Quoting: GroganWell, of course there is more overhead running games through translation environments. Or worse, silly distros where you have to run this stuff in containers.

Use Windows if that bothers you. Open source isn't going to make that better, unless the games themselves are released that way. (Then, they could be compiled natively and linked to your system libraries etc.)

P.S. I used to keep a Windows install for games, then I was free to have the Linux system I wanted for the rest of my usage. Nowadays I have two Linux systems. One fat free, and the other that has the environment I need for games.

Ahah, this doesn't help in regard of used disk space for sure :)

2 words: BTRFS compression.
Sure, if you have many Wine prefixes they take up a lot of disk space but Wine compresses wery well, you can reclaim %75-90 disk space by just using compression and I am not even going into deduplication. For shader caches I don't have much to recommend but they are usually around %10 of the game's size and a shader cache must exist for Windows as well (idk how large it is) so Linux is not at disadvantage here. Manager applications like Heroic, Lutris etc. don't actually take up a significant amount of disk space.

Quoting: Craggles086Linux could operate comfortably on as little as 80 Gig

I have installed a full fat Linux distribution (Pop OS) to a 16 GiB thumb drive and have more than half free space. I can install Steam and HOI4 with all DLC and still have plenty of disk space available.

Quoting: kokoko3kAhah, this doesn't help in regard of used disk space for sure :)

No, but it does allow me to have a no-nonsense, pure 64 bit setup tailored exactly to my wants and needs, for normal use. I play some native games and open source games there, but the gaming system needs a lot more libraries, including all the multilib builds of everything and a lot of things that make me want to barf.

I don't like eating dogfood, so I make a lot of work for myself on both setups, too.

It would actually save disk space to just use Windows for games and have only have one custom Linux setup. However, I would just buy another 2 Tb NVME if I need more storage for games. I don't need to have them all installed at once, though. I'm actually having to remove games I'm not playing because I've filled up a 2 Tb dedicated to games (Steam is installed there, my Lutris wine prefixes are stored there etc.)

Yeah, My fault.

I was frustrated and may have exaggerated the figures a "little bit".

Will check how much disk space Flatpak is using,

and if I have a few GB taken up by SystemD error logs,
or installed more games then I intended.

Have not played around with BTRFS, Will have to give it a go.

Why didn't Valve use BTRFS for the SteamDeck?
They need the raw speed? Which EXT3 / EXT4 is better at?

Might end up doing a clean install.

Thanks for all the constructive critique.

Last edited by Craggles086 on 24 January 2023 at 1:10 am UTC

Quoting: Craggles086Why didn't Valve use BTRFS for the SteamDeck?
They need the raw speed? Which EXT3 / EXT4 is better at?

Don't use EXT4. XFS is better if you need a classic type filesystem.

Last edited by Shmerl on 24 January 2023 at 2:14 am UTC

Quoting: Craggles086Why didn't Valve use BTRFS for the SteamDeck?
They need the raw speed? Which EXT3 / EXT4 is better at?

Ext4 supports casefolding while BTRFS does not, casefolding fixes some odd issues in a few Windows games. Also compression supposedly decreases battery life so Valve saw no advantage of BTRFS.

Solved.

actually if we have to use transgaming tech so we do need some more disk space cuz we have some extra stuff.
if we use native apps we dont need more space than actually game requires.
also ext4 rulez.

I don't use launchers. I have 9 games installed at this time - 7.6 GB in total.

i use a 4TB USB drive for my /home + games because i never know which game i might want to play, when i actually get a chance to play one