Gaming with ProtonGE | Fedora Podcast Ep. 40

Linux gaming has come a long way, and a lot of that progress runs through Proton GE. In episode 40 of the Fedora Podcast, Noah and I sat down with Tom Crider to talk through how Steam and Proton GE let you play a huge range of Windows games on Fedora, plus his work on Nobara Linux. We covered setup, troubleshooting, hardware tweaks, and where he thinks gaming on Linux is headed.

A few things worth carrying away from the conversation:

• Proton GE fills the gaps that stock Proton leaves open. Tom walked us through why the community build exists and how it folds in fixes and patches ahead of what ships by default, which is often the difference between a game running or not.
• Nobara takes Fedora and tunes it for gaming out of the box. Instead of asking every gamer to hand-configure the same tweaks, Nobara bakes them in, and hearing Tom’s reasoning made me appreciate the work that goes into that polish.
• A lot of gaming trouble comes down to a handful of known fixes. We got into troubleshooting and hardware tweaks, and the reassuring takeaway is that most issues have a repeatable answer rather than a dead end.

If you’ve been curious about ditching a dual-boot for gaming, this one’s a good place to start.