Gaming

Related articles
List of games
Video game platform emulators
Xorg
Gamepad
Wine
Linux has long been considered an "unofficial" gaming platform; the support and target audience provided to it is not a primary priority for most gaming organizations. Changes to this situation have accelerated, starting from 2021 onward, as big players like
Valve
, the
CodeWeavers
group and the
community
have made tremendous improvements to the ecosystem, allowing Linux to truly become a viable platform for gaming. Further, more and more indie development teams strive to use cross-platform rendering engines in order to have their game able to compile and run on Linux.
When it comes to gaming, the majority of user's thoughts are often directed towards popular
AAA games
which are usually written exclusively for the
Microsoft Windows
platform. This is understandable, however, it is not the only and sole availability. Refer to
#Game environments
and
#Getting games
further down the page where you can find software to run games from other platforms.
If you however are fixated on getting games written for
Microsoft Windows
to work on Linux, then a different mindset, tools and approach is required; understanding internals and providing functional substitution. See
#Game technicality
below.
Game technicality
There are ultimately
three complications
that arise from attempting to play
AAA games
made for Windows on Linux. They are:
Graphics SDK
Games written and compiled for an API that Linux does not recognize (such as
DirectX
).
General library dependencies
Libraries necessary for doing general purpose operations during gameplay, such as saving in-game, loading configuration files (e.g Microsoft Visual C++, MFC, .NET)
Incompatible interfaces
Aside from the frameworks mentioned above, there is a further problem with binary formats and compiled code generated by Windows which Linux does not recognize.
Graphics SDK forward graphical calls to the underlying graphics driver which then proceeds to talk to the GPU hardware.
A huge amount of games use
DirectX
as their main driving SDK. Linux, natively supports only
OpenGL
and
Vulkan
. Linux by itself does not support
DirectX
or any of the aforementioned technologies (Visual C++, MFC, .NET).
Instead, several opensource equivalents have been written which attempt to provide
identical
functionality, ultimately achieving the same result from a graphics point of view. These equivalents have their "own" written substitutes which attempt to "re-invent" what the original SDK calls would possibly achieve from a
black box
point of view. Popular ones include:
Wine
(Wine Is Not an Emulator) [provides a "loader vm", self written dependencies, interop and more]
Proton
(forked Wine project, optimized for Steam by Valve)
Mono
(.NET alternative)
MF-Media
(media foundation dependencies)
For example, a call to load, transform and shade vertices on
DirectX
may be re-written from scratch in a new
.dll
/
.so
owned by Wine, providing their own "hypothetical" belief on what the function may be doing underneath, and forward it instead to an
OpenGL
alternative, effectively trying to achieve similar results. Since these calls are direct equivalents and treated "as if" DirectX was running, performance is not impacted. (with the exception of the starting overhead to interop with these)
These tools are often brought in the distribution together on the system at the same time. A
prefix
(Wine's terminology for a directory mimicking a Windows sandbox) is created and configured. Dependencies are installed
inside the prefix
(the "sandbox" still needs the game's
redistributables
), often with
winetricks
, followed by an attempt to run the game "as if" it was executed from Windows.
This, nowadays, fortunately works for most games (aside from
anti-cheat protected ones
, which require a kernel driver that Wine/Proton does not yet have). If a game does not work, it is usually as a result of incompatible packages, missing dependencies or unimplemented functionality by Wine/Proton.
Lutris is a piece of software that provides runners and sandboxes that handle dependencies for you when you install games, if the above process is found tedious and/or complicated.
Common game dependencies
In order to gain a more in-depth understanding of what you will intend to do if you decide to go the Wine/Proton route, it is worthwhile to cover the common dependencies that games require in order to execute. Architecture also needs to be considered in mind, whether x86 or x64, preferably both.
A prefix would need to have the following populated into it in order to run
most
Windows games.
Mandatory (for high coverage)
This article or section needs language, wiki syntax or style improvements. See
Help:Style
for reference.
Reason:
Links to wiki articles that contain package links (e.g.
Fonts
) should be used here (Discuss in
Talk:Gaming
)
Microsoft Core Fonts
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 (2022 has the most coverage, recommended) [2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017-2018, 2019, 2022]
DirectX 9.0 (11.0 has the most coverage, recommended) [June SDK update 2010] {which consists of, to name a few:}
Direct3D
Direct2D
DirectShow
DirectInput
DirectPlay
DirectSound
DXGI
XAudio2
.NET Framework (4.8 has most coverage)
OpenGL
OpenCL
Vulkan
Optional (but still common)
XNA
PhysX
Quicktime
Adobe Reader 11
Java
SRE (e.g for
Minecraft
)
Rare (less common)
Gamespy
MIDI driver
ACDSee
Machine requirements
It is not enough to just populate a prefix with the dependencies the game will need. The kernel itself has to have the substitution it will provide to the calls the game will make. As already mentioned, drivers and alternatives are available.
Drivers
See
Graphics processing unit
.
Dependency for the machine & substitutes
Note
This is mostly informative. Some of these packages install themselves once you install the major ones.
Wine
wine-gecko
wine-mono
Vulkan
OpenGL
Proton
Redistributables (optional, but it may help)
Game environments
Wine/Proton are not the only approaches to play games. Different environments exist to play games in Linux, and have just as many (or more) games than on Windows:
Native – games which have builds targeting the Linux platform, shipping with OpenGL and/or Vulkan graphics API support.
Emulators
– required for running software designed for other architectures and systems. Most games run out of the box once the ROM is fed in to the emulator and issues are rarely encountered. For options, see
Video game platform emulators
.
Java
- write once, run everywhere platform. Examples of popular games that run on Linux are
Minecraft
,
Runescape
,
Wurm Online
,
Puzzle Pirates
.
Web – games running in a web browser.
HTML5 games use canvas and WebGL technologies and work in all modern browsers.
Flash
-based – you need to install an extension to play.
Wine
– Windows compatibility layer, allows to run Windows applications (and a lot of games) on Unix-like operating systems. Supports DirectX to Vulkan translation in runtime with the addition of
Wine#DXVK
, which improves performance in games which only support DirectX.
Virtual machines
– can be used to install compatible operating systems (such as Windows).
VirtualBox
has good 3D support. As an extension of this, if you have compatible hardware you can consider VGA passthrough to a Windows KVM guest, keyword is
"virtual function I/O" (VFIO)
, or
PCI passthrough via OVMF
.
Proton/DXVK
– Fork of Wine designed for use in the proprietary
steam
platform, enabling better support for games than Wine. See
Steam#Proton Steam-Play
for more information.
Game compatibility
Increase vm.max_map_count
Having the
vm.max_map_count
set to a low value can affect the stability and performance of some games. It can therefore be desirable to increase the size permanently by creating the following
sysctl
config file.
/etc/sysctl.d/80-gamecompatibility.conf
vm.max_map_count = 2147483642
Note
The default value is set by
/usr/lib/sysctl.d/10-arch.conf
, if you use a different file make sure it has higher priority. See
sysctl(8) § SYSTEM FILE PRECEDENCE
.
Arch Linux uses the value
1048576
by default
[1]
, which Fedora considers a safe value
[2]
. This default value is likely to be sufficient for current games, as increasing the value was mostly important when Arch used the kernel default of 65530
[3]
. A value of
2147483642
(MAX_INT - 5) is the default in SteamOS.
Apply the changes without reboot by running:
# sysctl --system
Note
This can lead to incompatibility with older programs trying to read core dump files
[4]
.
Getting games
Just because games are available for Linux does not mean that they are native; they might be pre-packaged with
Wine
or
DOSBox
.
For list of games packaged for Arch in
official repositories
or the
AUR
see
List of games
.
Athenaeum
— A libre-centric replacement to Steam.
https://gitlab.com/librebob/athenaeum
||
athenaeum-git
AUR
Flathub
— Central
Flatpak
repository, has small but growing game section.
https://flathub.org/apps/category/Game
||
flatpak
,
discover
,
gnome-software
GOG.com
— DRM-free game store. Games can be installed through offline installation scripts (either with a
gtk2
AUR
-based UI, or run from a terminal), through the Galaxy client (requiring Wine), or through unofficial clients.
https://www.gog.com
||
lgogdownloader
AUR
,
wyvern
AUR
,
minigalaxy
AUR
Heroic Games Launcher
— A GUI for GOG and legendary, an open-source alternative for the Epic Games Launcher.
https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
||
heroic-games-launcher
AUR
itch.io
— Indie game store.
https://itch.io
||
itch-setup-bin
AUR
Legendary
— A free and open-source replacement for the Epic Games Launcher.
https://github.com/derrod/legendary
||
legendary
AUR
Lutris
— Open gaming platform for Linux. Gets games from GOG, Steam, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay and many other sources. Lutris utilizes various
game runners
to launch the games with fully customizable configuration options.
https://lutris.net
||
lutris
Modrinth App
— An unique, open source launcher that allows you to play your favorite mods, and keep them up to date, all in one neat little package.
https://modrinth.com/app
||
modrinth-app-appimage
AUR
Rare
— Another GUI for legendary, based on PyQt5.
https://github.com/Dummerle/Rare
||
rare
AUR
Steam
— Digital distribution and communications platform developed by Valve.
https://store.steampowered.com
||
steam
For Wine wrappers, see
Wine#Third-party applications
.
Game launchers
Game launchers are important tools for managing and running games on various platforms. Below is a comparison of different game launchers available for Linux, particularly focusing on their features and compatibility.
Package
License
Wine support
DLC management
Cross-platform
ProtonDB support
Focused on
athenaeum-git
AUR
GPL-3.0-or-later
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Flatpak
lgogdownloader
AUR
WTFPL
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
GOG
heroic-games-launcher
AUR
GPL-3.0-only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Epic, GOG, Amazon Prime
itch-setup-bin
AUR
MIT
No
No
Yes
Yes
itch.io
legendary
AUR
GPL-3.0-only
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Epic
lutris
GPL-3.0-only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wide-ranging
play.it
AUR
BSD-2-Clause
Yes
No
No
No
Native,
Wine
, DOSBox and ScummVM
portproton
AUR
MIT
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Wine
rare
AUR
GPL-3.0-only
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Epic
Steam
Proprietary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Proton
umu-launcher
GPL-3.0-only
Yes
No
No
No
Proton
Configuring games
Certain games or game types may need special configuration to run or to run as expected. For the most part, games will work right out of the box in Arch Linux with possibly better performance than on other distributions due to compile time optimizations. However, some special setups may require a bit of configuration or scripting to make games run as smoothly as desired.
Multi-screen setups
Running a multi-screen setup may lead to problems with full-screen games. In such a case,
running a second X server
is one possible solution. For NVIDIA users, a solution may be found in
NVIDIA#Gaming using TwinView
.
Keyboard grabbing
Many games grab the keyboard, noticeably preventing you from switching windows (also known as alt-tabbing).
Some SDL games (e.g. Guacamelee) let you disable grabbing by pressing
Ctrl-g
.
Note
SDL is known to sometimes not be able to grab the input system. In such a case, it may succeed in grabbing it after a few seconds of waiting.
Starting games in a separate X server
In some cases like those mentioned above, it may be necessary or desired to run a second X server. Running a second X server has multiple advantages such as better performance, the ability to "tab" out of your game by using
Ctrl+Alt+F7
/
Ctrl+Alt+F8
, no crashing your primary X session (which may have open work on) in case a game conflicts with the graphics driver. The new X server will be akin a remote access login for the ALSA, so your user need to be part of the
audio
group to be able to hear any sound.
To start a second X server (using the free first person shooter game
Xonotic
as an example) you can simply do:
$ xinit /usr/bin/xonotic-glx -- :1 vt$XDG_VTNR
This can further be spiced up by using a separate X configuration file:
$ xinit /usr/bin/xonotic-glx -- :1 -xf86config xorg-game.conf vt$XDG_VTNR
A good reason to provide an alternative
xorg.conf
here may be that your primary configuration makes use of NVIDIA's Twinview which would render your 3D games like Xonotic in the middle of your multiscreen setup, spanned across all screens. This is undesirable, thus starting a second X with an alternative configuration where the second screen is disabled is advised.
Note
The X configuration file location is relative to the
/etc/X11
directory.
A game starting script making use of Openbox for your home directory or
/usr/local/bin
may look like this:
~/game.sh
if [ $# -ge 1 ]; then
        game="$(which $1)"
        openbox="$(which openbox)"
        tmpgame="/tmp/tmpgame.sh"
        DISPLAY=:1.0
        echo -e "${openbox} &\n${game}" > ${tmpgame}
        echo "starting ${game}"
        xinit ${tmpgame} -- :1 -xf86config xorg-game.conf || exit 1
else
        echo "not a valid argument"
fi
After making it
executable
you would be able to do:
$ ~/game.sh xonotic-glx
Note
If you want to avoid loading configs from
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
, you should also use the
-configdir
option, pointing to an empty directory.
Adjusting mouse detections
For games that require exceptional amount of mouse skill (like shooters), adjusting the
mouse polling rate
can help improve accuracy on high-end mice. The improvement can be by a few milliseconds when increasing from typical polling rates like 250 Hz - 500 Hz to 1000 Hz, but increasing past 1000 Hz will get at most slightly less than a millisecond of improvement. In general, latency is influenced by the quality of the mouse's microcontroller, firmware, and sensor, and
the mice with the lowest latency currently available don't necessarily improve past 1000 Hz
.
Binaural audio with OpenAL
For games using
OpenAL
, if you use headphones you may get much better positional audio using OpenAL's
HRTF
filters. To enable,
create
:
~/.alsoftrc
hrtf = true
Alternatively, install
openal-hrtf
AUR
from the AUR, and edit the options in
/etc/openal/alsoftrc.conf
.
For Source games, the ingame setting `dsp_slow_cpu` must be set to `1` to enable HRTF, otherwise the game will enable its own processing instead. You will also either need to set up Steam to use native runtime, or link its copy of openal.so to your own local copy. For completeness, also use the following options:
dsp_slow_cpu 1 # Disable in-game spatialiazation
snd_spatialize_roundrobin 1 # Disable spatialization 1.0*100% of sounds
dsp_enhance_stereo 0 # Disable DSP sound effects. You may want to leave this on, if you find it does not interfere with your perception of the sound effects.
snd_pitchquality 1 # Use high quality sounds
Tuning PulseAudio
If you are using
PulseAudio
, you may wish to tweak some default settings to make sure it is running optimally.
Enabling realtime priority and negative nice level
PulseAudio is built to be run with realtime priority, being an audio daemon. However, because of security risks of it locking up the system, it is scheduled as a regular thread by default. To adjust this, first make sure you are in the
audio
group. Then, uncomment and edit the following lines in
/etc/pulse/daemon.conf
:
/etc/pulse/daemon.conf
high-priority = yes
nice-level = -11

realtime-scheduling = yes
realtime-priority = 5
and restart PulseAudio.
Using higher quality remixing for better sound
PulseAudio on Arch uses speex-float-1 by default to remix channels, which is considered a 'medium-low' quality remixing. If your system can handle the extra load, you may benefit from setting it to one of the following instead:
resample-method = speex-float-10
Matching hardware buffers to Pulse's buffering
Matching the buffers can reduce stuttering and increase performance marginally. See
here
for more details.
Remote gaming
Cloud gaming
has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, because of low client-side hardware requirements. The only important thing is stable internet connection (over the Ethernet cable or 5 GHz Wi-Fi recommended) with a minimum speed of 5–10 Mbit/s (depending on the video quality and framerate).
See
Gamepad#Gamepad over network
for using a gamepad over a network with services that do not normally support this.
Note
Most of the browser-only services have broad browser compatibility, but some are only officially compatible with
google-chrome
AUR
. If you don't want to use Chrome, it's possible to change the user agent string sent by your browser to attempt to 'trick' the website into thinking you are using Chrome, as most of these services don't employ any further fingerprinting/detection.
Service
Installer
In browser client
Use your own host
Offers host renting
Full desktop support
Controller support
Remarks
Dixper
–
Yes
Windows-only
?
?
?
–
Reemo
reemod-bin
AUR
Chromium based only
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows-only
You can also install the software with the official installation script in the download section via their website.
Xbox Cloud
xbox-cloud-gaming
AUR
Yes
No
No
No
Yes
You need Game Pass Ultimate to be able to use XCloud.
GeForce Now
–
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
You must have games on Steam, Epic Client or GOG to use this service. Not all games are available.
Moonlight
moonlight-qt
No
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
This is only a client. Host machine must use either GeForce Experience (windows only) or
Sunshine
(multiplatform).
Parsec
parsec-bin
AUR
Yes (experimental)
Windows-only
No
Yes
Yes
–
Playkey
playkey-linux
AUR
?
?
?
?
?
–
PlayStation Now
[
dead link
2024-07-30—HTTP 404]
Runs under
Wine
or
Steam
's proton
No
No
–
No
Yes
Play PS4, PS3 and PS2 games on PC. Alternatively, you can use
emulators
.
PlayStation Remote Play
chiaki
AUR
No
Yes
–
Yes
Yes
Play games from your PS4 and/or PS5 on PC.
Rainway
[
dead link
2025-03-15—domain name not resolved]
Web Browser based
Yes
Windows-only
No
Yes
?
–
Shadow
shadow-tech
AUR
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Controller support is dependent on USB over IP, and currently AVC only as HEVC is not supported
Steam Remote Play
Part of
steam
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
–
Vortex
[
dead link
2024-01-29—HTTP 404]
–
Yes
No
–
No
?
–
VNC
tigervnc
or
x11vnc
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
General purpose remote desktop protocol, but the latency should be low enough to use it for gaming over a LAN. See
Gamepad#Gamepad over network
for gamepad support.
xrdp
xrdp
AUR
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Another general purpose remote desktop protocol, has both OpenGL and Vulkan support after configuring
graphical accleration
. Recommended for gaming over a LAN. See
Gamepad#Gamepad over network
for gamepad support.
X11 forwarding
openssh
No
Yes
No
No
No
X forwarding over SSH with
VirtualGL
supports OpenGL and works for some but not all games. See
Gamepad#Gamepad over network
for gamepad support.
Boosteroid
boosteroid
AUR
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
You must have games on a digital distribution platform (Steam, EGS, Origin, etc.) to use this service. Not all games are available. You need to sign up (free) to see the full list of games. You need to purchase a subscription, to launch the games you own on the digital distribution platform.
Blacknut
blacknut-appimage
AUR
or
Blacknut AppImage
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
You need a subscription to be able to use this service. Not all games are available.
Improving performance
See also main article:
Improving performance
. For Wine programs, see
Wine#Performance
. For a good gaming experience low latency, a consistent response time (no jitter) and enough throughput (frames per second) are needed.
If you have multiple sources with a little jitter they are likely to overlap sometimes and produce noticeable stutter. Therefore most of the time it is preferable to decrease the throughput a little to gain more response time consistency. On the other hand if you get low average FPS or if the gaming application itself produces spikes in CPU demand it is better to increase raw throughput.
Improve clock_gettime throughput
User space programs and especially games do many calls to
clock_gettime(2)
to get the current time for calculating game physics, fps and so on. The time usage can be seen by running
# perf top
and looking at the overhead of read_hpet (or acpi_pm_read).
If you are not dependent on a very precise timer you can switch from hpet (high precision event timer) or acpi_pm (ACPI Power Management Timer) to the faster TSC (time stamp counter) timer. Add the
kernel parameters
tsc=reliable clocksource=tsc
to make TSC available and enable it. After that reboot and confirm the clocksource by running
# cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource*/current_clocksource
You can see all currently available timers by running
# cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource*/available_clocksource
and change between them by echoing one into current_clocksource. On a Zen 3 system benchmarking with
[5]
shows a ~50 times higher throughput of
tsc
compared to
hpet
or
acpi_pm
.
Warning
Forcing
tsc
when it's unreliable will cause Firefox to crash randomly because it breaks the monotonicity of
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC)
[6]
, on which Firefox relies. Use at your own risk!
Tweaking kernel parameters for response time consistency
You can install the realtime kernel to get some advantages by default (see
realtime kernel
article) but it costs CPU throughput and can delay interrupt handling. Additionally the realtime kernel is not compatible with
nvidia-open-dkms
and  does not change the scheduler for SCHED_NORMAL (also named SCHED_OTHER) processes, which is the default process scheduling type. The following kernel parameter changes improve the response time consistency for the realtime kernel as well as other kernels such as the default linux kernel:
Proactive compaction for (Transparent) Hugepage allocation reduces the average but not necessarily the maximum allocation stalls. Disable proactive compaction because it introduces jitter according to
kernel documentation
(
inner workings
):
# echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/compaction_proactiveness
Reduce the watermark boost factor to defragment only one pageblock (2MB on 64-bit x86) in case of memory fragmentation. After a memory fragmentation event this helps to better keep the application data in the last level processor cache.
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/watermark_boost_factor
If you have enough free RAM increase the number of minimum free Kilobytes to avoid stalls on memory allocations:
[7]
[8]
. Do not set this below 1024 KB or above 5% of your systems memory. Reserving 1GB:
# echo 1048576 > /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes
If you have enough free RAM increase the watermark scale factor to further reduce the likelihood of allocation stalls (explanations
[9]
[10]
). Setting watermark distances to 5% of RAM:
# echo 500 > /proc/sys/vm/watermark_scale_factor
Avoid swapping (locking pages that introduces latency and uses disk IO) unless the system has no more free memory:
# echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
Make sure
zswap
is enabled. If there arises the need for swapping pages, then zswap helps reduce swapping related stutter. If you do not have a swap partition, you can
use zram
instead of zswap.
Enable Multi-Gen Least Recently Used (MGLRU) but reduce the likelihood of lock contention at a minor performance cost
[11]
:
# echo 5 > /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/enabled
Disable zone reclaim (locking and moving memory pages that introduces latency spikes):
# echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode
Disable Transparent Hugepages (THP) at a performance cost. Even if defragmentation is disabled, THPs might introduce latency spikes
[12]
[13]
[14]
. Enable only when the application specifically requests it by using madvise and advise:
# echo madvise > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
# echo advise > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/shmem_enabled
# echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag
Note that if your game uses TCMalloc (e.g., Dota 2 and CS:GO) then it is not recommended to disable THP as it comes with a large performance cost
[15]
.
Reduce the maximum page lock acquisition latency while retaining adequate throughput
[16]
[17]
[18]
:
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/page_lock_unfairness
Tweak the scheduler settings. The following scheduler settings are in conflict with
cfs-zen-tweaks
AUR
so for each setting choose only one provider. By default the linux kernel scheduler is optimized for throughput and not latency. The following hand-made settings change that and are tested with different games to be a noticeable improvement. They might not be optimal for your use case; consider modifying them as necessary
[19]
[20]
:
# echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/sched_child_runs_first
# echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sched_autogroup_enabled
# echo 3000 > /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bandwidth_slice_us
# echo 3000000 > /sys/kernel/debug/sched/base_slice_ns
# echo 500000 > /sys/kernel/debug/sched/migration_cost_ns
# echo 8 > /sys/kernel/debug/sched/nr_migrate
Further, it is recommended to test different schedulers as described in
Improving performance#CPU scheduler
. For example, the
scx_cosmos
scheduler from
scx-scheds
shows promise for improving response time consistency, as it optimizes task-to-CPU locality (enhancing cache hit consistency between runs), reduces locking contention, and is suitable for general usage scenarios, prioritizing interactive tasks under load. Similarly,
scx_lavd
is specifically optimized for consistent gaming performance. You should test different schedulers to see which is the most successful for your workload.
Make the changes permanent
Usually, the advice for permanently setting
kernel parameters
is to configure create a
sysctl
configuration file or change your
boot loader
options. However, since our change span both procfs (
/proc
, containing sysctl) and sysfs (
/sys
), the most convenient way is to use
systemd-tmpfiles
:
/etc/tmpfiles.d/consistent-response-time-for-gaming.conf
#    Path                  Mode UID  GID  Age Argument
w /proc/sys/vm/compaction_proactiveness - - - - 0
w /proc/sys/vm/watermark_boost_factor - - - - 1
w /proc/sys/vm/min_free_kbytes - - - - 1048576
w /proc/sys/vm/watermark_scale_factor - - - - 500
w /proc/sys/vm/swappiness - - - - 10
w /sys/kernel/mm/lru_gen/enabled - - - - 5
w /proc/sys/vm/zone_reclaim_mode - - - - 0
w /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled - - - - madvise
w /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/shmem_enabled - - - - advise
w /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - - - - never
w /proc/sys/vm/page_lock_unfairness - - - - 1
w /proc/sys/kernel/sched_child_runs_first - - - - 0
w /proc/sys/kernel/sched_autogroup_enabled - - - - 1
w /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bandwidth_slice_us - - - - 3000
w /sys/kernel/debug/sched/base_slice_ns  - - - - 3000000
w /sys/kernel/debug/sched/migration_cost_ns - - - - 500000
w /sys/kernel/debug/sched/nr_migrate - - - - 8
After that reboot and see if the values applied correctly.
Reduce buffer bloat
A device experiences buffer bloat when a large buffer queues requests, causing new requests to be blocked for a long time. This can occur with both sending and receiving data.
Buffer bloat is solved by having a smart queuing algorithm that gives fair and timely share towards the device. Smart queuing algorithms produce quicker and more consistent response times, but increase CPU overhead. For interactive workloads reduced buffer bloat is desirable.
Reduce buffer bloat on storage devices
For storage devices, the BFQ scheduler is the most effective at minimizing buffer bloat and improving interactivity
Improving performance#The scheduling algorithms
.
Reduce buffer bloat on the network
You can use the default
fq_codel
or the improved
cake
smart queue management algorithms. They can be set via
sysctl
.
Your home internet router can cause buffer bloat, which might be mitigated by reconfiguring it, installing a new router OS, or replacing the router (
more info
).
Here
are some easy ways to test for network buffer bloat.
Improve PCI Latencies
Change the PCI Latencies similar to CachyOS
[21]
. Reduce the maximum cycles a PCI Client can occupy the bus, except for sound cards
[22]
. Note that these settings are in conflict with
Professional audio#Optimizing system configuration
.
# setpci -v -s '*:*' latency_timer=20
# setpci -v -s '0:0' latency_timer=0
# setpci -v -d "*:*:04xx" latency_timer=80
To enable these settings consistently run them as super user on
system boot
.
Disabling simultaneous multithreading (SMT)
Whether or not disabling SMT improves your gaming experience depends on your hardware and gaming applications.
Advantages of SMT:
Higher total throughput if your application can make use of the additional threads
More run-queues for the scheduler and therefore on average less waiting time for a process thread to get scheduled on a core
Advantages of disabling SMT:
Higher single core performance due to not needing to share core internal resources and the ability of the kernel and firmware to disable SMT related security mitigations
More consistent single core performance. Depending on your processors microarchitecture, SMT shares various processor internal resources like instruction decoding units, micro-operations cache, register renaming capabilities, L1-, L2-Cache and translation lookaside buffer entries. Depending on what a sibling thread does, the throughput of a main thread varies. SMT also lessens the fairness of the process scheduler even if it is aware of SMT.
If you disable SMT, do so in the BIOS/UEFI to improve single-core performance. (Example of SMT sharing CPU internal resources:
[23]
)
Load shared objects immediately for better first time latency
Set the
environment variable
LD_BIND_NOW=1
for your games, to avoid needing to load program code at run time (see
ld.so(8)
), leading to a delay the first time a function is called. Do not set this for
startplasma-x11
or other programs that link in libraries that do not actually exist on the system anymore and are never called by the program. If this is the case, the program fails on startup trying to link a nonexistent shared object, making this issue easily identifiable. Most games should start fine with this setting enabled. Since packages inside the official repository are built with RELRO
[24]
by default, only packages from other sources should be affected in terms of first time latency, bugs in linking might still be triggered.
Utilities
GameMode
GameMode
is daemon and library combo that allows games to request a set of optimisations be temporarily applied to the host OS. This can improve game performance.
Gamescope
Gamescope
is a microcompositor from Valve that is used on the Steam Deck. Its goal is to provide an isolated compositor that is tailored towards gaming and supports many gaming-centric features.
ACO compiler
Note
The method shown below
only
works on AMD GPUs running the
AMDGPU
drivers.
See
AMDGPU#ACO compiler
Reducing DRI latency
Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) Configuration Files apply for all DRI drivers including Mesa and Nouveau. You can change the DRI configuration systemwide in
/etc/drirc
or per user in
$HOME/.drirc
. If they do not exist, you have to create them first. Both files use the same syntax; documentation for these options can be found at
https://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ConfigurationOptions/
. To reduce input latency by disabling synchronization to vblank, add the following:
<driconf>
   <device>
       <application name="Default">
           <option name="vblank_mode" value="0" />
       </application>
   </device>
</driconf>
Improving frame rates and responsiveness with scheduling policies
Most games can benefit if given the correct scheduling policies for the kernel to prioritize the task. These policies should ideally be set per-thread by the application itself.
For programs which do not implement scheduling policies on their own, application known as
schedtool
, and its associated daemon
schedtoold
AUR
can handle many of these tasks automatically.
To edit what programs relieve what policies, simply edit
/etc/schedtoold.conf
and add the program followed by the
schedtool
arguments desired.
Policies
SCHED_ISO
(only implemented in BFS/MuQSSPDS schedulers found in -pf and -ck
kernels
) – will not only allow the process to use a maximum of 80 percent of the CPU, but will attempt to reduce latency and stuttering wherever possible. Most if not all games will benefit from this:
bit.trip.runner -I
SCHED_FIFO
provides an alternative, that can even work better. You should test to see if your applications run more smoothly with
SCHED_FIFO
, in which case by all means use it instead. Be warned though, as
SCHED_FIFO
runs the risk of starving the system! Use this in cases where -I is used below:
bit.trip.runner -F -p 15
Nice levels
Secondly, the nice level sets which tasks are processed first, in ascending order. A nice level of -4 is recommended for most multimedia tasks, including games:
bit.trip.runner -n -4
Core affinity
There is some confusion in development as to whether the driver should be multithreading, or the program. Allowing both the driver and program to simultaneously multithread can result in significant performance reductions, such as framerate loss and increased risk of crashes. Examples of this include a number of modern games, and any Wine program which is running with
GLSL
enabled. To select a single core and allow only the driver to handle this process, simply use the
-a 0x
#
flag, where
#
is the core number, e.g.:
bit.trip.runner -a 0x1
uses first core.
Some CPUs are hyperthreaded and have only 2 or 4 cores but show up as 4 or 8, and are best accounted for:
bit.trip.runner -a 0x5
which use virtual cores 0101, or 1 and 3.
General case
For most games which require high framerates and low latency, usage of all of these flags seems to work best. Affinity should be checked per-program, however, as most native games can understand the correct usage.
For a general case:
bit.trip.runner -I -n -4
Amnesia.bin64 -I -n -4
hl2.exe -I -n -4 -a 0x1 #Wine with GLSL enabled
etc.
Optimus, and other helping programs
As a general rule, any other process which the game requires to operate should be reniced to a level above that of the game itself. Strangely, Wine has a problem known as
reverse scheduling
, it can often have benefits when the more important processes are set to a higher nice level. Wineserver also seems unconditionally to benefit from
SCHED_FIFO
, since it rarely consumes the whole CPU and needs higher prioritization when possible.
optirun -I -n -5
wineserver -F -p 20 -n 19
steam.exe -I -n -5
Peripherals
Mouse
You might want to set your
mouse acceleration
to control your mouse more accurately.
If your mouse has more than 3 buttons, you might want to see
Mouse buttons
.
If you are using a gaming mouse (especially Logitech and Steelseries) you may want to configure your mouse
polling rate
, DPI, LEDs etc. using
piper
. See
this page
for a full list of supported devices by piper. Alternatively
solaar
for logitech devices.
LEDs
You can change and manipulate various RGBs with
openrgb
, for a list of currently supported devices see
[25]
See also
linux_gaming
- Forum on reddit.com with gaming on linux as its topic, subpages:
Wiki
,
FAQ
.
Linux Gaming Guide
- Compilation of different techniques for optimizing the Linux gaming experience.
are we anti cheat yet
A comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton.
proton db
crowdsourced Linux compatibility reports