6 ms·

Once gaming is on par on Linux, windows is doomed, and I'm sure they know this, so this is their death spiral

mcv 3y ago
And Linux gaming is already pretty good. I switched recently, and I'm not planning on looking back. (I hope it lasts, this time.)
- dekken_ 3y ago
  I can too play a lot of games on Linux, just not all games that I want to play, yet at least
- qwerty456127 3y ago
  The only app still making me want Windows is Paint.Net. It really feels by far the best, if not say perfect, non-pro picture editor ever. I would even pay for really good (Pinta is quirky although indispensable) Linux and Mac ports. I also love Visual Studio but JetBrains Rider seems more than a match. Games indeed have ended being a problem long ago. Perhaps some latest and greatest games still are, I dunno. Have anybopdy tried something like Hogwarts Legacy or Baldurs Gate 3 on Linux?
  - rpigab 3y ago
    BG3 works well on my new recent install of Debian Bookworm with nonfree sw on, Nvidia RTX 2080 SUPER, nvidia prop driver 525 or 535 I think, KDE Plasma set to Xorg (Wayland caused some flickering, supposedly bad interaction between Wayland and nvidia drivers). I think I don't have advanced stuff like DLSS and HDR though, maybe I could if I did some tinkering.
  - lpcvoid 3y ago
    Hogwarts legacy works really well via Proton (Steam). Full AMD system, though.
- lkramer 3y ago
  Which may be another motivation for them to buy up so much of the gaming industry. They can probably justify blanket banning anyone playing COD on Linux in the name of banning cheaters.
  - mcv 3y ago
    I fear you might be right. The gaming market is important to MS, so all this Linux gaming that Valve is actively driving is a threat to them.
- dartharva 3y ago
  It may be pretty good for previous-gen games and hardware, and that too after various compromises. Current and next-gen PC hardware will always be optimized for Windows first, with some technologies being straight-up limited exclusively to Windows. Not that gamers are losing out on anything valuable, of course. I run Debian stable and spend quite a few times gaming on it, and it turns out almost all the games that won't run on it aren't games worth playing altogether. But this is an opinion of the negligible minority like you and me. The Consumers will obviously care for the latest.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Current gen games also tend to work immediately or within days of release nowadays.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    The Steam Deck is, at least for Valve, a first-class citizen of its platform. Tons of money and effort has been put in to bring it up to Windows. It’s not quite there yet, but it is a lot closer than you’re making it seem.
  - mcv 3y ago
    Cyberpunk 2077 works quite well on my RTX4070. The only issue is that the few times it does crash, it takes out the compositor, but that's easily fixed.
    - dartharva 3y ago
      Huh. Does DLSS and ray tracing also work perfectly? What settings are you running the game in?
      - mcv 3y ago
        No DLSS or ray tracing. Those might work if I imported the game into Steam; the it would use the Steam settings where I think they do work, from what I've heard. But I don't care that much about DLSS or ray tracing. Otherwise, I think I've got the highest graphics settings, though I haven't checked them.
HeckFeck 3y ago
I wish, but good luck to Linux making any serious inroads into the corporate desktop world.
- dekken_ 3y ago
  I used Linux when working at Intel, but I'm a programmer, so maybe not general case.
  - creata 3y ago
    Yes, they're not talking about programmers. Unfortunately, the corporate world runs on Excel.
- reitanqild 3y ago
  At the consulting company I work for Linux has been an option for 6+ years together with Mac and Windows. Hey, even at the customer I work with now (a rather influential directorate), people have the option to choose Mac or Linux. And: pro-tip, if you are going to work in such a place (public directorate), consider taking the Mac option because unlike with Windows PCs there are limits to how cheap the bean counters can get them and the budgets for hardware is optimised independently of the budget for hiring more people to cover for the fact that they aren't nearly as effective as they could have been and I am afraid - also the hiring budget. (The Linux option is the second best: you get the same hardware but with Linux you make the best out of it.)
  - rob74 3y ago
    That never ceases to amaze me: I mean, as software developers we usually get paid more in a month (or maybe two) than the company hardware we are using costs, so you would think it would be obvious to anyone that money spent on hardware which enables us to be more productive is money well spent?! But no, "do you really have to have the laptop with 32 GB RAM, isn't 16 GB enough?"...
    - macNchz 3y ago
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
> Decided it's time to switch to Linux because everyone says windows games now work on Linux thanks to Valve's efforts > Installed Nobara (fork of Fedora made for gaming) and proceeded to install my copy of Red Alert 2 (my most played game) via Wine > Try to run game, 'Error: xxx32.dll not found' or something > Spent over an hour looking up forum posts on fixing that error, manually copying that dll and other modded variants of that dll to the install directory, but no cigar, still same error or other error, don't remember exactly > Throw in the towel and went back to Windows where Red Alert 2 'Just Works TM'. Definitely no "year of the Linux" for me. I don't care how many thousands of Steam games work on Linux if they're not the games and apps I own and play. But good luck. Edit: nice to see I'm getting downvoted for telling a personal story on this topic. Very emotionally mature of you guys.
- dekken_ 3y ago
  So you might say, Linux is not on par with Windows, which is what I said?
- gaganyaan 3y ago
  Use Lutris if the game isn't on Steam: https://lutris.net/games/command-conquer-red-alert-2/ https://lutris.net/games/command-conquer-red-alert-2/
- minimaul 3y ago
  My experience of running Red Alert 2 on modern Windows is pretty horrific, and it looks like it’s shared by a lot of people: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert_2 https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_A... More generally, I usually have more success running older games under Wine than on Windows 10 or 11 - DXVK helps a lot with early directx9 games in particular, in my experience.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    I use the DODI patched variant of Red Alert 2 which works out of the box on Windows 11 as it ships with all the necessary patched DLLs to work on modern Windows.
Timshel 3y ago
For those wondering running the Steam and Lutris flatpak work really well. Kept a dual boot but switching less and less.
tambourine_man 3y ago
I think you underestimate the corporate market.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
As I understand it, the most significant barriers for having all of the big games run on Linux are the anti-cheat software in multiplayer games. Many of the games I've tried, just kind of work. Path of Exile, for example, worked on my PopOS system (AMD CPU / Nvidia GPU) with no fiddling. (I switched a couple of weeks ago.)
- pcdevils 3y ago
  HL² on pop-os was ok (tried it last week), a bit glitchy though. Portal completely froze and had to be killed. Probably better with Nvidia; I was using intel graphics. Interesting to try it though

mcv 3y ago

And Linux gaming is already pretty good. I switched recently, and I'm not planning on looking back. (I hope it lasts, this time.)

dekken_ 3y ago
I can too play a lot of games on Linux, just not all games that I want to play, yet at least
qwerty456127 3y ago
The only app still making me want Windows is Paint.Net. It really feels by far the best, if not say perfect, non-pro picture editor ever. I would even pay for really good (Pinta is quirky although indispensable) Linux and Mac ports. I also love Visual Studio but JetBrains Rider seems more than a match. Games indeed have ended being a problem long ago. Perhaps some latest and greatest games still are, I dunno. Have anybopdy tried something like Hogwarts Legacy or Baldurs Gate 3 on Linux?
- rpigab 3y ago
  BG3 works well on my new recent install of Debian Bookworm with nonfree sw on, Nvidia RTX 2080 SUPER, nvidia prop driver 525 or 535 I think, KDE Plasma set to Xorg (Wayland caused some flickering, supposedly bad interaction between Wayland and nvidia drivers). I think I don't have advanced stuff like DLSS and HDR though, maybe I could if I did some tinkering.
- lpcvoid 3y ago
  Hogwarts legacy works really well via Proton (Steam). Full AMD system, though.
lkramer 3y ago
Which may be another motivation for them to buy up so much of the gaming industry. They can probably justify blanket banning anyone playing COD on Linux in the name of banning cheaters.
- mcv 3y ago
  I fear you might be right. The gaming market is important to MS, so all this Linux gaming that Valve is actively driving is a threat to them.
dartharva 3y ago
It may be pretty good for previous-gen games and hardware, and that too after various compromises. Current and next-gen PC hardware will always be optimized for Windows first, with some technologies being straight-up limited exclusively to Windows. Not that gamers are losing out on anything valuable, of course. I run Debian stable and spend quite a few times gaming on it, and it turns out almost all the games that won't run on it aren't games worth playing altogether. But this is an opinion of the negligible minority like you and me. The Consumers will obviously care for the latest.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Current gen games also tend to work immediately or within days of release nowadays.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  The Steam Deck is, at least for Valve, a first-class citizen of its platform. Tons of money and effort has been put in to bring it up to Windows. It’s not quite there yet, but it is a lot closer than you’re making it seem.
- mcv 3y ago
  Cyberpunk 2077 works quite well on my RTX4070. The only issue is that the few times it does crash, it takes out the compositor, but that's easily fixed.
  - dartharva 3y ago
    Huh. Does DLSS and ray tracing also work perfectly? What settings are you running the game in?
    - mcv 3y ago
      No DLSS or ray tracing. Those might work if I imported the game into Steam; the it would use the Steam settings where I think they do work, from what I've heard. But I don't care that much about DLSS or ray tracing. Otherwise, I think I've got the highest graphics settings, though I haven't checked them.

HeckFeck 3y ago

I wish, but good luck to Linux making any serious inroads into the corporate desktop world.

dekken_ 3y ago
I used Linux when working at Intel, but I'm a programmer, so maybe not general case.
- creata 3y ago
  Yes, they're not talking about programmers. Unfortunately, the corporate world runs on Excel.
reitanqild 3y ago
At the consulting company I work for Linux has been an option for 6+ years together with Mac and Windows. Hey, even at the customer I work with now (a rather influential directorate), people have the option to choose Mac or Linux. And: pro-tip, if you are going to work in such a place (public directorate), consider taking the Mac option because unlike with Windows PCs there are limits to how cheap the bean counters can get them and the budgets for hardware is optimised independently of the budget for hiring more people to cover for the fact that they aren't nearly as effective as they could have been and I am afraid - also the hiring budget. (The Linux option is the second best: you get the same hardware but with Linux you make the best out of it.)
- rob74 3y ago
  That never ceases to amaze me: I mean, as software developers we usually get paid more in a month (or maybe two) than the company hardware we are using costs, so you would think it would be obvious to anyone that money spent on hardware which enables us to be more productive is money well spent?! But no, "do you really have to have the laptop with 32 GB RAM, isn't 16 GB enough?"...
  - macNchz 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

> Decided it's time to switch to Linux because everyone says windows games now work on Linux thanks to Valve's efforts > Installed Nobara (fork of Fedora made for gaming) and proceeded to install my copy of Red Alert 2 (my most played game) via Wine > Try to run game, 'Error: xxx32.dll not found' or something > Spent over an hour looking up forum posts on fixing that error, manually copying that dll and other modded variants of that dll to the install directory, but no cigar, still same error or other error, don't remember exactly > Throw in the towel and went back to Windows where Red Alert 2 'Just Works TM'. Definitely no "year of the Linux" for me. I don't care how many thousands of Steam games work on Linux if they're not the games and apps I own and play. But good luck. Edit: nice to see I'm getting downvoted for telling a personal story on this topic. Very emotionally mature of you guys.

dekken_ 3y ago
So you might say, Linux is not on par with Windows, which is what I said?
gaganyaan 3y ago
Use Lutris if the game isn't on Steam: https://lutris.net/games/command-conquer-red-alert-2/ https://lutris.net/games/command-conquer-red-alert-2/
minimaul 3y ago
My experience of running Red Alert 2 on modern Windows is pretty horrific, and it looks like it’s shared by a lot of people: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert_2 https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_A... More generally, I usually have more success running older games under Wine than on Windows 10 or 11 - DXVK helps a lot with early directx9 games in particular, in my experience.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  I use the DODI patched variant of Red Alert 2 which works out of the box on Windows 11 as it ships with all the necessary patched DLLs to work on modern Windows.

Timshel 3y ago

For those wondering running the Steam and Lutris flatpak work really well. Kept a dual boot but switching less and less.

tambourine_man 3y ago

I think you underestimate the corporate market.

slowmovintarget 3y ago

As I understand it, the most significant barriers for having all of the big games run on Linux are the anti-cheat software in multiplayer games. Many of the games I've tried, just kind of work. Path of Exile, for example, worked on my PopOS system (AMD CPU / Nvidia GPU) with no fiddling. (I switched a couple of weeks ago.)

pcdevils 3y ago
HL² on pop-os was ok (tried it last week), a bit glitchy though. Portal completely froze and had to be killed. Probably better with Nvidia; I was using intel graphics. Interesting to try it though