Everyone will have a different experience based on their hardware, distro, and game preferences; But for me Linux has been a far less headache-inducing gaming platform than Windows literally for years at this point.
I have a gaming PC which I planned to setup a linux distro on for almost 2 years now. I just need to find the time to choose which distro, then debloat it, get the wifi, speakers, keyboard working, then install the required Nividia drivers, then optimize it and study wether OC its bios is worth it or no, then test optimal settings and compatibility, then compare my benchmark FPS results to similar ones on the internet, then open Steam and fucking game on brother lets go!
Its mostly there if your ready to dump your League addiction. Proton Db has guides for the games that don’t just work first try and most of the fixes are select a different launch option from a drop down in Steam.
I discovered that Helldivers 1 ran fine on Linux despite having an anti-cheat, because when the anti-cheat fails to launch the game just says “fuck it” and runs anyway. Though other games like PUBG refuse to run when their anti-cheat fails. I love PUBG but not so much that I’m willing to let some shady publisher from the other side of the world run unknown and unrestricted code at the lowest level of my home computer just to play it. That will never be a worthwhile trade.
Ironically, from what I understand (haven’t done direct comparisons myself), a lot of games written for windows run just as well or better on linux.
DOTA 2 is just noteworthy to me because it’s an exception to the “other than competitive games” exception. And while I can’t say for sure that no one is hacking on there, I have yet to see any blatant cases of it (though admittedly it might be difficult to tell in a game where it’s normal for some players to snowball significantly over others).
Ironically, from what I understand (haven’t done direct comparisons myself), a lot of games written for windows run just as well or better on linux.
Yes, Wine/Proton translates DirectX calls to Vulkan calls, and Vulkan is so efficient that native Windows games sometimes run better on Linux than they do on Windows.
I had this mindset for about 2 decades, from when I first played around in OpenSUSE and Compiz back in 2005 up to 2024 when I finally switched because of Windows 10 being put out to pasture by Microsoft. But since I’m now in my early 40s and no longer play competitive games as I used to 15 years ago, I’ve had zero problems with Linux and gaming.
So I totally understand your mindset as I too once thought the same.
Problem with waiting is of course that developers don’t favor linux due to lack of people on linux playing game, so it’s a vicious circle:
not playing on linux because it’s not well supported by games
game devs not making games for linux because not enough players are there.
To be fair, I did find a few very early windows 98/XP’ish games or so hard to get going. There was a period where developers tailored the games very specifically for the OS. But they’re fairly rare.
So far it’s working fine, yeah. No need to choose among a zillion distros someone swears is the best, I know for a fact there are first-party drivers for everything, no need to fiddle around with CLI, it plays everything my graphics card can muster, and I don’t need to worry about game compatibility or whether Nvidia deigned to support my OS.
Windows has a lot of problems, but if you’re just looking to play games without too much complexity… It’s as close to “it just works” as I can imagine getting without switching to a console (or limiting myself to the few games that work on Apple devices, I guess).
Plus, big argument, it’s familiar. You can forgive more annoyances when you’re not learning something new. Humans are just lazy like that.
First and foremost, I do think Windows is the better choice for most people to play games on, mostly due to vendor support.
However, I’d say that a lot of people have some sort of issue with Windows, albeit probably less than they would have with some Linux distributions. I just wanted to express that “without headaches” is a goal that is maybe higher than necessary.
Yea, but the issue is, Windows works because others don’t, like linux. Windows gets preferrential baby treatment from all consumer tech manufacturers… A perfect example is my laptop. I have ubuntu on it. NOTHING works right because Lenovo decided to only support Windows and my employer didn’t check and neither did they agree to invest some of my hours to investigate. Now I’m stuck with it. So i ask: is that Linux’s fault, or Lenovo’s, or whose is it?.. Either way it’s not Linux’s fault…
The drivers for the proprietary hardware are all windows only. And, A LOT of the drivers this machine needs are proprietary. It has a fancy camera with good res and some IR…thing on it, but it only works in 480p resolution and has heavy smearing because 1. It doesn’t use a normal free driver and 2. The driver Lenovo made for it to work is only available on Windows as an exe, and I’m really not knowledgeable enough to try to get it to work on a work machine… If you know what I can do please educate me but I’m not willing to guess and then have to pay for the thing… If you want details it’s the ThinkBook G6 17 IML. The camera thing is just an example.
Let’s at least not exaggerate, because it’s not particularly useful if you’re trying to get someone to switch. If someone is on the fence about it and sees comments like yours, they’ll be more likely to go “oh well I don’t have those kinds of issues with Windows, so it must just be them.” The vast majority of Windows users (office workers, people using it to check emails and browse Facebook, people just using it for Steam, etc) will literally never need to use CLI.
If you’re needing to use CLI every hour or two on Windows, that sounds more like you’re using the wrong tool for the job. Essentially, you’re trying to use a drill when you need a hammer. A drill may function as a hammer… But it’ll probably take a lot of extra effort. And it’ll likely end up damaging the tool, because you’re using it for something it wasn’t designed to do.
I was a windows sysadmin doing mostly software deployment and automation. I was definitely an edge case. Point is, windows has a command line and requires it for a lot of tasks.
Had this conversation with my brother the other day…I’m all for Linux gaming and he is staying with windows because learning something new is antithesis to his having fun. I totally get it.
“Best Linux distro” listicles are notoriously bad for choosing a distro, which doesn’t help at all, but nowadays everyone and their dog recommends Bazzite for people who just want to play games (don’t ask me why, I wouldn’t touch an atomic distro with a 10 foot pole)
One day, Linux will be ready for a no-headaches gaming PC. Genuinely looking forward to it.
That day is today.
Peripheral drivers enter the chat
Everyone will have a different experience based on their hardware, distro, and game preferences; But for me Linux has been a far less headache-inducing gaming platform than Windows literally for years at this point.
I have a gaming PC which I planned to setup a linux distro on for almost 2 years now. I just need to find the time to choose which distro, then debloat it, get the wifi, speakers, keyboard working, then install the required Nividia drivers, then optimize it and study wether OC its bios is worth it or no, then test optimal settings and compatibility, then compare my benchmark FPS results to similar ones on the internet, then open Steam and fucking game on brother lets go!
Easy as that!
Yup
Its mostly there if your ready to dump your League addiction. Proton Db has guides for the games that don’t just work first try and most of the fixes are select a different launch option from a drop down in Steam.
Except games with shitty anti-cheat like Battlefield. Those are just unplayable.
I discovered that Helldivers 1 ran fine on Linux despite having an anti-cheat, because when the anti-cheat fails to launch the game just says “fuck it” and runs anyway. Though other games like PUBG refuse to run when their anti-cheat fails. I love PUBG but not so much that I’m willing to let some shady publisher from the other side of the world run unknown and unrestricted code at the lowest level of my home computer just to play it. That will never be a worthwhile trade.
Good.
Though on that note, I started playing a lot of DOTA 2 on linux without issue.
It is native on Linux, just like most of Valve’s catalog, so it should run as well as running a Windows game on Windows.
Some games run worse natively on Linux, because they fall back to some badly optimized OpenGL renderer.
Ironically, from what I understand (haven’t done direct comparisons myself), a lot of games written for windows run just as well or better on linux.
DOTA 2 is just noteworthy to me because it’s an exception to the “other than competitive games” exception. And while I can’t say for sure that no one is hacking on there, I have yet to see any blatant cases of it (though admittedly it might be difficult to tell in a game where it’s normal for some players to snowball significantly over others).
Yes, Wine/Proton translates DirectX calls to Vulkan calls, and Vulkan is so efficient that native Windows games sometimes run better on Linux than they do on Windows.
I’m deeply sorry for your loss.
I had this mindset for about 2 decades, from when I first played around in OpenSUSE and Compiz back in 2005 up to 2024 when I finally switched because of Windows 10 being put out to pasture by Microsoft. But since I’m now in my early 40s and no longer play competitive games as I used to 15 years ago, I’ve had zero problems with Linux and gaming.
So I totally understand your mindset as I too once thought the same.
Problem with waiting is of course that developers don’t favor linux due to lack of people on linux playing game, so it’s a vicious circle:
I hope you enjoy linux when you’re ready.
I switched in my 20s when I stopped caring about competitive games, and I’m always surprised at how little effort it is to do the things I want to do.
To be fair, I did find a few very early windows 98/XP’ish games or so hard to get going. There was a period where developers tailored the games very specifically for the OS. But they’re fairly rare.
That’s tricky on Windows too, and generally you need a compatibility layer anyway (e.g. dosbox).
This post accurately described my life. High five brother.
Hell yeah! ✋
already is for me!
Well, is Windows?
So far it’s working fine, yeah. No need to choose among a zillion distros someone swears is the best, I know for a fact there are first-party drivers for everything, no need to fiddle around with CLI, it plays everything my graphics card can muster, and I don’t need to worry about game compatibility or whether Nvidia deigned to support my OS.
Windows has a lot of problems, but if you’re just looking to play games without too much complexity… It’s as close to “it just works” as I can imagine getting without switching to a console (or limiting myself to the few games that work on Apple devices, I guess).
Plus, big argument, it’s familiar. You can forgive more annoyances when you’re not learning something new. Humans are just lazy like that.
First and foremost, I do think Windows is the better choice for most people to play games on, mostly due to vendor support.
However, I’d say that a lot of people have some sort of issue with Windows, albeit probably less than they would have with some Linux distributions. I just wanted to express that “without headaches” is a goal that is maybe higher than necessary.
Yea, but the issue is, Windows works because others don’t, like linux. Windows gets preferrential baby treatment from all consumer tech manufacturers… A perfect example is my laptop. I have ubuntu on it. NOTHING works right because Lenovo decided to only support Windows and my employer didn’t check and neither did they agree to invest some of my hours to investigate. Now I’m stuck with it. So i ask: is that Linux’s fault, or Lenovo’s, or whose is it?.. Either way it’s not Linux’s fault…
Lenovo decided only to support linux? What?
Ah i see now, “to only support windows” *
Ah okay. Some lenovo devices are good with linux. Interesting.
The drivers for the proprietary hardware are all windows only. And, A LOT of the drivers this machine needs are proprietary. It has a fancy camera with good res and some IR…thing on it, but it only works in 480p resolution and has heavy smearing because 1. It doesn’t use a normal free driver and 2. The driver Lenovo made for it to work is only available on Windows as an exe, and I’m really not knowledgeable enough to try to get it to work on a work machine… If you know what I can do please educate me but I’m not willing to guess and then have to pay for the thing… If you want details it’s the ThinkBook G6 17 IML. The camera thing is just an example.
I have a lenovo machine and it works like a charm with Linux (I think) i assumed they were linux friendly. Maybe not.
I think it depends on the model. I know for example 2017 ThinkPads are excellent with windows, but the new ThinkBooks are seemingly windows-only…
Mine’s pretty recent
I supported windows for a while… I’m not sure I went more than an hour or two without going to command line to fix something or another.
Let’s at least not exaggerate, because it’s not particularly useful if you’re trying to get someone to switch. If someone is on the fence about it and sees comments like yours, they’ll be more likely to go “oh well I don’t have those kinds of issues with Windows, so it must just be them.” The vast majority of Windows users (office workers, people using it to check emails and browse Facebook, people just using it for Steam, etc) will literally never need to use CLI.
If you’re needing to use CLI every hour or two on Windows, that sounds more like you’re using the wrong tool for the job. Essentially, you’re trying to use a drill when you need a hammer. A drill may function as a hammer… But it’ll probably take a lot of extra effort. And it’ll likely end up damaging the tool, because you’re using it for something it wasn’t designed to do.
I was a windows sysadmin doing mostly software deployment and automation. I was definitely an edge case. Point is, windows has a command line and requires it for a lot of tasks.
If something is broken in windows, tough luck. I always find if something is broken in Linux, someone has a fix
Had this conversation with my brother the other day…I’m all for Linux gaming and he is staying with windows because learning something new is antithesis to his having fun. I totally get it.
What a reasonable person you are! /gen
Nowadays most people just recommend Bazzite if you just want to game
Just googled “best Linux distro for gaming,” and got about 10 different recommendations.
You’re literally the person your quote is describing lol
“Best Linux distro” listicles are notoriously bad for choosing a distro, which doesn’t help at all, but nowadays everyone and their dog recommends Bazzite for people who just want to play games (don’t ask me why, I wouldn’t touch an atomic distro with a 10 foot pole)