without having to tinker a lot. you could use any distro but some games might have performance issues or require additional settings and configuration. nobara gets rid of maintaining that yourself, you might still have to tinker with a few things like launch options but not as in depth as other distros.
another popular distro is bazzite which does similar things, though i feel that's a bit more advanced to understand some concepts.
if your curious about switching i would recommend, if you can, to install a second hdd (can be cheap/small) and try one or both of them for a week to see what it's like and how well your games run. also if you don't like how one looks you can also try different desktop implementations. coming from windows, KDE will feel very familiar.
tl;dw? I assume it's clickbait nonsense and nothing has changed but I'm not about to watch 19 minutes of video to find out they're lying.
E: my complaint is related to the use of "now" in the title, as if something has changed, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
Depends on the game.
Linux-native Rimworld and Stellaris are (by my measurements) 1.5x-2x slower than Windows. Not by pure FPS, but by simulation speed, which is much more detrimental. The frametimes spikes are awful, tool.
Running them though Proton seems fine, but they still aren't any faster.
Modded minecraft and Starsector are the opposite. Old java games freaking love linux, apparently.
For reference, I'm running CachyOS (a distro focused on optimization) and used game-native measurement tools.
of the few games I've played that had linux versions (Cities Skylines 1, Eurotruck Simulator, American Truck Simulator, Rimworld from what I can recall off the top of my head, there have been others that i cant recall off the top of my head i'm sure), None of them were worth a god damn.
At best unstable and slow, at worst laden with bugs and issues.
Either way, playing the windows version via proton offered a better, more stable, more reliable experience.
Yeah.
People turn their nose at this, but devs have to develop for windows. If they can give their users a better experience targeting Proton, with less time and more refinement and better support than a native port, that's a-okay with me.
A hilarious situation would be linux superseding Windows for desktop gaming... And Proton still being the standard target. I would love that future.
I couldn't even get the Linux version of ETS to run on Linux. The Windows version runs flawlessly.
Modded minecraft and Starsector are the opposite. Old java games freaking love linux, apparently.
It's less about Java and more about OpenGL. Since it was the only option for quite a long while on Linux, the Linux implementation is fantastic. On Windows, OpenGL was always the third API that needed to be half-assed just so you can say "it works".
Before AMD "fixed" their Windows OpenGL driver a few years ago, it was not unheard of to get double the frames in Minecraft on Linux compared to Windows.
Running them though Proton seems fine, but they still aren't any faster.
Running through Proton is still "gaming on Linux," fyi
Do you have more info on how you tested Rimworld's simulation speed, or maybe a source that has tested this? I always used the native linux Rimworld version when I was playing because I assumed it would be better for simulation lag.
It's horrendously worse, just look at the TPS on the same save.
But specifically, I used the Dub's Performance Analyzer frametime graphs. It's nice since it separates out rendering and simulation.
One note, I am on Nvidia. It's possible AMD (or Intel?) cards would behave differently.
Of course, but the video is pointing out that of the games tested, most of them perform better on Linux.
Yeah, but most potatoes can run RimWorld, so we're talking a difference between 2000 and 2500 fps. Not to mention that the game uses forking processes on Linux, which means saves happen in the background instead of freezing your entire game, so I'll take that any day.
Granted, I'm not an avid Factorio player, so maybe when you have hundreds of hours and millions of enemies on the screen it halts to a crawl, but I usually play without enemies and have never seen the game dip below 60 not even on the Deck.
Yeah, but most potatoes can run RimWorld, so we’re talking a difference between 2000 and 2500 fps. Not to mention that the game uses forking processes on Linux, which means saves happen in the background instead of freezing your entire game, so I’ll take that any day.
I have an overclocked 7800X3D, 6000MHz low latency RAM and... I'm still majorly CPU bound in big, modded colonies. TPS can drop below 180, or slower than realtime (60) if I'm not careful with the game's settings, especially during raids or with multiple maps loaded, and this causes major frametime spikes too.
Yeah I've found java and Linux seem to get along very nicely. Minecraft with distant horizons and shaders runs way better on Linux for me than windows.
Is that rimworld with or without rocketman?
Tested with rocketman, performance fish and performance optimizer. And modded in general, on a big colony save.
It wasn't super recent though, not 1.5. But should still be applicable, I suspect.
🌎🧑🚀🔫👨🚀
Would love to test this, but my Steam install seems permanently screwed up now and I genuinely don't have the energy to start from scratch and have to go through setting up the Nvidia drivers again.
Not to repurpose this into a "convince me not to uninstall Linux" thread, but... you may try at your peril.
What distro?
See, I feel you just failed in that attempt already.
But for the record, I landed on Manjaro with KDE Plasma and Wayland because I have an Nvidia card and HDR monitors and that's the first one I tried where everything worked at once (I think on attempt five). And yes, I tried Mint first. Not everything worked at once on Mint.
Look, I don't think the fix here is getting tech support. I'm trying to share at least one Steam library across my Windows and Manjaro dual boot setup (because that's terabytes of space and I'm not made of NVMes and bandwidth) and I bumped into some combination of spotty Windows FS support and Steam's weird bugs around temporary download storage on Linux (which has been a known issue since the late 2010s, btw).
Not all of that is Linux's fault, technically, but it is broken and annoying, and if I lose the dual boot setup I have to keep Windows for a number of reasons, so that's where we are.
Yes yes will install steam os soonish.
I've been considering adding steam os on top of my dual boot setup, to test the waters of using it as my main gaming system.
Bazzite is quite good as an alternative with steamos like interface.
that's simply not true for most cases
And yet Everspace 2 still plays like a slideshow...