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?
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:
You use this software at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any damage it may do to your filesystem. It ought to be suitable for day-to-day use, but make sure you take backups anyway.
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
Edit: I’ve reread your post, you are trying to run non-steam games through steam & proton right?
Did you move/symlink compdata out of the NTFS disk?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#Steam_Library_in_NTFS_partition
I use ntfs3 (not ntfs-3g driver) with uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=000,rw,user,exec,nofail,nocase,windows_names flags and after moving compada out (see the github link) it kind of just works.
Also what is your HW? If you have a laptop with extra dedicated gpu or have PC with cpu with integrated graphics and extra GPU card the games might be trying to run on the wrong GPU.
I did not move the symlink and compat data. I did delete the compat data with protontricks and move the game to my ext4 partition (the partition Linux is installed on). Still the same bad performance.
I am using ntfs-3g I will try switching it to ntfs3
Nah I am using a desktop:
3070
Ryzen 7 3700x
16gb of RAM
to move the compatdata and sysmlink do I paste the command as is if steam is installed natively in the default location?
$ mkdir -p ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata $ ln -s ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata /media/gamedisk/Steam/steamapps/
Those micro stutters and lower performance for the non-steam games are due to shaders needing to compile as you play. If you play for a while and keep the same Proton version, they’ll eventually go away and performance will improve.
@entropicdrift @ludicolo
I had the same issues, but since I’ve changed to a specific proton version, there are no noticeable lags on my games anymore. Especially Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fanzasy 7 Remake are running very smooth.
@ludicolo
What are your hardware specs, distro and proton version you use?
Nouveau or Nvidia’s own drivers? X11 or Wayland?
