Unless we’re talking about the handful of kernel-level anti-cheat games where the devs have refused to allow Linux support through Proton, nearly every game you own will work. Most of them without any tinkering whatsoever.
This is a myth and has been for several years. The only games that do not work with linux are ones that have intentionally artificially disallowed the use of linux using kernel level anticheat (rootkit). Many of these games worked on linux until adding no-linux policies to their anticheat.
There is no technical incompatibility, only artificial policy choices that game companies have made
EDIT: you can downvote me, but I am still correct.
I have been trying to get the sims to work on my wife’s Linux laptop. I can either get it to run at 3-4fps, or I can get it to run without the ability to save anything.
I have Steam deck and with every game I have tried on it so far working, I thought it would be the same with a laptop. Boy was I wrong.
It looks like The Sims 4 is the only one that might need some tinkering. Stupid EA installers…
Though the only entry for the first Sims game that appears in the results is the “Legacy Collection,” so if you’re referring to like the original CD-ROM or something, it might be different.
Edit: just noticed that Sims 3 doesn’t appear to have any entries on ProtonDB so I don’t know… If any of them don’t work is most likely because of EA bullshit
Sims 4, and I have tried every version of Proton, I have tried proton ge or whatever it is, I have tried every suggestion in the sims 4 protondb entry.
I have tried the suggestions in my thread about it. (I think there was one I still need to try, actually)
I have the fitgirl repack, I have tried via steam, I have tried the .exe from EA.
What distro of Linux did you install on the laptop? I’ve had no luck getting wine to work on Fedora, but my desktop is running Bazzite which is based on the steam deck OS and I’m games run great (sometimes with tweaking required).
Oh, Sims 4 fit girl pack Ive gotten to run consistently on Cinnamon. Feel free to ping me sometime if you try it and run into an issue, I may be able to get lucky with a pointer.
It’s got a shit ton of expansions in it.
Edit:
(Believe the last couple of times I did the installs through Lutris. I just picked the .exe and used the standard wine defaults for the install, then once it’s done I believe it worked fine by adding a game and pointing it to the .exe for the play file. Then if you feel like it you can switch to proton to see if you get better performance, but a Mint install with a Pentium Processor with 4gb of ram (HP touchsmart) was able to run it, so most anything should be able to use the standard wine setup just fine.)
Ok let’s give you some more software which still don’t work with linux
- recordbox
- serato
- traktor
- engine dj
While recordbox 6 still worked in a kvm environment … recordbox 7 crashes even in this environment.
You can to a certain degree avoid maybe serato or traktor and use “engine dj in a kvm” to prepare denon stuff but you always need recordbox for preparing usb sticks too as a dj.
Again, further proving my point. Rekordbox was arbitrarily designed to detect if it is being run with WINE to prevent use with linux. There is no technical incompatibility, only a policy choice, and you can get rekordbox to run with linux if you jump through hoops to defeat the WINE detection.
It’s a very small subset of games and most are live service microtransaction garbage not worth playing anyway. Many are spyware and viruses disguised as games, eg Valorant
No, they’re saying you are making a mountain of molehill and using it as justification. You are saying you are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Now you two feel free to proceed, I have my popcorn.
Yeah but they are saying a reason why people don’t move, not a justification of why he isn’t.
That said I had to run a program that detected my computer specs for a job interview recently, and they flagged my machine because I had just booted Windows in Virtual box so I could hopefully pass their test. Instead I had to borrow my spouses laptop, run the test then went back to using my computer for everything else once the test was over.
That said, you should never take a job that requires you to use your own hardware… But desperate times…
The user asked why people still use Windows and I gave a few examples.
You gave examples, but they were incorrect and invalid examples. As I already corrected you, you’re parroting a myth because games do run on Linux. In fact, games run better and faster on linux than windows
I just wanted to chime in that there’s far more reasons that your software doesn’t work on Linux than just the developer saying no.
Basically, if your game or software has to interface with anything at the driver level, such as a keyboard or a headset configuration software, or anything that needs to access complete system access such as kernel level access or being able to see processes outside of the wine environment. It’s going to be incompatible. This is by design for system security and is unlikely to change on official releases any time soon.
Additionally, if the game requires any type of integration into basically anything Microsoft, so be it the Microsoft account services, the authentication token services, multiplayer services, applications on the MS store etc, it’s going to be a no go as they have yet to make a decent translation layer for those systems. Being said with the push for demand of Game Pass on PC, there are people working on those projects, but I haven’t personally seen anything that had decent progress.
I have to hard disagree with the statement that it’s a myth. Yes, many games will work with minor tinkering. However, We are still a long way from having something that is just a click play and it works style system and it’s not usually from developer choices (outside of choosing not to make a Linux distributable)
Being said, it has gone a long way since I started using Linux back with Mint Maya. ProtonDB is an excellent resource to find known workarounds when it breaks, But you definitely should not go into any Linux system expecting it to “just work™”
I have multiple versions of proton installed currently. However, I’ve mostly given up on the glorious egg rolls because they seem to have caused more issues than they are worth. But if you have a specific version that you’ve found is easier to use and not as annoying, I’m up for suggestions.
Once my system loads, I’ll tell you what versions I’ve tried and which ones I’ve had issues with.
Currently I have proton GE 9-7 as my default for steam(with the hope that it works), and when that fails I swap to proton 9-0-4 or experimental, but I have GE 10-10 and 10-4 installed but they currently aren’t on any games as I haven’t got any games to seem to want to run with them.
Then on lutris main I’m using a custom runner for one of my games because it needs to get around EAC since standard support is iffy, but I default to Wine 10 for it as they state proton shouldn’t be used on non-steam. However I do have Lutris-GE-8-26 installed but it only ever worked right on one of the games.
Then for lutris on my distrobox Arch container(because FF XIV and Genshin launchers & controller support break for some reason otherwise) I use Wine-ge-8-26 which is a coinflip of if it lets me launch or crashes which makes me suspect that theres a race condition somewhere.
I haven’t had good experiences with GE which is why I was hoping you might have some recommendations on a /stable/ version if you can call GE stable lol
I’m parroting old talking points because those talking points still exist. They existed in 2022. They existed in 2012 when I started, and they still exist today August 2025.
I said I agree that wines gotten better, but I’m sick and tired of people thinking that it’s some sort of magical unicorn that can just resolve all the inner communication issues with Windows & Linux.
In the last 2 months alone I have had several games that have failed to launch completely. at least 10 games that have required me using a specific proton version. One game that required me to install a custom wine runner that’s specifically configured for the game to function, a handful of software incompatibilities, The most annoying of which being the software that is supposed to make my headset compatible with the computer, which required me due to the fact it’s not compatible with wine, to have to make my own audio profile to split the two mixes it has, and I’m currently working on a custom user interface for it to allow me to actually change the settings on the headset.
All of these examples are completely ignoring the reason that you provided of companies not wanting to support it. It’s just the support doesn’t exist in the current wine infrastructure. If we’re including the games that are using kernel level AC or disabling the usage on Linux, that list becomes bigger.
10 games that /launched/ on linux. there is a difference. It was for sure not 10 games that ran the same as if in a windows enviroment. For example one of those games in that critera you can’t tab out of it or it hard crashes. (Safecracker if you were curious)
Another one of those games was “The Isle” which has a raving disco ball sky during the night time.
Then theres phas… which while it functions the mic support is iffy cant work in lobby and night vision video is broken
Of the popular titles, of what I tried was probably Phas, Death Stranding (random crashes when the BT’s show), Sniper Elite 3 (overall laggy), Ark SE (not surprising but it has massive pre-game queueing if the server is modded so it takes 20-30 minutes to enter a modded server), Genshin Impact (controller issue on my main OS so i need to run it on my Arch distrobox) and FF XIV which launcher crashes unless I run it in a distrobox, and has weird audio issues.
Another one of those games was “The Isle” which has a raving disco ball sky during the night time.
You should probably try this again, I can only assume that it has been a long time since you tried, because the protondb posting for the last 4+ months all say there are zero issues and it works perfectly. No clue why you’d need to use a specific version of proton because the posts include the latest version as well as a variety of others.
Then theres phas… which while it functions the mic support is iffy cant work in lobby and night vision video is broken
Lol I literally play this one on linux, and no, it works 100% without any issues or bugs.
it will be a slight downgrade, but they do have a Minecraft bedrock wrapper program that uses the Android version of Minecraft, so technically Pocket Edition, and that’s probably the easiest currently at getting that version of Minecraft to run on Linux.
It’s stupid, honestly. I was trying to play Fallout New Vegas for the fifth time, and starting the game I realized the main radio station of the game, which repeats forever, was mute. For my weird taste, this was a dealbreaker, as IDK how they do it, but their playlists have this quality to immerse me in the game no matter how many times I listen to them. Tried every fix I could find to sort this problem with no success. So, back to Windows 10, and it works. At this point of time, I don’t play New Vegas, but there are so many GB to download, partitions to extend, etc. I guess in December I will try to go back to Linux.
I still need to use it for university. We often need to use very specific programs for homework and I don’t know if I can always find an alternative on linux. Even if, I’d have to go through the hastle of converting to the requested file formats. And it’s not guaranteed that I will always find a solution for every course I’ll take.
Unfortunately education still expects you to work with Windows and programs that only work on Windows.
Of course, your metrics may vary because every person’s situation is different, but I went through my associates and my bachelor’s CIS degree with very minor issues issues., Many colleges will state that it requires windows for the course, but then you’re able to use something like LibreOffice just fine. Like technically, the only course that I ever had to actually use windows for was my Microsoft Office course and that’s self-explanatory of why I needed Windows for that lol
Im genuinely curious as to what themes and DE you’re using that looks better. In Windows everything is slick and polished, stuff slides and bounces around, the colours are consistent and work together, it’s all pretty elegant. I’m using KDE right now and all that I get is the start menu thing changes shade when I hover the mouse over it. I also use Gnome and XFCE, Gnome is pretty good and XFCE is obviously really basic.
You just answered my question. I was going to ask you earlier and then forgot to hit send. Because I thought plasma actually looked really slick, so I was going to recommend it. Especially with how customizable it is.
The biggest annoyance that was to get used to was the change in overall size of the menu bars, but once you’ve been using Linux for a week or two, it actually hurts your eyes going back onto Windows again.
Why does anyone use windows?
A lot of software still requires Windows.
Games are a big one for sure, but there is a lot of productivity and creative software that does not run on Linux.
Unless we’re talking about the handful of kernel-level anti-cheat games where the devs have refused to allow Linux support through Proton, nearly every game you own will work. Most of them without any tinkering whatsoever.
This is a myth and has been for several years. The only games that do not work with linux are ones that have intentionally artificially disallowed the use of linux using kernel level anticheat (rootkit). Many of these games worked on linux until adding no-linux policies to their anticheat.
There is no technical incompatibility, only artificial policy choices that game companies have made
EDIT: you can downvote me, but I am still correct.
I have been trying to get the sims to work on my wife’s Linux laptop. I can either get it to run at 3-4fps, or I can get it to run without the ability to save anything.
I have Steam deck and with every game I have tried on it so far working, I thought it would be the same with a laptop. Boy was I wrong.
Not sure which Sims you’re referring to, but it looks like it should work: https://www.protondb.com/search?q=the+Sims+
It looks like The Sims 4 is the only one that might need some tinkering. Stupid EA installers…
Though the only entry for the first Sims game that appears in the results is the “Legacy Collection,” so if you’re referring to like the original CD-ROM or something, it might be different.
Edit: just noticed that Sims 3 doesn’t appear to have any entries on ProtonDB so I don’t know… If any of them don’t work is most likely because of EA bullshit
Sims 4, and I have tried every version of Proton, I have tried proton ge or whatever it is, I have tried every suggestion in the sims 4 protondb entry.
I have tried the suggestions in my thread about it. (I think there was one I still need to try, actually)
I have the fitgirl repack, I have tried via steam, I have tried the .exe from EA.
Bummer, sorry to hear that.
What distro of Linux did you install on the laptop? I’ve had no luck getting wine to work on Fedora, but my desktop is running Bazzite which is based on the steam deck OS and I’m games run great (sometimes with tweaking required).
Mint Cinnamon
Oh, Sims 4 fit girl pack Ive gotten to run consistently on Cinnamon. Feel free to ping me sometime if you try it and run into an issue, I may be able to get lucky with a pointer.
It’s got a shit ton of expansions in it.
Edit: (Believe the last couple of times I did the installs through Lutris. I just picked the .exe and used the standard wine defaults for the install, then once it’s done I believe it worked fine by adding a game and pointing it to the .exe for the play file. Then if you feel like it you can switch to proton to see if you get better performance, but a Mint install with a Pentium Processor with 4gb of ram (HP touchsmart) was able to run it, so most anything should be able to use the standard wine setup just fine.)
@theunknownmuncher @TheFeatureCreature
Ok let’s give you some more software which still don’t work with linux
- recordbox
- serato
- traktor
- engine dj
While recordbox 6 still worked in a kvm environment … recordbox 7 crashes even in this environment.
You can to a certain degree avoid maybe serato or traktor and use “engine dj in a kvm” to prepare denon stuff but you always need recordbox for preparing usb sticks too as a dj.
Again, further proving my point. Rekordbox was arbitrarily designed to detect if it is being run with WINE to prevent use with linux. There is no technical incompatibility, only a policy choice, and you can get rekordbox to run with linux if you jump through hoops to defeat the WINE detection.
I never gave a reason why a game would/wouldn’t run on Linux. I just said that games are a reason some people continue to use Windows.
It’s a very small subset of games and most are live service microtransaction garbage not worth playing anyway. Many are spyware and viruses disguised as games, eg Valorant
The quality of those games is irrelevant. The user asked why people still use Windows and I gave a few examples. Simple as that.
You are arguing for the sake of it.
No, they’re saying you are making a mountain of molehill and using it as justification. You are saying you are technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Now you two feel free to proceed, I have my popcorn.
Yeah but they are saying a reason why people don’t move, not a justification of why he isn’t.
That said I had to run a program that detected my computer specs for a job interview recently, and they flagged my machine because I had just booted Windows in Virtual box so I could hopefully pass their test. Instead I had to borrow my spouses laptop, run the test then went back to using my computer for everything else once the test was over.
That said, you should never take a job that requires you to use your own hardware… But desperate times…
You gave examples, but they were incorrect and invalid examples. As I already corrected you, you’re parroting a myth because games do run on Linux. In fact, games run better and faster on linux than windows
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-steamos-than-windows-11-ars-testing-finds/
I just wanted to chime in that there’s far more reasons that your software doesn’t work on Linux than just the developer saying no.
Basically, if your game or software has to interface with anything at the driver level, such as a keyboard or a headset configuration software, or anything that needs to access complete system access such as kernel level access or being able to see processes outside of the wine environment. It’s going to be incompatible. This is by design for system security and is unlikely to change on official releases any time soon.
Additionally, if the game requires any type of integration into basically anything Microsoft, so be it the Microsoft account services, the authentication token services, multiplayer services, applications on the MS store etc, it’s going to be a no go as they have yet to make a decent translation layer for those systems. Being said with the push for demand of Game Pass on PC, there are people working on those projects, but I haven’t personally seen anything that had decent progress.
I have to hard disagree with the statement that it’s a myth. Yes, many games will work with minor tinkering. However, We are still a long way from having something that is just a click play and it works style system and it’s not usually from developer choices (outside of choosing not to make a Linux distributable)
Being said, it has gone a long way since I started using Linux back with Mint Maya. ProtonDB is an excellent resource to find known workarounds when it breaks, But you definitely should not go into any Linux system expecting it to “just work™”
Tell me you haven’t tried Proton on Linux without telling me you haven’t tried Proton on Linux.
I have multiple versions of proton installed currently. However, I’ve mostly given up on the glorious egg rolls because they seem to have caused more issues than they are worth. But if you have a specific version that you’ve found is easier to use and not as annoying, I’m up for suggestions.
Once my system loads, I’ll tell you what versions I’ve tried and which ones I’ve had issues with.
lmk
Currently I have proton GE 9-7 as my default for steam(with the hope that it works), and when that fails I swap to proton 9-0-4 or experimental, but I have GE 10-10 and 10-4 installed but they currently aren’t on any games as I haven’t got any games to seem to want to run with them.
Then on lutris main I’m using a custom runner for one of my games because it needs to get around EAC since standard support is iffy, but I default to Wine 10 for it as they state proton shouldn’t be used on non-steam. However I do have Lutris-GE-8-26 installed but it only ever worked right on one of the games.
Then for lutris on my distrobox Arch container(because FF XIV and Genshin launchers & controller support break for some reason otherwise) I use Wine-ge-8-26 which is a coinflip of if it lets me launch or crashes which makes me suspect that theres a race condition somewhere.
I haven’t had good experiences with GE which is why I was hoping you might have some recommendations on a /stable/ version if you can call GE stable lol
Is it possible that old system files are your problem? I’ve never had problems with any version of GE or Lutris.
You haven’t told me any of the games you’re trying to get to work.
If they have kernel anti-cheat, anti-Linux checking, etc then you’re going to have bad luck and may want to consider a VM and GPU passthrough.
With the vast majority of games I have tried on Linux, things Just Work out of the box.
Tl;dr parrotted talking points completely irrelevant since 2022
If you want to specifically use Microsoft software then you have to use Microsoft software? Wow, gee, what a perceptive point. You got me there lmao
I’m parroting old talking points because those talking points still exist. They existed in 2022. They existed in 2012 when I started, and they still exist today August 2025.
I said I agree that wines gotten better, but I’m sick and tired of people thinking that it’s some sort of magical unicorn that can just resolve all the inner communication issues with Windows & Linux.
In the last 2 months alone I have had several games that have failed to launch completely. at least 10 games that have required me using a specific proton version. One game that required me to install a custom wine runner that’s specifically configured for the game to function, a handful of software incompatibilities, The most annoying of which being the software that is supposed to make my headset compatible with the computer, which required me due to the fact it’s not compatible with wine, to have to make my own audio profile to split the two mixes it has, and I’m currently working on a custom user interface for it to allow me to actually change the settings on the headset.
All of these examples are completely ignoring the reason that you provided of companies not wanting to support it. It’s just the support doesn’t exist in the current wine infrastructure. If we’re including the games that are using kernel level AC or disabling the usage on Linux, that list becomes bigger.
Nope!
So in other words, 10 games that worked on Linux…
10 games that /launched/ on linux. there is a difference. It was for sure not 10 games that ran the same as if in a windows enviroment. For example one of those games in that critera you can’t tab out of it or it hard crashes. (Safecracker if you were curious)
Another one of those games was “The Isle” which has a raving disco ball sky during the night time.
Then theres phas… which while it functions the mic support is iffy cant work in lobby and night vision video is broken
Of the popular titles, of what I tried was probably Phas, Death Stranding (random crashes when the BT’s show), Sniper Elite 3 (overall laggy), Ark SE (not surprising but it has massive pre-game queueing if the server is modded so it takes 20-30 minutes to enter a modded server), Genshin Impact (controller issue on my main OS so i need to run it on my Arch distrobox) and FF XIV which launcher crashes unless I run it in a distrobox, and has weird audio issues.
LOL That’s literally a classic window bug. Try borderless-windowed. You’re welcome!
You should probably try this again, I can only assume that it has been a long time since you tried, because the protondb posting for the last 4+ months all say there are zero issues and it works perfectly. No clue why you’d need to use a specific version of proton because the posts include the latest version as well as a variety of others.
Lol I literally play this one on linux, and no, it works 100% without any issues or bugs.
For me, Minecraft bedrock (for kids) but looks like anything MS tainted will start (or maybe already does) require windows.
Looks like I have to decide what to do soon because they’re still on W10.
it will be a slight downgrade, but they do have a Minecraft bedrock wrapper program that uses the Android version of Minecraft, so technically Pocket Edition, and that’s probably the easiest currently at getting that version of Minecraft to run on Linux.
It’s stupid, honestly. I was trying to play Fallout New Vegas for the fifth time, and starting the game I realized the main radio station of the game, which repeats forever, was mute. For my weird taste, this was a dealbreaker, as IDK how they do it, but their playlists have this quality to immerse me in the game no matter how many times I listen to them. Tried every fix I could find to sort this problem with no success. So, back to Windows 10, and it works. At this point of time, I don’t play New Vegas, but there are so many GB to download, partitions to extend, etc. I guess in December I will try to go back to Linux.
I still need to use it for university. We often need to use very specific programs for homework and I don’t know if I can always find an alternative on linux. Even if, I’d have to go through the hastle of converting to the requested file formats. And it’s not guaranteed that I will always find a solution for every course I’ll take. Unfortunately education still expects you to work with Windows and programs that only work on Windows.
Of course, your metrics may vary because every person’s situation is different, but I went through my associates and my bachelor’s CIS degree with very minor issues issues., Many colleges will state that it requires windows for the course, but then you’re able to use something like LibreOffice just fine. Like technically, the only course that I ever had to actually use windows for was my Microsoft Office course and that’s self-explanatory of why I needed Windows for that lol
I say this as a Linux user, Windows is still considerably easier to use and it certainly looks a lot slicker.
As someone who is still required to use Windows on my work laptop, hard disagree.
Im genuinely curious as to what themes and DE you’re using that looks better. In Windows everything is slick and polished, stuff slides and bounces around, the colours are consistent and work together, it’s all pretty elegant. I’m using KDE right now and all that I get is the start menu thing changes shade when I hover the mouse over it. I also use Gnome and XFCE, Gnome is pretty good and XFCE is obviously really basic.
You just answered my question. I was going to ask you earlier and then forgot to hit send. Because I thought plasma actually looked really slick, so I was going to recommend it. Especially with how customizable it is.
The biggest annoyance that was to get used to was the change in overall size of the menu bars, but once you’ve been using Linux for a week or two, it actually hurts your eyes going back onto Windows again.
I have one extremely important game that is a half life 1 mod and will NOT run on Linux.
Plus, pretty much all I do on my main desktop is play games.