Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever
Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/29912814
Just made the switch, surprised how smooth the transition went so far.
Ooooh, what distro did you go with?
Can’t be Arch, else he would’ve already said that he uses Arch btw. /s
I went full AMD and Fedora. Couldn’t be happier. All games I’ve tested work. It’s been a while since I’ve had a gaming pc so I don’t have a reference point, but everything is as smooth as I’d want to. Some games may need a library or so as stated in protonDB but, I’m so impressed. Now I have desktop running KDE, steam deck has KDE too and my laptop also with fedora.
Mint, I need my emotional support windows xp.
For a while I never made the switch because of gaming. I did 3 years ago and never looked back. Proton is a game changer
The only ones that wouldn't work are probably the ones with kernel level anti cheat. Maybe if I would be much younger, I might have had different opinion, but, as of today, I believe that all these games that wont run on Linux due to anti-cheat are cancer anyway.
Kernel level anti-cheat is what's probably going to keep me on Windows for a while. I get those games aren't for everyone, but I like them well enough, and that's what my friend group plays. Warzone, DMZ, and going to try RedSec tomorrow. Kind of a shame. Otherwise I'd love to make the jump. As it is I'll probably see about dual booting when I get my next PC in a year or two.
You can run them alternative ways usually. Fortnite works with mouse and keyboard through gamepass, although gamepass is a shit deal just for fortnite.
I know a lot of people dual boot or use a virtual machine with windows on it too.
2026 will be the year of the Linux desktop!
The time is near
Every year
I am a PC gamer and I exclusively use Linux. It's completely viable for gaming, I can say for a fact.
How is device support? Direct drive steering wheels, gamepad, VR, status LED or info displays (ie. Making your keyboard glow red on low health) and bunch of other things like my Sound Blaster G6
Hit and miss since those tend to not have actual standards and generally do their own thing. If it's popular, there's a decent chance someone has reverse engineered it and there's at least partial support (mostly applies to simpler things like steering wheels), but there will be concessions to make until device manufacturers officially support Linux.
If you're willing to replace equipment, there's something that works for most of those categories, if not all.
Direct drive steering wheels
Which one? Support varies wildly depending on manufacturer.
gamepad
I have never seen a gamepad that doesn't work on Linux. You may not be able to update their firmware if they only provide a Windows tool but they work perfectly fine.
VR
Valve Index and HTC Vive work out of the box. SteamVR is pretty rough in Linux and plagued by issues but it works.
For any other headset you will have to depend on community support. Some work, some don't.
There's lots of info on https://vronlinux.org/
status LED or info displays
Which ones? They usually use completely proprietary protocols.
Sound Blaster G6
It will work like any other bog-standard sound card has for years. You will lose any features that are custom to the sound card (dialogue mode, virtual surround, equalizer, ...) but those are rarely necessary because there is lots of other software that achieves this for every sound card.
I recommend you boot Linux from USB and take a look. No need to install anything, just boot from USB and take a look if your hardware works.
I can't say for certain if steering wheels or LEDs work, but I know gamepads work better than on Windows, especially Sony ones. DuelSense works perfect. It only works if plugged in but as far as I'm aware that's how it works on Windows.
Status LEDs/displays likely won’t work unless the manufacturer makes a Linux driver, publishes driver documentation, or it’s a super popular device. Reverse engineering USB is possible but very much a passion project. Most gamer hardware hasn’t had to care about Linux users till the last few years. Input devices at least are usually normal HID devices which are standardised.
Me since 2017 when I stopped dual booting. Never looked back thank goodness
I have you beat by a few years.
I kept a dual boot windows 7 around for a loooong time. I booted it up like once every 2 years or something.
me since dec 2024, i usually use Linux for gaming(thank you Valve for Proton) but i may still spin up a Windows VM to flash roms to my Samsung Phone(grimlers fork sucks).
apps are also pretty alright on Linux but would love this area see some improvement.
i also feel like FOSS works the best on Linux cause duh Linux itself is foss, incl apps.
i wonder how these numbers change if you weight by active players. like sure, Shooty Guns 2 (2008) running on linux is a good thing, but if it has a grand total of 5 people in the world playing it, it won't really do much for linux adoption as long as games like league of legends, apex legends and fortnite still don't work
(for the record i don't play any of those games and i've been happily daily-driving linux with no windows intervention for the last 4 year)
Very fair argument. This way the statistics would most likely be considerably worse. Though personally, I couldn't care less about games like League, Fortnite or FIFA. A case could be made thay they're almost always harmful, so them being unavailable isn't an issue.
I've yet to find a game that I couldn't play (though knowing me I probably forgot one or two). It's mainly mods that I've not been able to implement, as some of them require running an exe file.
However I've had very helpful people tell me I can do all that in a wine instance or something similar so mainly it's just my own laziness (and lack of understanding about how to "do it in a wine instance") that's holding me back from installing fancy modpacks or playing the latest Stalker gamma version.
Also i don't play multiplayer stuff so the anti-cheat thing issues don't usually apply to me. So there's that.
Lutris for mods. You can point it at the game exe downloaded by steam in many cases (not all), and then run arbitrary exes inside the same wine prefix.
In my personal experience, the only games that don't work are those that explicitly choose not to :
I'm not much into competitive games myself, so the only one that's inconvenient in this list to me is Roblox. There are a few really fun games on their platform that I wish I could play on Steam Deck, as used to be possible.
You can play Roblox through Sober. It runs the Android version directly so it's pretty similar to what an official port would be, in terms of performance
Sober is awesome, and I can actually have Roblox LAN parties with my son thanks to it.
I play a lot of Space Engineers, and it randomly crashes... No idea what's causing it.
And Space Engineers 2 just doesn't launch for me.
There's likely a config option that could fix things, but I don't know it.
Every other game I play is fine.
You know about protondb already? Gives a good list of potential fixes if you come across issues, it's been a godsend on the rare occasions something doesn't work first try
Have you changed which version of proton it uses? It's in the compatibility options for the game, sometimes going to an older version solves some issues.
Check the Lutris website, there may be a custom install script there
That's because of the awful spaghetti code that is the basis of Space Engineers. I gave up on that game years ago, because those devs were vibe coding before it was cool, and it shows.
Not too surprisingly, you can add League of Legends (another Riot games title) to the list. While I'm not a fan of kernel level anticheat, I do love most of these games, and it's really frustrating how I don't see any change in the future. After more than a year of struggling, I finally managed to get my Mint working (turns out my old mobo was faulty), but it looks like I will still have to keep Windows for basically all multiplayer titles I play.
Rocket League as well; it's the only reason I haven't gone full Linux for gaming.
...you'd think after 8+ years of playing I'd be bored, but it's just fun.
Rocket League works on linux? Unless something changed recently, because I used to play it on my Steam Deck all the time.
I played Rocket League yesterday on Bazzite through Steam without issues
Try wine bottles, Im using that for games on Linux Mint, havent found any issues yet. You may also need flat seal to make it accessible outside the flatpak environment.
I believe Destiny 2 also doesn’t work. I just don’t play it anymore lol
The distro really matters as far as Roblox goes. I tried Arch, Manjaro, Garuda and couldn't get it working. Ended up back at Ubuntu and it works fine now
For Roblox you have to use Sober
Linux doesnt have games that install kernel-level spyware under the guise of anti-cheat. Hopefully never will, but I don't underestimate gamers who love think spyware is a good idea. Stay away from linux if you want kernel anti cheat please, its ruining computers
Breaking News:
This just in new game requires sudoers access to play!
What's hilarious is that is par the course on windows to run Steam as an admin. In fact that fixes a ton of bugs for people, so any executable the steam process spawns, like game executables, has admin rights as well.
You are not in the sudoers file, this incident WILL BE REPORTED. ಠ_ಠ
I mean companies could probably already create perfectly good kernel level anticheat on Linux if they really wanted to through eBPF programs.
That would not require permanent changes to the Kernel and games would only need root rights at install time. (Like most software already does)
I wouldn't even have a problem with that kind if a solution.
I’m confused, first you say that Linux doesn’t have anti-cheat, and then you say you should stay away from Linux if you want anti cheat.
Kernel level anticheat. There's very effective anticheat that is not kernel level and therefore works fine on Linux.
Linux doesn't have kernel level anti cheat and I hope it remains that way, but I fear my opinion will be in the minority soon if not already.
No I think you got the message of what they were saying correct. Linux doesn't have kernel level anti-cheat at the moment, and they're saying that if you are a proponent of it, then don't use Linux because it's something we'd like to continue not having.
There are layers of abstraction between the kernel and the userspace, and few applications need kernel level access. Anti-cheat poking around in the kernel is very invasive. I know plenty of people who equate it to spyware, myself included.
trying to force AI into windows 11 isnt helping MS.
I can not understand why they made that decision.
They think line won't go up if they don't shove it down every user's throat. They've put most of their eggs in that basket.
--> $ <--
Because it allows them to collect and process more data, which can be used or sold, increasing their profits.
The end user is seen as nothing but an exploitable resource. If a few thousand nerds don't like it, they don't give a shit. Until the general public wakes up to the shitfuckery, nothing will change. Just ask your mom, what she thinks about Microsoft's data collection.
To be fair it's not just Microsoft doing that. I was looking at gym equipment the other day and some idiots were trying to sell a fucking home gym with AI. Everyone wants to sell it, nobody wants to buy it.
I'm installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it's easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.
Edit: bro, firstly, what the fuck and where did all this performance come from?!?! I vastly underestimated how many resources windows was hogging. I downloaded Steam (easy-peasy) and then Project Zomboid just as a test. This game runs like butter now. I was having major problems with it before. To the point I basically stopped playing. I know its just one example but I haven't had my machine run this well in several years, I feel. Also, got Spotify running. Super easy. I need to figure out how to get my VPN set up (ProtonVPN) but so far, I'm kind of in shock. I can't wait to actually dig in and see what I can do with this new setup.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.protonvpn.www You are welcome :)
That did it! Thank you so much!
It's honestly surprising how bloated Windows has become, and for no clear reason either. Even with all of the obvious bloat disabled and resource-intensive features turned off there's still a significant overhead, it's just so constant that you don't notice it. Then you load up Linux on the same hardware and realize what you've been missing.
If you have a look at phoronix.com (probably the best linux news site) you can find loads of articles on linux gaining 0.2% of performance in some superspecific workload.
The Linux performance is what happens when thousands of people do these kinds of micro improvements for decades.
In comparison Windows is what happens if everyone follows the new cool trend and tries to lamd the next big thing.
This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I've experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
Windows 10 did that to us. My work workstation and my wife's laptop suffered with W10, so I searched alternate OS and found Linux. Luckily our CAD software had a Linux version and I got productivity back.
My wife's 2010 laptop on w10 was not usable. Its super fast with Linux. Faster than my work issued brand-new Lenovo laptop with W11. The only performance problem would be rendering video or other hardcore tasks.
Protonvpn has a flatpack. Check your distro's app store for it.
One of the most frequently suggested beginner distros is Linux mint. It's great, it's stable, it's what I use and while it's not exactly cutting edge, or necessary the prettiest distro, it's great for beginners and will feel pretty familiar coming from windows.
Pop_os! And bazzite are more "gaming focused" if that's more your style, but I've never had an issue gaming with Linux mint.
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter terribly much. Pick one, install it to a new drive and try it out. If you don't like it, pick another one.
Linux mint isnt just not bleeding edge, its significantly more stable than Debian. Its so much incredibly more stable that they still use X11 and probrally will for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile nearly 60% of Windows Games now run on Windows.
And how many run on linux via a well documented way?
I've been playing around with bazzite a bit, and for sure, i can run a lot of games on it, but you often end up googling which launcher to use, which settings to use, ... And then even if you find something, it doesn't always work.
Linux is making good progress in this regard, but this title feels a bit over optimistic (or at least, users who take it at face value will quickly be disappointed when they can't get 90% of their games to work).
A lot of people have mentioned ProtonDB already, but I'll throw in Lutris as well. It's a multi-platform game launcher that supports Steam, GOG, Humble Games, Epic Games, EA, etc. but its website also lets you search for a game title, and most should have a user-created method to launch.
I keep seeing this and I keep forgetting to look into this!
I know, i've got steam, and lutris, and heroic. And some games work in some of these things. For some free games i only find ancient versions in these launchers, ...
All i'm saying is that it's still far away from "just working". It's made incredible leaps, but if someone reading this will think "this'll be easy", and they try to play an older or less known game, they'll quickly be disillusioned...
I’ve been playing around with bazzite a bit, and for sure, i can run a lot of games on it, but you often end up googling which launcher to use, which settings to use, … And then even if you find something, it doesn’t always work.
Here's a step-by-step guide:
Zero issues.
To add to this-
One of the biggest traps for new linux users since forever has been to jump straight into the deep end- tweaking any and every tunable- then when that inevitably all breaks, blaming Linux and moving back.
For anyone reading- You don't need Arch as your first distro, you don't want to on the bleeding edge unless you're prepared to bleed. You don't need things like Golden Eggroll Proton or any external launchers.
Just keep it simple to start- Something like Mint, SuSE or plain Fedora with Steam using the built-in Proton.
Bazzite gets... let say 'advertised' a lot and it's got a lot of good ideas - but if you're coming from Windows I think it's just too much - it's an immutable system with containers for everything. That's an ocean away from Windows unless you were comfortable with Sandboxie beforehand (if you were, dive right in)
\the system is read only, you cannot change anything in the default image, ie. imagine if you were never allowed to add files to c:\windows
Edit: For the newbs, an ancient meme- https://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/funroll-loops/Gentoo-is-Rice.html
#4 is the main reason I’m hesitant to install games from Steam instead of alternative versions of the game that don’t have this limitation. But then installing games on Linux often becomes a time-consuming feat of trial and error.
There are Issues.
If you only play new popular games, and buy them on steam (and not GOG which is a platform that's far more aligned with the linux way of thinking), sure. But i've got plenty of old steam games that have issues, or require me to muck around with custom control stuff, have warnings that they might not be fully supported, ...
I love that we're all moving to linux to be free, and then be using steam iso GOG XD.
Please let me know if you find good documentation. I want to make the jump off of windows, but honestly I'm scared it will just cause a ton of frustration
Honestly, check https://www.protondb.com/ and look for the games you want to play, it will let you know how well they work out of the box by just installing them on steam and hitting play. The reality is that it very much depends on what games you want to play, if you like CoD and other competitive multiplayer you're unfortunately in the missing 10%, but for most cases you should be fairly well covered.
It’s very strange.
Most games will just launch, no problems. But then you’ll get one title like the above poster has, that just refuses to launch no matter what you do.
Most of the times there’s a work around on ProtonDB that will get you running in a few minutes. But sometimes it feels like, or is the case, where the developers actively prevent the game from launching on Linux.
I previously played with just Steam and there's basically one setting to enable - allowing the install of non-native games - and then (for supported games) it's pretty much the same as Windows. In some cases you need to select the Proton version but generally using "latest" does the trick. There are games that require Proton-GE to work. These were essentially ones where Valve's Proton version doesn't have workarounds for various DRM etc (likely because doing so would get them in trouble). On Steam Deck this is done by pretty much going into the local Appstore in "desktop mode" to install. Other distros may vary.
For non-Steam games it's a bit more of a pain, and can vary widely by game. I've installed a ton either just by running the Windows installer from Wine or scripts provided by Lutris.
Honestly if you've got the cash and want to try things, grab a Deck and give that a shot. If it works for you, take the leap to Linux on PC. Alternatively on PC, add/resize a disk and go dual-boot. The guided installers on Ubuntu variants generally make this pretty easy.
I think you've gotten some good replies here.
My comment isn't meant to scare away people, but to keep our feet on the ground. Linux gaming has made amazing progress. If you play recent, mainstream games, it'll be very well documented, and most things will work, unless they're explicitly made to not work (such as certain anti cheat systems).
If you play lesser known indie games, really old games, or more specific things (not sure how good VR support is?), you'll quickly encounter issues that may or may not be well documented. Also, in another reply thread to my post, someone commented a game not working because he has multiple monitors on linux. Stuff like that is also still happening.
So it can be really decent, but know that you might encounter issues. Give it a try and see if it works for the games that are the most important for you :).
protondb
I am genuinely interested in helping here, can you list a few titles here?
Also the whole compatibility statistic is a misnomer, not accounting for windows games and applications that are now only supported with Wine and Proton. Windows 11 doesn't have 100% windows compatibility either.
It's just my experience when playing around with bazzite on my legion go.
But look at the other replies, there are people mentioning issues they encounter (like one guy replying a game not working because he's using multiple monitors. If that's breaking games on linux... that's a far better description of the current state than the title of this thread).
And some of the other replies here are "launch steam, press play"...
And i'll give you a quick example of what i encountered: i thought of giving visual pinball a go on my legion go. It's a free project, not on steam. Checked lutris, it was on there, but an ancient version, not kept up to date. But since the latest version, they have an actual linux build, gave that one a go, and had to manually tinker with it expecting a symlink for a certain dll to exist, but bazzite is fedora based, and uses a different convention for that dll than other distros, so had to manually make a symlink so the game could find it.
I'm a programmer, the above is an hour of frustration until i have solved it, i can manage. But that's an example of what i encounter. I've got some older games in my steam library that have warnings that there are controller issues with them, ...
And that is just the linux experience. Wrong distro? it might not work. Multiple screens? It might not work. The latest hardware? You'll never guess it, but it might not work. It's tuesday? It might not work.... I'm amazed with proton etc... how much progress linux gaming has made, but we have to keep our feet on the ground, and be honest with ourselves. If we act as if we're already there, while we're not. How will we actually get where we need to get if everyone acts as if it's good enough already?
Gaming on Linux is like gaming on Windows 20 years ago when you spent more time just trying to get the fucking game to run than actually playing the game.
I got an error trying to launch a BF2 expansion that told me to contact the nearest rendering developer.
I think you've gotten some good replies here.
My comment isn't meant to scare away people, but to keep our feet on the ground. Linux gaming has made amazing progress. If you play recent, mainstream games, it'll be very well documented, and most things will work, unless they're explicitly made to not work (such as certain anti cheat systems).
If you play lesser known indie games, really old games, or more specific things (not sure how good VR support is?), you'll quickly encounter issues that may or may not be well documented. Also, in another reply thread to my post, someone commented a game not working because he has multiple monitors on linux. Stuff like that is also still happening.
So it can be really decent, but know that you might encounter issues. Give it a try and see if it works for the games that are the most important for you :).
But what percentage of games that use anticheat?
Probably a somewhat popular opinion in the Linux crowd already, but I think we should be pressing companies to find better ways to manage anti-cheats than kernel-level anti-cheat anyway. I'm glad I don't play games like that because I don't like how it works at all.
Absolutely. It's completely possible too by using server side verification and not giving the client info they shouldn't have, but that costs them slightly more in server costs (which aren't significant).
It would also require designing the games code to account for this from the start, so not insignificant but definitely all reasonably possible, as in if there were magically legislation tommorow forcing all new multiplayer games to stop doing invasive anti cheat in a year, it'd be done in 6 months.
Seems about 40% working, I personally only have one game that doesn't jive with Linux. If the game you're playing doesn't work that's the fault of the specific anti-cheat developers because it's obviously possible to do it right.
Sure, but from the end user perspective, it doesn't matter whose fault it is - the result is you can't play a game you otherwise just can in Windows. We know it's their fault.
If you never play any games with anticheat that's fine, but all it takes is one game, and then later another, and then later another, to make Linux a dealbreaker for many gamers. These are not unpopular games.
It can be the whole difference between someone sticking with Windows but itching to make the switch, and someone actually making the switch.
What good is 90% of games working if you have 3 games that you really want to play that don't work?
The rust entry is kinda wrong. Linux friendly community servers do run they just need more active players to be fun
Had a quick look into this, this is the best related info I could find on the situation with Rust.
I think the lack of EAC support is a red flag for some users that there may be more cheaters compared to windows (and more bugs). At least that was my perspective when I was reading the Reddit posts and forum posts at the time.
I mean, you get what you pay for with games that have anti cheat software mandatory.
Well, I'm 90% proud of Linux!
Linux Mint here. I have had only 1 issue with a game on Linux and honestly, it was an easier fix then getting some games working on Windows which I have experienced plenty of as well. Linux really is just as easy as "Install from Steam, play".
Drivers are easy now today too, just like Windows. Honestly, if you gamed on Windows, you have all you need to game on Linux.
I've found Bazzite and Arch-based distros like SteamOS tend to fare better when it comes to gaming (probably due to their different update model compared to Mint), but if what you're after is stability and familiarity and don't play super new games, Mint's awesome. Glad you're having fun with it :)
I made the switch almost a year ago when they started announcing all the spyware coming to win11. The distro you choose matters a LOT. After several that were buggy and frustrating I landed on Garuda dragonized. Setup was easy with their assistant finding the drivers I needed and I have yet to have any system breaking updates. Better track record than windows TBH. Performance is great, and steam integrates so well with proton that my experience is honestly just as good as windows native. I should probably go make a donation to the Garuda project, now that I'm thinking about it.
Aside from Nvidia, what drivers?
Most accessories are plug and play these days, so Nvidia may have actually been the only one. Not all distros can detect the best Nvidia drivers automatically, and finding and installing the right one can be a pain. Which makes it borderline impossible for a low tech person looking to make the jump to Linux.
Notably, it's also entirely possible that the issues I dealt with were more to do with poor Wayland implementations than drivers. Either way, Garuda has worked beautifully and easily.
if i cant run something at linux i'll just do without it. Might try virtual machine if its something really crucial but might not care to even bother. Fortunately any games i know that will not run are kind of games that i wouldnt want to touch anyway.
That's what I've done. I have a windows VM but I don't even bother spinning it up anymore
I'm not going to throw doubt on the 90% number. Statistics are made up and generally don't mean anything. "90% of games" .... In what context? Games on steam? Games ever made? I don't think I'm going to be playing sierra titles from the 90s.... What about Flash based games that used to run in a browser? Do they count?
I don't know and it doesn't matter.
The only thing I want to say is that the "10%" that don't work are usually pretty popular.
I'd like to see this metric based on average player counts. What percentage of gamers, playing games right now, could play on Linux.
IMO, that would give a much more relevant indication of how viable it is for most gamers to switch to Linux.
I'm still using Windows 10 and no, I didn't buy their extended bullshit. I don't even run the latest version of Windows 10. I also have an update server setup so I don't usually get updates often because I need to go approve them. But I also work in IT and I've seen every social engineering attack type that's been used since the 90s and I know when to not click on something. I haven't needed an anti virus on my personal system in 20 years.
To say I'm not worried about it is an understatement.
If you open it, it mentions the data is from protondb. Which is a database of steam games
And? How does this indicate the daily active player counts for the games supported and not supported?
Half of steam is just hentai or shovelware games anyway
Wouldn't you be playing Sierra games from the 90s in ScummVM whether you were on Linux or Windows anyway?
Idk, I've never tried to run 30 year old games on modern systems.
I'm just not that nostalgic.
I’m still using Windows 10 and no, I didn’t buy their extended bullshit. I don’t even run the latest version of Windows 10. I also have an update server setup so I don’t usually get updates often because I need to go approve them. But I also work in IT and I’ve seen every social engineering attack type that’s been used since the 90s and I know when to not click on something. I haven’t needed an anti virus on my personal system in 20 years.
To say I’m not worried about it is an understatement.
I don't think anybody cares you're proud to use Windows
Neat.
Thank you for your unsolicited opinion.
The only thing I want to say is that the “10%” that don’t work are usually pretty popular.
Yeah, like I'm glad Linux support is increasing among games, but my main daily driver game (Genshin) still doesn't support it 🤷 And I don't think Hoyoverse will be spending work on Linux support when they are raking in so much cash from their millions of players. From what I can see Linux usage hovers around 0.3% in China, and that's Hoyo's main market.
In my opinion this the unique milestone linux has to achive to be declared as a total winner vs windows, in the near future I would like to see non tech industries using linux instead of microsoft spyware.
There's a chance it will happen outside the USA.
Deciding to send to the landfill every PC sold after 2018 is a decision that they saw analyzing only numbers from big American corporations. "Anyway they lease the computers and have a refresh every 3-5 years"
But the rest of the world?
Here in Italy I still see people on Windows 7
When I traveled in southeast Asia I saw people using windows XP
Or Brazil, where the import taxes make a windows 11 compatible PC ultra expensive
Regular people and small businesses , especially outside the USA won't simply buy a new PC just because Microsoft and Intel needed the line to go up.
Even in the USA, although probably not at the rate of other countries, a lot of individuals (especially ones who don't have enough disposable income or are retirees) will also keep their system configs no matter what Microsoft says.
If we could get just one of the big tech suites to support it, I think that would help to finally break the dam and get some serious migration.
Mechanical/civil engineering software, music production, and digital art. Those are the big ones.
Tech-idiot, here, but Linux-curious and running Windows 10 with an ardent refusal to change it to 11.
I know there are a ton of different versions of Linux, 'Ubuntu' and such, but I don't know jack about any of them... which would you recommend that's best suited to someone who's only ever used Windows? Looking for the most idiot-proof option. Gaming and office style work are primary use.
Emphasis on the idiot proof. I am really anxious about switching from fear of jacking up my computer, but am so sick of Window's bullshit... probably as good a time to dive in now than any point going forward.
Tbh it actually doesn’t matter that much. There’s like a million different distros, but really there’s like 3 base distros (yes Linux nuts, this is an oversimplification) of Debian, Fedora, and Arch. Ubuntu has gotten a lot of hate lately for their choice of forced package manager, but it’s probably fine. It’ll matter way more to you what desktop environment you select. I’d recommend looking into Bazzite for gaming. It’s based on fedora and it has a bunch of gaming stuff built in, but also does great for anything else. It’s made to be the steamOS for anything not a steam deck. Go with KDE for a windows-like desktop experience.
For gamers who are newcomes to Linux, Ubuntu (or Debian) should be a hard pass. Linux gaming is advancing too fast for the 2-3 year gap between LTS versions to not matter, and trying to work around the stable (outdated) packages is typically what ends up breaking installs.
Listen, there's dozens of Linux users on Void, Slackware and Gentoo. Dozens! Especially the ones wanting to run the latest games. Can't just leave all of them out.
The problem with bazzite is it's just an objectively worse option then cachyOS if your using your PC exclusively to game.
Immutable distros and the lack of aur can be such a massive pain in the fucking ass if you play games with a lot of community tools.
Almost exclusively every community tool I've ever seen for any game only ever supports Arch and never anything else. So while you can use other things, it sucks to have to compile it all yourself every f****** update.
lol, lots of folks responding to me doing the exact thing i was warning about. Honestly, just pick one that seems like it offers what you're looking for.
If you want it to feel kind of familiar to windows, pick KDE as your desktop environment. you can have this in pretty much any distro, some make it easier to set as part of the install process.
If you want it to be harder to fuck up, but with less flexibility for customization or being on the bleeding edge of support, pick an immutable distro like bazzite
If you wan full flexibility and the added danger and complexity that brings, go for an arch-based distro. lot of great comments below too with actually good details and not just "people are dumb for using X, they should use Y because i'm smarter" - specifically dubyakay and Holytimes are offering some great details.
Dude, we don't know what you just said. Lol
As someone who went through something similar, Linux Mint is a really great option. Based off Ubuntu so lots of software, cinnamon desktop environment for a windows familiar feel and layout, and stable releases.
If you want a windows-like experience, Linux Mint is hard to beat. It will feel very familiar.
If you enjoy gaming (which I’m assuming you do, considering the article) then maybe Bazzite would be a good option. It comes with GPU drivers (which have historically been a giant pain in the ass for Linux) ready to go. It’s an immutable distro, which is… Contentious in the Linux community. It means you won’t be able to accidentally break your OS, but it also means it isn’t as customizable. The newer users appreciate the safety net, but the experienced power users see it as overly restrictive coddling.
It also pisses off new users frequently when they start to try to use any community tools for most games... Bazzite is a fucking nightmare for gaming because of it. It's God damn funny counter productive issue.
The steam deck has the same problem to be fair.
Also historically is right, installing drivers has been trivial on every distro I can possibly think of for the last fuck, almost 20 years.
There have been one click gui installers for fucking ever at this point. Lol
For gaming, you can't go wrong with Bazzite. It's meant for gaming to mostly just work out of the box, so you likely won't need to tinker with anything.
It's that tinkering that introduces stability risks. Adding third-party package repositories and trying to install newer software on top of older LTS distros is what tends to end up breaking them.
Depends on how much you care about security. Some distros are still very focused on "I operate my desktop in my locked house and don't expect police to knock" use cases. If you're chill with typing in a disk encryption password on boot you can turn that on, but getting a seamless secure boot+tpm decrypt is pretty challenging.
And then if that is what you want, people will of course happily tell you what a stupid insecure idea that is because Intel or Microsoft or something.
To answer your question broadly: I found arch/endeavor to be easier to secure and have a single set of solid instructions. OpenSuse and fedora both had multiple mediocre and deeply iffy sets of instructions, but for basic setup and use they are easier to use. OpenSuse bricked several times, fedora was far far far more stable for me but you'll hear countless people with the opposite story. I don't care for Ubuntu.
The bigger impact past setup is the desktop environment. You pick gnome (Ubuntu, fedora, endeavor) if you hate yourself and think some random dev 5000 miles away can make decisions for you better than you can. You pick KDE (fedora, suse, endeavor) if you want a nice windowsesque experience. You pick cosmic (popos, derived from Ubuntu) if you want to try something new that might suck. There are others but they are mostly if you want a super cut down experience.
People have recommended mint for new users for at least a decade or so. Please just don't. It's super out of date.
Rule 1 you do not get better instructions, manuals and documentation then arch and it's family. Full stop. It's great
How new is your computer?
I found Pop!_OS worked out of the box fine on my new desktop.
Mint had problems, but worked fine on my older computers.
Back up any important software (like, on a separate drive or online). Get a couple flash drives. Try out mint, popos, bazzite. They're all free so it doesn't matter that much if you don't like one.
I don't recommend trying to dual boot on one drive because windows is a rude room mate.
I am running Pop!_OS, too. Really easy to get in. For most parts entering code isnt needed. And when its just installing packages.
For Singleplayergames i dont have any problems. Its just install and play.
If someone just multiplayer games it can be hard time. Many anticheat wont work
It's really easy and quick to install a distro so you can just test them out. Get three you think you'd like, try em out, you'll probably like all of them, but you get to pick your fav.
There is no "best", just "best for you".
If gaming is your focus and you just want to go into Linux without research, I'd start with Ubuntu or Mint for a couple weeks. If you're liking it, check out some others, but don't be surprised if you go back to Ubuntu or Mint simply because you found them easy and working just fine. There's no wrong choice, just lots of good ones. It is all up to how you like it with no anxiety of making a bad choice 😁
If you need a computer that's reliable for office work, use Debian, if you want a more console-like experience and less likely it'll break your computer, use bazzite, if you want to be able to use new hardware, the moment it's released to the market have the best compatibility with all games and software and the widest range of supported hardware and software use cachyOS.
Debian is stable because it updates so slowly. It makes sure everything works under pain of death. So having compatibility issues, new hardware being supported, having to do weird little things for a less than popular application is pretty normal. But if it works, it's literally the most stable thing you can possibly put on a computer.
Bazzite it's kind of your middle ground. It's up to date in 95% of all cases while support. Basically everything but it is immutable which makes it hard to tinker with or change things should you need to. Which is both a benefit and a downside. Does mean you're less likely to break your computer while you're learning on the flip side.
CachyOS is based on Arch the most up-to-date core that you can have for any computer. It's what steamos is based on in many other bleeding edge options. It has a focus on hardware support, gaming support, software support doing so as up-to-date as physically possible. If you need something to be supported, it's more likely to be supported here than anywhere else. While the old joke Arch likes to randomly break itself isn't untrue. It's also about 15 years out of date in how true it is. Modern Arch rarely ever breaks and when it does so will every other option barring debian almost exclusively.
Realistically speaking, when it comes to actually installing and using any of these options day-to-day, they're completely identical. Typically, if you have the ability to rub two brain cells together, read and have even a 5th grade level of critical thinking skills. If you're planning on gaming as your main use of your computer not work, not art, just gaming, just use cachyOS.
There is one last thing to be aware of when choosing any option. If it's based on Arch, it's going to have the best documentation in the most user-friendly possible way. Arch has the single. Best, wiki there is. Which for a new user can be a godsend if you actually know how to read.
despite your weirdly hard-line anti-bazzite stance elsewhere, this is an excellent expansion on some of the other comments in this thread.
Most good Linux releases (distros) have a Live CD/usb boot option. Do try that out! It doesn't mess with your existing setup and you can see how it feels.
FWIW, my daily driver is Fedora. It has a good balance of cutting edge and stability. Great gaming support and solid office productivity.
Had no major issues with Steam games so far on Linux mint, but I like owning my games, so I buy as much as I can from GOG, and Lutris and Heroic both have not given me exactly easy experiences :L
Heroic has gone pretty well for me. I've found a few exceptions that are solved by the same trick though. If you're running a game like The Thaumaturge, and it doesn't boot on the GOG version, take a look at SteamDB. SteamDB's entry for the game has a "depot" for VC 2019, VC 2022, and DirectX 2010. If you run winetricks on The Thaumaturge via Heroic and install those three dependencies, it works.
You own your games on steam just as much as you do on gog for like 99% of them. The majority of steam games have no form of drm.
Out of my 2000 ish steam games less then 50 actually use drm that ties them to steam and those are basically only triple A games that arnt on gog anyways.
Just remove the overlay and the VAST majority of games just work with out steam entirely.
I've converted all my gaming to linux including vr and couldn't be happier! Even hardware works flawlessly these days with the exception of VR at times. I'm still struggling to get No Man's Sky to work on my quest 3 and linux VR and thats really the only thing I'm missing but it seems close to working just needs more fiddling.
Highly recommend Bazzite for people looking for a linux gaming distribution. It's immutable which can complicate some things but it's mostly plug and play and impossible to ruin due to immutable nature.
I've installed Bazzite myself. What do you mean by immutable? I ran into an issue trying to install VPN the other night. Something about the fs being read only. I'm still yet to look into it.
That's what immutable means in this case. You can't modify outside of your user directory, at least not directly, on immutable distros. The files outside of your ~ home path are read-only. You can override that a few different ways, however. If your VPN has a flatpak, that's the easiest way to get it up and running. If you don't care about more space (minimal, if you only do it for your VPN) being used, you may be able to follow your VPN's fedora instructions, replacing dnf with rpm-ostree. That will likely allow you to install as you can in other distros.
Feel free to ask any questions if you have any, I'm happy to help.
It is a perfect baseline OS. It gets people connected to Steam faster and easier to Windows, which is the main access to most games.
Biggest obstacles to venturing out in Linux is the documentation for everything is not built or assuming normie users. The default assumption of competancy does not exist in Windows manuals.
But even so using Homebrew in Bazzite is no more complex than in Windows.
Been a while since I used windows but afaik docs are much worse on that side of things. At least on Linux you find some command or smt that could fix your issue, many windows problems are unsolvable and completely undocumented. There isn't even a centralized log system like journalctl on windows so every error is just an alert pop up that says nothing or just complete silence.
Cachy does everything bazzite does but better less complicated and more friendly to new users coming from windows.
Immutable distros just add endless headache for new users and are a pain in the ass to look things up for if you don't explicitly understand what your os is.
I use cachy on my laptop but I wouldn't call friendly an arch based distro that during setup asks the user "which of those 19 desktop environment do you want? Choose wisely only one"
It doesn't even have a gui to install new software (at least, I am not an expert, I chose hyprland and it didn't install that, and when I manually installed KDE Discover and the GNOME software manager, they only show and install flatpak apps - but because I'm not an expert I might have messed something up)
Immutable distros just add endless headache for new users
I disagree here. Sure it makes copy/paste computing a bit harder but it also prevents newbies from working themselves into a dysfunctional operating system which happens way more often than you'd think. People open a port or set some system variable for one thing and never set it back breaking everything else. With immutable system new users are forced into sustainable, reversible and transparent solutions.
The issue is that immutable linux is still pretty new so some mutable solutions aren't adapted in immutable ways yet but if you're just gaming you should never be on that side of the bleeding edge anyway.
There are still lots of reasons that stop people from jumping 100% into Linux. Gaming is less and less one of them.
True, but network effects are important to that.
There were huge numbers of people that wouldn't move to Linux because it didn't support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.
There are lots of people that won't move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that's not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn't support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.
Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we're not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that's already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they'd need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.
While this is awesome we still need to have the same performance on Windows. Yes, some games run better through proton for some reason, but that's the minority. Hopefully, proton will not be needed for new games in the future and we get native builds like CS2.
Tried switching to Mint yesterday, it's a struggle as the guide kinda failed to mention some detail that i have to google a bit, and the result is it fail to boot(not a bootable drive error). Might try again tonight or this weekend. Honestly i can't see mass adoption if it's this PITA to get it working(not plug and play like windows), unless it's provided by the manufacturer.
Edit: so one of a few struggle i have is the guide failed to mention i need to create an efi partition, i have to google that for the recommended size.
Another is the "primary" and "logical" partition. I have no idea which to chose so i put everything on primary, not sure if this cause the issue.
Then another one is what should i mount my "rest of the partition" with, i googled it and all the answer given is "you should probably read on what is all this about to get a sense what you should do" when i just want some simple answer to what should i do with that, like in Windows, C is for the OS, and you put everything on D or something like that. It's akin to asking me to read the whole physics chapter when i just wanna know what speed a horse could run.
Then the final nail in the coffin for the session is "not a bootable drive". Then i just plug in my windows ssd and go on with my day.
There was not an option to autopartition the drive you picked? Having to manually make efi partition sounds suspect to me.
The only thing you should need is to be able to identify what is a partition and what is a drive. Then pick the drive you want. Then the wizard should ask if you wanna wipe it and autopartition it.
Regarding the 'logical partition' stuff: Unless you are using a legacy bios system, rather than UEFI, you can change the drives partitioning scheme to GPT instead of MBR, before partitioning it. Then you should not be dealing with logical partitions any more. Then everything will just be called partition.
You can do that from inside windows or from a bootable linux stick.
Who knows why your drive is set to use MBR. Maybe your drive was used in an old computer or windows set it for compatability reasons.
Worth mentioning is that your uefi might have a legacy compatability setting sometimes called CSM. Sometimes called legacy bios. If it is turned on it may be expecting MBR disks. I would turn it off and only use it if really needed.
I tried installing it on a new ssd so to separate window and linux stuff(and also upgrade from a bunch of very old hdd), the guide recommend me to select "something else" and create the partition accordingly. I follow their official guide here
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html
At the time i'm installing, i still have my old drive plugged in so in fear of messed thing up badly and had my whole data erased, i chose to manage the partition myself. Should i unplug everything other than the new drive, and have the installer do it automatically?
Theres literally an option in the linux mint installer to just wipe the drive and install, and it creates all partitions for you, if you dont understand what a partition is. You literally dont have to do anything except click the bubble and choose next.
There's some information missing. What is saying "not bootable drive"? You should make a primary partition on the target drive.
Also, even if you don't have tpm, you may have some sort of secure boot preventing non-windows drives from booting.
What is saying "not bootable drive"? You should make a primary partition on the target drive.
When booting, after the bios screen it give me a black screen with that message, and refuse to boot.
Also, even if you don't have tpm, you may have some sort of secure boot preventing non-windows drives from booting.
How do i navigate this? My machine is build around 2012-14 so not sure what its in. I had someone build it for me so i'm not sure what's in it.
Idk what was your problem, but mine was not reading on filesystems when the choice occured and not knowing how awesome BTRFS is with incrimental backups.
The windows installer is exactly as complicated and even uses the same termino of primary and logical etc.
You literally just click the next button like 7 times. Ignore everything and it sets it all up correctly by default.
Why would you screw with advanced options for your first go. You would have the exact same problems if you did that on windows.
This just sounds like you purposefully made it harder for yourself so you could removed.
Do you have anything else to add? Because being unhelpful doesn't solve my issue, but to inflate your ego. Others tried, and i acknowledged my problem and will try other way to see if it helped. And you're here to removed about my unsuccessful attempt.
I have a 3090 and heard nvidia gpus dont do very well for Linux gaming if anyone wants to quell my fears and get me off Windows
I have a 3070 and it runs the majority of games better than windows. The "Nvidia doesnt work good for linux" statement has become dated. Nvidia has become much better about giving support to other platforms, I think it has alot to do with being flexible for the ai market
I'm on a 5090 and bazzite has (in the majority of games and apps) just worked.
been running an nvidia gpu since 2019, literally switched from windows right as cyberpunk 2077 was being launched, and trust me, it was possible back then, and it's even more performant now.
I have a brand-new lenovo workstation with an nVidia RTX card. Works great. Vulcan calculates the shader cache on first run of a game that takes a minute to run through, but after that the game runs great. I'm on tumbleweed, the only issue I had past week was kernel moved ahead but the nvidia driver wasn't ready right away. Just meant booting the old kernel in the boot menu till that all syncs up
As long as you run the proprietary nvidia drivers, performance is more or less noise for a given driver version. There IS some annoyance with slower releases for drivers to Linux but... nvidia has had much bigger problems with new driver releases over the past year.
The big issue is if you run the open source community drivers. And... if you are spending leather jacket money and then using low performance drivers... you are an idiot. Because Mistah J already has the metrics and money he wants and doesn't care if you actually use your card after buying it.
I have a 3090ti. Made the switch to Linux last year after reading that most games work. Never had a problem with the card, it works flawlessly out of the box (using the proprietary Nvidia drivers).
It still was a bit of a learning curve for me though... Using steam they work without a hitch. If they are not on steam, I found that the easiest (for me) is to install them using lutris, and then adding them to steam as non-steam games and using Proton to run them.
I don't play that many games though, so ymmv
Desktop on a 3060 Ti is doing fine. Never ran Windows on it to compare though
My rtx2080ti runs perfectly in linux and fine on games, thats fairly old card too. My kids computers use gtx1050's and they are also running every game including Roblox just fine.
Check my post history I repeat this so often I'm getting tired of it, sorry, but basically 2080ti since it's out, been gaming nearly daily on it, from AAA to indie, from "flat" to VR and... it just works. I just followed https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and that's it, no tinkering.
The only real issue is hdr in my experience, runs fine through gamescope usually but I've found the proton only option (expose Wayland and the like through proton_ge) technically work but the colours are washed out (and yeah, I have all the dxvk hdr stuff there). Dlss and frame gen work perfectly fine, HDR through gamescope does work as well for most games, bl4 has weird dlss artifacts in linux for some reason but that's the notable standout to me. Been running a 4070ti for the last year for reference, I do intend to go amd at some point but nvidia works fine.
I have a 3090. As long as you have the correct drivers and a quality emulator (I think I use glorious eggroll's experimental proton branch) quality is quite comparable.
I have a 3090. As long as you have the correct drivers and a quality emulator (I think I use glorious eggroll's experimental proton branch) quality is quite comparable.
Good, gaming was the last thing keeping me on windows, once I find a distro that's compatible with my laptop hardware I'll move to Linux completely
Unless you have something truly obscure, I can confidently say any of them will do at this point. I recommend Pop!OS myself, others will disagree. Pop! has a download for AMD hardware and a separate for NVidia GPU-equipped machines. Try it out on a USB today! YOU CAN DO EEET!
I second this as well. It's my first distro and it's been a good experience.
Bazzite seems a famous option for gaming
Rip Microsoft
Some shitty games will hold out, but as long as the majority works better under Linux, I'm fine with it.
I love to hear it, but only about 70% of mine work on Linux, so I'm stuck with a dual boot. 99% Linux is better than no Linux, at least.
but only about 70% of mine work on Linux
Have you tried wine bottles? I had real problems getting anything to work right till I found that app.
Yeah, I've tried all of the compatibility programs.
Some will run using those, but in a very, very sluggish way.
It's great that the number of games playable on Linux is rising. But the lack of mods is stopping me from switching. I tried to play Civilization 6 and it's hard to play it without many quality of life improvement mods.
You can mod games on Linux though, some just need a bit of fiddling, just look it up. Never tried Civ 6 but people say it's possible.
Okay, but how far back does this go? It can’t really be that all games in existence that ran on Windows is being counted. Is it?
The chart is based on ProtonDB, which covers all Steam games.
When you go far enough back less games work on windows then Linux just because you need emulation and compatibility software anyways for both of them.
And they tend to be better support on Linux.
Which is always a fun time.
...Wine Is Not an Emulator
First paragraph indicates that it's pulling from ProtonDB's list of games:
However, the most recent stats from ProtonDB (via Boiling Steam) highlight that we are edging towards a magnificent milestone. The latest distilled data shows that almost 90% of Windows games now run on Linux.
You completely glossed over the question he was asking.
90% of Windows games.....but, from how far back? Are we talking 1988 with Windows 1.0? Are we talking 1995 onwards with Windows 95? Are we talking modern Windows with Windows 10 onwards? Are we strictly talking Windows 11?
There are a lot of logical jumping off points for where you can start measuring, each with a logical arguement with why you start there, but also with multiple logical arguements for why thats a bad idea.
I use a quest 2 headset through my desktop via desktop streamer into steam VR into VRchat. Would this all work on linux? it's already a pain on windows.
This page says it works, but it also might be a pain to setup.
I think it used to work officially, but last I heard they dropped official support.
I think virtualdesktop works, but don't quote me on that.
The thing is I swapped, whenever I start using something and I dont want it to become popular because everything somehow gets ruined when it gets popular, it ends up getting popular. Im usually a late "early" adopter.
Basically if I stopped being put off by it and felt I wanted to switch, I think it may be viable for many more ppl in a year or two, or already, I swapped like almost a year ago, I typically don't like stuff til it feels intuitive, instantly good.
A bit sceptical of this number. Most popular games have some form of anti cheat which the game not run on Linux. Some other games sometimes have weird bugs that do not occur on windows. - source: I am on Linux 😩
When you are talking about "popular" games, you mean service games that are often some kind of multiplayer games. Each of them binds a lot of players and is big and popular, indeed. But these are only a few compared to the amount of games that have been released in the past decade. Let alone released games from 2024 that are listed on imdb.com are 1551 Imdb.com
So yes, I can imagine 90% is right since the most games are no service games and do not require some shitty kernel level anti cheat.
For bugs: I have no idea since I only use linux for non-gaming tasks.
Some games with Kernel Level Anticheat do work on Linux, because the KLA doesn't actually check if it has access. Drag can imagine that the next generation technology of Linux gaming will be add-ons to WINE that lie to KLAs and tell them they have access. Like how yt-dlp lies to youtube and says it's a browser.
Corporations will claim using these programs violates terms of service and is grounds for a ban. Players will respond to the bans by submitting refund requests for games they got banned from. And if we're lucky, Valve will respond to the refund requests by demanding corporations support Linux in some form, whether it be removing the KLA or making it work on Linux.
This is by amount of games, not by player count. Most games (including non-popular ones) are not live service multiplayer games but small indie titles that do not try to break Linux compatibility on purpose. So yes, 90% sounds plausible.
I am immediately skeptical of the 90% claim. There are a lot of Windows games, going back decades! Not even 90% of those work on Windows, let alone Linux!
Actually, once you go far enough into the past, Linux has better support for legacy Windows software than modern Windows does. The claim might be true if they're counting a lot of shovelware.
A lot of those older games that don't run on Windows DO run on Linux now.
And many games haven't been assessed either. I plugged my Steam account into ProtonDB, and apparently 51% of my games can be made to run perfectly on Linux, 10% are various levels of broken, but the remaining 39% has no information. I guess it's because I have many indie games in my library.
need some support from anti-cheat
its fine, cause no user program should run in the kernel. unless its a driver.
Not all games are created equally.
Lots of off topic comment threads so I don't mind adding my own: going to make the Linux dive here soon and just had a general question on VR. I recently got a mostlySteam setup (sensors / controllers) with a Vive Pro 2 headset. Overall is VR supported? Is it limited to certain headsets? I was thinking of getting a Bigscreen Beyond 2, if that makes a difference. Any info appreciated.
Usually is limited by headset/controllers support. Take a look at Linux VR Adventures Wiki for compatibility.
Thanks!
nice
I can't wait to be banned for playing online from linux
Can confirm the viable gaming. Some need fairly annoying workarounds that require some regular fiddling to adjust (looking at you EA/Origin with your silly launcher), but in the end it’s definitely playable.
Does anyone know if it's possible to run VR games on Linux? I'd love t ditch Windows for the gaming pc....
Has support for DP 2.1 or HDR in Wayland made any improvements yet? I tried Pop_OS and had lots of issues with this
https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/816
I’ve been following this GitHub issue waiting for this change to make it into the next nvidia driver release but still suspect this won’t address HDR. Obviously first world problems for high end hardware but it’s one of the last pieces holding me back from trying Linux on my desktop
HDR
HDR works on KDE and GNOME desktop environments. KDE is currently the better choice if HDR support is important.
As for software:
Can't speak for DP 2.1 since I have an AMD GPU and no hardware that uses DP 2.1 (yet).
Appreciate the info! I had been trying out the new Cosmic DE that ships with pop os and I’m guessing that’s still lacking HDR but did feel very performant. I’ll have to see if switching is worth the trade off once they nvidia driver update gets released
Linux gaming is good enough that I would consider not getting the Playstation 6 if I didn’t have kids and didn’t want to watch basketball through the nba league pass.
I’m trying to get my kids to play with the Steam Deck, but it’s honestly still not as good as a Playstation for such a use.
Still it’s going the right way.
I tried Solus back in 2018 with Wine. The only game that didn't work properly was Mass Effect Andromeda (if memory serves correctly); it kept crashing to the desktop anywhere between a few minutes in to 2 hours.
I didn't want to have to do debugging both at work and outside of work, so I switched back to Windows, and it worked fine after that.
I would be willing to try again maybe, if I can find the will and time over the weekend to setup a hybrid Linux and Windows implementation on my PC - does anyone have any good recommendations?
Hmm... protondb says it's playable, so worth trying maybe?
Also, I'd recommend not dual-booting your PC because it would be a pain.
Eh I've already played it on Windows - it was some time back.
I don't think I can fully abandon Windows as I have some work software that is only meant to run in Windows, so either I dual boot or get a separate machine for work things.
This is great but my MSI laptop wasn't very compatible with Linux.
Like how? You may need some proprietary firmwares.
That's great and all but the two things that hold me back from going 100% Linux are kernel-level anticheat, and lack of graphics card acceleration in virtual environments. Once we have those I'll be happy.
Visual Basic added to Libre Office would be really nice too, but I get that it's not particularly feasible.
Not having Malware Anti-Cheat support is a good thing. Hopefully it will continue this way until people realize that it's not worth giving shitty companies like EA access to your online banking passwords just to pretend to shoot 11-year-olds in the head.
Agreed. I should have said letting the anticheat THINK it has kernel access, the same way WINE makes Windows programs think they're on a Windows machine. I know this is an oversimplification and frankly I don't even know what kernel-level looks like, but there has got to be a workaround that doesn't drain resources too much.
Shut your mouth about VB.... 😁
Why? I have written a lot of custom macros and created forms to assist filling data fields in large spreadsheets. I have written macros that can open a CSV, comb through the contents and pick out the data I need to fill workbooks.
I'm not saying I'm especially tied to VB itself, I actually find it to be a pretty stupid language, but I do miss being able to write my own functions and effectly use Excel as a pre built GUI for whatever I'm trying to do. If there's an alternative in Libre Office that I'm missing please point it out.
dfsdfsdfsdf
FYI: That's more Windows games than run in Windows!
WTF? Why? Because a lot of older games don't run in newer versions of Windows than when they were made! They still run great in Linux though 👍
There is like a good chunk of an entire decade’s worth of games that can’t be played on PC legitimately due to either expired licenses for music (e.g. EA Trax) or lack of support for older, disc-based DRM (SecuROM etc.).
That’s before factoring older titles that no longer work due to arbitrary changes to DirectX and the Windows kernel, which break backwards compatibility.
Huh wonder whether shadows of destiny pc port works on proton.
Might be worth checking ProtonDB, or WineDB if it's not on steam.