so. i've got a circa 2013 thinkpad t440 as my daily driver now (my modern laptop has a fiddly fragile charger so it can only really be used when stationary). it's been pretty good, quality keyboard and deliciously clunky touchpad (i now prefer the swapped fn and ctrl locations i must say they really are better for shortcuts). but it can't exactly play every game i want to. this page is kind of a journal of games i attempted and whether or not i succeeded. mostly for fun and personal reference. consider this like protondb but for a somewhat potato-ish laptop on top of linux. i should probably create an account over there, shouldn't i?
the thinky is actually quite beefy for what it is and how much it cost. it's got an i5 (4th gen) and 8gb ram (ddr3), running linux mint 21.3 (cinnamon edition) full time. its only subpar quality is the fact it has a hard drive, which i won't replace for an ssd just yet because it's not that bad and it's a whole terabyte. also one of the screws is stripped (-_-) so i don't wanna deal with opening it up rn.
for software i have wine (and winetricks) and steam (webhelper is a pain in the ass though, so i avoid it when possible and prefer running it with steam +open steam://open/minigameslist, which feels a little better), using proton 6.3-8 by default. also the itch.io launcher but i always forget about it and i don't think it has any compatibility layers built-in? i tend to use lower settings by instinct and my screen resolution is 1366 x 768.
won't list literally everything since i also play a lot of tiny little itch games. if it was unremarkable and i had no doubts from the store page that it'd run then i don't see much point.
games with a ★ have been played a lot or to completion and been consistently well behaved. there's stuff that seems to be working perfectly but i just haven't spent much time with, so arcane errors might arise.
source:
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source: direct download, english patched with thcrap (from moriya shrine)
come on it's a 2004 touhou game. absolute perfection.
source: steam
crashes after around 10-15 minutes of gameplay, seemingly because the laptop is incompatible with dx12. if anyone can find a way to make it run i'll love you forever btw.
source: steam
crashed immediately after the start cutscene. after lots of tweaking i got it to crash immediately after character creation. (i've got twenty minutes in this game now without having even seen the overworld once)
source: steam
runs perfectly!
source: steam
seems to run perfectly on medium settings. killed the majula piglets without any issue (well. with the usual majula piglets issue (they're small and hard to hit). but i didn't die)
source: repack
a bit of a pain since i had to install it and ended up putting it in the wrong directory so i had to run it as root. played up until firelink shrine but framerate was probably half of what it should be. very smooth but animations were slow as fuck. asylum demon was much harder than it should have been.
source: direct download
runs perfectly. like. it's solitaire. my go-to casual game in this machine and it doesn't complain about running along with an youtube video on picture-in-picture mode.
source: itch.io
played the potato computer version. no complaints.
source: steam
runs perfectly also i need this game nowww
source: direct download (from internet archive)
exe doesn't launch (either through wine or steam). this is hell someone just make a native linux engine for the souls games or something.
source: steam
plays perfectly as swordsman. game keeps running with a black screen as archer and i have to force quit. oh well doesn't matter. this one's from my friend's library share and i didn't like it much.
source: steam
low spec mode + turned off 3d effects. runs perfectly. a slight frame drop when spawning in the last boss but that straight up didn't matter. crashed when giving my post-run report (error said a missing texture, but i didn't catch it in detail). that's not too bad though, i tend to play a single run anyway.
source: steam
despite having a native linux build, that didn't launch. it's just a well known issue that this game doesn't actually work on linux. there are tweaks (basically new run.sh files) but nothing worked for me. so i had to play with proton. performance is subpar for a 2016 woims game too -_- so
source: direct download (flatpak)
worked perfectly, no problems with my controller either (an ipega mini). played metal gear solid peace walker for an hour or so but the camera controls were kicking my ass. why didn't the psp have two analog sticks.
source: steam
it runs, but the video stutters a bit. which is odd, but not unprecedented with video playback in this guy when there are other processes running, and it does recommend 16gb ram. it's a bit of a resource hungry game, i got framedrops when playing on the acer too and had to lower video quality (which doesn't make any visible difference anyway)
source: steam
like its bunnygirl successor, seems to work perfectly until it crashes at around 10 minutes. which is odd since this one only needs dx10. even after increasing vram to 512mb it has very poor performance and crashes. i suspect this game just doesn't play very nice with linux, it crashed on the acer too (though it performed perfectly and for longer. dunno what that was about)
update 20/08/24: HUGE!! i set it up on lutris to launch through wine (not steam) and force dxvk v2.1. lutris bitches and moans about it because my poor widdle intel 4400 isn't entirely compatible with vulkan 1.3 or some shit, but it launches anyway and since it's a 2d game none of this matters. i guess that solved it? it means i have to play offline but that's how i usually play regardless, and not opening steam is much more efficient. rip my achievements though. this could really change things for failed games that should be running in this bad boy...
source: direct download
perfect!
source: direct download + petza
as good as it gets with an old ass game like this. some custom playscenes do not work because of the resolution, so i made a launcher to open it with wine explorer /desktop=petz,1024x768. not the most elegant solution but gets the job done. lnz pro and pet workshop work great as well. don't quite have enough resolution vertically because of the window borders and bars and stuff so sometimes petz vanish out of frame, but that's fine.
source: steam
won't boot
source: steam
framerate a got little low but not too bad all things considered, this game doesn't really need a stable 30.
source: steam
black screen on launch :(
source: itch.io
it feels like it wants badly to crash while booting, but once the game's going it doesn't matter.
source: steam
oh it does not love being here. works though. haven't tried multiplayer yet.