There are quite a few mediocre ports from when Linux gaming was in it's infancy. If you look at ports around the 2015 - 2018 they were more of an afterthought based on a loose promise. Since then many things have improved from engine support, drivers, kernal updates & hardware support. However since then Proton has too released and that has gone from strength to strength and you would be advised to run those older ports using proton if possible and forget about it.

Interestingly i found that sometimes even a modern game might actually run better on proton than native. This is probably because i am running older hardware and proton is using Vulkan where by a native title might use OpenGL which has more CPU overhead. Of course if the native title is running Vulkan then it's probably better to run native. In the end it doesn't take much to switch between the two options ( on steam at least ) and see which runs best.

So yes older ports were quite poop, but we were grateful to have them in any case

Quoting: LoftyThere are quite a few mediocre ports from when Linux gaming was in it's infancy. If you look at ports around the 2015 - 2018 they were more of an afterthought based on a loose promise. Since then many things have improved from engine support, drivers, kernal updates & hardware support. However since then Proton has too released and that has gone from strength to strength and you would be advised to run those older ports using proton if possible and forget about it.

Interestingly i found that sometimes even a modern game might actually run better on proton than native. This is probably because i am running older hardware and proton is using Vulkan where by a native title might use OpenGL which has more CPU overhead. Of course if the native title is running Vulkan then it's probably better to run native. In the end it doesn't take much to switch between the two options ( on steam at least ) and see which runs best.

So yes older ports were quite poop, but we were grateful to have them in any case

I guess what gets me is they list system requirements like a 7970 for "recommended" which tells me that nobody ever tested the Linux port on an AMD GPU at all. Just so sloppy and lazy for what should be a professional company.

I don't know, i played both of them, last light multiple times, and i never felt it choppy or slow. It may be just the games weren't updated (as proprietary crap goes anywhere) and in the few years the underlying software changed a lot. For me personally, over the years i found that for some reason AMD cards don't like anti-aliasing, turning that lower or off was usually the best gain of performance after lowering the resolution. (even on windows) I think your system should run the ports fine as well. Can't speak of the Exodus port, haven't played the native version of that.

I remember the Metro ports as being quite good. I know that (at least the very first port, not Redux) they were missing tessellation and volumetric light, but other than that they performed very similar with the Windows versions.
Out of curiosity I fired 2033 Redux again and gotta say, they're as good as I remembered.

At 2560x1440 with the highest quality settings (SSAA off) it ran at between 75-100+ fps, even in the most hectic moments. And yes, the spiders were there.
Not sure if the volumetric light is still missing, but there's definitely no tessellation.

2560x1440


Edit: Heck, in the very same place it goes up to 134 fps at 1920x1080.

Last edited by dubigrasu on 27 June 2021 at 12:33 pm UTC

Quoting: PublicNuisance

Quoting: LoftyThere are quite a few mediocre ports from when Linux gaming was in it's infancy. If you look at ports around the 2015 - 2018 they were more of an afterthought based on a loose promise. Since then many things have improved from engine support, drivers, kernal updates & hardware support. However since then Proton has too released and that has gone from strength to strength and you would be advised to run those older ports using proton if possible and forget about it.

Interestingly i found that sometimes even a modern game might actually run better on proton than native. This is probably because i am running older hardware and proton is using Vulkan where by a native title might use OpenGL which has more CPU overhead. Of course if the native title is running Vulkan then it's probably better to run native. In the end it doesn't take much to switch between the two options ( on steam at least ) and see which runs best.

So yes older ports were quite poop, but we were grateful to have them in any case

I guess what gets me is they list system requirements like a 7970 for "recommended" which tells me that nobody ever tested the Linux port on an AMD GPU at all. Just so sloppy and lazy for what should be a professional company.

A HD 7970 card was what I used for playing the Metro games few years ago, and it ran very well even then, but only at 1920x1080 resolution, although can't remember the settings used. In any case, SSAA was (and still is) out of the question.

I'm actually glad there are people who had a positive experience on the Metro redux games on AMD GPUs. The main correlation I see is those people are using Debian or Debian based distros while I'm on Manjaro. I'm going to install Debian and Mint on a spare SSD and try the redux games then and see if I have a different experience.

So I have done some further testing. I tried out Linux Mint 20.1 and Debian 10.10 on a spare SSD as a fresh install. I got the same low frame rates on Metro 2033 Redux as on Manjaro. I tried out KDE Plasma in place of Mate on my Manjaro system but same low frame rates. Not sure what to chalk this up to. I am going to test on a spare computer that has different hardware, see if I get different results. One thing I will say is that I did notice the spiders, must have missed them the first time through.

Quoting: PublicNuisanceSo I have done some further testing. I tried out Linux Mint 20.1 and Debian 10.10 on a spare SSD as a fresh install. I got the same low frame rates on Metro 2033 Redux as on Manjaro. I tried out KDE Plasma in place of Mate on my Manjaro system but same low frame rates. Not sure what to chalk this up to. I am going to test on a spare computer that has different hardware, see if I get different results. One thing I will say is that I did notice the spiders, must have missed them the first time through.

You could (just for testing) install an Openbox session and try there. Just to eliminate whatever DE possible inefficiencies. Also go for the usual suspects, CPU governors/etc.
IDK, your HW should be more than enough to run these titles.

Last edited by dubigrasu on 29 June 2021 at 4:59 pm UTC

I tried it out on my spare system which has an i7-4770 and an R9 270 and it got between 70-90 FPS at the same settings as my Ryzen 5/580 system got 19-29 FPS.

Quoting: dubigrasuYou could (just for testing) install an Openbox session and try there. Just to eliminate whatever DE possible inefficiencies. Also go for the usual suspects, CPU governors/etc.
IDK, your HW should be more than enough to run these titles.

I'll give those a try.