13 ms·

Gaming on Linux has never been more approachable

• pinewurst 11mo ago
  https://archive.ph/DNFkL https://archive.ph/DNFkL
• xedrac 11mo ago
  Welcome to the world of computing freedom.
• josefritzishere 11mo ago
  Never before has a successful software company worked so hard to reject the wants of their user base. Ai continues to be a solution seeking a problem.
  • baal80spam 11mo ago
    C'mon. Microsoft is one of the top 3 companies in the world.
    • officeplant 11mo ago
      All three of the top three could vanish overnight, and a think a lot of us could just go on living without much issue from the "loss".
    • agumonkey 11mo ago
      but the windows brand is taking a serious beating win10 was a great restart somehow but 11 transition was (and is) alienating many people
    • SirFatty 11mo ago
      That couldn't have anything to do with being a near monopoly.. no sir.
      • recursive 11mo ago
        Two names for the same thing.
• officeplant 11mo ago
  In the 2000's I used to fear that not having windows at home would lead me to a lack of troubleshooting prowess when it comes to problems with windows at work. Now I'm just glad I only have to suffer windows at work.
  • Gualdrapo 11mo ago
    After some uni class at a conference room, back in 2006, there was a Linux hackathon/demo-y thingy outside where there were people showing off Compiz, the cube and that kind of stuff. Of course my noob ass was impressed with that - you can switch windows a 3d cube? That's amazing! That's the future! I want to try that! So they were kind enough to give each one of us a Ubuntu 5.10 CD, one of those from back then when Canonical shipped free Ubuntu CDs to people around the world completely for free. I can recall poking around that brown-y Gnome 2.x and feeling cozyness, like feeling at home. Everything felt transparent and humble and honest, from the desktop wallpaper, the icons and the typography to the tone the help pages were written. You could feel the ubuntu on it. It really felt like it was made for human beings. The computer no longer felt like a dark box that only let you do things your license let you to do and if you dared to look at other direction, ever so slightly, things could go insanely wrong. Granted, I didn't had internet at home back then (and wouldn't have it until late 2008 via a crappy 3G modem) so after nuking the Windows XP install and tried install it, also nuked the partition where I had all my uni docs and stuff and, defeated, had to go back to Windows via a pirate copy - until I had enough spare time to go learn what I did wrong and try again. Never went back ever since. Things have changed a bit - Ubuntu is not what it what it used to be, I am not who I used to be (ended being a graphic designer) and not even the internet itself is not what it what it used to be - but I'm glad human creations like Linux still exist.
    • shmeeed 11mo ago
      Man, Compiz! Ubuntu on CDs! :') Thank you for activating some core memories.
    • officeplant 11mo ago
      I really miss the old cozy days of Ubuntu as well. Ordered a set of CDs to pass out to friends in University sometime around 5.04 or 5.10 as well. I used to wish I could afford the ubuntu backpacks they sold at the time.
• seemaze 11mo ago
  >So if anything goes wrong in my install, it’ll be a lot of forum-hopping and Discord searching to figure it all out This is not inaccurate, however every time I've had to interface with either Microsoft or Adobe issues, both the professional and community support have been abysmal. Both community forums seem to incentivize engagement to the point where every response is 3+ hyperlinks deep to someone else's vaguely related post. Maybe the linux forums self select for independent problem solvers..
  • huflungdung 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • ronsor 11mo ago
    Community forums/support from big companies like Microsoft and Adobe tend to be completely useless. In most cases, all threads follow the same flow: * Question with reasonable amount of detail. * A reply from some "Community Helper" (Rank: Gold): "did you try reading the help files?" * Another person with a "Staff" badge: "this isn't our department" [Thread closed.]
    • ACCount37 11mo ago
      At least it's not Qualcomm support forums. "Talk to the sales about this functionality. [Thread closed]"
      • marcosdumay 11mo ago
        I have some respect for the Oracle's honesty in putting stuff like "this bug can't be solved in the cheapest version of the software, buy the upgrade package X if you need it fixed" right on the forum.
        • jm4 11mo ago
          There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. Every enterprise OSS company operates like that. People paying for support and funding the project get to make requests. Anyone else can submit a PR or be happy with the free software. It’s a pretty good deal if you ask me. Granted, Oracle charges a lot just to even use the software, but I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to limit certain types of requests for higher paying customers. Pay base price and you get to use the software, get updates and call tech support. Pay a premium and they prioritize bug fixes and features for you.
• tonymet 11mo ago
  Any technical minds care to explain how the "agentic Windows" actually functions? Based on the marketing it seems to run a sandboxed copilot instance that can impersonate the user to take actions, with their permission? Something like "hey copilot install Putty"? and it does it? I can relate to the reluctance to adopt AI features into the OS -- but I would also like to understand how they work and any utility they might provide.
  • thewebguyd 11mo ago
    That's what I understand. It basically spins up a windows VM, you grant it access to specific files or folders, and it runs the actions in the VM. From the MS support doc: > "An agent workspace is a separate, contained space in Windows where you can grant agents access to your apps and files so they can complete tasks for you in the background while you continue to use your device. Each agent operates using its own account, distinct from your personal user account. This dedicated agent account establishes clear boundaries between agent activity and your own, enabling scoped authorization and runtime isolation. As a result, you can delegate tasks to agents while retaining full control, visibility into agent actions, and the ability to manage access at any time." MS showed a little bit of something like it at Ignite yesterday, but for enterprise automations, the AI spun up a Windows 365 instance, did some stuff on the web, then disposed of it when it was done.
    • tonymet 11mo ago
      thanks for explaining that. I could see some value and also tremendous risk. My concern is that the Windows Credential itself doesn’t have a ton of value (opening windows apps) but the browser cookie jar (e..g Edge or Chrome) , which the Credential unlocks, has tremendous value — and threats. The core problem is lack of granularity in permissions. If you allow the agent to do browser activities as your user, you can’t control which cookie / scope it will take action on. You might say “buy me chips” and it instead logs into your Fidelity account and buys $100k worth of stock. Let’s see how they figure out the authorization model.
  • ACCount37 11mo ago
    "How it actually functions" is too much of a moving target. The book of "best practices for building AI agent functionality into your OS" is still being written. But "sandboxed envs for AI to do things in" is one approach MS is currently trying for. I agree that a "good" implementation of agentic AI can have a lot of benefits, to casual users and power users both. But do I have any trust in Microsoft being the company to ship a "good" implementation? Hell no. Windows has been getting more and more user hostile for years now, to casual users and power users both. If there's anyone at Microsoft who still cares about good UX, they sure don't have any decision-making power. And getting AI integration right is as much a UX issue as it is a foundation model issue or an integration hook issue.
• ge96 11mo ago
  I couldn't afford new computers in the past, would get some POS but putting Linux on it and a tiling manager gave me more bang for my buck Started with Linux Mint then Debian/Ubuntu, tried some others too but ultimately just stuck with Ubuntu
• unethical_ban 11mo ago
  Anyone have experience with CachyOS or Bazzite here? I'm using Fedora KDE standard, never toyed with Arch distros, and don't know much about Bazzite/Kinoite. Regular Fedora seems pretty usable to me. In any case, it's really great to see Linux overcoming its final major hurdle for a lot of technical people to dump Windows: Gaming compatibility.
  • chazfg 11mo ago
    I use cachyos. It's good as long as you're fine with some knob turning. I haven't had an issue granted I haven't played many things. Cities skylines 2 works for me so I can't complain about it
  • cwbriscoe 11mo ago
    I've only played with CachyOS in a VM but I plan on installing it on my next computer build.
  • quasigod 11mo ago
    Both are great options, but if you're happy with Fedora, there's probably not a big reason to switch. Arch is a full rolling release, which requires you to be aware and ready to deal with any breaking changes each time you update your packages. On Fedora, you'll mostly only have to be ready for this on a new version release. If you want to always have the newest packages for everything and don't want to wait, then CachyOS is great. If you want to turn on auto updates and only think about changes when a major release drops, Fedora is a better pick. Bazzite, being an atomic distro, is kind of hard to compare to. For basic use-cases like running just software available in Flathub, it is incredibly solid and easy to use. If I were choosing a Linux distro for a non-technical family member, I would go with an atomic Fedora distro and be completely confident they could get things done without breaking anything. However, if your needs are more advanced, you're going to need to be ready to relearn a lot (e.g. using containers for development), since atomic distros are a big paradigm shift from standard ones. This isn't a bad thing, just something to be ready for.
  • westpfelia 11mo ago
    if you want a gaming-fedora experience I use Nobaro and its pretty great!
• ErroneousBosh 11mo ago
  Over here we've been saying for years that gaming on Linux is a far better experience, with better framerates and better stability. Just you're kind of SOL if you want to play anything that isn't based on some flavour of Quake or Unreal engine. Well, that's different now. See? Told you. Faster, smoother, less crashy. Oh, you want Microsoft Office? Yeah well you're probably using Office 365 these days anyway. Everything's in a browser. No, it looks just the same. Edge? It's less crashy in Linux, weirdly. AutoCAD? Nah. Still SOL.
• Jigsy 11mo ago
  I was still using Windows 8.1 at the start of 2024 and was trying to slowly shift away to Linux at the time, but circumstances beyond my control ended up throwing me into the deep end a lot quicker than I expected. I'm really enjoying Linux. It's one of those things that makes me somewhat passionate about computing for the first time in a long time.
  • switchbak 11mo ago
    I'm one of those weird people that has been on Linux so long (wow, like over 2 decades now) I quite literally don't remember how to use Windows - even though I cut my teeth on it in the 90's. I dabble on the Mac to a moderate degree, but I'm just mostly comfortable on Linux, despite more BS than one would prefer. The benefits certainly outweigh the downsides (for most purposes), especially if you're technical enough to be self-sufficient. When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? If I wasn't super tech savvy, I can see why people would pay the absurd Mac tax - just throw money at the problem enough to make it go away.
    • Jigsy 11mo ago
      > When I see the adware monstrosity that Windows appears to have turned into, I'm actually quite shocked to see sharp folks using it. I must be missing something, like do they have cheat codes to make it usable? I think the sad reality is a lot of people simply don't care. I specifically avoided Windows 10 because of the telemetry and the whole forced reboots for updates seem pretty annoying, and I didn't see it getting any better which is why I decided to try and move to Linux. The only thing that held be back at the time was I was too ensconsed in my eight-year-old setup, so I needed to be able to do the same things on Linux; and I needed gaming to be viable. Which it thankfully is now to Proton. And it's even more disgusting how Windows 11 has become considering it has the "we'll take screenshots of what you're doing every five seconds" stuff now. Sure, Microsoft claim they'll never see what people are doing, but what's stopping them from doing that in a future update? At least people are slowly wising up to this; though a believe a good majority of new Linux users are because they don't want to create e-wase and replace a perfectly good computer just because Microsoft says "No." Personally, I wish I'd swapped sooner.
• andai 11mo ago
  >I don't want to talk to my computer I recently vibe coded a voice typing software (using Parakeet — your best bet is probably Handy though). It works in my terminal. (I just changed my paste shortcut to Ctrl+V I can now literally speak software into existence! I made a thin wrapper around my llm() function I can pipe text into from Bash. This allows me to make many other thin LLM wrappers, such as one that summarizes then contents of entire directories. I have a thing called Jarvis inspired by a Twitter post, where I ask it to do anything in bash, and it just does that. I wouldn't exactly say it's useful (I am unemployed) but I am kind of having my mind blown a little bit. The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.
  • beepbooptheory 11mo ago
    Please, really, I am sure we all get it. Who is even the audience for this kind of comment at this point? Can't we have one comment section that's about how Linux is cool and good and Windows sucks? Like when we were all still real nerds instead of product hypers?
    • andai 11mo ago
      The point of my comment is that if you use AI in the CLI it can be very helpful, because they're really good with text and pretty bad with everything else. The general rule here is that you use it for what it's good for it's actually really good. The "typing into my terminal" is mostly for interacting with Claude Code. I wish that part worked on my phone. Although I do use the voice typing tons for text chat, ironically.
      • beepbooptheory 11mo ago
        Ok! Great! Thanks.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  • multjoy 11mo ago
    What lunatic thinks that voice is the best way to interface with a computer?
• AuthAuth 11mo ago
  This is bad. New user going onto an arch distro with a ton of tweaks is worst case scenario for a smooth experience. I'm sure cachyOS will work a treat out of the box, but i'm also sure that one day things will stop working and cascade into a distro hop or reinstall leaving a sour taste in the users mouth. You do not need a "gaming" distro, all distros use the same software and you will be fine on ubuntu, fedora etc.
  • kevinfiol 11mo ago
    Agreed. I'm surprised by the amount of Linux newcomers being directed toward these weird, specialized derivatives that have existed >2 years.
    • cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
      It’s almost certainly driven by a desire for everything to work as expected out of the box. Speciality derivatives come with attention to detail and purpose-fitting that often isn’t found in general purpose distros, like how Nobara has a system to auto-apply fixes for common problems or how Bazzite includes an overlay for game stats (framerate, etc). Rolling and bleeding edge distros have been popular because people want to use the latest hardware. Can you get these things with a general purpose distro with older kernels? Sure, but the process varies depending on distro, hardware, use case, etc and isn’t necessarily accessible to many, even with the selection bias towards a technical mindset that comes with wanting to switch to Linux. It’s the same reason why Windows has been popular for so long and why Valve has seen outsized success with Linux: the fiddly bits have been minimized. Major distros could pull in many of these users by sinking resources into that golden “out of the box” experience and aggressive hunting down and fixing of papercuts.
      • beeflet 11mo ago
        okay but this should just be upstreamed into a real distro, we don't need 1000 distros that are all reimplementing the same thing
• pshirshov 11mo ago
  It should be NixOS of course.
  • hombre_fatal 11mo ago
    I started using NixOS a month ago. Knowing nothing about how to configure it, I installed it with the graphical installer, booted into a tty, installed claude-code, checked the config files into git, and proceeded to vibe-code a basic sway (now niri) environment to see what it would feel like. A month later, my NixOS environment is so much better than my heavily optimized macOS environment that I sheepishly use it inside a VM on macOS (UTM) or VNC to my desktop machine so I can use it from my bed. LLMs really open the doors of desktop Linux since you can git clone all of your deps locally (your window manager, keepassxc, waybar, your apps, nixpkgs, home-manager, even the linux kernel, etc., etc.) and the LLM can dig into source code and web search to do things for you or debug issues. And NixOS adds a level of observability into what's going on since any changes show up in git-diffed config files. If anyone is like me and used macOS because you used to use Linux but couldn't be bothered anymore when you'd run into a rough edge, you might find it fun to use NixOS + claude-code (or equivalent) running in ~/nix-config.
    • Vinnl 11mo ago
      Yeah the NixOS recommendation here is clearly a joke and I wouldn't recommend it to almost anyone, but I too switched about a month ago, and it's basically made for LLMs. Let them read the Git repo and they'll actually have a chance at figuring out the issues you have. But: you will have issues.
      • pshirshov 11mo ago
        It's not a joke. Despite of all the shortcomings it's the only way to have reproducible environments and stay sane. LLMs do help with learning curve, yes.
    • tstrimple 11mo ago
      This is the way. I'm running NixOS on my NAS and my Desktop and I use Nix and home manager on my MBP. Thinking about trying Jovian on my Steam deck. I can have a single flake that describes my home environment and device specific configs for each separate deployment. Claude Code to setup and integrate everything has been a lot of fun and has been productive. I have run NixOS quite a bit on my own prior to this, so it's been helpful to know where and when to push back on CC. I finished my desktop setup last night. The only thing I did was enable SSH on a clean NixOS install and setup sudo settings for CC. After that I used my NAS CC instance to SSH to the desktop and bootstrap an "idiomatic NixOS install of Claude Code". From there, every change on my NixOS desktop has been via LLM.
• more_corn 11mo ago
  My buddy gave me a computer because it wouldn’t run 11. I put Zorin Linux on it. I’m quite pleased. Not once in initial setup or first week of use did it use dark patterns to try to trick or force me into something I don’t want to do.
• arcfour 11mo ago
  I have been waiting for this time to come. Microsoft clearly doesn't care about Windows very much, and Linux has never been more ready to break out in market share. Quite exciting to see!
• andrewmutz 11mo ago
  I use bazzite linux for gaming full time and can't say enough good things about it. You don't need to do anything at all to maintain it. Every Windows game I've ever tried just works perfectly out of the box. Sometimes I will see a warning telling me that a certain game is not certified for a good experience by Steam, and it all just works perfect anyway. When I was running Windows on the same machine I was constantly trying to diagnose why things stopped working, and downloading drivers. Perhaps my experience with Windows was worse than average, I don't know. But from my perspective there is zero reason not to run Linux full time for gaming.
  • johanvts 11mo ago
    There is one reason, anticheat, that at least was why i had to abandon bazzite for now. Otherwise i loved how easy it was to set up like a console for my kids to use without my help.
    • fossilwater 11mo ago
      I still keep my dual boot Windows for this reason. EA decided to put anti-cheat on EA WRC, so now you cannot play it on Linux. I play most of my games on Bazzite and anything requiring anti-cheat or use of my Logitech wheel on Windows
  • keraf 11mo ago
    Also daily driving Bazzite on my gaming laptop, everything is supported out of the box (iGPU / dGPU switcher, fan control, LED keyboard, low/high screen refresh), there's barely any maintenance needed and it runs really smooth. The other day I connected my G27 (wheel, pedals and gear shifter) to play BeamNG, it just worked, no drivers, crapware or configuration needed. I also use the same machine for dev work and everything works amazingly well.
• djhworld 11mo ago
  My gaming PC sits next to the TV in my living room and I use it like a console, I have one of those cheap blutooth wireless keyboards with trackpad for the really basic iteractions and then I just use a game controller for playing games. Windows 11 has been fine for me, I don't interact with it much other than seeing it for a bit when launching games. I honestly wouldn't mind giving Linux a go, the only downside is I made the mistake of buying an nvidia graphics card, I'm not sure how much of a pain it is these days but last time I tried it was a bit of a nightmare - the general wisdom at the time was to go with an AMD card.
  • sbrother 11mo ago
    Nvidia's Linux software is first rate -- actually a large amount of the software that would merit buying an Nvidia graphics card is Linux-only anyway. I actually briefly had an AMD card but ended up giving it away since it didn't support ~any of the projects I needed to work on. But YMMV, my anecdata is from a ML engineering perspective.
    • robotnikman 11mo ago
      I can confirm your anecdote, based on messing with ML on a linux system in my personal time over the last few years. I don't do any work in ML, but I have never heard of anyone doing anything with ML on Windows other than maybe running some models locally. Though I will say I have encountered issues in the past with a Linux gaming computer which experienced issues with the Nvidia drivers anytime I decided to update the distro (I was using Kubuntu at the time).
      • selectodude 11mo ago
        I do ML in a Debian WSL install because I’m a crazy person. But I hate dual booting and it works perfectly.
    • rabf 11mo ago
      Not only has Nvidia Linux support been first rate for decades now, but their FreeBSD support is also great. The secret has been that they run the same driver on all platforms with just a shim to interface with the different kernels.
• molave 11mo ago
  Changed from Windows 10 to an Ubuntu with beefy specs. When I saw firsthand the improvement of the user experience, I felt the year of the Linux desktop is nigh.
• vagab0nd 11mo ago
  I had to briefly go back to Windows and I just couldn't understand how anyone serious can run an OS that just decides to reboot itself in the middle of the night.
  • WD-42 11mo ago
    This 100%. The main purpose of an operating system is to run programs and keep them running. Windows fails at that.
    • jaza 11mo ago
      The (only) people who pay for Windows are corporate managers. Therefore, the main purpose of Windows is to make corporate managers happy. Corporate managers want updates to install promptly, so they can tick their ISO compliance box saying "no insecure software running here". They couldn't care less about an annoying experience or slightly reduced productivity for their underlings. Therefore, Windows succeeds at its main purpose.
  • layer8 11mo ago
    Just install Reboot-Blocker. Or equivalently, define a Scheduled Task that rotates your “working hours” every hour, so that it always matches the current time. Yes it’s annoying to have to do that and that there isn’t a simple switch anymore like there used to be, but at least it’s defeatable.
  • morshu9001 11mo ago
    Any corp laptop will do this too, regardless of OS. It's annoying but not a dealbreaker for most people. They aren't running servers.
  • Gareth321 11mo ago
    Apple has decided to take this paternal route as well, and it's quite frustrating. The good news is if you use the Pro version of Windows, you can disable that. Still crazy you can't fully disable it using standard setting on the consumer version, of course.
  • 11mo ago
• ruined 11mo ago
  >I’m going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro optimized for gaming on modern hardware, with support for cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs and an allegedly easy setup. oh no
  • oompydoompy74 11mo ago
    I don’t understand this reaction. It’s an immutable distro and is very similar to SteamOS. It’s very hard to break and dead simple to maintain. You will likely install apps via Flatpak and never have to touch the Arch repos.
    • Vinnl 11mo ago
      I think you're thinking of Bazzite. Which indeed would probably have been an excellent fit for a gaming-focused beginner for the reasons you mentioned.
• pessimizer 11mo ago
  Please don't install some weird trendy distro. I'm starting to think that Microsoft is sponsoring them just to make sure that people come running back to Windows, complaining, saying "not ready for prime time." Just install Debian. Stable. Or Mint or even Ubuntu. Move over to something bizarre when you know why you want it.
  • perihelions 11mo ago
    Occam's distro-hopper? Don't attribute to malice, what's easily explained by people chasing after trendy new things.
  • WD-42 11mo ago
    People want to game. Telling them to install Debian stable is not going to end well. There's a reason why these "weird" gaming distros are popular, and it's not because they are making people run back to Windows - quite the opposite.
  • rabf 11mo ago
    The secret for a reasonable linux distro for most people is LTS Kernel + Latest packages. Most people want the latest versions of whatever software they use that will often include new features and lots bugfixes. The only time you really need a new kernel is for to support cutting edge hardware. Many of the Arch or Fedora derivatives fit this paradigm well.
  • morshu9001 11mo ago
    And DEs. MS taking no prisoners, meanwhile Linux community squabbling over which button layout is best.
• homeonthemtn 11mo ago
  Funny timing. I just said screw it the other day and wiped an old laptop to install Linux. I'm using budgie at the moment, but it's been pretty smooth sailing. I suspect the combination of modern Linux + + Steam + LLM to troubleshoot and learn may see more conversions like myself
• spuz 11mo ago
  > So really, why wouldn’t I blow that up and start over? I really wish more people would mention the option of dual booting. Use another separate SSD to install your linux OS and that way you always have the option of going back to your Windows install. You can even reserve some programs for Windows and do everything else with linux. There's really no need to approach it with a "screw it" attitude. You'll probably get yourself in too deep with that approach.
  • kurttheviking 11mo ago
    This is the way. I've been dual booting with Ubuntu for almost 20 years now and my main finding these days is just how easy it has become and how rarely I need to switch to Windows. Sure, it happens and the option is always there, but Ubuntu as a daily driver is solid.
  • smallstepforman 11mo ago
    Why stop with only 2 OS’s? I triple boot with Haiku.
  • Ferret7446 11mo ago
    Windows has a rather famous bad habit of nuking any other OSes installed on the same drive, so you really do need an extra separate drive, which is inconvenient if you don't already have a separate drive.
    • physicles 11mo ago
      Yeah this happened to me at least once, and I had to spend several hours with low-level recovery software to get my files back. This was the catalyst that finally got me to ditch windows for good 7 years ago.
    • devnullbrain 11mo ago
      And changing your bootloader (every update) and timezone (every boot)
    • ctrl4 11mo ago
• bitwize 11mo ago
  Open source sickos: Yes... hahaha... YES! Honestly, I'm just surprised it took this long, and this much end-user abuse, to get things to where even casual enthusiasts are realizing that Microsoft (any proprietary vendor really) is NOT their friend, and looking long and hard at giving Linux a go. But I'm glad y'all are here.
• tombert 11mo ago
  I wish my parents would switch. Look at my comment history if you want more details, but TL;DR the auto update to windows 11 bricked my mom’s laptop and I had to do some weirdness with Linux to save her files and then wipe the computer. Since I am a software person I have become the person that my parents call for IT help, and increasingly I have grown pretty frustrated with Windows. I have been trying to convince them to move to Zorin or Mint or something or to buy a Mac, and they will not yield. In a bit of fairness to them, the biggest issue is MS Office; they did recently try LibreOffice and the MS Office online, and they had shortcomings with both. Since I have been wholly unsuccessful at getting any modern Office to work on Linux (without virtualization), so now I don’t have a case for them to move. Which is annoying, because I really hate having to deal with it.
  • charlie-83 11mo ago
    What were their shortcomings with LibreOffice?
    • tombert 11mo ago
      My dad complained about StarBasic being different enough from VBA to where he'd be forced to port over large amounts of his spreadsheets over. He also uses the paid version of Mathtype to do his equation editing, which I'm not sure would work in Linux even if Word did run on Wine, at least not the direct integration. I am drawing a blank over what my mom was complaining about but I do recall that it was valid. Something to do with Word. It's tough for me to give full rebuttals to any of this, because I don't really use any WYSIWYG stuff for documents anymore and just use Typst or LaTeX/Pandoc for everything now. That works fine on Linux but of course that's understandably a non-starter for most people. At this point I think the only thing I could realistically do to get them to switch, and I doubt it would be successful, would be to convince them that Winboat would be fine.
      • charlie-83 11mo ago
        That makes sense. I think for most people the main, or even only issue, with LibreOffice is the switching cost of compatibility with their existing documents and then the ongoing annoyance of dealing with MS files people send them. Unfortunately I don't think there will ever really be a way around that.
• gnarlouse 11mo ago
  Once they get music production onto Linux, it's fucking game over for Microsoft, at least for me. A good deal of VSTs run in Wine already, Ableton works, Bitwig works...
• whoaoweird 11mo ago
  I moved to Linux after Win10 stopped receiving updates. It's WAY better than I expected it would be. Highly recommend people making a cut over. (I used Bazzite, but there's other options out there.)
• issafram 11mo ago
  Installing a working Nvidia driver was a nightmare for me. And this was on a very recent version of Ubuntu. I don't know if I would use the word approachable
  • jdpage 11mo ago
    Fedora makes it pretty approachable, and some distros (e.g. Nobara, Bazzite) just straight-up ship the driver. IMHO, stuff is moving fast enough in the Linux gaming world that any distro built around taking its time to update things (i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) is liable to be a bad time. Anecdotally, I've found that redirecting new users interested in gaming away from those distros has dramatically improved their satisfaction.
  • aidenn0 11mo ago
    Graphics drivers are near the top of my list of issues I've had with Ubuntu. I've been using Linux for well over 20 years and Ubuntu (and to a large degree, other Debian derivatives) is just such a pain in the ass to install and configure. It is superficially a good UX in the sense that if you can somehow manage to stay on the happy path, it's smooth, but go an inch off of that and you're in for a world of pain.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• vinkelhake 11mo ago
  I recently had my Framework Desktop delivered. I didn't plan on using it for gaming, but I figured I should at least try. My experience thus far: * I installed Fedora 43 and it (totally unsurprisingly) worked great. * I installed Steam from Fedora's software app, and that worked great as well. * I installed Cyberpunk 2077 from Steam, and it just... worked. Big thanks to Valve for making this as smooth as it was. I was able to go from no operating system to Cyberpunk running with zero terminals open or configs tweaked. I later got a hankering to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This time, the game would not work and Steam wasn't really forthcoming with showing logs. I figured out how to see the logs, and then did what you do these days - I showed the logs to an AI. The problem, slightly ironically, with MD is that it has a Linux build and Steam was trying to run that thing by default. The Linux build (totally unsurprisingly) had all kinds of version issues with libraries. The resolution there was just to tell Steam to run the Windows build instead and that worked great.
  • ascagnel_ 11mo ago
    > I later got a hankering to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This time, the game would not work and Steam wasn't really forthcoming with showing logs. I figured out how to see the logs, and then did what you do these days - I showed the logs to an AI. The problem, slightly ironically, with MD is that it has a Linux build and Steam was trying to run that thing by default. The Linux build (totally unsurprisingly) had all kinds of version issues with libraries. The resolution there was just to tell Steam to run the Windows build instead and that worked great. I've heard it said in jest, but the most stable API in Linux is Win32. Running something via Wine means Wine is doing the plumbing to take a Windows app and pass it through to the right libraries. I also wonder if it's long-term sustainable. Microsoft can do hostile things or develop their API in ways Valve/Proton neither need nor want, forcing them to spend dev time keeping up.
    • danielheath 11mo ago
      MS _can_ do that, but only with new APIs (or break backwards compatibility). Wine only needs to keep up once folks actually _use_ the new stuff… which generally requires that it be useful.
• B-Con 11mo ago
  I just rebuilt my PC and setup Steam on Linux. It was fairly smooth. I've dual-booted Arch and Windows for about 16 years. I always kept Windows around for gaming, and the occasional "doesn't support Linux" workflow. For a few years where I didn't game I found myself almost exclusively in Linux. But then I spent the last 5-6 years stuck between the two as my PC use for daily tasks dwindled, I stopped working on side projects, and I started gaming a bit more. I hated trying to split my time between them. Most of what I used a PC for was the browser, so I could just stay in Windows most of the time. I wanted to use Linux, but rebooting to use a web browser just didn't make sense. As a result I would accidentally go 2-3 months without ever booting Arch. As a result, I had a couple of major updates that didn't go smoothly. I wanted to use Linux, though. I like having a customized WM, I like having so many useful tools at my disposal, etc. I just like using Linux, in spite of the occasional technical complexity. In the last couple months I rebuilt my PC and a major requirement was that I get set up to game in Linux as much as possible. I even bought an AMD card to ensure smooth driver support. I'm so incredibly thankful that Steam has made gaming not just possible, but relatively simple. Installation was simple. My single-player games seem well supported so far. And most importantly, Steam has made it obvious they're committed to this line of support, so this isn't some hero effort that will bit rot in a couple years. I still have to reboot to play competitive games, due to their anti-cheat requirements, but that's less of a problem, I'll take what I can get.
• keithnz 11mo ago
  I really like windows 11, works great. I have it way more customized to my liking than most "normal" users would, but there's really no negative impact on me. I also have a Mac and use Linux (bounced between arch, ubuntu, and now just use PopOS). Overall I generally prefer windows, it generally runs everything. Things like windows powertoys make the user experience pretty nice, doing similar on linux requires a lot more work. Wezterm standardizes the terminal across all platforms. But the OS really doesn't matter too much, it only accounts for maybe <10% of my experience. But everything just seems a bit easier on windows but I could live just fine in any of the OS's if I had to.
  • thewebguyd 11mo ago
    I generally like Windows too, which is a lot of why I'm so incredibly frustrated by the direction Microsoft is taking. There are still glaring bugs, omissions, and regressions in Windows 11 that just are not getting attention because Microsoft is 100% focused on AI instead of improving their product. I have a MacBook Pro now. I get by. Window management drives me absolutely insane, but this is the best laptop hardware, performance, and battery life I've ever had. Windows is now shoved into a VM that I pop open only when I explicitly need it for a few work things (primarily Excel and PowerBI Desktop). I'd go back to Windows again the moment Microsoft starts respecting their users again, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
  • throwawee 11mo ago
    I had to help someone elderly set up Windows 11 recently and it was monstrous. The error messages were useless and when we finally got it going, the UI was horribly sluggish. There was a time Windows was a solid default choice for the average consumer, but Windows 7 was 15 years ago.
• LanceH 11mo ago
  I just tried installing Heroic Games on Arch, and the install process has left me less than impressed. It will be one vague error with a bunch of forums saying, "try this" and no "this is what that error means". I try to install that one and it has its own error, with the same forum experience. I'm not trying to install something which will allow me to install vulkan which will allow me to install heroic games...maybe. I don't think an Epic games launcher is exactly obscure. Mind you, I'm completely commmitted to Linux and having the launcher is just in the "nice to have" category, but it hasn't gone well so far.
  • dgunay 11mo ago
    The experience using Heroic Games Launcher is a good bit less polished than Steam IME. I only really use it to play games that are occasionally given away on the Epic Games Store for free so I mostly treat it as a nice bonus if they actually work on Linux.
    • LanceH 11mo ago
      I use it almost exclusively for Satisfactory, which I could buy again on Steam, but I don't want to. Steam is working flawlessly. Other than anti-cheat, I haven't run across anything that doesn't play exactly like its windows counterpart.
  • tmtvl 11mo ago
    My experience installing the Heroic Games Launcher on Arch was just: - git clone the heroic-games-launcher AUR repo, - makepkg -sc, - pacman -U. And it just worked. This was something like a month ago, though so maybe my experience is more recent?
• gigatexal 11mo ago
  Call of duty 6 and now 7 will never work. They’re checking for TPMs and yelling about secure boot. Insanity.
  • pelotron 11mo ago
    Yea and guess who owns Activision?
    • wiredpancake 11mo ago
      [dead]
  • SSLy 11mo ago
    I wonder when games will require HVCI and friends
• dgunay 11mo ago
  I've been gaming on Linux exclusively for the last few years. Problems with games are few and far between these days. I've only had to fully reinstall once every ~2 years or so, and it's usually due to some problem with my DE/system not booting that I can't be fucked to troubleshoot. That's mostly my fault for running GNOME on a rolling distro. I just back up my home dir to the storage drive and I'm back up and running in less than an hour. Other than that, it just continues to work and I can be reasonably assured that if I don't touch it, it'll be fine.
• Venn1 11mo ago
  This week we shut the doors on our Linux gaming podcast that has been running continuously for the past 13 years. No fuss, no drama, but with the announcement of Steam Machine II (we also covered the origianl launch) it just seemed time. Proton has evolved to the point most things work out of the box. Nobody is bothering with native and it's gotten difficuls to find things to cover. It really feels like evertying is ligned up for the year of Linux in the Living room and yeah, it's really good to see.
• Venn1 11mo ago
  This week we closed the doors on our Linux gaming podcast, which has run continuously for the past 13 years. No fuss, no drama. With the announcement of Steam Machine II (we also covered the original launch), it just seemed like the right time. Proton has evolved to the point where most things work out of the box. Few people are bothering with native support, and it’s become difficult to find new things to cover. It really feels like everything is lined up for the year of Linux in the living room, and it’s great to see.
  • abnercoimbre 11mo ago
    Wait, what was the reason for winding down the podcast? > Few people are bothering with native support Was the podcast an attempt to increase porting efforts to Linux? But Proton (and now Steam Machine II) took the wind out of your sails?
  • J_McQuade 11mo ago
    I never listened to the podcast, but I see where you're coming from and thanks for doing it anyway. Twenty years ago I was in university and had a Debian install on a cheap-ass Acer laptop and I managed to get exactly two and a half games working under Wine: the first two Fallouts and about three hours of Civ IV before crash. Getting games to run at all was A THING so a podcast for that makes a lot of sense. Today I have a full-time job and deleted the Windows partition from my expensive PC about three years ago... pretty much every game I've ever wanted to play since then has just WORKED. Better than on modern Windows, even. Not a lot to talk about there, I guess. One thing I wish is that Valve could publish a 'Proton spec' that people could build against to ensure compatibility, but I imagine that that this would be an IP nightmare.
  • pabs3 11mo ago
    Can we have a link to the podcast?
    • watermelon0 11mo ago
      I'm quite sure it's this one: https://linuxgamecast.com/podcasts/ https://linuxgamecast.com/podcasts/
• Escapade5160 11mo ago
  If you are looking solely for a Linux gaming distro, Bazzite is it. I switched from Windows earlier this year and I haven't looked back. Everything works out of the box. https://bazzite.gg/ https://bazzite.gg/
• throwsuperlativ 11mo ago
  That sounds less than impressive.
• jachee 11mo ago
  There is exactly one game keeping me from running Linux as my main OS… and that’s iRacing. Sadly, they won’t (not can’t…) ship the flag in EOS (née EAC) that enables anti-cheat support on Linux. It would work, but they just don’t have the resources to support a whole other family of OSes. So, between that and the abject murder of WMR for my Reverb G2, I’m stuck on Win10 for the foreseeable.
• h4kunamata 11mo ago
  Gaming on Linux always sucked because of many factors: 1. Linux decades ago was not "new user friendly" 2. Wine and PLayOnLinux was all we had with endless problem, and heavy dependency on Windows files like DirectX and libraries 3. Windows dominated the gaming market 4. 3D GPU driver was non-existent The single reason why gaming on Linux now is better than Windows, has one name: Valve SteamDeck/SteamOS changed everything, the whole Wine process is managed by the OS and no longer by the user. You may need to change the Proton version, that is all. That also pushed GPU drivers to be better supported on Linux. Valve single handled what gaming on Linux has become. I run Mint Cinnamon Linux, and even tho it is not "SteamOS", I can play Steam games just fine. Microsoft terrible takes and AI, is also pushing gamers over to Linux, better FPS on Linux than Windows. The only restriction is kernel anti-cheat software that only runs on Windows, but many games do not use that and the ones that do use it like COD(dead game), BF, etc, isn't everybody cup of tea. If it wasn't for Valve, Linux gaming would still be as dead as it has always been. To make it more perfect, users that use their computer for browsing, writing docs (LibreOffice), etc, can be done on Linux for free. You as a computer user in 2025, you have little to no excuse to try Linux, but try something good like Mint Cinnamon Linux that is extremely new user friendly, good for browsing, good for development work, solid for gaming, video editing is chef kiss, etc, etc. Avoid Ubuntu (they are going proprietary).
  • tombert 11mo ago
    I don't really play multiplayer games other than a self-hosted Minecraft server, so for me the SteamOS experience (using Jovian on NixOS) is strictly better than what I had on Windows. A lot of games from the late 90's/early 2000's have trouble running on modern Windows but work fine with Wine or Proton. I've been utterly astounded by Proton in the last year. Nearly every game I have run has run just about perfectly, often better than on Windows, and I'm able to play them with an Xbox One pad no less. Valve absolutely deserves a lot of credit, but I do think that the constant effort from the Wine people should get a lot of credit as well. Wine has had constant progress for three decades, with every release getting a little better. I haven't worked on it, but I suspect 90+% of the work with Wine is figuring out all the weird edge cases that have popped up on Windows throughout the years, which is often slow, tedious, thankless work. Valve did a lot of work but there's a reason they opted to improve Wine instead of writing Proton from scratch.
• marcus_holmes 11mo ago
  I switched over last year, no problems. Everything runs fine, and often better than on my wife's Windows machine. We're going to switch her over soon, because Windows 11 is such a shitshow. Really interested to see where Valve goes with the new hardware. I love my Steam Deck, so I have faith they'll do a good job.
• ndesaulniers 11mo ago
  Dunno, just upgraded Fedora to Fedora 43 and all of the games I had set up (wine) stopped working. Will try gaming on Linux again next decade.
  • rcarmo 11mo ago
    You should rebuild the Wine environments. Or just use Steam.
    • ndesaulniers 11mo ago
      Is this common with wine; that you need to rebuild your environments when upgrading??
• kgwxd 11mo ago
  My final Windows partition ever, exists solely for Roblox now. I was forced to "upgrade" my $200 Windows 10 Pro to 11 when Minecraft would no longer update. After installing 11, I find now Minecraft won't run unless you sign into the Microsoft Store app, not even the Java Edition. In Linux I can at least run Java Edition of MC, and all the other games I care about work perfectly, heck, sometimes better, through Steam. I love Valve.
• jokoon 11mo ago
  I don't want to believe it until it happens. NVIDIA and AMD can decide to undermine it if Linux doesn't yield enough profits for them. Even if only one of them undermines linux, linux gaming might have trouble progressing and game developers might just ignore Linux gaming. Microsoft could also undermine it if they really wanted.
  • bigyabai 11mo ago
    > NVIDIA and AMD can decide to undermine it if Linux doesn't yield enough profits for them. Can you elaborate what you mean, here? AMD has Mesa drivers for Vulkan 1.2+ compliance; their GPUs will support DXVK and Proton until the hardware breaks, even if they quit today. Nvidia's situation is slightly precarious, but the community has Nouveau and NOVA as hedged bets against them going rogue. And I can't see why they would ever go rogue - supporting Proton is so easy that many manufacturers do it by accident. Remember, even Apple Silicon supports DXVK on Asahi, despite Apple neither documenting their GPU, writing Vulkan drivers for it or designing their raster hardware around open standards. I'd be shocked if AMD or Nvidia managed to make a card that runs DirectX but refuses OpenGL and Vulkan bytecode in any form.
  • npteljes 11mo ago
    This is exactly why Valve's work is important with SteamOS. The more SteamOS devices people use, the more of a viable market they are, and so, a direct incentive is born, against locking games out of Linux. Personally, I don't think it will get worse than it is now. Some games are locked to some platforms, be that Windows, PS5 or Switch, and many great games can be enjoyed in Linux.
• 29athrowaway 11mo ago
  Gaming on Linux is approachable because decades were spent working around the obstacles created by Microsoft and the work that Microsoft did to steer people away from open standards.
• charcircuit 11mo ago
  Google made gaming on Linux both approachable and profitable with their work on the Android platform.
• INTPenis 11mo ago
  I've been linux gaming for decades so I'm not a good metric here. But I recently installed Bazzite on my gaming PC, and with Steam Big Picture mode, and Steam Controller mode, it's just like a Steam Machine now. Except it has more VRAM, larger, more modular. I just felt like I wasn't using the PC for anything but gaming so why run Fedora with FDE and everything, just go full gaming mode on it, keep it simple, and the experience has been great so far.
• capnjngl 11mo ago
  Like many others, I recently dove head-first into trying Linux as Windows 10 is no longer officially supported, and I really don't like a lot of design changes in Windows 11. So I went and installed Fedora, and for the most part, everything's working great. I use my machine for both work and gaming, and there are really two deal breakers right now on the work side: 1. Most of my work is web-based, and it's really surprising that this is an issue, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get Chrome to use autoscroll on mouse middle click. In Firefox it's just there as an option, and worked great. The LLMs suggested adding a flag to the launch options (which was an additional layer of complexity because of flatpacks) but that doesn't actually work if you're using Wayland. 2. Google Drive. No native app. Was able to mount my drive with RClone, which works, but at the core of my workflow on Windows is using the Everything app (on hotkey) to quickly search my Drive files immediately as I type. I can't seem to get KRunner to index my Drive files. I add the folder path to the indexer, but it's not surfacing any results in there. Gaming works great though.
  • egor83 11mo ago
    > how to get Chrome to use autoscroll on mouse middle click I'm using an extension for that: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/middle-button-scroll/goaoidnacdfckcafkpopiaabkohjghmm https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/middle-button-scrol... There used to be a more popular one, but it got dumped by Chrome recently, guess it wasn't up-to-date. This one isn't perfect (eg sometimes it pastes clipboard on middle-click), but still it mostly works.
    • capnjngl 11mo ago
      Thanks! This works pretty well.
      • capnjngl 11mo ago
        Arg, but then middle clicking links to open in new tabs wont work any more. Think Gemini 3 can one-shot a Chrome extension?
• pjmlp 11mo ago
  Gaming on Linux, with games complied on Windows, using Windows APIs, targeting Windows users. This will be like the netbook wave, or OS/2 Windows compatibility layer, a celebration until Microsoft decides the show has had its time. Valve really should push for native Steam OS builds.
  • npteljes 11mo ago
    Depending on the landscape, it will not be up to Microsoft, though. If enough SteamOS machines are on the market, it will be a viable target platform on its own, and then, even if MS had a special part of the API, the developers won't use it, lest they lose the SteamOS market.
    • pjmlp 11mo ago
      Microsoft has many ways to tackle the problem, starting by the amount of studios they could take out of Steam moving exclusives to their store, console style, as one of the biggest publishers. Then there are enough shennigangs they might think of regarding APIs, legal actions against Proton, or whatever their creating minds can conjure.
      • npteljes 11mo ago
        I'm sure there's a lot they could do, but I think even is the worst scenarios, SteamOS would still be a vibrant indie platform, with many major releases from studios who dgaf about Microsoft specifically. We'll see for sure, especially if the Gabecube sells well. Right now, SteamOS is still not among the largest players, when looking at units sold. I'm sure Microsoft will ramp something up when it gets more popular.
      • devnullbrain 11mo ago
        There are low hanging, unpicked fruit for Microsoft to make more money from selling desktop licences. It's still trivial to buy one for a third party for pennies on the dollar. It's still not possible to install officially without TPM 2.0. In contrast, Microsoft have pushed the pricing of Game Pass up significantly and are in the process of unifying the next Xbox platform with PC. Given that, I don't think it's consistent with Microsoft's current strategy to make selling games to gamers harder for the benefit of the OS division. Now, that conclusion does depend on Microsoft acting rationally, which isn't a given, so I'll also add that I don't think it's actually an option for them: win32 already exists, the cat is out of the bag. And the cat can't get back in the bag to be extended/extinguished unless Microsoft convinces everyone to move to Windows 11.
• MegaThorx 11mo ago
  About two months ago, I switched from Windows to Chrome OS, and I haven't missed Windows at all. The only thing that needed some adjustment was my audio setup. I have virtual channels for the system, music, chat, and games. These are then mapped to my Rodecaster Pro II. With Pipewire, this setup was not too difficult and works reliably. Gaming works perfectly fine. The only application I miss is ShareX for taking screenshots. I still use my old Windows PC for gaming with anti-cheat software via Moonlight and Sunshine, and it works perfectly.
  • Already__Taken 11mo ago
    imo everyone needs to try ChromeOS for the OOBE and living with sleep & instant reboot updates. Windows is a nightmare. it's made me want to get into core boot and find Linux laptop hardware that hums along.
• goranmoomin 11mo ago
  I knew for a fact that a Linux desktop was a viable option when you have a separate macOS/Windows laptop (which is my main computer). Recently (frustrated with macOS updates), I decided to be Linux-only for a week[0], replacing my MBP with an MBA that runs Asahi Linux. Unfortunately it turns out that I depend on too many desktop apps that runs on the major desktop OSes but not on Linux (or on Wine, for that matter). * KakaoTalk, the major South Korean IM app ran on Wine for a week, but the updater doesn't work and freshly reinstalling the app broke Wine for some reason. (I tried removing the whole ~/.wine prefix, but it doesn't work.) Now I'm stuck without KakaoTalk. * Discord is only provided as a x86_64 Deb file and a .tar.gz file. I tried using it from Firefox, and it works fine but audio sharing during screen sharing doesn't work. * Disconnecting from my Bluetooth AirPods somehow does not stop my music. I'm not sure if this is an AirPods limitation or a Linux limitation (since I've never used AirPods with Windows), but it annoyed me endlessly. * USB-C DP mode and the fingerprint sensor doesn't work. This is an Asahi Linux limitation, but I've seen various parts of the hardware not working when using other Linux distributions on laptops as well. I feel this is a common occurrence. Not to mention that the lack of text editing shortcuts that macOS has, which is a big deal to me (but I tried as that is a macOS-ism). I carried my MBA for 4 days before I gave up today. I brought my MBP today with me. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940274
  • yetihehe 11mo ago
    > * Disconnecting from my Bluetooth AirPods somehow does not stop my music. I'm not sure if this is an AirPods limitation or a Linux limitation (since I've never used AirPods with Windows), but it annoyed me endlessly. I think this is by design, not limitation. On android, changing sound device stops music playback. On windows and linux, changing sound device doesn't stop sound. I tried it with wired headphones, maybe expectations for BT are different, but I think that comes from smartphones.
  • westpfelia 11mo ago
    For discord I just use Discord Canary. its a wrapper and works perfectly. But I'm also on Fedora. I would suggest trying something other then Asahi linux! I know that their support with Mac systems is near unbeatable. But it does still tend to have some hiccups. Especially with M3+ systems. I know that "try a different distro" is a often (user biased) and imo bad answer. But in the case of Asahi as awesome as their work is they are climbing a different mountain compared to the rest of linux development.
• gethly 11mo ago
  I heard Jonathan Blow say that the problem of Linux, or native gaming on Linux, is the gazillion of libraries of unimaginable number of versions. I find it funny that investing a ton of time(by now decades) and money into making a API layer for Windows API made more sense than to clean up or somehow standardise Linux itself. What a mess this thing is. Though, I am definitely not moving to W11, so Linux will be in my future one way or another.
  • zamalek 11mo ago
    Steam works around this using a chroot (container-like) into an environment with controlled libs. That being said, I have never seen it work: I always end up enabling Proton. There is the school of thought that Wine is merely the Linux gaming ABI, and I largely agree. Native Linux binaries "feels" better but doesn't bring much from a practical standpoint.
    • gethly 11mo ago
      I thought Steam uses Proton. How many of these gaming layers are there? Also, it looks like yet another unnecessary fragmentation.
      • zamalek 11mo ago
        For Linux-native games (there aren't many) it uses what I described, making the system look a lot like Ubuntu to the game. Proton is for Windows (PE/exe) binaries, not Linux (ELF). Jonathan Blow is sharpshooting and being intentionally difficult in order to sound smart (he really needs to engage in that behavior less, he's smart enough as-is). Virtually nobody bothers with Linux-native binaries for games. Compile your game for Windows, test it on Linux+Proton, find that it probably works fine, it's not hard.
        • gethly 11mo ago
          > Virtually nobody bothers with Linux-native binaries for games. Well, that was exactly his point.
• rcarmo 11mo ago
  Best thing we did two years ago was to set up Bazzite on a mini-PC. It’s been flawless.
• Jackson__ 11mo ago
  Sadly pipewire still has issues properly delivering audio on my system with all core load of ~50%. It makes media consumption on a linux pc simply impossible for me, even a 13 year old thinkpad running windows is better in that regard.
• masfoobar 11mo ago
  I have been a GNU/Linux user since 2006. While I still had a Windows PC (likely dual-boot on one machine) for games and my full-time job, Linux provided ALL I needed 90% of the time. I tried various Linux flavours. Starting with Ubuntu. From memory, I tried Mint, Fedora, Slackware, Manjaro, etc. I cannot remember when I last tried a Distro. It likely ended by 2010. Since I have just stuck with Debain.. for both client and server installs. I said goodbye to Windows a few weeks ago.. fully. While Windows has served my purpose in certain ways, I have always been critical of Microsoft and their practices. I would agree that Windows 11 is a solid OS.. its the "features" added on top that slows it down. This time, I have the latest version of Debian. No dual-boots.. nothing else! Despite being aware of Steam's Linux support for some time, now.. I actually gave it a shot and suprised how easy it was. I then tried Heoric (Epic) Launcher and just as easy! It probably helped that my laptop is an AMD. I normally hear effort and difficulty with nVidia but I did not have much trouble 10 odd years ago. Not sure what its like to properly work today. So far I have tried 4 games. 2 modern games, and two 90's games. All of the worked! Whiles the 90's games had their issues at times.. this mostly refers to using a gamepad. The 2 new games (sure this is not a good experiment for all games) have worked flawlessly! Honestly.. in my opinion.. installing Debian appears exactly the same as it was back in 2010.. maybe more. I rarely had issues. It's just this time I am able to play Steam and Epic games and installing dotnet is easy on Linux. Let's not forget the work Steam are doing. We have a new Steam Machine. While being marketed as a new games console it's still a PC... and new users will try it out. For the younger generation, it might increase the Linux skills and spread wider adoption. The only thing Linux has against it is time. Time is something humans lack... we lack patience! I knew that one day Linux would get better games support. It was possible even back in 2008. I managed to get GTA3:ViceCity working through Wine. Mark my words. Linux will gain marketshare. The only part I am concerned about is infiltration of corporations jumping all in. It's not the kernel I am concerned about as it's protected by the GPL.. it's the larger corporations selling their products which the average user adopts and eventually becomes "required" software in most distributions. The best way to understand this is, in an alternate universe, Microsoft drops Windows and encourages everyone to use Linux. How do you think they would get involved. Just think about that.
  • devnullbrain 11mo ago
• otikik 11mo ago
  I have been using Bazzite[1] since I discovered it here. It works great for games. [1] https://bazzite.gg/ https://bazzite.gg/
  • stavros 11mo ago
    What are the benefits of Bazzite over Proton? I'm not sure where I would use this.
    • okkdev 11mo ago
      Bazzite isn't an alternative to proton. Bazzite is a distro and still uses Proton. Bazzite is an alternative to SteamOS.
      • stavros 11mo ago
        Ahh, I see, thanks! Is it like Jovian then? I've been wanting to install an OS for games onto my NUC.
        • otikik 11mo ago
          It's like Jovian in the sense that it takes the "immutable" (for some reason I have heard it being called "atomic" too) approach to installing things. Honestly I don't have to think too much about it, and that's the way I like it, for a gaming system. It works, it gets updates, it lets me install games, they run ok.
          • stavros 11mo ago
            Yeah, same, I'll install Bazzite ASAP, thanks!
• jumski 11mo ago
  I recently tried to run Apex Legends on my Manjaro (i played this a lot few years ago on my Windows dualboot), but it is impossible to play it on Linux, as EA/Respawn is preventing the game from running on Linux due to Anti cheat systems having troubles with protecting the game. I'm really curious what would be the appropriate solution for an anti cheat that runs on Linux in a way that a) does not compromise my OS/privacy/security b) protects the game from cheaters at the same time.
  • tapoxi 11mo ago
    Secure boot and let the game attest the boot state. It would restrict you to a series of whitelisted kernels, probably from major distributions, but it's better than the current situation.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    • jumski 11mo ago
      that sounds like a reasonable compromise, it may even provide more control and protection over what they are able to achieve on Windows? i remember their anti cheat was utter crap tbh, not like something that Riot implemented for Valorant (a kernel-level system that runs from boot-up with deep system access)
  • PuppetSoup 11mo ago
    I don't think there is a good solution. The best for privacy and security would be server-side anti-cheat but imagine the tantrum EA would have when they'd have to spend some dollars themselves instead of installing a spyware into their clients' pc for free.
    • jumski 11mo ago
      what tapoxi suggested above sounds like a reasonable compromise tbh, but i doubt it will ever happen, as the userbase is too small :-(
  • 11mo ago
• havblue 11mo ago
  Steam Survey October: Windows 94.84% -0.56% Windows 11 64 bit 63.57% +0.53% Windows 10 64 bit 31.14% -1.04% OSX 2.11% +0.20% Linux 3.05% +0.37% In other words, for Steam users who waited to switch to Windows 11, half left Windows and most people who left went to Linux.
  • physicles 11mo ago
    Linux grew its share by 14% in one month? Amazing.
• theoldgreybeard 11mo ago
  Install Ubuntu. Enable the proprietary drivers if you have Nvidia graphics during the install. Install system updates when the pop up appears on first boot. Install Steam from the Ubuntu App Center. Open Steam, install a game and play it. Most of them will work without issue unless it has invasive kernel anti-cheat. The install-to-game time on Linux is actually substantially lower than it is on Windows now.
• nijave 11mo ago
  Shout-out to ProtonDB for the fix when things don't work out of the box
• k__ 11mo ago
  My current stack: LG Gram, Manjaro, Steam. I'm mostly playing MtG: Arena and it works like a charm. I could even install Steam via the package manager.
• alan-jordan13 11mo ago
  [dead]
• rldjbpin 11mo ago
  having used desktop linux before i even started gaming on a pc, things are easier but still not there yet for the general masses. personally, it is still not there either. take one of the most popular ea sports title. it does not run: - on linux via proton, because of anti-cheat - inside a windows vm (in linux), because of anti-cheat - via cloud streaming (technically perhaps because of the previous reason) still got people exploiting and just a horrible experience in competitive mode. so much so that devs refuse to allow a universal marketplace. the console folks disable crossplay to avoid any trouble in competitive modes. the same publisher went out of their way to support nintendo switch with crossplay, but steam deck does not seem to be big enough to go through with the actual work in making things work right. these titles print money and have the most means to make this possible from their end. so if you want to play mainstream online experiences, or with simulator accessories, you are mostly on your own or dedicated community efforts. maybe a few more years in the oven?