this post was submitted on 25 May 2025

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Steam Deck

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With the Legion Go S, we can now directly compare performance between official builds of SteamOS and Windows (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

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Source is this video:

Windows Was The Problem All Along - Dave2D

We could obviously compare performance between windows and steamOS before on the steam deck, or between windows and Bazzite on other handhelds. But this is the first time we have had official windows and SteamOS builds for the same hardware.

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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 141 points 1 month ago (9 children)

the gains come from the reduced overhead that linux has compared to windows

literally the next line

..the games here are being run through proton

I really hate the dismissal of the heavy lifting proton does. Proton is what makes gaming on Linux so great. So many native linux games perform worse on Linux vs their windows counterparts. Then again, I'd expect nothing less from Dave2D

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 116 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, yeah, but if Proton is doing an absolutely flawless job, then it has 0 performance penalty compared to Windows. All the actual gains still do come from Linux having less overhead. So, both are true, that Proton is killing it and that the gains come from Linux.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

DXVK (which also runs on windows) alone gives you a huge performance benefit. Playing world of warcraft on windows I'll see about a 30% reduction in CPU usage and higher performance.

Proton doesn't just get you to almost matching Windows' performance. Proton easily outperforms windows even on higher end hardware where windows bloat isn't a concern.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 51 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

While proton enables that, that's still just vulkan outperforming DirectX.

So technically proton isn't improving performance here, it's just allowing the game to run on better performing systems (like Linux and vulkan).

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 23 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Yeah its wine/proton and linux together. Wine/Proton efficiently handles translating the Windows programmes API calls into POSIX calls while Linux seems to offer a lower OS overhead so there is more system resource available for the games.

I do think Proton gets a little too much credit. Its wine plus faudio, dxvk and other open source projects combined. Proton is great but it is standing on the shoulders of giants.

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[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (13 children)

What does proton do?

I only vaguely understand it as "thing that makes game playable on other thing."

(And also I have six versions installed on my steam deck whydoIneedsixofthese?)

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Proton is the compatibility layer that valve makes that lets you run games on Linux. Proton uses DXVK a program that converts Direct X API calls (windows only) to Vulkan API calls (runs on anything). DXVK alone gives you huge performance benefits (especially on older DirectX 11 and older games) and you can run it on windows.

Proton gives you a ton of other tools that can make huge performance differences.

[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

Hopefully not a dumb question: If Vulkan runs on anything, assuming their game isn't a Windows (Xbox?) exclusive, why don't more people program their games to use Vulkan instead?

[–] thejevans@lemmy.ml 25 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It's becoming more common, but it mostly comes down to available tooling. At this point all three of the big game engines have a Vulkan backend available, but that's a fairly recent development. And if a developer isn't using a game engine, writing their own openGL renderer is easy, and writing a Vulkan renderer is a nightmare.

[–] dormedas@lemmy.dormedas.com 15 points 4 weeks ago

Also a lot of old proprietary game engines were written either specifically for DirectX or additionally for DirectX because in the olden times it was the most advanced and compatible rendering software.

Then, those developers move forward in time to work on other engines and focus primarily on DirectX because it’s still good, compatible, and it’s what they know best. OpenGL languished and it took a while for Vulkan to come out, catch up, and standardize their API.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 weeks ago

That my friend, is entering operating system politics.

But the TLDR is: resistance to change, lack of support, bribery, a combination of all 3, features, and much much more!

[–] zib@lemmy.world 12 points 4 weeks ago

Vulkan is designed to be closer to the metal than something like DirectX 11 or OpenGL, which makes the API more explicit and difficult to use. This means it requires a great deal more care to use properly. And to complicate matters more, subtle bugs that are very difficult to debug are very easy to introduce.

But, this applies mostly to devs who build their own tech. Most of them these days are just using 3rd party engines like Unity or Unreal, so it comes down to whether or not the person making the game decides to check the box to use Vulkan and just how good those render backends are. Engine developers of 3rd party tech have to build their stuff to be as generic as possible. That's likely gonna add a lot of bloat that might not be fully optimized for every game developer's use case.

TLDR: It's tough and time consuming for someone writing it themselves. And for the ones who aren't, they're having to place a lot of trust in a renderer that is probably a black box and might be buggy/slow.

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[–] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 101 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

A performance uplift plus double or tripled battery life compared to running on Windows.....hot damn that's impressive.

Get rekt Windows.

[–] DarkDarkHouse 20 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (10 children)

What's nice is that Microsoft today doesn't have capability to improve in the short or even medium term. They could drop a billion dollars into it and it would still take them years to improve their offering, if they can at all.

[–] Laser@feddit.org 13 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

And why would they? They're printing so much money, this niche probably doesn't make a dent.

It doesn't matter if Windows is the best system for gaming. It just matters if people believe it is.

You can always justify using Windows. "How do I get Game Pass to work on my handheld?" is probably something people care about.

Granted this is an expensive way to lock customers into your platform, but they're already doing it anyways, so no need to pour money into the OS experience when you can just sell services building on customer data.

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[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 60 points 4 weeks ago (24 children)

Windows Gamers (who will never switch to Linux): Linux still isn't ready for mass adoption

[–] groet@feddit.org 19 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Windows Gamers (who will never switch to Linux)

So you accept that Linux is not the problem. We are litterally at the point where it will get mass Adoption in the next few years. That is what this post is about. That you can litterally go out and buy a fully complete gaming system preinstalled with Linux that performs better than the same system with Windows.

We are very close to the point where the only thing holding Linux gaming back is marketing.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 4 weeks ago (6 children)

Marketing and market availability are the biggest problems. People need to be able to go into any store, buy a handheld/laptop/desktop and have it include Linux without them asking.

[–] xavier666@lemm.ee 26 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Don't forget educational institutes. Linux should be the defacto OS at such places. The younger generation's first interaction with a PC is at school. If they are used to Linux from a young age, this is greatly help them ease into the Linux mindset (package manager, terminal).

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[–] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 57 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Battery Life:

[–] cron@feddit.org 54 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Battery life doubled in some games? Now that is even more impressive than 10-20% performance gain.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 28 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I also find it interesting that the Steam Deck OLED has a smaller battery but gets longer life on the same OS

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Valve did a lot of work to tune the APU in the steam deck for efficiency. It's custom silicon at the end of the day.

AMD just kinda took one of their existing laptop APUs and threw it into handhelds instead of laptops.

[–] OscarRobin@lemmy.world 14 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

The Deck also has a weaker but lower wattage chip and worse display, that makes a big difference.

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[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 41 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Valve doubling down on Linux as the default OS on the Steam Deck was such a great decision. It obviously has given them a massive competitive edge. Windows has become so horribly bloated, and Microsoft has almost zero interest in making it run more efficiently.

[–] tiramichu@lemm.ee 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Personally I feel what it gave them - primarily - was the ability to be independent of Microsoft, not beholden to them in any way whatsoever, and not having to pay them any license fees.

The fact that after putting so much work into making Proton and that whole toolchain amazing it actually turned out faster than Windows, well, that's juat the delicious icing on the cake, from a commercial perspective.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 41 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

So I'm not insane. Monster Hunter Wilds and Helldiver's II both run better on my Ubuntu image with the same hardware than my Windows 10 image.

Does that mean that Proton and Vulkan are far more efficient than Direct3D?

[–] MrSoup@lemmy.zip 33 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

I think there's in play also background activity from Windows' bloat.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 points 4 weeks ago

Probably this. Especially on low end hardware that doesn't really have a lot of background resources to give.

Just open task manager and see all the shit windows thinks is essential to run all the time. Scanning the drive for viruses, downloading updates for shit you've never even looked at...

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[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 21 points 4 weeks ago

My understanding is that vulkan is generally more efficient than directX.

[–] Chill_Dan@lemmy.world 41 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Goes to show how much bloat is in Windows that it kills hardware like this.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 16 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe I need Cortana, Microsoft Excel, and OneDrive while I play Doom Eternal. You don't know me.

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[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 37 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Holy shit triple the hours

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[–] lectricleopard@lemmy.world 33 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

They said make electric cars fast, and you'll get car guys to buy in. It was true.

Now they're making linux make video games faster and prettier...

I dont know if there will ever be a year of the linux desktop, but this is the kind of stuff you gotta do to get there.

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[–] barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 31 points 4 weeks ago

Hmm, it's like having spyware constantly run in the background slows down the computer?

[–] ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Linux Dev's anti Sony bias shows front and center

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[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 21 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Back in ~2010, my first dual boot was an Ubuntu. It was fairly easy to run WoW from Linux and it gave me a solid >15fps while Windows ran at less than 10fps.

I was very young at the time but still aware that this was super impressive with extra compatibility layers. That definitely took part in selling Linux to me.

[–] CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works 17 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I could barely get Minecraft to run 20fps on this old laptop I had given to me a few years ago. Loaded Ubuntu on it and Minecraft ran near 60fps. Blew my mind.

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[–] _LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org 21 points 4 weeks ago

makes a lot of sense honestly. I never knew the numbers behind it (tks for sharing). when I was ripping witcher 3 on nobara and then changed my OS back to Windows due to work related issues, I felt a SIGNIFICANT performance drop. the game became laggy, when it used to run top on Linux with the same settings. good share - the time for Linux gaming is now.

[–] gamer@lemm.ee 15 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Valve won. Maybe it's lucky timing, or maybe Gabe is actually a genius, but it's only going to get worse for Windows as there is no way in hell Microsoft shifts resources from AI projects to make Windows better for PC gaming. Recently, Capcom announced that their PC gaming sales surpassed their console sales, and I don't think it's likely we'll see that trend changing, and it's also likely other publishers will make similar announcements soon (although idk if they count SteamOS as a console). The Switch 2 is coming out soon, but people already say it's too expensive, and there are controversies surrounding some of their product decisions.

Will this bring about the era of the Linux desktop? Idk, but the era of the Linux gaming PC is inevitable now.

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[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 13 points 4 weeks ago (7 children)

I am a little curious how something like Ubuntu would do on one of these gaming handhelds. Steam OS is a nicer user experience but I always wonder if it also adds any significant optimization.

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[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 12 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Spoderman no

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