More Reasons To Dump Windows For Gaming

Wine Gets NTSYNC Support, And SteamOS 3.8.0 Preview Brings Lots Of New Features

While Microsoft slowly removes things that no one asked for in an attempt to stem the disgust being expressed by their users, gaming on Linux just keeps getting better.  If you have been using Wine to game on a Linux box you really want to grab the latest version, Wine 11.  The update includes NTSYNC and if you are playing a game that supports it you will see huge performance gains.  For instance Dirt 3 went from 110.6 FPS to 860.7 FPS, and the original COD:BLOPS is now perfectly playable.  You won’t see much improvement in games which don’t support NTSYNC but it is far superior to fsync which Wine used previously.

If you are playing with SteamOS then the new 3.8.0 preview release now supports Steam Deck and other handheld gaming devices as well as even more PC hardware.  The new SteamOS is built off of an Arch Linux base with Linux kernel version 6.16 as well as a brand new KDE Plasma desktop environment which dumps X11 in favour of Wayland.  Valve did not give an update on the release of their Steam Machines, which is not terribly surprising considering the state of the market. 

Drop by Ars Technica for more details on what SteamOS 3.8.0 offers.