I made the switch to daily driving Linux on my laptop for work and play a few months back with a dual boot setup with Windows, and changed over mine and my partner's gaming desktops to do the same, and they recently got a Steam Deck OLED as well. Honestly I can't say this is true. It depends on the distro, but I went with Pop OS, and it has been ridiculously pain free to game on. I play a large variety of weird, old, indie games, and I've encountered a single game that didn't work on Pop OS that I needed to play on Windows (WRC 4) and that particular game BARELY worked on Windows as well and took lots of setting up and fixing. More often than not I'm finding things work better on Pop OS (GTA IV doesn't crash when changing multiple graphics options like on Windows, and GTA IV and 2013's Tomb Raider both get better frame rates) than Windows.
This is all particularly notable because I didn't go in as some Linux expert touting the superiority of it (I chose Pop OS because I'm a noob, and it's easy to use), and fully expected to have all sorts of issues. My biggest complaint is that I should have set my dual boot partition for Pop OS way bigger because I barely need to use Windows anymore! My absolute #1 annoying niche issue that I can't figure out is that the VPN I need to use to remote into my work 1) will work on Windows, 2) DID work on Pop OS when connected to my phone's data but not my home wifi (???), 3) no longer works on either my phones data or wifi. Gaming though, has been a cakewalk, you should give it a go. Install proton, maybe grab a glorious eggroll, and you're set, they're support for NVIDIA cards make it equally pain free (across the 3 systems I mentioned we're gaming on Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA gpus, and all are equally pain free).
Even controllers are no problem, but I haven't messed around much with my wheel, or VR headset though, so we'll so how that goes.
Sorry I meant steam link is launched on quest. So you can connect wireless with the quest headsets. At least on Windows, not sure how well that works on Linux.
That said I have no experience with any of it as game pass sounds very unappealing to me as someone who prefers to own her games and not buy subscription services
Honestly gaming hasn’t been a problem for me on Linux. It is a bit more work in some games to get them up and running, but windows 11 started waking up without any reason so I abandoned it and think the extra work is worth it.
But I understand why someone wouldn’t want to go through it.
No I checked before I went to Linux. There was no obvious reason anywhere and nothing in the logs. It just decided to wake up every afternoon. Whatever, I’m done with the OS.
You are on Linux, obviously that fixed your problem. But yeah, the setting for faster wakeup from sleep is hidden somewhere, and Microsoft does not want that to be toggled off and may even ignore it, lol
Windows keeps the computer awake and does not do sleep like it used to anymore. S3 sleep, that is. Keeps wifi connected and all that jazz. Battery drain is significantly worse now.
Only if you play CoD, Fortnite, or Destiny 2. If you’re technically inclined and don’t mind working around some issues, gaming on Linux has come a long way and can be used for pretty much anything else. I used to dual-boot Windows for games, then I went to booting Windows in a VM and gaming with a spare, passed-through GPU. But I haven’t booted my VM in months, and I play lots of games.
So my options are install OS, install GPU drivers, install games, and then play games, or install OS, read 50 different guides, fight iommu or some other configuration, eventually get it working enough to install another OS in a VM, fight getting that performing well, install games, and then play games with potential for worse performance.
I love Linux, but claiming these two things are comparable is ridiculous. I work with Linux all day at work, I don’t want to work with it at home when I just want to relax.
The point I’m making is that you don’t have to read 50+ guides anymore. Install a distro with a good gaming track record (Nobara, Garuda, Pop_OS, Bazzite) and play games. Linux gaming has come a long way.
That said, I understand where you’re coming from. I’m just trying to say it’s easier now than it’s ever been before.
See, that's the thing: I very much mind "working around some issues" in gaming and in gaming alone. I'm as much of a tinkerer when it comes to software as the next guy, but now with a child and all of those pesky responsibilities that slowly pile up as you age, gaming time is
a) scarce and
b) the only real "wind down" time I get
I have time for other things that make me happy mind you, but gaming time needs to be different you cannot dive into an RPG and do subtle story Sidequests and whatnot if you can't dive into the game fully, switch off everything else for a time. Whenever I can do that, any "small issue" I'd need to work around would make me MAD.
Gaming is the one thing where I don't want the super customizable OS that works exactly as I want that I can get with Linux. I want to press play and be taken to a place where peasants will task any random stranger to bring their child somewhere and any Lord will entrust his kingdom into some random dipshit he just.met.
And not wanting to do that makes perfect sense. I don’t really want to either, of course, but I’ve decided that if I as a person who can do it actually switch to Linux that must mean that some others of similar minds are going to do it as well.
When it reaches critical mass it’ll just become easier and easier. It already is much easier than it has been, but not having time is a totally valid reason not to do it yet.
But at least for my personal experience the kinds of issues I encounter gaming on Linux are typically less frustrating than the ones I encountered gaming in Windows.
To pretend that either experience is pain-free would be dishonest but I’ve had less difficulties since switching fully to Linux and actually seen a noticeable improvement in performance on many games as well.
I think in reality if stability and never having to “fix” issues or bugs is your biggest concern you are probably more suited to console gaming
The difference between paranoia and fear is the difference between not wanting to buy a Google Home because it listens to you and not wanting to buy a Google Home because you’re afraid you’ll break it.
That is actually a great metaphore. I always just used:
It’s like me not wanting to use google photos because they scan your photos to train algorithms vs my mom not wanting to use google photos because she is afraid all of her photos will get deleted.
I actually switched to openSUSE Tumbleweed from Ubuntu and love it. I know it’s not as popular, but I can’t see why. Rolling release, compatibility, support, it’s awesome!
Q : How/why did you make such a great OS?
A : I thought - what would attract young users to Linux? So I created this idea after a lot of reading and work.
Ubuntu has caused me far more headaches and downtime than Arch. Go figure.
And to make this be a worthwhile comment: I wonder if it is because I use Arch (and derivatives) that Ubuntu causes issues. When something isn’t right, I try and fix it. In Arch I can. In Ubuntu it seems like a dozen paper cuts to get there and it may not work in the long run anyway. Oh the Snap doesnt have foo compiled in? No problem I can add it to the snap directory. No, that didnt work. Ok I will remove it and bring in a .deb file. Dependencies not met. Fine, I will compile it from source… and by that time I have wasted a TON of time.
Worth noting, this meme is from the time before Arch had an easy installer. So that’s probably what it’s referring to. I joined Linux almost 4 years ago, and this meme already existed then. I dunno how old it really is.
reminds me of what happens when developing software and using “no code” tools. Fragile and inflexible but if you meet the exact use case in the exact way it’s an instant win
Oh god yeah that’s the fate of snap and flat pack.
Install OBS studio, current version has some issues oh look there’s a flat pack install the flat pack instead. OBS runs great. Oh, I need some plugins Go to install the plugins, The plugins folder isn’t where it belongs. I scrape along and find the plugins folder I try to shove them in there doesn’t work. Oh I need to find the flat pack installer for the plugin… But half the s*** I want isn’t available.
I truly appreciate them trying to make things more universal and easier. But it’s a fine line we’re walking between easy but unconfigurable and non-standard complicated but flexible.
My arch install took some setup to get it specifically right for me, still trying to figure out the final touches. I have the entire thing encrypted and under btrfs sub-partitions. I set up secure boot as well and added it to my tpm. Last thing I got to do is set it up so it automatically decrypts on boot without a password. I’ve been liking this setup over my Fedora setup. I have to worry about smaller breakage every so often, but with Fedora I had to worry about big breakage every major version. Moving most of what I can to flatpak mitigated a lot of that though. I’m too lazy to replicate my arch setup on my laptop so that’s just sticking with Fedora until I decide it should run something else.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, and maybe it’s because I’m not understanding exactly what you’re saying, but what’s the benefit of encrypting if it decrypts on boot without a password?
Just to prevent someone who boots another OS on your device from being able to access your files? Something else?
Because changing any hardware will flip the tpm and require a password. If they stole the hard drive, it’d be encrypted. Basically I’m protecting on if they rip out the harddrive lol.
It might be getting a second wind now as an escape from Wayland/NVIDIA and death by a thousand snaps. That was why I switched a few months ago; all I wanted was to play ETS2 on my old laptop, dangit.
I have been using the same Arch installation for about 8 years. The initial installation/configuration is the only time consuming part. Actual day-to-day usage is extremely easy.
Maybe this is no longer the case but I previously used Ubuntu and it was actually much more annoying in comparison, especially when upgrading between major revisions or needing to track down sources/PPAs for packages not in the main repos. Or just when you want something more up-to-date than what they’re currently shipping.
The rolling release model + the AUR saves so much time and prevents a lot of headaches.
Add comment