I recently spent some time with the Framework 13 laptop, evaluating it with the new Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and the AMD Ryzen 7 7480U. It felt like the perfect opportunity to test how a handful of games ran on Windows 11 and Fedora 40. I was genuinely surprised by the results!
…
The Framework 13 is perfectly capable of gaming even with its integrated graphics, provided you’re willing to compromise by lowering the resolution and quality presets for more demanding games. (It’s also a testament to how far AMD’s APUs have come in the past decade.)
Summary of results:
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Linux wins
- Total War: Warhammer III: Windows wins
- Cyberpunk 2077: Linux wins
- Forza Horizon 5: Windows wins
These results are an interesting slice of the Linux vs Windows gaming picture, but certainly not representative of the entire landscape. A few shorts years ago, however, I never would have dreamed I’d be writing an article where even two games on Linux are outperforming their Windows counterparts.
It’s extremely invasive, but I won’t give up playing something that my friends all enjoy once in a while. The best hope is that companies realize that Steam Deck and other efforts make companies consider other markets.
It’s all about where to draw the line, and what you are able to tolerate, I guess. The biggest problem with that though is continuing to support a game / Dev / publisher that is consistently doing these awful things.
If you aren’t able to tell your friends “no, I’m not playing that game, and here’s why” then the industry will just slide deeper into these terrible practices and the entire games industry gets worse. Some people don’t even understand what anti-cheat is doing (and think it works), and if those of us that do, that they trust, don’t explain it to them, they won’t have the opportunity to make an informed decision of whether to support it or not.
