Even games that work natively on Linux just don’t look as good because of the difference between OpenGL and DirectX.
I’m replaying Metro Last Light (not Redux) on a new PC with dual boot and I’m just playing it from Windows, even when the game (has) native Linux support.
To get the best grahpics I probably could run the Windows version from WINE as I already got Steam to work with it, but AMD’s GPU drivers are unstable on Linux and I couldn’t get the Mesa video drivers to support my MOBO’s integrated video output that I’m currently using for one of my displays.
I usually complicate things while tinkering to get something working in a specific way, but other times I just don’t feel like it.
I have an RT7900 XTX and I just want to get the best possible graphics with it.
This comment seems a bit strange to me for a few reasons. The Linux ecosystem has changed and improved drastically in the last few years, and a lot of this reads like it was written a decade ago.
AMD drivers have been rock steady for quite a few years now. The catch is that unless you’re doing some exotic thing (not general-purpose gaming) you should not be installing anything extra. People used to downloading drivers for everything tend to make the mistake of hunting down and downloading the Radeon proprietary drivers when those are not needed, and in some cases actively make things worse. I suspect this is the case because you mentioned Mesa when talking about the integrated graphics card, but not the dedicated one. If I’m right about that, uninstall Radeon and let Mesa handle it with the AMDGPU open source drivers built into your kernel.
Unfortunately, dual GPU setups are still very painful and annoying to set up and use. That is still an active pain point in the ecosystem. DRI_PRIME is still the best solution for this afaik, but it isn’t exactly an elegant one.
Steam comes with Proton built in (their own fork of WINE with a lot of improvements), WINE & Proton have made gigantic leaps forward with the backing of Valve, and pretty much everything gaming related has moved from OpenGL to Vulkan. Anything run in Proton, for example, is going to be using Vulkan, not OpenGL
Checking out Metro’s protondb page, yeah, seems like the consensus is that the devs did a shit job with their port. I’d recommend right-clicking the game in Steam, go to properties, compatibility, and enable Proton there.
I started with the proprietary drivers. I mentioned on Lemmy how “crashy” they were and someone recommended the Mesa drivers as they had good performance and stability.
When I tried to install the Mesa drivers, I completely removed AMD’s proprietary drivers first. I got the Mesa drivers to work apparently, but the mouse cursor was only visible on the integrated graphics display, kind of a common issue. After some troubleshooting I finally got the mouse cursor to show on the decicated GPU displays, but then I had no output on the other display. If I got myself a Display Port to VGA adapter I could quit using the dedicated video port, but at the time I don’t have one.
I know about proton. The original L4D runs quite well on Linux and required zero extra set up. However, I was quite disappointed when I tried the original Metro 2033 (not Redux either) with Proton, as it looked quite worse on Linux than on Windows.
Based on what you say, running Last Light with Proton could be interesting, tho.
I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but imho without knowing in detail all the changes you tried to make and the fixes you wanted to apply, the most effective method to fix these issues might be doing a full reinstall and starting again.
Even nuking the system won’t guarantee that I don’t have the same issue with the mouse cursor and the onboad graphics display while using Mesa drivers.
I’d rather simply get the DP-VGA adapter in a future and then try with Mesa.
Even games that work natively on Linux just don’t look as good because of the difference between OpenGL and DirectX.
I’m replaying Metro Last Light (not Redux) on a new PC with dual boot and I’m just playing it from Windows, even when the game (has) native Linux support.
To get the best grahpics I probably could run the Windows version from WINE as I already got Steam to work with it, but AMD’s GPU drivers are unstable on Linux and I couldn’t get the Mesa video drivers to support my MOBO’s integrated video output that I’m currently using for one of my displays.
I usually complicate things while tinkering to get something working in a specific way, but other times I just don’t feel like it.
I have an RT7900 XTX and I just want to get the best possible graphics with it.
This comment seems a bit strange to me for a few reasons. The Linux ecosystem has changed and improved drastically in the last few years, and a lot of this reads like it was written a decade ago.
AMD drivers have been rock steady for quite a few years now. The catch is that unless you’re doing some exotic thing (not general-purpose gaming) you should not be installing anything extra. People used to downloading drivers for everything tend to make the mistake of hunting down and downloading the Radeon proprietary drivers when those are not needed, and in some cases actively make things worse. I suspect this is the case because you mentioned Mesa when talking about the integrated graphics card, but not the dedicated one. If I’m right about that, uninstall Radeon and let Mesa handle it with the AMDGPU open source drivers built into your kernel.
Unfortunately, dual GPU setups are still very painful and annoying to set up and use. That is still an active pain point in the ecosystem. DRI_PRIME is still the best solution for this afaik, but it isn’t exactly an elegant one.
Steam comes with Proton built in (their own fork of WINE with a lot of improvements), WINE & Proton have made gigantic leaps forward with the backing of Valve, and pretty much everything gaming related has moved from OpenGL to Vulkan. Anything run in Proton, for example, is going to be using Vulkan, not OpenGL
Checking out Metro’s protondb page, yeah, seems like the consensus is that the devs did a shit job with their port. I’d recommend right-clicking the game in Steam, go to properties, compatibility, and enable Proton there.
I started with the proprietary drivers. I mentioned on Lemmy how “crashy” they were and someone recommended the Mesa drivers as they had good performance and stability.
When I tried to install the Mesa drivers, I completely removed AMD’s proprietary drivers first. I got the Mesa drivers to work apparently, but the mouse cursor was only visible on the integrated graphics display, kind of a common issue. After some troubleshooting I finally got the mouse cursor to show on the decicated GPU displays, but then I had no output on the other display. If I got myself a Display Port to VGA adapter I could quit using the dedicated video port, but at the time I don’t have one.
I know about proton. The original L4D runs quite well on Linux and required zero extra set up. However, I was quite disappointed when I tried the original Metro 2033 (not Redux either) with Proton, as it looked quite worse on Linux than on Windows.
Based on what you say, running Last Light with Proton could be interesting, tho.
I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but imho without knowing in detail all the changes you tried to make and the fixes you wanted to apply, the most effective method to fix these issues might be doing a full reinstall and starting again.
Even nuking the system won’t guarantee that I don’t have the same issue with the mouse cursor and the onboad graphics display while using Mesa drivers.
I’d rather simply get the DP-VGA adapter in a future and then try with Mesa.
What OS are you using? Which distribution / version?
Ubuntu 23.04