History of LINUX GAMING: From Zero to Hero
- Thread starter f33dm3bits
- Start date
Maarten, I found this fascinating, and I have pinned it, so that if people ask "Can I play games on Linux", helpers can link to this.
Thanks
Chris
Thanks
Chris
That's a marvellous find, Maarten. Well done! A fascinating dive into just what IS possible on Linux these days.....and even less excuse for those who've been "fence-sitting" to get off their backsides & finally make the switch.
Nice one, mate!
Mike.
Nice one, mate!
Mike.
Prajinvenkat
Member
linux can run gta 5 smoothly without lag ?
kibasnowpaw
Well-Known Member
Linux gaming is not a dream anymore, but old games still hit harder for me
That video made me think about a lot of things.
The video talks about how Linux gaming started almost from nothing. Text games, NetHack, Rogue, Tetris, X11 games, Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble, Battle for Wesnoth, SuperTuxKart, Doom, Quake, Loki Software, Wine, Humble Bundle, Steam on Linux, Proton, Steam Deck, Lutris, DOSBox, ScummVM, all of it.
And when you look at it like that, Linux gaming really has come a long way.
People still say “you can’t game on Linux” like it is still 2005 or something. But that is not really true anymore. Maybe it was never fully true, it was just harder back then. You had to fight more. You had to read old forum posts, try Wine versions, test random fixes, hope the game did not crash, and sometimes spend hours just to get one old game running.
But today it is different.
Gaming on Linux is not a dream anymore. It is real. It is not perfect, but it is real.
Steam, Proton, Lutris, Wine-GE, DXVK, VKD3D, cnc-ddraw, DOSBox, ScummVM, GOG installers, old disks, community fixes. There are so many ways now to make games work. Sometimes it still takes work, but that is fine. I do not mind working for it if the game means something to me.
And that is kind of what I am doing now.
I am building up my game library again. Not just buying random new games. I am starting with the games I grew up with. The games that actually mean something to me. The good games. The games a lot of people forgot, or never played, or only know by name.
Games like Dungeon Keeper, StarCraft, Doom II, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Gex, Pandemonium, Resident Evil, Delta Force, Soldier of Fortune, Empire Earth, Age of Empires, Conflict: Desert Storm, and all those old PC and console-era games.
I was a gamer nerd as a kid, but not the kind who played one game for years and only that one game. I jumped around. Different games, different consoles, different genres. FPS, RTS, platformers, horror, action, weird old PC games, PS1 games, disk games. If I could play it, I probably tried it at some point.
So now when I look at my Lutris library, it is not just a game launcher to me.
It is more like pieces of my own gaming history.
One game at a time, I install them again. I test them. I make them work. Some run easy. Some fight me. Some need DXVK turned off. Some need WineD3D. Some need cnc-ddraw. Some need a direct exe and not the launcher. Dungeon Keeper 2 crashes if bump mapping is on. Pandemonium 2 only worked right when I launched the real pandy.exe. Old games can be cursed like that.
But when they finally work, it feels good.
It feels like bringing something back.
Modern games do not really give me that feeling anymore. I am not saying all new games are bad. Some are still good. But most of them do not pull me in like old games did. Too many modern games feel like they are built around accounts, launchers, battle passes, online services, monetization, seasons, skins, and all that garbage.
Sometimes it feels like the game itself is not even the main point anymore.
And maybe that is why new games just do not mean much to me now.
In 2024, I bought around 41 games. That was my last big year.
In 2025, it was around 11.
This year, it is about 4.
That says a lot.
I just do not feel that need to buy new games anymore. Most of the time I would rather sit and play something from the 90s or early 2000s. Not because the graphics are better, because they are not. Not because they are easier, because sometimes they are not. But because they have meaning to me.
They feel like games.
You installed them. You played them. You learned them. You remembered them.
No live service breathing down your neck. No store page trying to sell you more stuff. No fear of missing out. No endless account systems.
Just a game.
That is what I miss.
And that is also why Linux fits this so well for me. Linux is not just about running the newest thing. It is about choice. It is about making your own system. Your own setup. Your own way of doing things.
I can take an old disk game, a GOG version, a Steam game inside Wine, an old Windows program like Winamp or TextAloud, and make it part of my own setup. I can use Lutris, Wine, Proton tools, patches, wrappers, whatever works.
Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes I sit there thinking, “why the hell does this old game hate one checkbox so much?”
But I still like it.
Because when it works, it feels like I earned it.
So yeah, Linux gaming is not a dream anymore.
It is real now.
But for me, the best part is not just that Linux can run new games. The best part is that I can rebuild the games that shaped me. The games I grew up with. The games that still have soul to me.
I do not need the newest game to feel like a gamer.
Sometimes I just need an old game, a working Wine prefix, and the feeling that a small piece of my past is alive again.
That video made me think about a lot of things.
The video talks about how Linux gaming started almost from nothing. Text games, NetHack, Rogue, Tetris, X11 games, Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble, Battle for Wesnoth, SuperTuxKart, Doom, Quake, Loki Software, Wine, Humble Bundle, Steam on Linux, Proton, Steam Deck, Lutris, DOSBox, ScummVM, all of it.
And when you look at it like that, Linux gaming really has come a long way.
People still say “you can’t game on Linux” like it is still 2005 or something. But that is not really true anymore. Maybe it was never fully true, it was just harder back then. You had to fight more. You had to read old forum posts, try Wine versions, test random fixes, hope the game did not crash, and sometimes spend hours just to get one old game running.
But today it is different.
Gaming on Linux is not a dream anymore. It is real. It is not perfect, but it is real.
Steam, Proton, Lutris, Wine-GE, DXVK, VKD3D, cnc-ddraw, DOSBox, ScummVM, GOG installers, old disks, community fixes. There are so many ways now to make games work. Sometimes it still takes work, but that is fine. I do not mind working for it if the game means something to me.
And that is kind of what I am doing now.
I am building up my game library again. Not just buying random new games. I am starting with the games I grew up with. The games that actually mean something to me. The good games. The games a lot of people forgot, or never played, or only know by name.
Games like Dungeon Keeper, StarCraft, Doom II, Quake, Wolfenstein 3D, Gex, Pandemonium, Resident Evil, Delta Force, Soldier of Fortune, Empire Earth, Age of Empires, Conflict: Desert Storm, and all those old PC and console-era games.
I was a gamer nerd as a kid, but not the kind who played one game for years and only that one game. I jumped around. Different games, different consoles, different genres. FPS, RTS, platformers, horror, action, weird old PC games, PS1 games, disk games. If I could play it, I probably tried it at some point.
So now when I look at my Lutris library, it is not just a game launcher to me.
It is more like pieces of my own gaming history.
One game at a time, I install them again. I test them. I make them work. Some run easy. Some fight me. Some need DXVK turned off. Some need WineD3D. Some need cnc-ddraw. Some need a direct exe and not the launcher. Dungeon Keeper 2 crashes if bump mapping is on. Pandemonium 2 only worked right when I launched the real pandy.exe. Old games can be cursed like that.
But when they finally work, it feels good.
It feels like bringing something back.
Modern games do not really give me that feeling anymore. I am not saying all new games are bad. Some are still good. But most of them do not pull me in like old games did. Too many modern games feel like they are built around accounts, launchers, battle passes, online services, monetization, seasons, skins, and all that garbage.
Sometimes it feels like the game itself is not even the main point anymore.
And maybe that is why new games just do not mean much to me now.
In 2024, I bought around 41 games. That was my last big year.
In 2025, it was around 11.
This year, it is about 4.
That says a lot.
I just do not feel that need to buy new games anymore. Most of the time I would rather sit and play something from the 90s or early 2000s. Not because the graphics are better, because they are not. Not because they are easier, because sometimes they are not. But because they have meaning to me.
They feel like games.
You installed them. You played them. You learned them. You remembered them.
No live service breathing down your neck. No store page trying to sell you more stuff. No fear of missing out. No endless account systems.
Just a game.
That is what I miss.
And that is also why Linux fits this so well for me. Linux is not just about running the newest thing. It is about choice. It is about making your own system. Your own setup. Your own way of doing things.
I can take an old disk game, a GOG version, a Steam game inside Wine, an old Windows program like Winamp or TextAloud, and make it part of my own setup. I can use Lutris, Wine, Proton tools, patches, wrappers, whatever works.
Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes I sit there thinking, “why the hell does this old game hate one checkbox so much?”
But I still like it.
Because when it works, it feels like I earned it.
So yeah, Linux gaming is not a dream anymore.
It is real now.
But for me, the best part is not just that Linux can run new games. The best part is that I can rebuild the games that shaped me. The games I grew up with. The games that still have soul to me.
I do not need the newest game to feel like a gamer.
Sometimes I just need an old game, a working Wine prefix, and the feeling that a small piece of my past is alive again.
Useful video. I have vague memories of the sound that plays when the system starts up, but I don't remember exactly what it is. What is that sound at the beginning of the video, please? By the way, I recently shared my thoughts on gaming on Linux: https://linuxverse.ddns.net/gaming/gamingonlinux I hope this will be helpful to others as well.
kibasnowpaw
Well-Known Member
Thanks. If you want to see how old and newer games actually run on Linux, you can also follow my channel. I mostly test and stream real games running on Linux, often from original physical PC discs, using Wine/Lutris rather than hiding everything behind “easy mode” tools.
I have been gaming for 25+ years and using Linux on and off since the Ubuntu 14 era. My approach is simple: I prefer understanding what is happening instead of letting a launcher do everything for me. Bottles and similar tools are fine for some people, but for me they can become a handicap. If something breaks, you often have no idea what it changed, what prefix it made, what DLLs it added, or why the game suddenly works or fails. Same reason I do not like relying too much on app launchers on Linux. If you never learn Wine itself, you limit yourself.
Proton is cool, and Steam has done a lot for Linux gaming, but Proton is not a god. Underneath, it is still Wine plus patches and game-specific work. Wine can do a lot of the same things if you know what you are doing. Sometimes Proton installs better, sometimes plain Wine runs better. I just had that with Crysis: Proton 64-bit handled the install better, but Wine 11 was what actually launched the game properly. That is why knowing Wine matters.
I recently streamed Dead Space from the original PC disc in Wine:
And I have started Crysis as well:
More physical PC disc / Linux / Wine runs are coming. I am building this as a proper old-school PC gaming archive, not just “click launcher and hope it works.”
So, what was that sound I've asked before?
Anyway I really respect your attitude and what you do, it’s a rare and valuable thing these days. I had Crysis too although I’ve played through the entire game on Windows so far, I’ve already gotten quite far into it on Linux as well. https://linuxverse.ddns.net/gaming/crysis It ran much better on Linux, even with integrated graphics, than it did on Windows on the same machine. While it often stuttered on Windows even on medium or low settings, on Linux it ran almost flawlessly even on full high settings.@kibasnowpaw :-
Heh.
I would never describe myself as a 'gamer'. For me, games have never been a defining thing in and of themselves.....always had too much to do in the real world!
However....
As I'm getting older - and I now spend more of my time looking after my elderly Mum - I have spells when I haven't got a moment to call my own. Conversely, on "good" days, I often find I have long spells when I'm at a loose end.
As part of the 'Puppy' Linux portable-app ecosystem - which I've helped to foster, and grow into what it is today - in recent years I've turned my attention to building up a collection of games in addition to everything else. I'm discovering a new-found interest in these things, which is unusual in folks who reach my time of life (60+).
You know what? I'm finding that I'm far more "taken" with the huge number of free & open-source games that are out there.....which most modern-day gamers seem to either dismiss as not being worthy of their attention, OR don't seem to know even exist.
To me, from what I can see of it, I have no time for modern AAA+ titles. They're too slick, too consumed with trying to be as hyper-realistic as possible.....and all the crap that comes bundled with them leaves me cold. I want a game to BE just a 'game'. I don't want it to be indistinguishable from the real world. Where's the 'fun' in that?
I'd far sooner spend a half-hour with something like Doom or OpenArena, AssaultCube or Urban Terror. I like 'The Dark Mod', based on the old 'Thief' series. SuperTuxKart is great fun for a quick unwind. And something like Red Eclipse, along with the classic Nexuiz & its offspring Xonotic, are far more my cup o' tea.....
Diff'rent strokes for different folks, I guess. But I DO know where you're coming from.
Mike.
Heh.
I would never describe myself as a 'gamer'. For me, games have never been a defining thing in and of themselves.....always had too much to do in the real world!
However....
As I'm getting older - and I now spend more of my time looking after my elderly Mum - I have spells when I haven't got a moment to call my own. Conversely, on "good" days, I often find I have long spells when I'm at a loose end.
As part of the 'Puppy' Linux portable-app ecosystem - which I've helped to foster, and grow into what it is today - in recent years I've turned my attention to building up a collection of games in addition to everything else. I'm discovering a new-found interest in these things, which is unusual in folks who reach my time of life (60+).
You know what? I'm finding that I'm far more "taken" with the huge number of free & open-source games that are out there.....which most modern-day gamers seem to either dismiss as not being worthy of their attention, OR don't seem to know even exist.
To me, from what I can see of it, I have no time for modern AAA+ titles. They're too slick, too consumed with trying to be as hyper-realistic as possible.....and all the crap that comes bundled with them leaves me cold. I want a game to BE just a 'game'. I don't want it to be indistinguishable from the real world. Where's the 'fun' in that?
I'd far sooner spend a half-hour with something like Doom or OpenArena, AssaultCube or Urban Terror. I like 'The Dark Mod', based on the old 'Thief' series. SuperTuxKart is great fun for a quick unwind. And something like Red Eclipse, along with the classic Nexuiz & its offspring Xonotic, are far more my cup o' tea.....
Diff'rent strokes for different folks, I guess. But I DO know where you're coming from.
Mike.
kibasnowpaw
Well-Known Member
@hgabor84
Thanks, I really appreciate that.
About the sound, if you mean the sound that plays when the system starts up, then yes, I know exactly what you mean. Those old PC sounds stay in your head.
For some people it is the Windows 98 startup sound. For others it is Windows XP. For me it is also the BIOS beep, the hard drive waking up, fans spinning, the CD/DVD drive making noise, and that feeling that the machine is actually coming alive.
I still get a little bit of that feeling on my own Linux PC. My Blu-ray/DVD drive starts up when I turn the machine on. It is an external USB drive, and I keep it on the table instead of hidden inside the cabinet because that is how I like it. I like hearing it wake up.
It sounds silly maybe, but to me that kind of thing matters.
A computer should not just feel like a sealed silent box that runs apps. It should feel like your machine. Something you know. Something you understand. Something with its own little sounds and habits.
That is also why physical PC games hit different for me. It is not only nostalgia for the game itself. It is the whole ritual around it. Taking the disc out, hearing the drive spin, installing the game, maybe reading the manual, fighting some old error, finding a patch, trying Wine, breaking something, fixing it again, and then finally seeing the game run.
That moment feels earned.
Modern gaming has lost a lot of that. Everything is faster and easier now, but also more distant. More hidden. More controlled by launchers, accounts, services, and companies somewhere else.
Your Crysis result makes sense to me too. Some games really can run better on Linux/Wine than on Windows, depending on the hardware, drivers, game version, and whatever Windows is doing in the background.
Crysis is a good test because it is old enough to have weird modern problems, but still heavy enough to prove whether the setup is actually working.
For me, Proton 64-bit handled the install better, but plain Wine 11 was what actually launched the game properly. That is exactly why I still think learning Wine itself matters. Sometimes Proton is better. Sometimes Wine is better. Sometimes Lutris helps. Sometimes the easy tool hides the problem instead of helping you understand it.
That is why I am doing these physical disc runs. It is nostalgia, yes, but it is also something more than that. It is preservation. It is testing. It is proof that these games are not dead just because the industry moved on.
And maybe there is also a mental side to it.
Getting an old game running on Linux gives me a kind of calm focus. It is problem solving. It keeps the mind busy. It gives me something real to work with instead of just sitting there and letting everything spin in my head.
That is worth something to me.
@MikeWalsh
You have my sympathy with looking after your Mum.
I know that kind of life. I took care of my own dad for the last 5 years of his life. He died from a heart attack about 5 minutes after I got home, so when you talk about having periods where you have no time for yourself, and then suddenly having quiet gaps where you do not know what to do with yourself, I understand that more than I wish I did.
That kind of life does something to your head.
You are always half alert. Always listening. Always waiting for the next thing. You get used to putting yourself last. Then when there is finally silence, it does not always feel peaceful. Sometimes it just feels empty.
For me, gaming has been an escape for most of my life.
I played games before I can even properly remember it. I remember sitting on my dad’s lap playing Pong / ping-pong style games when I was a kid. So games have always been there in some form. They were not just entertainment. They were something stable. Something familiar. Something I could return to when life was heavy, messy, or too much.
Gaming has always been by my side.
That is probably why I see it differently from someone who only plays once in a while. For me it is memory, escape, habit, history, and sometimes just a way to keep my mind from going places I do not want it to go.
It is not always about fun in the simple sense.
Sometimes it is just about having something to hold on to.
That is also why a lot of modern AAA games do not really hit me anymore. They may look amazing, but many of them feel empty to me. Too much noise. Too many accounts. Too many stores. Too many battle passes, launchers, online systems, seasons, currencies, and corporate hooks around the actual game.
Sometimes I just want a game to be a game.
That is why I understand what you mean with Doom, OpenArena, AssaultCube, Urban Terror, SuperTuxKart, The Dark Mod, Xonotic, and games like that. They may not have the biggest budget, but they have something more honest. You start them, you play them, and that is the point.
No nonsense.
No giant machine trying to keep you trapped.
Just a game.
That fits Linux very well too.
Linux gaming is not only about running the newest Steam game through Proton. It is also old games, open-source games, native games, Wine testing, physical discs, weird fixes, community patches, and keeping games alive after the mainstream industry has moved on.
That is why I have started going back to physical PC games. I would rather sit with Red Alert, Age of Empires, Dead Space, Crysis, old shooters, old RTS games, or strange forgotten PC games than keep chasing every new AAA release.
Those games feel more real to me.
Maybe because they come from a time where gaming felt less like a service and more like something you actually owned. Maybe because they are tied to memories. Maybe because they still feel like they have soul.
So even if we come at gaming from different places, I think we agree on the important part.
A game does not need to be new, huge, realistic, expensive, or full of modern systems to be worth playing.
Sometimes the simple stuff has more soul.
Sometimes an old game on your own computer, with a real disc and your own setup, feels more human than a brand-new game buried under launchers, accounts, and corporate noise.
And for me, that matters.
Because games have not just been something I played.
They have been one of the things that helped me keep going.
Thanks, I really appreciate that.
About the sound, if you mean the sound that plays when the system starts up, then yes, I know exactly what you mean. Those old PC sounds stay in your head.
For some people it is the Windows 98 startup sound. For others it is Windows XP. For me it is also the BIOS beep, the hard drive waking up, fans spinning, the CD/DVD drive making noise, and that feeling that the machine is actually coming alive.
I still get a little bit of that feeling on my own Linux PC. My Blu-ray/DVD drive starts up when I turn the machine on. It is an external USB drive, and I keep it on the table instead of hidden inside the cabinet because that is how I like it. I like hearing it wake up.
It sounds silly maybe, but to me that kind of thing matters.
A computer should not just feel like a sealed silent box that runs apps. It should feel like your machine. Something you know. Something you understand. Something with its own little sounds and habits.
That is also why physical PC games hit different for me. It is not only nostalgia for the game itself. It is the whole ritual around it. Taking the disc out, hearing the drive spin, installing the game, maybe reading the manual, fighting some old error, finding a patch, trying Wine, breaking something, fixing it again, and then finally seeing the game run.
That moment feels earned.
Modern gaming has lost a lot of that. Everything is faster and easier now, but also more distant. More hidden. More controlled by launchers, accounts, services, and companies somewhere else.
Your Crysis result makes sense to me too. Some games really can run better on Linux/Wine than on Windows, depending on the hardware, drivers, game version, and whatever Windows is doing in the background.
Crysis is a good test because it is old enough to have weird modern problems, but still heavy enough to prove whether the setup is actually working.
For me, Proton 64-bit handled the install better, but plain Wine 11 was what actually launched the game properly. That is exactly why I still think learning Wine itself matters. Sometimes Proton is better. Sometimes Wine is better. Sometimes Lutris helps. Sometimes the easy tool hides the problem instead of helping you understand it.
That is why I am doing these physical disc runs. It is nostalgia, yes, but it is also something more than that. It is preservation. It is testing. It is proof that these games are not dead just because the industry moved on.
And maybe there is also a mental side to it.
Getting an old game running on Linux gives me a kind of calm focus. It is problem solving. It keeps the mind busy. It gives me something real to work with instead of just sitting there and letting everything spin in my head.
That is worth something to me.
@MikeWalsh
You have my sympathy with looking after your Mum.
I know that kind of life. I took care of my own dad for the last 5 years of his life. He died from a heart attack about 5 minutes after I got home, so when you talk about having periods where you have no time for yourself, and then suddenly having quiet gaps where you do not know what to do with yourself, I understand that more than I wish I did.
That kind of life does something to your head.
You are always half alert. Always listening. Always waiting for the next thing. You get used to putting yourself last. Then when there is finally silence, it does not always feel peaceful. Sometimes it just feels empty.
For me, gaming has been an escape for most of my life.
I played games before I can even properly remember it. I remember sitting on my dad’s lap playing Pong / ping-pong style games when I was a kid. So games have always been there in some form. They were not just entertainment. They were something stable. Something familiar. Something I could return to when life was heavy, messy, or too much.
Gaming has always been by my side.
That is probably why I see it differently from someone who only plays once in a while. For me it is memory, escape, habit, history, and sometimes just a way to keep my mind from going places I do not want it to go.
It is not always about fun in the simple sense.
Sometimes it is just about having something to hold on to.
That is also why a lot of modern AAA games do not really hit me anymore. They may look amazing, but many of them feel empty to me. Too much noise. Too many accounts. Too many stores. Too many battle passes, launchers, online systems, seasons, currencies, and corporate hooks around the actual game.
Sometimes I just want a game to be a game.
That is why I understand what you mean with Doom, OpenArena, AssaultCube, Urban Terror, SuperTuxKart, The Dark Mod, Xonotic, and games like that. They may not have the biggest budget, but they have something more honest. You start them, you play them, and that is the point.
No nonsense.
No giant machine trying to keep you trapped.
Just a game.
That fits Linux very well too.
Linux gaming is not only about running the newest Steam game through Proton. It is also old games, open-source games, native games, Wine testing, physical discs, weird fixes, community patches, and keeping games alive after the mainstream industry has moved on.
That is why I have started going back to physical PC games. I would rather sit with Red Alert, Age of Empires, Dead Space, Crysis, old shooters, old RTS games, or strange forgotten PC games than keep chasing every new AAA release.
Those games feel more real to me.
Maybe because they come from a time where gaming felt less like a service and more like something you actually owned. Maybe because they are tied to memories. Maybe because they still feel like they have soul.
So even if we come at gaming from different places, I think we agree on the important part.
A game does not need to be new, huge, realistic, expensive, or full of modern systems to be worth playing.
Sometimes the simple stuff has more soul.
Sometimes an old game on your own computer, with a real disc and your own setup, feels more human than a brand-new game buried under launchers, accounts, and corporate noise.
And for me, that matters.
Because games have not just been something I played.
They have been one of the things that helped me keep going.
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