Gaming on SegLinux

SegLinux is set up for games out of the box: Windows games run through Wine, Proton and DXVK, and the system is tuned for low latency. This page lists what is included and why.

Settings → Gaming

Open Settings (Super+I) → Gaming. Everything applies to the next game started; the display settings apply at once.

• Windows games and programs (segrun): the runner, chosen from the installed ones (system Wine, umu-launcher, and every Proton build Steam installed or that is in compatibilitytools.d, such as GE-Proton) or typed; the shared Windows environment; a separate environment per installer; GameMode, DXVK and VKD3D-Proton (automatic, always, never); esync, fsync and Wine's debug output.
• Performance overlay: MangoHud in Windows games, its position and detail (frame rate only, one line, standard, detailed), and a frame rate limit for every game. Right Shift+F12 shows or hides it while playing.
• gamescope: run Windows games in gamescope, fullscreen or borderless; the game's and the output's resolution (upscaling when the output is larger), a frame rate limit, the upscaling filter (FSR, NIS, integer scaling, nearest) and its sharpness, variable refresh rate and HDR, plus any other gamescope arguments (one per line). Zero leaves a value to gamescope.
• Display: variable refresh rate (FreeSync, G-Sync) for fullscreen games or always, and tearing when a game asks for it, for the lowest latency.
• Gaming Mode: the resolution, refresh rate, variable refresh rate, HDR and performance overlay of the SegLinux Gaming Mode session.
• Environment variables for every Windows program, such as PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 (DLSS on NVIDIA cards).
• Game profiles: settings for one program, matched by its file name (Game.exe, *Launcher*.exe): runner, environment, GameMode, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, gamescope, a Wine virtual desktop, DLL overrides and variables. Fields a profile does not set keep the general settings.
• Installed gaming tools: which of Wine, umu-launcher, GameMode, MangoHud, gamescope, Steam and Lutris are installed.

segrun's settings are saved in ~/.config/seglinux/segrun.toml; settings Settings has no control for (such as a profile's args) are kept. Restore page defaults resets the settings but keeps game profiles and variables. Steam and Lutris keep their own settings for the games they start.

Choices

Included software

Gaming Mode

The sign-in screen offers SegLinux Gaming Mode: Steam's Big Picture inside gamescope, like SteamOS. It suits controllers and TVs. Leaving Big Picture (Steam menu → Exit) returns to the sign-in screen.

Running Windows games with segrun

segrun recognises games from what they import (Direct3D, OpenGL, Vulkan, XInput) and then:

• installs DXVK (Direct3D 9/10/11) or VKD3D-Proton (Direct3D 12) into the prefix once;
• starts the game under GameMode (gamemode = "auto").

segrun Game.exe                       # GameMode automatically
segrun run --hud Game.exe             # MangoHud overlay
segrun run --gamescope Game.exe       # inside gamescope (fullscreen)
segrun run --gamemode never Game.exe  # without GameMode

Per-game settings go in ~/.config/seglinux/segrun.toml:

[[app]]
match = "Game*.exe"
gamescope = true
gamescope_args = ["-W", "2560", "-H", "1440", "-r", "165", "--adaptive-sync"]

System tuning

Extra kernel parameters can be added in the answer file ([performance] kernel_parameters) or in /etc/default/grub followed by sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

NVIDIA

Setup reads the PCI IDs of the graphics cards. For an NVIDIA GPU of the Turing generation or newer (GeForce GTX 16, RTX 20 and later), it installs nvidia-open-dkms, nvidia-utils, lib32-nvidia-utils and nvidia-settings when the network is reachable (this also updates the system). Without a network connection, or with [drivers] nvidia = "never", the open-source nouveau/NVK driver is used; install the packages later with sudo pacman -Syu nvidia-open-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils. Older NVIDIA cards are not supported by NVIDIA's current driver and keep nouveau.

Intel graphics and low-end PCs

What to expect, honestly:

• Intel Iris Xe, Arc and newer (Mesa's ANV driver): Vulkan 1.3, so DXVK 2 and VKD3D-Proton work. Older and lighter games (Direct3D 9-11, esports titles, indie games) run well; recent AAA games are limited by the GPU itself, as on Windows. Intel's Linux drivers are mature: in Phoronix's 2025 comparison on Lunar Lake, Linux roughly matched Windows 11, ahead in some tests and behind in others.
• Intel HD Graphics 520/620 and other Skylake-era GPUs: Vulkan 1.3 through ANV; fine for older and light games at low settings and 720p.
• Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell (HD 2500-6000): Mesa's HASVK driver, which is not a conformant Vulkan 1.3 driver. segrun asks vulkaninfo which version the GPU offers; below 1.3 it installs DXVK 1.10.3 (the last release for Vulkan 1.1/1.2) instead of DXVK 2, and tells you that Direct3D 12 games cannot run. Expect old games only.
• Weak CPUs: DXVK compiles shaders while you play, which causes stutter the first time effects appear. Steam's shader pre-caching (Settings → Downloads) removes most of it for Steam games.

What SegLinux does for low-end machines:

• A light desktop (labwc + the Rust shell) leaves more RAM and CPU to the game than Plasma or Windows would.
• zram doubles as cheap extra memory: on a 4 GB PC, swapping to compressed RAM is much faster than to disk.
• GameMode switches the CPU to its performance governor while a game runs, and on integrated GPUs, when the GPU is the busy part, lowers the CPU's share of the power budget so the GPU can clock higher (/etc/gamemode.ini).
• Mesa's shader cache may grow to 4 GB (MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE, set in /etc/profile.d/seglinux-gaming.sh): DXVK 2 and VKD3D-Proton keep compiled shaders there, and the 1 GB default makes games recompile them (stutter) once several are installed.
• Hardware video decoding (intel-media-driver, libva-intel-driver) takes video playback off the CPU.
• The Lite ISO (well under 1 GB, see building.md) is quicker to download and fits small USB sticks. It installs the same system as the full ISO (Setup downloads the games stack), so games run exactly as fast with either.

Getting more frames on weak GPUs:

# ~/.config/seglinux/segrun.toml
[[app]]
match = "Game.exe"
gamescope = true
# Render at 720p, upscale to 1080p with AMD FSR, cap at 60 FPS.
gamescope_args = ["-w", "1280", "-h", "720", "-W", "1920", "-H", "1080", "-F", "fsr", "-r", "60", "-f"]

In Steam, the same works per game with launch options such as gamescope -w 1280 -h 720 -W 1920 -H 1080 -F fsr -f -- %command%. Lower in-game resolution, shadows and post-processing first; MangoHud's fps_limit (in ~/.config/MangoHud/MangoHud.conf) keeps frame times steady.

More on Intel GPUs:

• Two memory modules. An integrated GPU uses system RAM as video memory, so dual-channel memory (two modules instead of one) often gives noticeably more frames.
• Plugged in, performance profile: powerprofilesctl set performance.
• Ivy Bridge and Haswell (HD 2500-5000): the kernel's i915 driver clears GPU state between programs on these generations to fix an information leak (CVE-2019-14615), which costs them a large part of their speed. i915.mitigations=off on the kernel command line turns that off: much faster, but programs on the GPU can then read each other's leftovers. Your choice; in an answer file: [performance] kernel_parameters = ["i915.mitigations=off"].
• Check that the GPU renders: segrun doctor shows the Vulkan driver. A virtual machine without 3D acceleration only has Mesa's software renderer, which runs the desktop but not games.

Checking the setup

segrun doctor reports Wine, winetricks, Vulkan, NTSYNC, GameMode, MangoHud, gamescope, split lock mitigation, zram, the open file limit, vm.max_map_count and binfmt support.

Limits

Games whose anti-cheat requires a Windows kernel driver do not run unless the developer enables Proton support. Check ProtonDB for per-game reports.

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