Its time to switch to Linux!
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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In the last month, I made a genuine effort to switch to Linux Mint, then Bazzite, as my daily driver. Mint could not run Hitman 3 for unexplained reasons. Bazzite frequently got graphical corruption issues when returning from sleep. Neither could run niche indie games and gave no error codes.
I knew I’d be doing some tweaking to get Linux working how I wanted, but it was missing configuration as well as being unreliable by default. I like the principle of using a non-MS OS, but I need it to work.
Yeah I've always been a very casual Linux enthusiast (key word is casual) since I was a teen. Setup and things "just working" out of the box have absolutely never been the case, even in 2024, and even though people like to say it does. In an ideal situation on an ideal computer with ideal hardware, you don't have to tweak anything. But for most people, there are going to be some annoying issues and tweaks you have to work through.
If a Linux system has already been set up and tested for the end user, then it is a great alternative. But in my experience, these systems absolutely never work perfectly out of the box and it takes some technical know how to get to that point. Ever since Windows 7, Windows has "just worked" out of the box... especially because it comes pre-loaded on your device.
I have been dealing with some issues with my Bluetooth module in Windows. I had eventually solved the problem, but the fix seemed to have reverted itself somewhat recently. Annoyed, I thought I'd finally commit to a switch to Linux on my daily driver since my laptop doesn't support Win 11. Well, I chose Linux Mint since it doesn't use Wayland which for some reason has poor compatibility with my common Logitech mouse. Everything had been fine but then I found instead of the Bluetooth module crashing like in Windows, which just makes me have to reset the module, the entire system crashes in Linux instead and requires me to reboot it. Frustrating to say the least.
And then, as you've brought up, gaming on Linux is just generally not a good experience unless you have all of your games on Steam.
Linux can be awesome but it's absolutely not for everyone...especially people with less technical knowledge (unless it is set up for them), people who want something to "just work" without any fiddling, or people who do a lot of gaming outside of Steam.
I was lazy and went with pop!_os. Required minimal tweaking, and so far there are very few games I couldn't run
Same for me, running for a few months and all my steam games work great. I had to install some extra software to run my Logitech mouse and get the scroll wheel to be more sensitive. Otherwise though it's been a great experience so far.
Although I'm an IT professional, I really don't want extra work when I'm sitting down to game. So POP! has been great overall for my use case, with the bonus of Linux for any coding projects I tackle otherwise.
Really bummed your experience has been like that! :(
In my humble experience, I've gotten almost everything new and old to run via Steam, or my GoG games to run via Heroic. Vermintide 2, Metro: Exodus, Enter the Gungeon, X-COM 2, BattleTech, MechWarrior 5, I even got old stuff like Sims 2 working flawlessly via Bottles.
Trying to install stuff like you would on Windows by running installers manually seems to not be so great though...could that have been it perhaps?
Using front-ends that manage Proton / WINE for you makes the process so much easier.
I ditched Windows entirely because Vermintide kept BSODing my Win10 install, and it wouldn't even let me "refresh" the OS. Fully doing work and play on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed these days and the only thing I'm REALLY missing is VR.
I knew I had whole folders of indie games that are just a folder with an executable, so I trialed those with Lutris. It needed a huge setup form just to run one of them, and when I finished, it wouldn’t run and gave no errors.
Having that as my experience for, as I said, a whole folder of games, wasn’t really in my interest. It takes too long for the community to say “Hey, I got Assassin’s Creed running! Just use Proton 8.13 beta, and add these 8 command line options”
In my experience with standalone EXE installers and Lutris, the problem is often that Lutris just guesses wrong the name of the game executable after installation is done or can't even guess it.
Personally, every single time I had a problem of installing a game with Lutris from an EXE installer and when starting it afterwards the game goes to "Running" (see the left top list) and then quickly ends with no error, it's Lutris having guessed the game launch EXE incorrectly.
Having started with using Lutris' GoG integration first (were an install script generally takes care of all that) and only later moved to standalone EXE installers, I can see how one would lose hope on the whole thing if they started with the installers since so far for me almost all of such installations failed to give me something that just runs without tweaks afterwards, and for almost all of them the problem was Lutris picking up the wrong launch EXE or even having no launch EXE at all (which gives you a small and easy to miss warning in the Lutris install log at the end of installation).
If you still can, go and check in the game configuration in Lutris for one of those games (it will be in a tab with only a handful of option, not in the last tab with a ton of obscure options) if the launch EXE is present and correct.
The version of Lutris I installed used a file opening GUI to select the exact EXE to run. I was using simple unzipped folders, not installers.
Even if the fault of the game in question ends up being simple:
I am fine with one-time setup configuration for my OS to get preferences right, devices working, and settle myself to my steady workflow. I am not okay with doing laborious one-time setup for every single game I ever try.
Oh yeah, it's still not at the same level of ease of use as Windows.
It's massivelly better if compared to the old days in Linux and, curiously, it's easier for those who in Windows were never "sophisticated" user that did not relly on store frontends to manage the installation for them, but if you're the kind of user of Windows that does actually know what folders and executable files are, it's more complex to get going ~~than~~ in Linux.
Curiously in my experience even Linux native games are way more complex to get working in Linux that the Windows equivalent are in Windows (or even Linux: I have at least one game were the Windows version installs almost flawlessly in Linux whilst the Linux version is a "missing library" nightmare), unless they're recent enough that they come in something like Snap or Flatpack)
If you're using Steam, they use a native Linux client and a custom Proton that has all the settings and presets for their game library.
Everything I bought on Steam works for me under Linux Mint. And almost all my older games, like "Deus Ex" or "Giants: Citizen Kabuto" I can run directly under Wine with the default settings.
I get that, and I like it. When it works. (Hitman 3, which I know works under certain distros/Linux hardware, did not load levels for me on Linux Mint 22) Even on Bazzite, Helldivers 2 needed command line args to avoid a white border around the game in fullscreen.
Plus, much as I like Steam, I like competition, and I buy games off of other stores pretty often. Some of those stores just give you a zip file to download in your web browser.
I was lucky that when I moved to Linux some months ago I got used to install my games from Lutris and Steam, which seems to solve most problems and only maybe 1 game of the 15 or so I tried so far wouldn'twork no matter what.
That said, I and to figure out how to do diagnostics and use Winetricks and my little doc of Tips & Trick cover 5 games (out of about 15) so those are the ones that would work only after tweaking.
I still have weird situations like The Sims 3 from Steam not working but the pirate version I tried working flawlessly on first try (so now I know how to install pirated games with Lutris) which is maybe not the kind of thing the publishers would want people to know, but more often than not things just work.
All this to say that it's way better now than before if you use the kind of tools that wrap Wine (or in the case of Steam, Proton which is a derivative of Wine) with install scripts that will do the necessary game-speciric tweaks for you, but even then you'll need to learn how to diagnose problems and do the tweaks yourself if you want a higher that 60% or so rate of success or if you want to hoist the Skull & Bones and sail the high seas from your Linux Galleon.