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I am in the exact same boat. My laptop is Xubuntu and my work computer is as well. My home gaming rig is Windows 10 because Linux just doesn't compete yet with

by eumoria 10y ago

I am in the exact same boat. My laptop is Xubuntu and my work computer is as well. My home gaming rig is Windows 10 because Linux just doesn't compete yet with the proprietary optimizations that the hardware manufacturers and game developers use on the platform. Also my wireless card doesn't have Linux support but I would throw that in the trash the moment Linux gaming can even get to 80-90% of the Windows gaming performance. If this were Slashdot we couldn't even have the discussion without being swamped by fanboys claiming completely false things about Linux gaming. I've been trying over and over again for about 15 years playing all different types of games on different types of hardware and roughly speaking I would say an average of 20-50% performance hit on 3D rendered games but it is getting much MUCH better. It does work but I didn't spend the, honestly, stupid amount of money on my home PC to have it perform worse than it can just based on the software I choose. There's a billion reasons why this is the case so saying one specific thing or manufacturer is going to fix it but AMD pushing support is a wonderful thing. I can't wait until I can finally get rid of Windows completely. Really what I would love is a gaming focused Linux distro that actually works.

neverminder 10y ago
> Really what I would love is a gaming focused Linux distro that actually works. I think SteamOS was supposed to be that distro, but at some point it just kind of... ran out of steam?
- eumoria 10y ago
  ha! yea, I tried it early in development and it was a bit of a mess I should give it another shot that it's a little more mature. Their whole steambox/steamcontroller thing seems to have flopped but I'm sure it's better than it was on initial release.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    I think that it was just ahead of its time, and people didn't really "get it", and it wasn't marketed with the right message or marketed enough. The next PlayStation and Xbox seem more like gaming PCs than consoles, and it looks like the market is trending toward a shared experience across all devices in the future. I really hope that SteamOS continues and sees wide adoption, but I also agree from my experience mining btc on Linux years ago that drivers need to improve, as does the hack factor. As a sysadmin then, I struggled for hours to get the AMD + OpenCL stuff working right. Not sure if it's better now, but no way would the mainstream accept that type of experience to play games.
- kenny_r 10y ago
  I'm hopeful it'll get better. Steam itself was _awful_ in the early days. There's an old NSFW animated gif of the Steam logo that's tells you a little bit about how early users felt when Steam became mandatory to play Counter Strike. Look at Steam today, though. It's gone through a tremendous evolution.
vosper 10y ago
If your gaming rig exists to play games then why does it matter that it runs Windows? Your interaction is pretty much limited to "click on game icon" or "open Steam". Or are you wishing that you wouldn't have to have a separate gaming rig if only games ran well on Linux? Then you could ditch the laptop and you wouldn't need 2 computers at home?

by eumoria 10y ago

neverminder 10y ago

> Really what I would love is a gaming focused Linux distro that actually works. I think SteamOS was supposed to be that distro, but at some point it just kind of... ran out of steam?

eumoria 10y ago
ha! yea, I tried it early in development and it was a bit of a mess I should give it another shot that it's a little more mature. Their whole steambox/steamcontroller thing seems to have flopped but I'm sure it's better than it was on initial release.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  I think that it was just ahead of its time, and people didn't really "get it", and it wasn't marketed with the right message or marketed enough. The next PlayStation and Xbox seem more like gaming PCs than consoles, and it looks like the market is trending toward a shared experience across all devices in the future. I really hope that SteamOS continues and sees wide adoption, but I also agree from my experience mining btc on Linux years ago that drivers need to improve, as does the hack factor. As a sysadmin then, I struggled for hours to get the AMD + OpenCL stuff working right. Not sure if it's better now, but no way would the mainstream accept that type of experience to play games.
kenny_r 10y ago
I'm hopeful it'll get better. Steam itself was _awful_ in the early days. There's an old NSFW animated gif of the Steam logo that's tells you a little bit about how early users felt when Steam became mandatory to play Counter Strike. Look at Steam today, though. It's gone through a tremendous evolution.

vosper 10y ago

If your gaming rig exists to play games then why does it matter that it runs Windows? Your interaction is pretty much limited to "click on game icon" or "open Steam". Or are you wishing that you wouldn't have to have a separate gaming rig if only games ran well on Linux? Then you could ditch the laptop and you wouldn't need 2 computers at home?