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Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'
by thadt 11mo ago
Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'd care about from a desktop computer.
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
- quasigod 11mo agoJust wondering, what games are you playing that dont run on Linux yet? I can't think of games I'd play much with family that dont work well
- neura 11mo agoI do not believe that _you_ are trolling with this question, but answering this is just asking to be trolled. That said. Fortnite. Yes, I still play it with friends and cannot play it on Mac or Linux. :( I'm sure others have similar examples. Also there are just simple things like playing with friends and streaming on Discord. Anybody streaming from Windows always comes across smooth and HD to the other participants while anybody on Linux seems to consistently be received (I don't know where exactly in the chain the problem exists, so just "received", as it may not be a broadcasting or encoding problem, I'm not an expert in this) with a lot of artifacts and lower framerates.
- andai 11mo agoA friend of mine, a Linux user, says he installed Windows for gaming. Apparently the main issue isn't actual compatibility for games, but that a lot of games require some kind of kernel level anticheat (rootkit?).
- seabrookmx 11mo agoYes. Valorant and Battlefield 6, for example.
- cheald 11mo agoYes, this is broadly true. Just about everything that does not have Linux-disabling anticheat runs wonderfully on Linux these days. You can check https://protondb.com/ https://protondb.com/ to see how any given game runs.
- inexcf 11mo agoYes and they could just make it(the rootkits) work on linux. It's more about the publishers/devs actively opposing linux.
- rtkwe 11mo agoAlternatively it's still a pretty small slice of the market that's not willing to dual boot for the major games that do require windows only anticheats so it's just not worth their dev and support time to try to serve that small slice. Valve's work on Steam Machines/Decks is the thing needed to actually push developers to supporting it by providing a relatively consistent target OS and a large enough install base to justify spending the money to support.
- jsheard 11mo agoThe major anti-cheats do support Linux, but it's opt-in on the dev side because they're significantly easier to bypass than the Windows versions. It's not even close, getting around the Linux ACs is child's play. It sucks but nobody really has a good solution yet.
- rtkwe 11mo agoYep anticheats are one of the big hurdles to 'porting' a lot of online focused shooters to linux. It's an unfortunate situation but I get it from the company's perspective, not having any anticheat leads to shitty situations for way more players than not having a linux version of their anticheat and a vast majority of players have Windows devices or are willing to dual boot.
- grepex 11mo agoThis is true. Battlefield 6 is in this boat
- tapland 11mo agoIt’s a few games, but a few very important ones. GTAVs online ecosystem with custom servers. Rust hasn’t enabled Linux Battleye support. Valorant Some releases that are temporarily popular like BF6, playtest of Battleye games where Linux support isn’t enabled (Fellowship, Exoborne). All games in this paragraph also by Swedish developers. Kom igen, linuxstöd
- nickstinemates 11mo agoEscape from Tarkov is the only reason I have a Windows Hard drive still. It doesn't have anything else on it.
- bigyabai 11mo agoFWIW, PvE and modded Tarkov does actually run fine on Linux (Streets map doesn't, nor does Arena). It's definitely not the same, but between Arc Raiders and PvE I get my extraction shooter fix. Online Tarkov is mostly populated by Gaming Wizards™ anyways.
- nickstinemates 11mo agoYes I am playing Arc Raiders now instead of Tarkov because switching is not worth it. Until it will be!
- froggit 11mo agoEFT has a pretty ridiculous history with attempts at anticheat. Several years ago they set up their servers to kick anyone with virtualization enabled because cheaters had been using VMs to intercept network traffic (the network traffic wasn't encrypted for tarkov then). The response from cheaters was to use a seperate bare metal build to intercept the traffic. The devs "fixed" it right before windows 11 came out with virtualization on by default.
- mindcrash 11mo agoSome intrusive ones (EA's anti cheat for recent Battlefields, Activision's anti cheat for Call of Duty, anything from Riot to name a few) do not work. However, EAC - who is a major player in this field producing generic solutions - does support Linux. The involved publisher, however, needs to approve this and the developer need to turn on a feature flag. That's it. However, some publishers simply deny this for... totally mental reasons ...and this means that the game is marked as borked in protondb even though the game could as easily be played on Linux thanks to EAC's Linux support.
- belthesar 11mo ago"EAC supports Linux, but devs just won't turn it on" is the clickbait answer, but the details are more nuanced. EAC has multiple security levels that a title can set based on the threat model of the game, and most games with heavy MTX that use EAC shy away from it, largely because Fortnite doesn't do it. EAC is owned by Epic, and if Tim Sweeney says that you can't do MTX on Linux safely, then any AAA live services game with in-game MTX is going to shy away from it, regardless of how true the statement actually is.
- duskwuff 11mo ago"MTX" as in, microtransactions? What do microtransactions have to do with anticheat?
- mindcrash 11mo agoThe Finals has mtx, is protected by EAC, and is playable on Steam Deck. Throne and Liberty, which is also protected by EAC and has mtx, is also playable on Steam Deck. So this is bullshit and it clearly shows it's the publisher's choice. What Sweeney thinks has nothing to do with it.
- quasigod 11mo agoI dont think I'm getting trolled, I know that loads of games still dont work. I just wanted to get an idea of which games are the current biggest ones holding people back.
- thadt 11mo agoFortnite & Call of Duty If I could travel back in time and prevent my kids and nephews from ever learning about Fortnite, I might do it. Instead I'm out here trying to keep from getting sniped by a Simpson character. Fortunately, it seems like the rest of the family is getting tired of COD's ceaseless churn, and might be willing to pick up something else.
- haunter 11mo agoFortnite is a fun game though, it's the only game holding me back from fully switching to Linux. Cloud streaming just doesn't cut it, latency is way too high (+ more money for a single game)
- quasigod 11mo agoAh I had kinda forgotten Fortnite exists haha. I think I assumed your kids were younger.
- babuskov 11mo agoDoes Roblox run on Linux?
- andoando 11mo agoBF6 and any multiplayer EA games with anticheat
- OGWhales 11mo agoApex is an EA game and actually ran great on Linux until they removed support. Unfortunate, but they said it was necessary to combat cheaters though that claim is somewhat dubious since cheaters is perfectly viable on Windows still.
- seviu 11mo agoFIFA is another one that comes to mind, or however they call it these days. Also from EA
- Hikikomori 11mo agoIts much easier to cheat on Linux though.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo agoBattlefield 6, GTA V online, Escape From Tarkov, likely GTA VI Imagine not supporting the latest releases that all your friends are playing.
- quasigod 11mo agoZero of my friends are playing any of these games. GTA VI will probably do the console first release thing anyways. Edit: Fair enough to the other ones though. This comment wasnt meant to be inflammatory or argumentative, but clearly someone else believed it was.
- embedding-shape 11mo agoWhat's the point of arguing like this? You're asking for experiences from people, then when people give you proper answers it glides off with "well no one I know plays those anyways". Isn't the discussion larger than your personal and private experiences, if you're discussing in public like this? You seemed to have some initial claim that "all games actually work perfectly fine, prove me wrong" but then you don't seem to actually want to engage faithfully anyways.
- navigate8310 11mo agoThey think HN is Reddit, notorious with its flaming war
- quasigod 11mo agoHN wasn't letting me comment, then I forgot about this. I wasnt trying to be hostile, I didnt think about the comment coming off that when when I wrote it. I feel you were far to quick to assume bad faith, but either way I apologize that my comment came off as argumentative. I certainly never said nobody plays those games. I was just responding to their statement about not playing the games your friends are playing.
- Whinner 11mo agoSteam Box 2 will be out before GTA VI
- barbazoo 11mo agoTrying to get RDR2 to work on Linux, so far no luck.
- OGWhales 11mo agoFor me it's only games the specifically don't support Linux, which are mostly competitive multiplayer games with anti-cheat software. Apex Legends used to work great on Linux, but they removed support as an attempt to combat cheaters (there are still tons of cheaters).
- AndroidKitKat 11mo agoIn addition to what others have said, a group of friends still plays enough League of Legends that I don't both dual booting. Also if you play RuneScape (RS3, not OSRS) the best 3rd party add-on, Alt1 Toolkit, only works on Windows.
- dmoy 11mo agoFor me the thing that pushed me to reinstall windows after I got a cheap $10 copy was Kerbal Space Program. Though, in my specific case I strongly suspect it was older hardware & driver issues than anything else, since I've not had any major problems on steam deck. I do have more random crashes on certain games even on steam deck, but not as bad as Kerbal Space Program on my old (12 yr) desktop. Factorio seems to work better on Linux. Which is both good and bad (since it's so addictive).
- Zekio 11mo agoFactorio can save without stopping the game on Linux, which it can't do on Windows, since they just fork the process and do it in the fork IIRC, which makes the saving something you basically don't think about on Linux, but bugs you when ever auto save runs on Windows last I checked
- DanielHB 11mo agoDoesn't this make the game use double the memory for a while?
- SirMaster 11mo agoBattlefield, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, PUBG, Rainbow 6 Siege, Fortnite Basically all the games I play regularly with my friends.
- InvertedRhodium 11mo agoMicrosoft Flight Simulator
- quasigod 11mo agoFrom what I can see, that runs fine through Protob
- ugurcant 11mo agoI was in the same shoes, then one day I decided to give a shot to Bazzite. To my surprise the installation was extremely smooth, and everything worked right away. Now I’m playing almost everything on it (Arc Raiders, EU V, HLL and Horizon FW recently). If you want to _try_ all you need is 15 minutes, some HDD space and an empty USB. You don’t have to give up Windows at all, dual booting is also pretty smooth.
- gpderetta 11mo agoI have a bazzite box connected behind my TV. Even with a non optimal choice of graphic card (an old Nvidia) it works better than I was expecting.
- Whinner 11mo agoI also bit the bullet and did a bazzite install and am blown away how seamless it has been for what I need. All the games I like run on Steam. Even Diablo 4 runs through the Blizzard launcher which does take some work to get installed, but nothing you can't find in a youtube video. No issues using the system as my daily driver for personal things. I have dual monitors, one oriented vertically and one 144hz. All works great! I'd recommend it to anyone
- aryonoco 11mo agoThe whole Universal Blue image ecosystem is so polished, consistent and coherent. Bazzite is their gaming image variant, I’ve also recently switched to Bluefin which is their Gnome variant on my workstation and everything works so nicely together, it’s the most joy I’ve had using a computer in a long time.
- fullstop 11mo agoI've been very happy with Aurora-DX, which falls under the Universal Blue umbrella. I reboot it once a week to apply updates and I can roll back if I need to.
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- nicolaslem 11mo agoI used to also have a dedicated Windows machine just for gaming, but two years ago I formatted the Windows drive and put SteamOS (via ChimeraOS) instead. I can legitimately say that it has been more stable than running the same games on Windows. Just flawless.
- akshitgaur2005 11mo agonow with gabecube, maybe steamos would be directly available for desktop too
- com2kid 11mo agoI've been using Pop_OS, buggy as hell but steam games work great! Everything is kinda a dumpster fire, but they nailed steam games.
- quasigod 11mo agoPop_OS is pretty rough. Theyre running on a super outdated base while working on COSMIC
- com2kid 11mo agoThe pop shop app being single threaded is just embarrassing. Do a search, the entire UI freezes up until the search is complete. Also updates regularly break my KDE session and I have to restart my display server. Sometimes I have to switch to a tty and back to my graphical console to get my display back. It is a mess all around. I haven't managed to get my GPU working in Docker, ugh. That said, it does work. Mostly.
- marcianx 11mo agoAgreed about POP Shop being slow. I recently learned that they were working on its replacement: "COSMIC store" (written in Rust + Iced), and it's super-fast. You can try it with `sudo apt install cosmic-store`.
- bprew 11mo agoThe 24.04 beta is really stable and the new cosmic DE is great! I've got it on my desktop and laptop, no problems. System76.com/pop/pop-beta
- com2kid 11mo agoI actually really like my current customized KDE desktop. I have it all setup with transparency everywhere and a fully animated shader desktop wallpaper. Basically the opposite of everything Gnome stands for. :D
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- catears 11mo agoLike other commenters, I also recently made the switch. Figured I would dual-boot windows but have never needed to boot it back up again. ProtonDB is a goldmine when a game doesn't work. Oh, and switching from Nvidia GPU to AMD GPU seems to have worked great to get games to "just work".
- agentifysh 11mo agoone limitation for Bazzite for instance would be some titles that require anti-cheating won't work but just like OP, only use case I have for windows is gaming and running some banking app which won't work on non-Windows device love to see more and more users realize they can game just fine on linux
- drnick1 11mo agoIt's time to stop buying such games and send game studios a signal that we won't tolerate rootkits and/or closed platforms. Anti-cheats should run server-side, or better yet, servers should be community-operated. I would probably bought BF6, but since I exclusively use Arch, EA lost a sale -- too bad for them there are thousands of other games that work flawlessly on Linux.
- fleroviumna 11mo ago[dead]
- rft 11mo agoI want to echo a previous comment of mine on this topic: With the rise of mainstream-compatible, as in a standard gamer can get them running and use them with a similar frustration level as Win11, Linux first systems like steam deck, steam machine and even steam frame, there is a real, even if currently low, pressure for big publisher to support Linux/SteamOS. I somewhat hope/fear there will be a blessed SteamOS version that supports anticheats enough for publishers like EA, Epic and Riot to accept the risk.
- pdimitar 11mo ago
- theshrike79 11mo agoThis promises 4k 60fps gaming and Valve is good with hardware, so this is an immediate buy from me if it's under 1000€ No need to mess around building a gaming PC anymore.
- brailsafe 11mo ago> This promises 4k 60fps gaming and Valve is good with hardware, so this is an immediate buy from me if it's under 1000€ Does it promise that? It seems like the hardware might do it, didn't see that anywhere
- theshrike79 11mo agoValve says it runs 4k 60fps with FSR and I trust them. NOTE: it's not "4k60 at ultra detail", which seems to be implied in the minds of some PC gamers =)
- brailsafe 11mo agoHmm, you're right, weird that I didn't that initially, I wonder if it was just because all the background videos showed errors at the time and might have messed with the page layout
- phdelightful 11mo agoIt’s <= a Radeon 7600 GPU (28 CUs RDNA3 vs 32), so I’m not sure I’d have advertised it as a 4k60 machine. Then again I’m not a marketer so what do I know. 4k60 is a flexible target with FSR I suppose.
- seanalltogether 11mo agoSame, if they also released something like a Steam Machine Pro with more ram+vram and bit higher specs I would instantly purchase it. Nvidia and AMD have been rightly criticized for releasing 8GB video cards in the past year and valve shouldn't be immune to that criticism.
- rft 11mo agoWould be great of Valve to just drop a Steam Machine Max++ with an AMD Ryzen AI 395 and 128GB unified memory. I know this is not going to happen, but SteamOS should boot fine on that SoC, so you can DIY a Steam Machine that also runs LLMs (albeit a bit slow) :).
- gavinsyancey 11mo agoIt sounds like you want to install Bazzite on a Framework Desktop.
- neogodless 11mo agoLast year I read a lot of reviews making a fuss about the RTX 4070 (mobile) having "only" 8GB VRAM but it's what I ended up buying and it just hasn't been an issue where I'm like, shoot my games aren't fast enough or pretty enough to have fun. Sometimes I think number-based reviews miss the point, and I miss HardOCP!
- kulahan 11mo agoExtremely hard pass on a laptop. They already have the steam deck, and now they have this. Whether you want it portable or not, there are options. Laptops always end up being just... so disappointing.
- baby 11mo agothe limit last time was anything competitive or multiplayer that required a weird launcher or some low-level permissions or something. I just want to play CS2 and hunt showdown.
- nxpnsv 11mo agoI recently got a tiny and mighty GPD win mini. I booted windows once to shrink the data partition and installed Bazzite Linux. Painless install, never even considered booting in win again, and so far all games I tried worked flawlessly. I know there are issues with anti-cheat, but I usually don't even like those games..
- utopiah 11mo ago> If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games... SteamDeck is out since February 2022 and does all that. You can use a BT mouse&keyboard, plug a USB-C screen or dongle for HDMI. I did live presentations with that quite a few time. It's just a computer with another form factor. It's not "dangerously close", it's been there for years now. Basically only competitive gaming with kernel level anti-cheat are problematic.
- spydum 11mo agoseconding this. I bought a SteamDeck OLED -- and it blows my mind more people havent heard about these. it's essentially a bad ass handheld laptop. yes it plays games great, but the OS side when you boot into desktop mode is quite capable - I spend more time on it than my home pc these days
- kartoffelsaft 11mo agoThe thing that makes that different though is the packing/unpacking experience. With a laptop it's just... opening and closing the lid. With a steam deck (or really any mini PC with a screen and battery), if you go wireless as you suggest, there's now at least 3 devices (deck, KB, mouse) that need to be handled and charged separately. Given my previous negative experiences with BT I'd go wired but that makes every move take even more effort. I could see a setup with a case for the deck gives it a laptop form factor, but that doesn't seem like what you're suggesting. I might also ask how often you move your setup? My schedule requires I do so at least 8 times/week.
- MrDrMcCoy 11mo agoA Uperfect lapdock with a USB-C PD injector from one of the AR glasses sets (can be bought separately) is even more convenient for Deck as a laptop replacement.
- xxs 11mo ago>with my kids and family. if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything - including installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows
- jabwd 11mo agoAMD GPU here, but I had issues connecting my Xbox controller to it and using it with Steam. On Bazzite this all works out of the box. Would love to know what the issue was but could've been my bluetooth chipset or something of the sort -- Don't know what Bazzite does differently from Linux Mint sadly. Overall barely ever in Windows anymore and a happy Linux gamer.
- xxs 11mo ago>with my kids and family. if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything 'gaming' - on top of installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows
- mzhaase 11mo agoI made the switch to Linux for gaming maybe six months ago. I play A LOT of games and have only encountered a single game that didn't just work.
- HexPhantom 11mo agoThey already proved with the Deck that you don't need Windows for a great gaming experience anymore
- jokoon 11mo agoLaptops are difficult to cool down, they're bad for gaming. Unless they remove fans, or have limited hardware, but that's already a steam deck: just add a keyboard and a larger screen.
- graynk 11mo agoI believe you're looking for https://system76.com/ https://system76.com/
- fullstop 11mo agoI have a System76 laptop, and I bought it because they supported Linux and because I could buy replacement parts if I needed them. The battery swelled, so I contacted them and they don't sell the battery anymore. I tried ordering one from, literally, half a dozen places online and was refunded each time because it simply does not exist.
- spaceman_2020 11mo agoOnly reason I even had a windows machine too. I got rid of it because I realized after a long tiring day sitting upright, I really did not find sitting even more upright and playing games relaxing. I wanted to plop down on the couch and do it. And it was a gigantic tower that was taking up too much space in my office If I could have a machine like this instead, I'd happily buy it instead. Windows has zero use for me other than playing games
- yencabulator 11mo agoPlaying PC games with a controller, lounging back in a good recliner, is much more relaxing. Many games work great like that, and Steam tells you how well any particular game works with a controller.
- rockostrich 11mo ago> If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games... The Steam Deck is kind of close to this although the screen isn't the best. I think the closest you can get to this right now is adding a graphics card module on a Framework laptop.