Hello friends! I am back with another issue.
Recently I have taken on the task to get non steam games working on Proton. I have noticed that the performance is significantly worse with them on Linux then on Windows. More frequent stutterings and such. 100 fps consistently on Windows vs linux which it dips below 50 fps. Other “better performing” non-steam games get consistent micro stutters. I am using native steam because the flathub version because after installing dependencies with protontricks the game still would not launch.
The only possible thing I can think of is the games are on NTFS partition (yet steam regular games installed on it run just dandy). I dualboot with windows and access this particular drive between both os’. I am at a complete loss, any help would be appreciated oh Linux brotheren and sisteren.
Thank you!
(also the games drop audio consistently as well sometimes it wont come back unless I alt tab and come back to the game.)
EDIT: Hello everyone! thank you again for the help I think I have come to the conclusion that some of you suggested already. Wayland seems to be having the game perform significantly better than x11 but it still isnt quite up to par as windows. When I had tried it before I thought to myself “yeah this is better but it isn’t up to par with my windows partition” so I kept searching for an answer. the conclusion I have come to is, I think this just comes down to the particular game being unoptimized. Thank you all for your suggestions! You all are truly moving mountains when helping people swap to this wonderful operating system. Hopefully one day I can get rid of my windows partition fully. (too bad I am a VR dweeb that needs windows for some applications to function 😭).
WINE does not officially support NTFS as it is not optimal on Linux, even if you can technically read/write to it. So save yourself the headache and simply install your games on something like btrfs, xfs, or ext4 instead for playing games on Linux.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/FAQ#does-wine-run-on-all-unix-filesystems
does windows support btrfs? I am dualbooting and would like to use the drive between opersting systems.
also i am using proton, does it also not play nice with ntfs?
I once tried setting up exactly this (shared NTFS drive for games) but gave up shortly after. A lot of games would suddenly stop working between reboots, validating the games through Steam would basically redownload the whole game - just too much hassle for me.
Windows can support BTRFS with an unofficial driver:
https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs
I’ve used it without issues, so world recommend it as long as you’re aware of the disclaimer:
this will be my final straw solution. I am gonna try to get the games from stuttering on my ext4 drive (it’s happening there too) then test the ntfs drive with btfrs.
That driver tends to work decently, but the performance on windows can be a bit iffy, especially for games like Skyrim because of how the content archives work iirc.
I also ran into a bug where one specific program (Aseprite) wouldn’t save files correctly on winbtrfs and instead padded them with zeroes to a full 4KB or whatever, which didn’t happen on any other filesystem.
WinBTRFS is cool, but treat it as somewhat experimental just in case. Back your stuff up.
Proton use wine and bundles dxvk and other tools, so it also has the same issue.
Windows doesn’t support any of the mentioned file systems out of the box, but there is a btrfs driver available.
There also is the more inconvenient option of creating symlinks for the games on a supported file system: Guide
I moved the games to my ext4 partition and still the same terrible performance. I just booted them on windows and My assesment was wrong. I am actually getting around 100 fps (windows) and 60fps and below (linux).
I will be updating the post to reflect it accordingly.