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About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and

About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and get solely disappointed and return to windows. Most of the Linux hurdles in day to day work can be overcome (mostly is the lack of the apps I normally use that cause some attrition, but with some compromises and some work I can get around it). But for gaming (at least in NVIDIA GPUs) it keeps failing. I have very limited time for gaming (around 2-4h per week), I don't want to keep having to eternally fiddle with game settings, fixing bugs, fixing launchers, try different Proton versions, etc, etc, etc, every time I sit down for a bit of gaming. And Linux, unfortunately, is just not really there.

ewuhic 1y ago
Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS, so you 1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS; 2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again; 3) have best-in-class community support; 4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages out there among all the distros. Hope I did well on selling NixOS to you.
- Havoc 1y ago
  Link looks dead?
  - ewuhic 1y ago
    Remove trailing `;`
- wtcactus 1y ago
  I just don't have time for that. I use Ubuntu (headless for work), I don't have the time to spend configuring yet another system. I'm willing to try stuff like Bazzite since it - supposedly - comes all pre-configured. But I'm not going down yet another rabbit hole with a totally new OS just for gaming... I just don't have time for that. It's just much easier to install Windows 11.
Jach 1y ago
What games do you play? I really wonder about experiences like these since they differ so much to my own. The only time I mess with linux-specific things like proton versions is if a newly purchased game doesn't launch with the default proton for some reason. It's annoying, sure, but pretty rare nowadays and I usually anticipate it by checking protondb before buying a game rather than after, and it's not like it's much effort to change the version to experimental or hotfix or add a launch option. Only a handful of games have required anything more complicated like using protontricks to get extra dlls (something I've had to do on Windows for various games anyway) or the GloriousEggroll proton fork, which are easy to install with my distro's package manager. But once it's setup and working, either out of the box or after some tweaks, I don't have to mess with it ever again. I still have one game using Proton 5.0-10 from 2020 that I still play occasionally. (Current stable version is 9.0-4 from last December.) No need to change it if it's not broken. I game a lot so there's other stuff I'll do like tweak the actual game settings to get visual/performance/control qualities I want, or use steamtinkerlaunch as a way to more easily install mods, or let my distro update my nvidia drivers (which I've found more stable than AMD's in the past on linux, but I use the proprietary ones) but that's all normal gamer stuff regardless of OS.
- wtcactus 1y ago
  Right now, Clair Obscur and Crusader Kings mostly. I also try other games when I install the system to check the current status of things. For instance, the Monster Hunter World Demo (I don't like that game, I only use it for testing) is terrible. Very high lag, takes about 15min every time it starts because it needs to redo the graphics shaders, it's much slower than on windows. Clair Obscur doesn't start. I get into the main menu, and then I can't start it. Crusader Kings works fine IIRC. Also, Steam game mode still doesn't work correctly with NVIDIA cards in Wayland... after all these years. And yes, I did try Bazzite (that's what I mean when I say sometimes I just install a gaming distro instead of bothering to config). And like I said in another comment, this is not some super specific setup I have here. Now I have a 5060 Ti, before I had a 1080 Ti. This is the basic setup many people have. So, sorry, but I just don't believe when people say "It works perfectly fine for me". It's like when I hear "Firefox doesn't have any different energy consumption on my MacBook"... although people have been reporting the very same issues for more than a decade now and I, personally, experienced it in 3 different Apple laptops.
chrneu 1y ago
nvidia 4080 here. I dont have any issues on Pop OS!. Drivers install and update just fine. Games just work. Bazzite is another popular gaming OS. My steam library is like 120 games with several pretty popular ones. Again, no issues outside of anti-cheat but I'll uninstall those games so i dont care. nvidia's drivers have gotten a lot better and their support docs are pretty decent. i had a mild issue a few months ago getting ollama running properly. All i had to do was update the nvidia toolkit, worked fine after that.
- wtcactus 1y ago
  Well, before the 5060 Ti I have now, about 6 months ago I had an 1080 Ti and games absolutely didn't just work. In fact, the all thing was a very big mess because there isn't/wasn't proper support for 1000 series NVIDIA GPUs with Wayland and there was a big list of issues: VSync being an obvious one (but many others). I had to configure (the few distros that still support it) to use X11 and live with another set of issues.

ewuhic 1y ago

Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS, so you 1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS; 2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again; 3) have best-in-class community support; 4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages out there among all the distros. Hope I did well on selling NixOS to you.

Havoc 1y ago
Link looks dead?
- ewuhic 1y ago
  Remove trailing `;`
wtcactus 1y ago
I just don't have time for that. I use Ubuntu (headless for work), I don't have the time to spend configuring yet another system. I'm willing to try stuff like Bazzite since it - supposedly - comes all pre-configured. But I'm not going down yet another rabbit hole with a totally new OS just for gaming... I just don't have time for that. It's just much easier to install Windows 11.

Jach 1y ago

What games do you play? I really wonder about experiences like these since they differ so much to my own. The only time I mess with linux-specific things like proton versions is if a newly purchased game doesn't launch with the default proton for some reason. It's annoying, sure, but pretty rare nowadays and I usually anticipate it by checking protondb before buying a game rather than after, and it's not like it's much effort to change the version to experimental or hotfix or add a launch option. Only a handful of games have required anything more complicated like using protontricks to get extra dlls (something I've had to do on Windows for various games anyway) or the GloriousEggroll proton fork, which are easy to install with my distro's package manager. But once it's setup and working, either out of the box or after some tweaks, I don't have to mess with it ever again. I still have one game using Proton 5.0-10 from 2020 that I still play occasionally. (Current stable version is 9.0-4 from last December.) No need to change it if it's not broken. I game a lot so there's other stuff I'll do like tweak the actual game settings to get visual/performance/control qualities I want, or use steamtinkerlaunch as a way to more easily install mods, or let my distro update my nvidia drivers (which I've found more stable than AMD's in the past on linux, but I use the proprietary ones) but that's all normal gamer stuff regardless of OS.

wtcactus 1y ago
Right now, Clair Obscur and Crusader Kings mostly. I also try other games when I install the system to check the current status of things. For instance, the Monster Hunter World Demo (I don't like that game, I only use it for testing) is terrible. Very high lag, takes about 15min every time it starts because it needs to redo the graphics shaders, it's much slower than on windows. Clair Obscur doesn't start. I get into the main menu, and then I can't start it. Crusader Kings works fine IIRC. Also, Steam game mode still doesn't work correctly with NVIDIA cards in Wayland... after all these years. And yes, I did try Bazzite (that's what I mean when I say sometimes I just install a gaming distro instead of bothering to config). And like I said in another comment, this is not some super specific setup I have here. Now I have a 5060 Ti, before I had a 1080 Ti. This is the basic setup many people have. So, sorry, but I just don't believe when people say "It works perfectly fine for me". It's like when I hear "Firefox doesn't have any different energy consumption on my MacBook"... although people have been reporting the very same issues for more than a decade now and I, personally, experienced it in 3 different Apple laptops.

chrneu 1y ago

nvidia 4080 here. I dont have any issues on Pop OS!. Drivers install and update just fine. Games just work. Bazzite is another popular gaming OS. My steam library is like 120 games with several pretty popular ones. Again, no issues outside of anti-cheat but I'll uninstall those games so i dont care. nvidia's drivers have gotten a lot better and their support docs are pretty decent. i had a mild issue a few months ago getting ollama running properly. All i had to do was update the nvidia toolkit, worked fine after that.

wtcactus 1y ago
Well, before the 5060 Ti I have now, about 6 months ago I had an 1080 Ti and games absolutely didn't just work. In fact, the all thing was a very big mess because there isn't/wasn't proper support for 1000 series NVIDIA GPUs with Wayland and there was a big list of issues: VSync being an obvious one (but many others). I had to configure (the few distros that still support it) to use X11 and live with another set of issues.