this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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Take aways:
Some doubts:
Point is Microsoft and OEMs need to do better, however not every game or subscription services work on Linux, so in the interim time users should know what they can do to close the gap better.
This is really not surprising to anyone who has used modern windows and Linux recently. Windows is so incredibly bloated, whereas Linux is a true real-time OS basically out of the box.
Unless you use an RT kernel, Linux is not a realtime OS and certainly not a true one.
Because, you know, terms have a meaning.
Right but switching to an RT kernel is trivial for basically any mainstream distro. You can do it from the package manager.
True, I just wanted to clarify that by default Linux doesn't run on an RT kernel.
And tbh, an RT kernel is really not desirable for most applications, which is why it's not default. All these RT guarantees cost a lot of performance, and in most cases a guaranteed latency is not worth losing performance over.
In fact, using an RT kernel would be just the opposite of what you'd want on a gaming system.
While the bloat exists, even debloated windows wouldn't match proton because that's not the only reason. Despite bloat there are two games in this test the actually do similar or better than SteamOS. This means there's a confounding reason for the difference, not the bloat.
I recently switched from windows (with a debloat scrpit ran on it) to linux mint and I was shocked at how much faster it booted. When I turn my pc on I usually get up and do something else for a bit (not because windows is THAT slow but because I could spend the minute it takes to turn on to make lunch or something) and linux booted before I was out of my chair.
Why should the author rule it out? Honest question. If shader compilation leads so worse real world experience for gamers on Windows than SteamOS, it is a valid point to include.
Because I'm more curious about why things are the way they are just like the author, and would like to understand this with more data points, only making the comparison more helpful. I'm not saying author "should" consider impact of shader compilation, but I'm saying had they done, we'd understand the difference better.
They added asus vs Lenovo drivers data points, which alone tells us that driver optimization is responsible to a great extent. All I'm saying here is more data is more helpful.
Maybe even after taking care of that, the difference is huge, which will tell us its not enough to have precompilation of shaders. Maybe it does reduce the gap, telling us that potentially dx11 games might tend to do similarly.
Saying "RTX 5060 is better than 9060 XT" with 5 games tested is one level of comparison, but if they are grouped into RT and non RT games, games with 8gb and 16gb VRAM requirements, games with and without nVidia partnership, isn't that just more detailed and an even better comparison point?
Really grasping at straws there, eh? I'm no big fan of Ars but I hope we can assume they're not quite that incompetent.
Methodology is important to a robust result. It's weird that you take issue with their considerations there.
It's not a slight, as I said it's a doubt, not criticism. I'm not saying "did the author EVEN ..."
Your other doubts and concerns seem slightly biased, e.g. wondering what settings could be tweaked on only one of the systems being tested and then reminding us all that there do still exist some things that won't run on SteamOS. It's only that one that is outright ridiculous.
Biased to what? Point of comparison is to figure out why things are the way they are and use that information to get the best of both worlds? It's not very helpful if the conclusion stops at "x is better than y".
Going deeper into "why" Proton is doing better in 3/5 games but not in 2/5 will only help users of both operating systems to make better informed decisions and get everyone closer to root cause other than "bloated windows" or "just use linux", potentially even leading to improvements to both sides.