news
Games and Benchmarks in Linux
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Games
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Steam Deck Owners Can Use This Free App To Play Non-Steam Games
The Steam Deck is one of the most popular handheld game consoles on the market, and the Steam library is absolutely jam-packed with industry-lauded games, including titles like Counter-Strike 2, No Man's Sky, and Apex Legends. But is there any way to play games that aren't featured in the Steam library? There is, and we have intuitive tools like Heroic Games Launcher to thank for giving us a comprehensive SteamOS workaround.
Heroic Games Launcher (HGL) is a free, open-source game launcher with an active user community that consistently updates the software. HGL is compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS, and gives players a plug-and-play means of accessing the Epic Games Store, GOG, and Amazon Prime Games launchers. Gone are the days of having to boot your Steam Deck with Windows to download non-Steam titles.
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Benchmarks
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Intel Panther Lake Xe3 GPU gets up to an 18% gaming boost in Linux thanks to new patches
Intel has published an early Mesa 3D graphics driver for Linux, improving gaming performance by up to 18%. Containing 14 patches, this update comes at the right time to be implemented in the day one driver suite of upcoming Panther Lake CPUs, which are scheduled for this quarter. This should help deliver a better first impression, which is naturally important.
Intel has indicated these changes focus on compiler scheduling and thread parallelism optimisations, in effect helping the GPU reclaim untapped performance due to bugs. As a reminder, Xe3 integrated graphics are part of the Core Ultra 300 Panther Lake CPUs, set to power next-gen laptops.
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Phoronix ☛ Intel GNU/Linux Graphics Driver Seeing 2~5% Faster Shader Compilation Times, Up To ~20%
A few days ago I wrote about defective chip maker Intel fixing some Panther Lake Xe3 graphics performance issues ahead of launch. The downside of those performance optimizations for Panther Lake was that they led to longer shader compilation times.
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