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Games that run better with Wine than on Windows
ridge Sep 14, 2022
I've been finding more and more games that run better than they used to do when I, until a few years ago before completely getting rid of it, dual-booted with Windows. Among those are Elite Dangerous, Battlefield 5, Final Fantasy XIV and probably a few I'm forgetting.

In the case of Elite Dangerous, I actually did load up Windows temporarily when its expansion pack "Odyssey" released. It was notorious for having awful performance in certain scenarios, and even then, while performance was bad with Wine and DXVK, it was just slightly worse on Windows lol. Thankfully it runs a lot better nowadays.

Oh yea, and Quake 4 natively runs way better than on Windows which isn't exactly impressive nowadays, but.....

Honestly I just think this is interesting to see, so I'm curious; are there any games you find similar results in?
denyasis Sep 15, 2022
Morrowind. It's was about the same FPS, but was much more stable. I consider that better. (That was about the time I switched to linux, sorry I don't have much to offer that's newer, XP was my last alternate OS).

I played elite dangerous around 2019. Ran super stable for me via wine (proton didn't work). I might hop back in sometime, but I don't think I'm dedicated enough to do the latest DLC.
ridge Sep 15, 2022
Quoting: GuestBut, I do remember when World Of Warcraft ran in it's own environment with opengl (2005/2006), so it was never actually tied to any OS, and by adding 1 simple line of code to the config file it would run natively on Linux too, we are talking about he original WoW here.
And holy crap, it ran like effing lightning on Linux, massively outperforming Windows version by around 30fps, this was my first real interaction with Linux gaming too.

I actually had no idea this was a thing! That's really fascinating. When you say natively, you mean literally straight from a native binary and OpenGL? Crazy to me (as someone who only tried WoW briefly in its later years), but awesome.

Quoting: denyasisMorrowind. It's was about the same FPS, but was much more stable. I consider that better. (That was about the time I switched to linux, sorry I don't have much to offer that's newer, XP was my last alternate OS).

I played elite dangerous around 2019. Ran super stable for me via wine (proton didn't work). I might hop back in sometime, but I don't think I'm dedicated enough to do the latest DLC.

Yeah I totally getcha, Elite is a serious commitment in and of itself. For most people I feel like, you're either really invested in it, or you just don't play 😁
I don't use Steam, but I hear it runs really well in Proton nowadays, and I believe it, the Proton project is quite awesome.

BTW agreed, Morrowind just works on Linux.. never had a great time trying to coax it to work on Windows when I had that.

Last edited by ridge on 15 September 2022 at 10:12 pm UTC
BlackBloodRum Sep 16, 2022
Could be due to DXVK? It does improve the performance of a lot of older games. However one thing a lot of Linux users don't know (surprisingly) DXVK is not Linux exclusive.

You can use DXVK on windows in order to make older games work also
ridge Sep 16, 2022
Quoting: BlackBloodRumCould be due to DXVK?

I think this combined with the potential for much less overall resource use in many distros helps a tonne. Not to be all "neener neener" towards Windows users but.......
kit89 Sep 17, 2022
Discworld Noir, a few years back I could not get it running on a modern Windows machine but Wine ran it perfectly, great game too.

I don't know if this is still the case.
ridge Sep 17, 2022
Quoting: kit89Discworld Noir, a few years back I could not get it running on a modern Windows machine but Wine ran it perfectly, great game too.

I don't know if this is still the case.

Fancy that! I had no idea there was a Discworld game :O I'm definitely gonna give it a go.

Last edited by ridge on 17 September 2022 at 5:43 pm UTC
Grogan Sep 17, 2022
Generally, DirectX 11 games can work better with DXVK and the Vulkan back end than in Windows.

There are also cases where an older game doesn't work well (hitchy performance), and works better in a Wine environment. Old games like the original F.E.A.R. and Far Cry, for a personal example off the top of my head.
kit89 Sep 19, 2022
Quoting: ridge
Quoting: kit89Discworld Noir, a few years back I could not get it running on a modern Windows machine but Wine ran it perfectly, great game too.

I don't know if this is still the case.

Fancy that! I had no idea there was a Discworld game :O I'm definitely gonna give it a go.

If memory serves me right, there is 3 in total:

  • Discworld

  • Discworld 2

  • Discworld Noir



The first two titles are ScummVM games so they should work fine on any modern computer.
damarrin Sep 20, 2022
The first Discworld is brutal. The other two are fine for regular mortals.
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