Playing less than 100 hours of Path of Exile should immediately disqualify you from writing lengthy articles about Diablo-like ARPGs.

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Ubuntu is the answer to the question:
"What is the best distro for a Linux gaming newbie?"

It is not the answer to the question:
"What is the best distro for gaming?"

I'll let you divine the answer to that question. Let the distro wars commence! (or in this case, continue).

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Looks like Pillars of Eternity. Sold.

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I feel like GOG just can't please everyone, especially the die-hard 'old guard' of DRM-free proponents. Famously vocal on the forums.

I would cut GOG some slack, they're already posting losses or minimal profits. I don't mind if there's a small whiff of something resembling DRM on one or two games, as it's still optional to my understanding. And if it's not then don't throw the baby out with the bath water - GOG is still the best we got at DRM-free games and their selection.

Despite no Linux client (which bothers me less everyday due to alternatives), I like them. They try. I'll keep buying from them, screw it.

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GOG should be a perfect match for Linux gamers due to DRM-free games, or at least a better one than DRMed clients. But actually, DRM in general is not a hindrance any longer for Linux gaming. What is though, is a platform that does not like Linux. Meaning they show minimal support and effort or outright ignore Linux gamers.

I've found friggin EGS to handle linux gaming better than GOG.

And their offline installer experience? Atrocious! Without 3rd party tools like lgogdownloader (awesome by the way), it would basically be unusable for the lack of a better word. This is of course not limited to linux gaming, but in general.

I whine and complain yet I still buy from them. I don't mind the workarounds but really come on, they are supposedly providing a service.

About the news, I am amazed at how tiny the profits (or losses in this case) are. Though I shouldn't be. Who would have thought that selling mostly old 5 euro games at an 80% discount to a handful of gamers and the old guard barely brought in barely any revenue? No wonder they tried to develop with Galaxy. Which then of course alienated the DRM free crowd.

I don't really envy the GOG team. And some of them should be polishing up their CVs right about now.

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Just tried this out in Anno 1800. The balanced preset gave me around a 40-50% fps increase. Visual fidelity suffered a little bit, maybe a tad blurrier but nothing too noticeable.

Pretty impressed.

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QuoteAMD's version will at least work across both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, which may make it end up becoming more of a standard compared to DLSS but they face an uphill battle since NVIDIA has a firm foothold with DLSS already.

I think for many of us Nvidia gamers, the big thing AMD brings to the table is the fact that it works on non-RTX 10xx cards too. Unlike DLSS.

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I'm playing Grim Dawn yet again - this time through GOG. STarted afresh without my very well stacked stash from my STeam game saves, and enjoying it. A bit slow going without EXP potions and Saviour's merits to jump into Ultimate right away + plus lack of gear, but it's OK. Old-school 3 times playthrough per difficulty.

Completely made up my own build that was really bad in the beginning. Bone Harvest Spellbinder stacking Aether+Vitality+Cold dmg. Now it's semi-good even. Had a person join me in multiplayer last week, and noticed he carried me all the way with his pet build though :)

Yeah I got crossplay multiplayer working between GOG Galaxy (wine) + him on Steam. The major pain was getting GOG galaxy to function properly under Wine to begin with...wrote a short guide/my experiences from that ordeal, posted on Reddit + GOG forums.

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Phoenix Point - A solid 100+hours recently put into this gem of a XCOM-like game. I wish I had waited a little to start playing it though, as they only recently added animation speed increase options. THat was pretty much my only gripe playing the game (oh gawd, here the jet rocket heavy goes again for 20 seconds to move). I loved the music, the tactics, the writing and the varied playthroughs if your roleplayed. Played it through legendary (epic) and tkg's wine+dxvk.

Anno 1800 - after above, wanted to finally see the arctic dlc and the new africa dlc. I've never gotten to them before in my 300 hours yet. Get stuck on Crown Falls massiveness and end up burnt out. Until the next playthrough of course. This time I played campaign mode, and I enjoy the story and banter quite a bit compared to sandbox mode actually. Probably the best city building/trading sim game out there. Anno 1404 closely behind. Then Anno 2070. Only then maybe non-ANno games :) Got it working for the first time with a new Wine, since Wine 5.4. It broke after that with some unknown regression, and only started working on wine 6.0rc3. Who knows why what where. Not sure if multiplayer component works though - it used to and now it's greyed out, but I don't really mind, not my cup of tea with Anno games.

Next major game will be Witcher 3 (finally). I tested it and runs beautifully (GOG version with TkG's custom wine plus frills). Nobody spoil it for me!

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I'm extremely symphatetic to the cause of STadia - bringing easy access to triple-A titles with great performance accessible through merely a web browser. I was incredibly tempted to subscribe for a discounted fee due to Google One membership for months now and almost pulled the trigger when I read Cyberpunk 2077 worked so well on it. Something I would not have been able to get running on my 1070gtx rig on linux.

But. I just prefer to game on the rig that I built myself with handpicked parts, and got them setup and running after countless hours of tinkering on linux. Stadia and chrome browser gaming is just too easy. I would never forgive myself for succumbing to it, having not even bought a console. Sadomasochistic? Yes! Thoroughly pleasing and satisfying? Hell yea.

Yet looking at GPU prices these days, I probably will succumb to Google STadianess eventually. The laws of economics and having money (or not in this case) cannot be defied.

I'm not knowlegeable enough to comment on the bigger picture about proprietary Linux+Vulkan implementations in a closed-source console-like platform and its effects on the Linux gaming ecosphere. As contradictory as that should sound, I just, yeah, can't comment on it or will not speculate too much as I feel regardless it's out of my hands. Linux gaming will never overtake Windows gaming, but we might become a lot more relevant with Google and Valve backing it/us more.

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