Linux for competitive gaming and input lag?

[gameinn]

Hi everyone

Ok so 4 years ago talking about Linux and competitive gaming was probably a pipe dream but with Windows 11 being forced soon, is Linux a viable alternative? Now I know some anti cheat kernel does not work so no Valorant but what about Overwatch and Marvel Rivals on Linux? There seems to be so many "distros" with gaming as the main focus (Nobara, CachyOS etc).

I have seen some videos of players running Overwatch above 500 fps on Linux so performane wise it seems ok. However, this doesn't tell you about the input lag or responsiveness feeling.

Any advanced users play on Linux think it can match up to native Windows games for lag or is it still a pipe dream?

Thanks

[Hyote]

All of those distros have nearly identical performance and the latency is the same as well. Unfortunately it can't match up to Windows, even in games where you can get much higher 0.1% lows.

[gameinn]

It's actually funny that I asked this today as I did more searching. It does appear that input lag is worse compared to Windows but might be changing really soon. This got posted up earlier today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDDuRqvIJA8

I don't really know much about this but apparently Proton 10 is a big thing for input lag. At the end around 13:38 he says the input lag is now on par with Windows.

Maybe in like 6 months it might be a proper thing but yeah I'll be sticking to Windows. Do you have any recommended debloat stuff for W11 fresh install?

[dervu]

Still not good for services that do not care about Linux like faceit, but that might change.

[kyube]

No Linux distro is exempt from the translation layer CPU overhead & unoptimised kernel settings out of the box.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/p ... nux/284642
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/d ... nux/303207

However, what I have read about is AMD drivers being better on Linux than on Windows. I cannot seem to find the links in regards to this, so treat this with a grain of salt.
The translation layer still remains, regardless of GPU vendor choice.

Windows still remains the only usable experience for online games.

[drosku]

just get the basics done, you can tweak everything at the kernel level change kernels everything linux its just 10 x smoother with surface level settings tho.
in terms of input lag its a little bit better out of the box.If u go with a basic distro such as mint its just way more stable than windows and amd usually works well and remember to disable secure boot to run nvidia gpu at it should

[drosku]

just get the basics done, you can tweak everything at the kernel level change kernels everything linux its just 10 x smoother with surface level settings tho.
in terms of input lag its noticeable better out of the box.If u go with a basic distro such as mint its just way more stable than windows and amd usually works well and remember to disable secure boot to run nvidia gpu at it should.
I’ve started dual booting linux some weeks ago and in happy everything is just smoother better and more stable i still dual boot windows because of val and cs2 faceit you can still play premier tho on cs on linux.

[netborg]

You should check out my low-latency frame pacer for dxvk:
https://github.com/netborg-afps/dxvk/releases

In case you wonder how to install, just replace the respective dlls in your Proton directory (files/lib(64)/wine/dxvk/..), or better yet, put/copy (+rename) a Proton version into the .steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d directory to prevent Steam from overwriting it, and then replace the dlls and select the respective Proton version for your game.

I've tested it thoroughly with Overwatch and it should provide exceptional input lag for dx8-11 games. OW2 input lag with my pacer is much better than what you get natively on Windows, but you have some shader compilations overhead on Linux which causes some stutters unfortunately in OW2. The stutters are present in Windows too, but possibly to a lesser degree and also manifest themselves more as laggy input which my pacer strictly prevents. I've played OW2 with 340 fps cap via my limiter on 360 Hz with x11 and VRR (w/o v-sync). Reminder that you may sometimes need to toggle "Reduce Buffering" to off and on again to reset OW2 performance, it's not clear whose bug this is.

Wayland is promising, but defaults to Mailbox (fast v-sync) present mode, so I'll look into v-sync to get the v-blank timings to improve the VRR behavior there.

I'll also check out if I can apply my pacer to dx12/vkd3d, but I don't know yet if this will work out. Reflex is also supported for dxvk/vkd3d but it isn't well tested, as competitive gaming is still a niche within Linux.

[DudeBeFishing]

I've tried some games on Debian and Arch, with x11 and XFCE. I have enough annoyances that I don't recommend Linux as your main operating system. If you have a spare SSD it won't hurt to try it, but don't get rid of your Windows installation.

USB polling rates over 125Hz causes some games to stutter. This is an issue if you're used to having higher polling rates in Windows. You'll notice the input lag. If your mouse requires software to change this setting, it won't work in Linux, and there might not be alternative software.

Some games have shader compiling stutters the first time you play them. These stutters also happen after a game or system update.

Little things don't work correctly. The display manager overrides the Nvidia XSettings. Unplugging and replugging the monitor causes it to reset to 60hz. These might be an X11, Xorg, or LightDM issue.

I could write an encyclopedia on things that might go wrong, but I can probably do the same with Windows.

[netborg]

USB polling rates over 125Hz causes some games to stutter. This is an issue if you're used to having higher polling rates in Windows. You'll notice the input lag. If your mouse requires software to change this setting, it won't work in Linux, and there might not be alternative software.

Mouse input generally is quicker on X11 than on Windows as I have measured in the past (still have to measure Wayland). I have never used lower polling rates than 1000 Hz, but you can also play with 8000 Hz just fine (tip: you can deactivate USB and PCI-e power savings if higher than 1000 Hz is causing issues). Sure, some driver software may be incompatible with Linux, but my mouse works without issues (Superlight via solaar software).