this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Real question. Is gaming (not game dev) significantly better than it was 5 years ago on Linux? I really want to switch, but I also really don't want to give up everything "just working" and doing it smoothly when gaming on windows.
I've even considered having 2 PC's for my 4 monitors, and having the middle monitor run windows and the other 3 on a Linux box. I used to use a program that could simulate my mouse moving from one pc to an entirely different one even across windows and Linux, and also share the clipboard. I could try that again.
But if the gaming experience is sufficient and convenient on Linux I might switch entirely.
It's vastly better than it was 5 years ago. You can get an idea by going to protondb.com and looking at games. Basically, most games work out of the box with minimal to no issues. Even most new games work on release without major issues.
The biggest issue is anti-cheat and DRM. That can be a show stopped for some users, but for me it hasn't been an issue.
I switched full time to Linux about 3 months ago, I had been wanting to for a long time since I prefer dev work on Linux and generally hate Windows.
Gaming is nearly as easy on Linux as on windows, especially through steam imo. Almost all games will work right out of the box, just set steam to use proton for any non linux-natve games and it does it. The only game I've had an issue with is cyberpunk 2077, and that was fixed with a few minutes of googling, then pasting a launch config into the settings, now it runs perfectly. One thing to watch out for, no games that use a kernal-level anticheat will work on Linux unless they specifically support it, sucky but those anticheat software makers are coming around to support it slowly.
I actually prefer installing software on Linux to doing it on Windows. Same process for finding software, just Google it and look for stuff that works on Linux. Even proprietary stuff runs natively on Linux sometimes, I personally look for free and open source software as an alternative every time and it usually is better imo. Once you find what you want, it's super easy to install. No need to deal with downloading files, clicking them to install, and all that jazz. Just open a terminal and do "yay -S {package name}" and it'll install. Also makes it very easy to install multiple things at once, especially if you already know what software you want. Cherry on top, updates aren't forced on you. You can update all of your packages with "yay -Syu", or update individual ones if you want, there's a lot of control over it, and you don't need to rely on the app to have its own update tool.
Sometimes there's windows specific software that isn't on Linux, it kind of sucks, but almost everytime I'm able to find free and open source software that's natively Linux compatible and is better than the closed source software I initially wanted. Even with windows-specific software, most things can be run with wine and work just like a native Linux app. Sometimes things don't work on wine, but basically all of them will have free and open source alternatives you can use instead, or there are workarounds that are probably easy to find.
If you wanted to do the 2 PC's you definitely can, I would recommend one PC and just add a Linux partition or hard drive, you then boot into Windows or Linux but don't need a whole new PC. You have to reboot to go between them, but you can access each systems files from the other one (can't run games, but like documents and such). If you do go with 2 PC's though, I recommend using an app called Barrier for the mouse/keyboard sharing. I use it between my PC (Linux) and my work laptop (windows) and it's great, my work laptop stays folded up and I have only one mouse and keyboard on my desk.
I have a 64bit Mac that can't play 32bit Steam games anymore (which is all of them). I'm thinking of switching to Linux specifically for games. What you're saying so I could play whatever on Linux via steam? And Steam isn't a massive pain in the ass to install and configure like it used to be?? Holy shit, that's game changing. Pun intended.
Is Master Chief Collection on Steam? That would be amazing since the only instance of Windows I had decided to change it's own password and essentially lock me out.
Yep! Idk if the apple architecture caused any issues but I highly doubt it. At least on arch Linux it's as easy as "sudo pacman -S steam". It has some dependencies obviously, but after that it'll be installed and you can sign in easy peasy. It'll install proton through the steam downloader too, the only setting you even need to change is steam > settings > compatibility > Enable Steam Play for all other titles; run with proton experimental.
Master chief collection is on steam, and is playable with proton
Dammnn you just made my day! I'm not using my Mac for that. It doesn't have enough storage space on a good day. I have a Windows 10 computer that decided to change it's own password that I'll erase and put Linux on.
Do you have any recommendations on Linux OS? Right now I'm using Fedora but it seems like there are better options out there, especially if playing games.
Avoid Ubuntu, it uses flatpak. Besides that it's really personal preference. I personally love endeavouros, very easy installation process and a lot of desktop environments to choose from. Comes with some helpful initial setup tools too. It's arch Linux based and there's a ton of resources for arch too, but arch does come with a learning curve. Backups are your friend
I'll look into barrier, thanks. I work in the gaming industry (from home, on my own pc) and so I am constantly running games and doing non-gaming tasks on and off so dual booting is not really an option for me. I often need to do normal tasks while games are running too. Which is why I wanted that 2 pc setup I mentioned above.
However I think I might dual boot just to try Linux out with gaming for now (I have a spare ssd I can use to keep it simple) since I see a lot of people saying it's pretty good now. Then if it works out I can just transition to only Linux.
If you have the money for a second PC then I see no reason not to do it. If you want to use the same PC, you can also very easily make a windows virtual machine to do windows specific work in if you have something that doesn't work with wine for whatever reason. A vm won't be able to play the kernal monitoring anticheat games as far as I know, but any miscellaneous programs that may not like or run well on wine can be run there if needed
That's what a lot of Linux people miss. They've been dealing with it for a while already so a lot of them are like "it's so easy!" and then they have to start explaing repos and containers to people and the person just sticks to Windows.
Linux won't capture the users until it can handle an idiot as well as Windows.
I have two hard drives. One dedicated to each Windows and Linux. It maies life easier.
If you play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, it would be better to keep a windows partition for them (overwatch is the only game that I had a good experience on Linux).
I used to play some competitive Apex, I was overjoyed when I heard anti cheat support is available on Linux, and quickly installed it. I tried it a couple of times since then, the most recent being last month - The game is playable but not on a competitive level imho. The smoothness is just not there. Then again this might be because of my low spec hardware.
Games like Valorant just won't work because of their kernel level anticheat. (But hey we have Conter-Strike 2 now)
AAA games run just fine for the most part, its playable and I usually get performance similar to windows.
The steam deck uses a custom Linux distro made by valve specifically for it. So it's at least good enough for gaming that valve trusted it for their mainstream handled gaming PC.
I've got one and tbh it's pretty good. As long as you stick to games that are rated as either verified or playable on steamdeck you'll probably have a good time.