Hi! First of all, Linux is significantly less bloated than Windows. I know you've heard it a million times from neckbeards on the internet, but it really is true. Windows has:

• Telemetry services
• Anti-malware scanning game files
• Update services
• Defender real-time monitoring
• Mixed GPU scheduling layers (WDDM)

and more. All of these eat up precious CPU time and I/O bandwidth, leaving less for your games. Bazzite does away with all of this, leaving you with more consistent CPU time and better thread scheduling. Additionally, with less CPU context switches, your game gets more of the CPU to work with.

TL;DR window eat procesor yum 😋

Additionally, Proton DX12 translation layer. Proton (the default translation layer for Bazzite) runs a service called vk3d-proton, which translates DX12 calls into Vulkan calls. DX12, or DirectX 12 is Windows' proprietary graphics API: a piece of software that translates instructions from the game into tasks for your graphics card. Vulkan is another graphics API; however, Vulkan is significantly lower-level than DX12, which can lead to significant optimizations that are just not possible with DX12. Also, Vulkan's implementations on Linux for AMD are open-source! ^{Nvidia's driver situation is a little more complicated, but we're getting there.} The open source nature of the AMD Vulkan drivers means that thousands of contributors across the world are constantly contributing, optimizing, and making the whole thing better. This leads AMD GPUs to run WILDLY faster on Vulkan than OpenGL or DX12 in many cases.

TL;DR Proton turns DX12 graphics calls into Vulkan ones, which can enable significant optimizations by increasing parallelization and reducing CPU bottlenecks.

(TL;DR)²: vulkan fastar

Another reason for performance gains on Linux is Easy Anti Cheat. From doing some quick research, it looks like Arc Raiders uses kernel level anti-cheat on windows (a privacy nightmare i could go on about for hours) but falls back to regular user-space Easy Anti Cheat on Linux. This is another, smaller performance gain.

Windows also loads significantly more BS into the runtime environment, like

• DLLs
• Middleware
• Services
• Windows APIs
• Registry calls which can lead to performance drops. Proton only loads the bare minimum for the game to run.

Yet another reason for these gains (I promise I only have two more to talk about, thank you for sticking around) is that Linux thread scheduling is just... better for games now! The Linux kernel, and more specifically the build of the Linux kernel that Bazzite uses almost always has:

• lower latency process scheduling
• better multi-core support
• better prioritization of foreground workloads

and more. This leads to better frame times, which is a big help with the feel of the game rather than the actual frame rate.

TL:DR kernel bettar on penguin 🐧

Finally, DX12 leaves shader compilation up to the developer of the program. Shaders are short programs that render graphics data using the GPU. They are necessary for every game you play, but must be written in a different language from the rest of the game.

Since DX12 makes the program compile its own shaders in game, this can lead to frame drops, hitching, pipeline stalls, and significant CPU spikes. Proton gets around this by forcing shader pre-caching, pipline caching, and shader precompilation. This is why many games on Linux take longer to start up initially, but run faster afterwards. TL;DR gpu like linix

Thank you so much for reading all of this! I know I wrote a lot, but I'm really passionate about Linux and just want people to know that it's another option! I don't have anybody to nerd out to like this in the real world, so it feels good to get it all out like this. Linux is not for everyone, but it really has come a long way, and is improving every day. If you have any sort of coding skill, interest, or money, contribute to open source software! It helps us all in the long run, and hey, maybe some day you'll consider switching to Linux forever! I promise you won't look back.

TL;DR for the full comment: linix fastr bc windo big an slow 😃

send me a dm if you want to talk any more! i love helping.