Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 3 for Linux?

My rather pessimistic view: I don't think there is any chance at all while the game is in EA, and very very low afterwards since the first months after that will be full with content patches, then work on an addon. And then they will feel the opportunity or right time to take on a port has gone, if they think about it at all.

I would be fine with Larian having an eye on proton compatibility. This is a short or mid-term goal that is actually doable with very small effort.

I'd also be more than happy just with the game running fine under WINE/Proton, as many/most Vulkan games do.

So far the game is working decently with proton, though with the last two patches it required some re-finagling for me. As long as it keeps up as is, I too am *okay* with it. Though, I don't know if long-term this constitutes a good strategy for those of us who want to normalize Linux support. That is, by voicing our satisfaction with the half-measure of Proton, it signals that companies can long term ignore actually pursuing Linux support. This is a losing strategy if we actually want Linux, as the open-source option, to be increasingly used by gamers and users generally instead of Windows or Apple operating systems.

That is to say, I am stoked enough about BG3 that I will acquiesce with only Proton as an option (because, I am certainly not going to use Stadia), but I hope that we can develop other strategies in the future that force the hand of companies to offer full Linux support.

If it runs on Mac, why it can't on Linux?

It works well with Steamplay now out of the box.
Tested on: Zorin OS 16 beta
Proton: 6.3-4
Specs: | AMD Ryzen 1700x 3.4 GHz | ASUS PRIME X370-A | 32 GB 2400 Mhz DDR4 | ASUS Nvidia 1070 8 GB | SSD 1000 GB |
Nvidia driver: 460.80

Oh that's good news. I miss Linux. If we get to release and they fully support Linux I will switch my OS over.

Nice background btw.

Well you can always make a virtual box and run both Windows and Linux.

Awesome! I will try with the launcher enabled now.

Edit: I can attest that this works for me as well.

Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.8.0-55-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 15.6 GiB of RAM

I've found myself curiously resistant to the idea. I dunno why as I'm somewhat familiar with e.g. VM (the original one that ran on a System/370 mainframe) and aware that other operating systems can sometimes run faster under VM than on the actual hardware; and I use, erm, some sort of ABI to run particular Windows applications on Linux. I think I've just convinced myself that DirectX won't run well in that arrangement and a recent experience with trying to get decent X Windows performance from a guest system managed to convince me that was the case; in spite of the obvious, which is that X Windows isn't DirectX.

And then I come out with non-excuses like my Linux machine doesn't have a good enough graphics card (I mean it's passively-cooled: no point in going for a high-performance monster for something that mostly does 2D stuff) and that I don't want my games PC running when it doesn't need to, and, and... All the while overlooking the big problem which is that I don't like paying Microsoft (or paying them in kind nowadays) just to be able to play video games and that I've always hated Windows. Maybe I should give it another try. Until I find the first thing that doesn't work at which point I'll have a tantrum and throw my PC out the window.

Thanks.

Here's a better view of it;


The icons on it is something I made, which can freely be downloaded here: https://www.gnome-look.org/s/Gnome/p/1516492
It comes in 8 different colors.

I have been playing around with ProxMox, for my VM environment, and I am having a blast. I have Khali linux on it, Windows and Ubuntu. The ease of setting up VMs has just reached new levels from back in the day when I used to do it. Even Ubuntu has advanced so much since I used to use it like over 10 years ago. Although I am not a network admin, or a hacker, I do enjoy playing with things, and I have plenty of old laptops to do so.

I do wish there was more support for Linux, but I am thinking it is stifled by the big 2 not wanting more competition in the OS market. Never had the hate for Windows that others have, honestly I have more hate for Mac than Windows. Not saying Windows is a better environment than Mac, just saying I despise Apple and will never support any company made by Steve Jobs.

My experience here is that BG3 works well under Proton in wine. Performance is great. I don't have a Windows license, so I can't compare it to native, but honestly -- I'm playing with maximum "ultra" settings and have not noticed any slowdowns. That being said, I'd love a native version, obviously -- in particular stuff like alt-tabbing to another window doesn't really work.

Since Baldur's Gate 3 was part of Steam Deck marketing launch, I assume the Linux support does get some priority

+1 for Linux native app, but realistically this is why I run Windows in a kernel virtual machine.

Don’t think I saw anyone post this or not but there’s something I’ve always assumed there was one massive roadblock when it comes to a Linux workstation/PC and games, and that’s the non-standard environments users operate in. UNIX and UNIX-like OS kernels and graphics APIs aren’t the problem, Sony has based the PlayStation OS off of FreeBSD since the PS3. Nintendo also used its kernel to power the switch unless I’m mistaken. But those platforms all have something in common with Windows and that’s the single, predictable, engineered environment to build the game for.

In the Linux world we’ve got X11 or Wayland, Vulkan or OpenGL (for legacy), KDE, GNOME 3/40, Xfce, lxde, etc… with who knows what kernel version and extensions/drivers/mods… Now I do understand that 90% of all that stuff I listed off shouldn’t make a bit of difference to a game (at least on paper), but the Linux port of Shadow of Mordor is a great example of how this can impact experiences of the end user.

On KDE it ran fine in full screen, on GNOME 3 I had odd graphical pop ins from the top bar and occasionally my mouse could trigger the app search function if I moved it just right.

All that is to say, imagine trying to support an end-user with that wildcard setup. This is normally when I hear people argue that they put work in with WINE to get a game to work, they’d be willing to work with Larian on this too (And I suspect for many folks that’s true). but I’ve found a lot of times the relationship between consumer and vendor changes once $$$ is exchanged for something that’s supposed to natively work on a platform. There’s a much higher expectation placed on Larian or any developer to support the thousands of disparate configurations of a “desktop” on Linux based operating systems, and that’s not something they want to tackle while trying to get their game running on the 5-7 platforms they’re targeting at the moment.

Now just as container tech like Docker and podman have made shipping programs to run predictably in every Linux based OS much easier, there is similar technologies to containerize graphical applications to circumvent all the pitfalls having to support 20 DEs and 30 window managers can create. Flatpak is one that comes to mind, Docker has an implementation of it too (though I’m not as familiar with it). That may help circumvent the problems Larian may run into if they want to pursue a Linux native client for BG3, as they’ll just need to target the container runtime rather than the host system.

Anywho I’ve rambled enough, and I may be all wet when it comes to the actual issues developers run into that make them avoid native support for Linux based Operating systems. Kudos if they can/want to do it, but I’ve got a backup plan if they can’t/won’t

Did anyone try the GOG version with WINE? Any success? Anything in particular to consider/install besides WINE? Is WINE 6.0.1 ok or should I better try 6.14? Thanks!

I realise this is a rather old topic, but +1 for "official" linux support – the gog version works fine under proton (I <3 DRM-free stuff and buy everything on GOG, although I admit that proton is fantastic).

It would be good to have either some official support or a statement along the lines of "We don't officially support you, but the following definitely works on our testing: " – which is what EVE online does, for example.

Honestly, with the Steam Deck it's probably a good idea to make it relatively cross platform anyway!

Why would people prefer Linux over windows?? Especially for gaming..

A Linux native desktop version (GOG) would be greatly appreciated and bought with haste by this longtime member of the growing Linux gaming market.

As classl3ss observed, Wine is a possible half-measure but there is the case to normalize Linux support. While I would not want to discount possible hitches with the variety of Linux configurations,

GOG Linux versions are supposed to be distribution-agnostic and do not need containers like Docker/Flatpak: https://docs.gog.com/linux-guidelines/
and Linux games tend to benefit from a supportive and able community..


To such a question there are many possible answers found in dedicated internet threads, with some given in above posts - Vulkan, SDL, OS preferences, unsuitability of VMs on hardware .. so generally speaking of these modern OSs, "Why would people want to stop everything to run an app on a possibly unsatisfactory OS when their preferred multitasking OS performs as well and perhaps better depending on configuration?"