Gaming on Ultramarine

Sometimes, you may want some downtime from work and have fun. While Ultramarine Linux is not primarily optimized for gaming, it is still a great platform for gaming, as it already has some performance optimizations applied out of the box, and can be further optimized with some tweaks.

Performance

Gaming Platforms

Steam

Steam is a great PC gaming platform, and it has native support for Linux. Many game publishers publish their games on Steam, and some even natively support Linux. Steam offers discounts for games published on their platform, and also has a built-in overlay for chatting with friends, taking screenshots, and more.

Steam runs on the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), which essentially means that most of the UI is created using web technologies.

You can install Steam in 2 ways:

1. Install the steam package from the RPM Fusion repository. (system-wide)
2. Install the Steam flatpak from Flathub. (user-only)

The first option is recommended, as it has better system integration. However, the second option is also available if you are running Ultramarine OSTree/Kanopy/CoreOS, or if you want to keep Steam isolated from the rest of the system.

Proton

If your game does not support Linux, or the Linux version happens to be inferior to the Windows version, you can use Steam’s Proton compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux. Proton is based on Wine, and it is developed by Valve.

Apex Legends

Apex Legends can run on Linux using Steam’s Proton compatibility layer, plus the Easy Anti-Cheat runtime. The game has Linux support for anti-cheat, but the game binaries are Windows only.

Heroic Games Launcher

The Heroic Games Launcher is a native Linux client for the Epic Games Store and GOG Galaxy. It supports downloading and installing native Linux games from GOG, and running Windows-only games from both GOG and Epic Games Store using Wine/Proton.

Lutris

Lutris is a game launcher for Linux. It supports installing and managing your game library from various sources, including Steam, GOG, EA Origin, and its own community-provided installers. It also supports running Windows-only games using Wine/Proton.

League of Legends

League of Legends is a popular MOBA game developed by Riot Games. It is available on Windows, macOS, and Android. It is not officially supported on Linux, but it can be run using a special build of Wine by GloriousEggroll.

EA Desktop

Games that use EA’s Origin platform or EA Desktop can be run using Lutris. You can install the EA Desktop client using the Lutris installer, and then install your games from there.

Epic Games Store

Please refer to the Heroic Games Launcher section.

Bottles

Bottles is a tool for managing Wine prefixes. It is similar to Lutris, but is more focused on creating and managing Wine prefixes for multiple applications rather than creating each prefix for a single game or application.

Installing Bottles is only supported as a flatpak, for stability reasons.

Overwatch

Overwatch is a popular team-based FPS game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. It is available on Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It is not officially supported on Linux, but it can be run using Wine/Proton.

Overwatch 2 can be run in a Bottles prefix, simply install the game using the Blizzard Battle.net app and run it from the Bottles launcher.

Valorant

Valorant is a popular FPS game developed by Riot Games. It is available on Windows. It will not run on Linux, as it uses a kernel-level anti-cheat software that is not compatible with Wine/Proton.

Anime Company games

If you’re more of a gambler and want to play games from an Anime Company (name redacted for legal reasons), their games are not officially supported on Linux due to their anti-cheat software. However, there are current efforts to circumvent these restrictions. You can find more information on the Launcher.moe Wiki.

This is a current table of the status of their games on Linux, with generic names to avoid legal issues: