Gaming after the switch: your library survives, the NVIDIA App does not

TL;DR — Every game on this machine runs. Age of Wonders: Planetfall is ProtonDB Gold (trending Platinum, 95 reports) [1] and Valve rates it Playable on Deck/SteamOS/Steam Machine [2]; Fall Guys is one of the 146-of-245 anti-cheat titles GamingOnLinux records as Works [3]. The single ✗ is the NVIDIA App — DLSS overrides, driver-level game profiles and ShadowPlay have no GUI on Linux, only environment variables and separate tools [4]. The forward-looking blocker is what you don’t own yet: kernel-mode anti-cheat (Riot Vanguard, EA Javelin) is structurally unrunnable, so any future purchase in that class stays a Windows purchase [3].

The inventory, row by row

The Paradox Launcher bypass

<path to exe> %command% does not work under Proton, because Proton’s own wrapper chain is the command line. The working pattern rewrites that string instead [7]:

eval $( echo "%command%" | sed -E "s#Launcher/dowser.exe#<GameExe>.exe#g" )

Substitute Planetfall’s own executable name for <GameExe>. Keep it in your notes: this is the first thing to try when a Paradox Launcher update or a Proton bump breaks startup, and it is why Planetfall’s ProtonDB reports look inconsistent — half of them bypassed the launcher and half did not [1].

Anti-cheat: opt-in, not compatibility

The mechanism matters more than any per-game list, because it explains which future purchases are safe.

EAC and BattlEye already run on Linux. Epic added Easy Anti-Cheat support for Linux, macOS and Steam Deck including Wine and Proton, activated by the developer with a few clicks in the EOS Developer Portal [22]. Concretely, the studio must be on EOS SDK 1.14+ and must activate a Linux client module — “Players running the game using Wine or Proton will use the Linux client module”, so it also has to be tested and updated alongside Windows [23]. BattlEye works the same way, opt-in via Valve [24]. → A “Broken” EAC game is a business decision, not a technical limit.

Kernel-mode anti-cheat is a different category. A Windows ring-0 driver has no Proton translation target — there is no kernel to load it into, and a user-space shim would defeat the entire threat model. That is why the vendors that went kernel-only appear as hard failures on GamingOnLinux’s July 2026 list: 2XKO (Vanguard) Broken, EA SPORTS FC 27, Battlefield 2042 and F1 25 (EA Javelin) Broken [3].

The numbers. GamingOnLinux tracks 245 anti-cheat titles: 146 Works, 92 Broken, 7 needing reports [3]. AreWeAntiCheatYet’s wider 1166-game set is harsher — 642 Broken, 276 Running, 194 Supported, 52 explicitly Denied [11]. Both agree on your one affected title: Fall Guys is fine [3][11]. Check either list before buying a multiplayer shooter; nothing else in this inventory is exposed.

The Epic library: four tools, one answer

NVIDIA on a hybrid Legion

Driver branch. Install the 595 series: 595.58.03 became the recommended stable Linux driver on 24 Mar 2026 [17], with R595 adding Vulkan improvements, HDR work and DRI3 v1.2 over 590 [29].

Open vs proprietary kernel modules — decided for you. From 590, Turing and newer transition automatically to the open kernel modules, and Pascal-and-older lost support entirely [14]; distro packaging followed, with Arch’s main nvidia packages now building the open modules [28]. Any Legion new enough to carry an Intel Arc iGPU is far past Turing → take the default and stop thinking about it.

Wayland gaming. Usable, no longer experimental. The 590 branch raised the minimum Wayland version to 1.20 and fixed Vulkan swapchain re-creation, the stutter you see resizing a Vulkan window [30]; 595 fixed kwin_wayland failing to wake displays, kernel crashes on DisplayPort MST dock disconnect, and added system-memory fallback specifically to stop Wayland desktop freezes on low VRAM [17] — all three are laptop-and-dock failure modes.

Frame pacing. KDE Plasma 6.8 re-enables triple buffering by default for NVIDIA GPUs, cutting the stutter that appears when the compositor cannot align frame delivery with the display [34]. For per-game HDR, VRR and frame limiting independent of the desktop session, run the game inside gamescope ⭐ 4.9k [37] — that is the reliable route rather than fighting the host compositor.

Hybrid graphics. PRIME render offload keeps the dGPU idle until a game asks for it: __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 for Vulkan, plus __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia for OpenGL/GLX [31] — put those in the Steam launch options ahead of %command%. ⚠ Advanced Optimus does not exist on Linux. vga-switcheroo cannot express dynamic MUX switching [33], and NVIDIA’s replacement DRM-KMS user-space API is still a proposal [32]. Practical consequence: choose hybrid or dGPU-direct in the Legion BIOS and reboot to change it — there is no on-the-fly switch, and G-Sync on the internal panel generally requires the dGPU-direct path. (TDP and fan curves, the Legion Space / Vantage replacement, are covered by sibling research.)

What the NVIDIA App did that now needs a command line

NVIDIA’s own Linux gaming documentation is the authority here, and it is entirely environment variables [4]:

⚠ DLSS under Proton requires an NVIDIA Turing-or-newer GPU on the proprietary/open NVIDIA driver stack, and the game’s nvngx.dll/_nvngx.dll must be present in the prefix’s system32 [35].

Migration order

1. Install the 595 driver with open kernel modules; verify nvidia-settings opens [17].
2. Steam → enable Steam Play for all titles; test Planetfall, keep the sed bypass ready [7].
3. Heroic → log into Epic, install GE-Proton, install Fall Guys [8][10].
4. MangoHud + GPU Screen Recorder before you miss Game Bar [15][18].
5. Discord from the vendor package or Vesktop — not Flathub — if you screen-share [20][21].