Starfield on Linux: Starfield Essentials

[@KenBauer]

Runs great on my Nobara 40 install. I am running AMD for CPU and GPU on my workstation and it runs great! Linux user since the early 90s (yes, Slackware installations from floppies) so I can appreciate how much it is easier now than it was years ago. Linux is my daily driver on my workstation and laptop.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Thanks for sharing! 🙏🙏

[@fb6ins1z1]

Thank you for this video. Concise and informative!

[@RichardBejtlich]

I'm glad you liked it! Do you play Stafield on Linux? Now that Proton 9-0-4 supports Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation, I'm trying to get it to work. No luck so far. I seem to have FG working in Cyberpunk 2077 though. I'm probably going to try upgrading my drivers from 555 to 560 and see if that helps.

[@Websthecavespider]

Man that's a pretty PC set up 😍 thanks for the video by the way!!!

[@RichardBejtlich]

Glad you liked it!

[@tunin6844]

I am currently running the openSuse Tumbleweed Linux distro. I'm not sure I would recommend it to a new linux user, since the rolling release nature of this one can have introduce errors during upgrades (and it is recommended to use the terminal to upgrade rather than the gui tools). I have been playing Starfield, No Man's Sky, Conan Exiles, and Cyberpunk 2077 recently, but I have been running linux of some sort for almost 20 years and I have been playing games on it for 15 or so. When Wrath of the Lich King was the current WoW expansion, I was playing that on a linux machine. I'm sure there will be some challenges you run into with your switch from windows, but welcome to the linux side of things. Hopefully you can stick around a while.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Thanks! I mainly use Linux and BSD for servers, and at one point I did use those for the desktop too. We'll see how it goes!

[@RichardBejtlich]

I forgot to ask -- are you using any mod managers on Linux?

[@tunin6844]

@@RichardBejtlich I am not. I do know that Michael Horn (that is his channel name) put out a video in the last month or so talking about using the Bottles application to install and use one. I think MO2 was the example. I haven't tried it yet because I am a masochist that has (in the past) manually managed a 200+ mod skyrim install.... I'm mostly using creations in Starfield, with the only manually installed mods being SFSE and dependents as well as some mesh/texture and UI loose file mods.

[@tunin6844]

@@RichardBejtlich Oh, and I forgot to mention that The Nexus is working on developing a linux client. They are currently providing an alpha for people to try with Stardew Valley. There is an article about it that you might want to check out. I plan on helping with the testing and feedback once they move on to Cyberpunk 2077 (which is the next game they will move on to according to the last roadmap I saw).

[@RichardBejtlich]

Cool, and I really excited by that new Nexus App because it's Win/Lin. I would like to see SF support but I expect it would be behind other games.

[@adjoho1]

DDDUUUUUUDDDEEEE! Love it. Like you, I've turned way from MS with all the bullshit they're pulling. Wendell posted a vid a couple of weeks ago saying Linux is 100% for gaming now, so here I am!

[@RichardBejtlich]

Let us know how the game works for you!

[@adjoho1]

@@RichardBejtlich got it working really well, only to realise Linux doesn't do HDR. I have an AW3423DW, and it's kind of a shame to NOT use HDR with it. So, it's still a work in progress, I guess!

[@carne3343]

Mint is great for gaming! all my steam games work

[@RichardBejtlich]

Cool, do you use anything for managing mods?

[@carne3343]

@@RichardBejtlich for fallout 4 I use the workshop or do it manually if it isn't there

[@Rikhammer]

Wow you’re fkn smart man. I’d never would have thought of doing anything like this.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Thanks, it was easy enough for this old guy to get it to work. 😆

[@ozoak]

At launch I couldn't get it to run (Mint 21), several weeks later a Proton update fixed that, though I still needed to add launch options to Starfield in Steam to force it to recognise my Nvidia GPU properly (it has, or had, trouble with Turing GPUs). Since then, it's worked fine. I also managed to get Mod Organiser running early this year, and just in the last 24 hours I think the MO2 team have released build 2.5.2 which is now updated to support the Creations changes Bethesda introduced early June. I can't get the Creation Kit working though, that's my next mission (impossible). Gaming on linux is sooo much better these days, it's a night and day difference in the experience from 10+ years ago.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Sounds like a rough start but doing better! Tell me more about how you got MO2 working? I saw the new 2.5.2 version better supports SF. I also saw github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer Did you use that?

[@ozoak]

@@RichardBejtlich with hindsight, I probably should have used that installer script. I chose the hard path (I've been doing that with linux for 30 years), so I could get an idea of what it might be doing. I found a video by another content creator who stepped through command line effectively running the MO2 installer inside the Proton Experimental prefix, then creating my own shortcut to launch it. Overly complicated, I think, and likely easier ways to achieve it. With 2.5.2 I might try the rockerbacon script and see how it works out.

[@RichardBejtlich]

I hear you. I prefer understanding what is going on too. LMK what happens if you try that script. 🙏

[@elaron2537]

What about FreeBSD? Do we care? :D Sweet homelab setup, and some of those stickers on the old ThinkPad evoked nostalgia :D Valve has done a huge amount of work with Steam and games on Linux. I know it's prompted a lot by the Steam Deck (a pretty sweet piece of hardware, especially as you can swap it to Desktop mode, hook up a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and use it like an ultraportable Linux desktop) but it's reaped a ton of benefits elsewhere in the ecosystem.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Thanks! That was a Thinkpad a20 circa 2000 I think? It was my first laptop. It still works. I think I put Debian on it? The homelab took a lot of work in April. 😆 Glad you liked the stickers too! I need to check out the Steamdeck.

[@DashRendar308]

So many Steam games dont run natively on Linux. I was surprised that Starfield does. I will finally try this game out now. Got it a year ago for free, when I bought a GPU. I wish more games were available for Linux. One other thing I am missing is some easy way to undervolt your CPU and GPU on Linux. I am not a very tech savvy person, so even installing many aftermarket tools and software gives me a headache sometimes. But still I will never go back to Windows.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Just to be clear -- Starfield does not have a native Linux port. It uses compatibility layers to run, but it runs well. Look at github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT for working with your GPU on Linux. Have fun!

[@whosdr]

I was playing Starfield on Linux Mint from the first day it went into its pre-release launch. I've actually stopped playing it since, as Bethesda pushed an update many months ago that made playing left-handed difficult.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Oh no, that stinks. I hope it gets resolved.

[@henrycarlson7514]

Interesting , Thank you . That has been my concern , will the games I play work on Linux

[@RichardBejtlich]

Happy to help!

[@TheLotw]

What do you mean, You just install it and it works.

[@RichardBejtlich]

I guess you watched the video? 😆

[@angelooutlaw386]

I love this game but I don't have the Xbox Series X. I have Xbox S it just crashes all of the time can't land on the main Planets without it completely shutting down can't land on New Atlantis. I hope they fix it I tried everything to get it fixed I can't afford a better system it's getting worse as far as crashes.

[@RichardBejtlich]

That really stinks. I also have a series S but have only had a few crashes in 500 or more hours in it. No mods though.

[@Alkaris]

If anything when it comes to hardware on Linux, I would have to more or less recommend using AMD build for Linux. Simply for the fact that everyone's kinda almost falling out of favor with Intel currently, that said, it's not that Intel hardware on Linux is bad, it's just that you'd benefit from having more CPU cores with AMD than with Intel which hasn't made any great significant changes to give consumers more cores on their CPUs at the consumer grade level that isn't server grade level. Having a lot of CPU cores on Linux will give you the most smoothest experience to run whatever you want, if you can have 16 cores or more, then go for it. It's also beneficial if you want to also run virtualization for other operating systems, so you can run any version of Windows you want inside of a virtualized environment as a Guest OS and allocate however many cores for that environment you want along with RAM and Storage. When it comes to recommending Linux distros, it's kind of a hard pick to choose from, but the best way I deal with recommending Linux distros is to try one out and get a feel for it on your machine, booted off USB so you get the proper feel for it on bare metal, and find what works best for you. You could pick something based on looks alone if you so choose, but the prettier one doesn't always necessarily mean the "best" distro to choose. The best way of choosing what kind of desktop you want to run on your system can be decided like this; Which one looks the most bloated? Each Desktop Environment has their own ups and downs when it comes to looks, it's functions and _"How much RAM and CPU does this Desktop Environment use?"_ typically going for a light-weight Desktop Environment is what you'd typically want, especially if you're a gamer, the distro pages usually tell you what versions of their ISOs has for their Desktop Environments. KDE Plasma the most highly popular Linux desktop has a lot to offer in not just looks and customization, but the functionality it provides that every modern desktop should have, and is constantly updated with new things that improves the desktop experience. While I'm a fan of KDE Plasma, it does have a few annoying quirks from time-to-time. I use Cinnamon for my DE, it's simple, it's clean, minimal and very functional for a modern desktop. One other thing I look at is how easy it is to navigate the desktop and how easy it is to find things.

[@RichardBejtlich]

Excellent, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts! 🙏

[@downix]

What about FreeBSD? Honestly, never really used that. My BSD experience was with OpenBSD.

[@RichardBejtlich]

OpenBSD is great too. I built some firewalls with it a long time ago.

[@downix]

@RichardBejtlich last time I used it, I converted an old SPARC 32-bit system into my firewall/router.

[@RichardBejtlich]

🔥🔥🔥

[@stalker6617]

The year of openbsd is around the corner will be the next cope now that linux has almost 5% market share 😅

[@RichardBejtlich]

😆😆😆

[@xVirtualMagicx]

What about modding and Vortex, especially with SFSE?

[@RichardBejtlich]

That is my next test.

[@ryansullivan9217]

it works but is a pain to get working

[@xVirtualMagicx]

@ryansullivan9217 Hmmm. I'm getting an extra SSD delivered today. Then I'll put Kubuntu on it and then I'll have to test it with Bottles... The software has already made many things possible that were a Wine configuration nightmare.

[@ryansullivan9217]

@@xVirtualMagicx I recommend wine-ge-proton8-26, you will have to do the .ini by hand

[@RichardBejtlich]

I know there's a new video by Michael Horn using Bottles... I may have to try that. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYrVc4iDo9N2hNUsi=kk0YCxR876warJfh

[@willrun4fun]

I tried Linux a year ago and gave up after a week. I mod all my games and that is where it broke down. Skyrim was a major pain where on Windows it just works. Since gaming is my main use of my home system it just wasn't worth my time I could be playing the game vs trying to get them to run properly.

[@RichardBejtlich]

I hear you. Modding in general can be a pain, but throwing an emulation layer into the mix can be trouble.

[@ryansullivan9217]

Use proton-ge

[@ryansullivan9217]

And manually edit the.ini

[@ryansullivan9217]

@@willrun4fun proton isn't a emulator it's a translator for API calls

[@RichardBejtlich]

Yeah I should have said "compatibility layer."

[@hoti257]

I sadly don't have a good experience running starfield on Linux,with a 4090 and driver 555 on arch based distro CachyOS ,this game really doesn't run well once again,i have sub 60 FPS gameplay on it and sadly nothing ,changing proton versions and stuff, just doesn't make a difference,when on windows i havw 100 fps at ultra settings without FG

[@RichardBejtlich]

Yeah, if I did not get good performance with that beast of a card, I would just run Windows too. Actually, I still run Windows as my primary OS.

[@ryansullivan9217]

It is a Nvidia driver issue