Switching back to Windows. For now.
The amount of bullshit there is to make things work is... not that bad. When it comes to games, I just can't. Having to reboot just to fix common FPS issues is too much. I've had a bunch of things that require a config change, which then has caused other issues.
The state of Linux Desktop is the best it has ever been and I'll be back the moment Wayland works better. I love Linux, but for now, it's not working out for me... Just needed to vent, thanks for reading.
No shame in having to switch back after giving it a try and running into a lot of issues. Having to reboot a lot is definitely unusual, there's probably something wrong with your setup, but who knows where the issue is or how long it would take you to fix. Hopefully you can give it another try in a few years and those issues have been resolved.
There are too many issues to list, some caused by a different distro and some by misconfiguration that is just too much to undo. The FPS lag I have no idea what the cause is and it really only happens in newer games. Almost everything is "mild", the games are just less enjoyable.
A few years might be a bit too many, the next round is on W10 death at the least. Before trying Desktop Linux out half a year ago, I knew Linux CLI which made most things easy. It's just that I don't have time to debug things I have no clue about.
For me I want to know how much frame latency there is since I'm suspicious and I want to try things to see the effect and I just don't know how to get that information in an OSD like I can with msi afterburner.
If someone knows what can do this in Linux, please reply!
Instead I just stopped all competitive and cooperative gaming. Which is a bit of a shame. Sometimes I'll load up windows to join friends but usually by the time I've updated whatever game I've gotten over it.
Don't get me wrong, hiccups aside I'm very happy which is why I'm in Linux most of the time. But it's not always a wonderful world.
MangoHud is the Linux equivalent of MSI Afterburner. An optional tool called Goverlay is a GUI for configuring MangoHud. To make the overlay actually show up on screen, after you’ve installed MangoHud you need to add
mangohud %command%to the game’s launch parameters in Steam. Good luck.EDIT: Added the correct launch code—thank you, Pelotron.
mangohud %command%
Do "your games" run on steam? Did you check protondb for fixes?
Some of it to me, is just hardware selection. My laptop and egpu run windows fine. Linux gaming is rough as hell.
That said, i bought a steam deck, and it will run the same games my laptop struggles with in linux, just fine.
Sorry for the super late ping, but if they run under linux at all then it might be a distro issue. You should try out Bazzite. Hell, you should install it on your deck too. It's designed to basically be SteamOS++ and has deck/handheld, as well as Desktop images. I run it on my Lenovo Legion Go and everything just works, as if it were a deck honestly. I have it on my desktop with an Nvidia GPU too, and it games great, at least anything that will play on Linux. It's atomic, similar to an immutable distro, so it's also never broken to the point of unplayable. If something isn't working after an update, you can reboot and choose the older, working image instead.
Hm. I’ll give it a shot. I was trying it under pop!
Exactly, you gotta do what’s best for you in the moment, but it’s really a good idea to keep trying because most issues are solvable.
I've been 100% linux for my daily home computing for over a year now... With one exception... To be honest I didn't even try particularly hard to make gaming work under Linux.
Instead I have a Windows VM - setup with full passthrough access to my GPU and it's own NVME - just for Windows gaming. To my mind now it's in the same category as running console emulation.
As soon as I click shutdown in windows, it pops me straight back into my Linux desktop.
I do something similar but instead of a VM I just have windows installed on a separate hard drive and just boot up from there when I need it (I don't play games though)
Do you have a dual gpu setup for this or is there a virtualization feature I don't know about yet
Single GPU with scripts that run before and after the VM is active to unload the GPU driver modules from the kernel.
I think this was my starting point and I had to do just a few small tweaks to get it right for my setup - i.e. unload and reload the precise set of kernel modules that block GPU passthrough on my machine.
https://gitlab.com/Karuri/vfio
At this point from a user experience p.o.v it's not much different to dual booting, just with a different boot sequence. The main advantage though is that I can have the Windows OS on a small virtual harddrive for ease of backup/clone/restore and have game installs on a dedicated NVME that doesn't need backing up
Search for "vfio single gpu", It's possible, but it has drawbacks. Iirc you have to run everything as root or something like that.
Another recommended way is to run a headless linux as host, and passthrough the gpu to a linux guest next to a windows guest, than you just switch between the guests
I meant to do this when I built my old system back in 2018, but I found the handful of games I regularly play worked okay on Linux so I never got around to it, and Linux game compatibility has improved leaps and bounds from there.
If it's a Steam game, for most of them these days you only have to tick a box in Steam's settings to tell it to use Proton for all games and the game will just work when you click play.
You might give it a try. Or don't, I'm not your mother.
Fucking Hackerman. Is there a way to display the VM's output in a window/fullscreen on Linux today? The last time I tried this, I had to have a separate cable from the passed-thru (secondary) GPU to another input in my monitor.
Looking-glass.io is what most use for that
Ooh, that project was not usable back when I tried VFIO. Nice.
What're you using for visualisation? I didn't realise you could get decent graphics performance with VirtualBox.
Long past time for Linux to be set aside. Shit on windows too. We desperately need a return to early DOS and CP/M days. With the TRS-80 OS ecosystem, OSes were simple and command line, and any hacking was extremely easy and fast to detect. The power of the command line let you wipe out any hackers super super fast. Enough of this Windows GUI and hiding things from users shit. GUI is only for losers. Return the power to the devs.
Wow! Lol I hope this was satire because as satire it’s actually kinda funny. If serious… whoa! Check that foil hat.
Why don't you just use X11 instead?
This, I tried some newer distros with Wayland and ended up going back to Debian Stable and X11 for gaming. Got Sunshine (for Moonlight handheld client streaming) working for in about a minute.
All the talk I’ve seen about Wayland to date has been that it’s great if/when it works perfectly but that’s rare because it’s just not ready. Shame really.
And some people hate X11 and like Fedora's and RHEL's decisions to purge it lol
Are you volunteering to maintain it? It requires man hours to keep it working. Also it is a security nightmare.
But some people need it. Dropping it is just a moral question.
If you're rebooting to fix an "fps issue", you don't understand what's causing that issue. It doesn't sound like you're looking for advice, but to others scared off by this, this sounds a lot like a user who got in over their head and started mucking with things they shouldn't have.
This doesn't sound like gatekeeping at all
I'd rather gatekeep than lie to people, which is what you're doing if you're claiming that using Linux for gaming on your home PC doesn't require a good amount of knowledge and a willingness to learn and fix things. If you get a steam deck or a pre built Linux gaming pc, yeah, just about anyone should be able to use those without issue. But any gamer looking to run non-steam games, or even steam games that aren't well-supported, is going to run into edge cases and optimization issues, and not everyone wants to put in the time or effort to figure those out when Windows does most of it for you.
The Linux desktop is a very broad concept. The experience gaming on Arch could be a lot harder than gaming on Bazzite, they didn't specify which distro they were using so you've got no idea as to how far in over their head they are
So true. Really though ProtonDB should provide enough insight I’ve found.
Who gives a shit!?
I give a shit
Me too. But I think this is the correct type of gatekeeping. As the user himself stated. He doesn’t know enough to explain to someone that does know enough. So bringing an unknown to a party that can only fix known issues is as the poster stated. Just gonna cause a spiral.
I just did the opposite. Ditched windows which I only used for gaming. The amount of games working in Linux now is amazing, I play a lot of sims and even stuff like headtrackers and steering wheels just work. Sure it's not perfect and working for everybody but its getting really good really fast.
Games that do not work at all on Linux like Fortnite for example, I just ignore.
Same here. I used to dual boot but finally moved to Linux and instead shortened my games list. Plus games that I really enjoy playing are fromsoft games,hollow knight, hades, dead cells and factorio and all of them are amazing on Linux. So sorry Billy G, no more OS level big brother for me
It's all good. Use what makes you happy.
Hannah Montana Linux it is!
I recognize I’m kind of being one of those “it works on my machine!” types, but I’m rolling pop!os on a lenovo built intel/nvidia laptop and have zero issues. Am I just exceptionally lucky?
You're not. I think that's the experience of most Linux users. It's selection bias; I don't go to forums to make a post advertising how my system is working great with no bugs. When my system is working great with no bugs I just use it; I don't talk about it.
Yup. So ima make a post right now. My system running CachyOS is smoother than windows. It does involve tinkering. But nothing I haven’t found help or documentation for. Whether I understand the documentation is a whole other ball game though 😆
Which Lenovo laptop, if you don't mind me asking? I know there are Lenovo laptops with Linux support, but I am on a Lenovo Legion Slim 5, and I have heard there are quite a few issues that would need to be sorted.
I’ve got the legion y540 with an RTX 2060, apparently they made this same model number with a couple different gpu‘s.
I have no idea if it officially has linux support or not, I just got frustrated when it wouldn’t stop bluescreen’ing with windows 10. Ubuntu worked fine but was finnacky with peripherals, and I couldn’t change the brightness without fixes. Pop!OS has just worked perfectly across the board, straight out of the box.
What’s whacky is I could swear games run better on linux. Not even natively, like WINDOWS games run better through proton than they did when the same system ran windows. I’d bet a lot of it is just overhead from general bloat; windows is expensive to run these days.
If my experience is anything to go by, just start installing whatever OS strikes your fancy and hope for the best. Keep a windows usb handy just in case, but just start fucken around! You could spend a week reading documentation on ONE SINGLE OS, or you could spend just an afternoon trying probably every single OS you could find a modern ISO for. Just make sure you try the popular ones first hahaha
I roll popos and tried nobara and mint a month ago. I'm back on pop because it just works and installing games on it is no issue. There are a couple games that after playing a few hours a day for three or four days, the computer kind of freezes for a second here and there. I just log out and in and it's fixed. I would rather throw my computer in the street and run it over than go back to windows.
I've been gaming on Linux 100% for about 3 years now. I very rarely have any issues at all. But, I'm on an all AMD system.
Based on your experience, would you mind sharing specs? My observation has been that nvidia is normally involved whenever anyone has serious issues with Linux gaming.
The problem for Linux is that one person could have a wonderful experience with little issue, while somebody else can't even boot their machine. It's so across the board. I have several computers, and some love Linux while some hate Linux; some are 10x faster than Windows, while another is 2x slower than windows. I don't mind. I love all the tweaking. But sometimes it takes some brainpower to figure out something. Windows seems to be mostly decent on most machines. I definitely have more issues in Linux to get things to work the way I want them. Still, I'm a Linux user, but , I can't judge anybody for returning to windows.
Right, but that's sort of why I asked the question. The people who can't boot their machine probably have some commonality in the specs of their machines. As I said above, I wouldn't be surprised if nvidia is a common thread, and arguably, nvidia's relatively poor Linux support is a business issue for them.
If indeed it is the case, then it is important to label it as an nvidia issue as opposed to a Linux issue.
Edit: another way to put it: was the CloudStrike issue Microsoft's fault? System design choices aside, CloudStrike's software was the cause of the failure. To say it's a Microsoft issue misses the bigger picture. In that sense, poor nvidia support (if it is indeed at play here) is not really a Linux issue, rather than an nvidia issue and/or a brand loyalty issue.
That inconsistency is why I find Bazzite (and other immutables) so compelling. What works on my machine is very likely to work on yours.
My latest build is all AMD to help with compatibility/driver issues and I'm off to the races.
I can't seem to play things like PUBG and others who's anti-cheat doesn't work (I guess) but oh well. I'm considering adding a drive for Windows to play the ones that just won't work.
Anti-cheat isn't a Linux issue per se, in that there would be no way to fix it without compromising a lot of system security. Just because that has been allowed on Windows forever doesn't mean it's good practice.
The "solution" would be the gaming companies not using the current approach to anti-cheat.
That's about to change. With the crowdstrike shit show Microsoft is looking to remove access to the kernel for a lot of solutions, including, but not limited to, anti-cheat software. They said they want them relegated to user's pace only. Once that happens, there's no reason why we can't use the same anti-cheat in Linux the same way we now play games made for Windows (other than game developers being complete pricks, of course).
I've been recently thinking the same thing and was wondering why no one seemed to talk about it. I think, while the gaming market is very important to Microsoft with regards to PCs, it basically has no leverage. Gamers won't switch anyways, Windows is ubiquitous and studios are just committed to what means minimal support at maximum profit, so they target Windows. Apart from Valve, no publisher or studio has any credibility when threatening to move to another platform, and Valve won't do it because they're basically a store that develops a game from time to time. So MS can do whatever they want and anything gaming related will swallow it anyways.
With that in mind, I do hope that MS removes the privileged interfaces and all kernel level anticheat dies with it. Studios will cry, but that's all they'll do, and in fact, they wouldn't even have any option at that point; there's no alternative offering anything similar. Even Apple doesn't offer privileged access to 3rd party developers, which is why for example while mandatory for Windows gamers, Riot's games can be played without any kernel level anticheat on Mac.
Excellent point.
Which distro were you using?
Wayland is getting better every day. Check back in a year, and it’ll probably be ready for you. :)
it's Wayland, multiply any number times 10 at least. I've been waiting 2 years so far for them to decide on the word "must" vs "may" in a part of the protocol
That's what everyone said about Linux in 2005
I was one of those people, still stand by it. Linux was already better than the alternatives in 2005, and had only gotten better since.
I switched in 2008, so not that far off.
Even back in the late ‘90s I was experimenting both personally and professionally with alternative OSes. By early to mid 2000s I had some systems off the big money players and as of today I have 20 or so systems on Linux and ONE left with primary Windows only because I hardly use it as a desktop and it’s mostly providing services internally. So don’t fix what ain’t broken. Even then I’m planning to test a dual boot soon just to whet the computer’s appetite. And when it lets me know it’s ready, I’ll be 100% Microshaft free instead of 99%. Those sleazebags dug their own graves and they know it.
lol even in 2005 Linux was excellent for most situations. Problem was in a business environment it was usually harder to find someone who has the expertise in Linux but also gaming - the lowest-common-denominator sector of development - usually just prioritizes Windows. This is NOT because it’s “better,” but because it gives them more freedom and they can get shit “done” faster. On the user-side, meanwhile, Windows wasn’t really doing the user any more favors than just working pretty nicely.
But today? Omfg Linux has come insanely far while Windows is what, pretty much you handing over master control to M$ while borrowing some CPU time on your own computer so gracious of them.
Oh but if it lets you play a game then all is forgiven. Lol. Priorities.
I get it, and have switched back and forth myself a few times over the years..
I'm a Linux sysadmin who is also a PC gamer.
I run Windows for my main desktop as a gamer. Greatest choice, best compatibility, it's the primary focus for game developers, etc. I use debian on my laptops and home servers as I don't game on those and otherwise Linux is better in most other areas.
At least for me, it doesn't matter a huge amount what OS I use as a desktop provided it's stable and not annoying. Sometimes lilnux is annoying because of compatibility or bugs or specific software isn't available or work poorly, sometimes Windows is annoying because of monitoring, design choices that favour Microsoft instead of the user, changes - often hidden - to existing practices, or any of the thousand little annoyances. Neither is painless 100% of the time but they're not really so different from a day to day driver if the software you need works well on both, which for many people is basically just a web browser.
I applaud those who game under Linux, you're doing great stuff and opening the doors for everyone in the future.
While I'm far from being a sysadmin I'm in the same boat. Main study laptop is Linux but I just end up using Windows on my gaming PC for the same reasons.
Okay.
There are so many gaming options that do run well on Linux that I just don’t bother with with those that don’t. More fish in the sea…
It's a little different tho if you already purchased said games that don't run well or run at all on Linux.. Especially, if you have some games that you and your friends play together. "Oh sorry guys I can't play these games with you anymore, I'm on Linux now.."
Friends should accommodate for you too. The games that don’t work tend to have some shitty anti-cheat that you probably don’t actually wanna be playing anyhow.
Mulniplayer on Linux is bad and has been since anti cheat systems became the norm. Anti cheat systems often request kernel access (like Crowdstrike) and Linux is just not suitable for that.
It's not that bad. Of course I've had a few games that didn't work, like CoD:MW2, but nearly all multiplayer games my friends play also work on Linux. The last couple of years we've been playing Apex Legends, Overwatch, WoWs, Dota 2, Helldivers 2, Diablo 4, BF1, BFV, Hell Let Loose, Payday 3, Darktide, Isonzo, Ready or Not, Hunt: Showdown to name a few.
My personal experience has been that Linux is great for general use, and quite a few verified games. But anything multiplayer with anticheat, games that are regularly updated, etc, it's a constant struggle. So I have a separate hard drive for windows on my gaming desktop and, in general, mostly use Windows on that machine (with a lot of tweaks like openshell). But all my other devices I run off Linux and it works out fine.
I think it will be a long time of ever I will remove my windows boot. I love gaming on Linux but until games "support" Linux it won't be my only boot device.
Dedicated gaming machine or dual boot is a way to go.
I played steam on Arch and one update of OS and game stops working.
Despite claims, Windows gets better outcomes. I played a lot of World of Tanks Blitz and the same hardware on Linux was significantly lower graphics quality and FPS compared to Windows.
Check out massgrave dot dev, they have W11 IoT LTSC and activators. It's the best version of Windows! No more dealing with AI bullshit being added, nor advertisements.
Bon jour. Come back soon.
Aside from some notable examples, I've had great luck with gaming on Linux. Wayland's still rough (thanks Nvidia) but it's not that big of an issue; general usage is fine and development is fantastic.
There is only one issue when it comes to games...
I have a VR setup...
I get it, the problem solving can be really frustrating when you just want to relax and play some games in your limited free time. Personally I just installed Linux on a secondary drive and switch to Windows during startup for the games that don't work well with Linux (usually multiplayer games with anti-cheat). I still use Linux as my main OS since gaming is not what I spend the majority of my time doing.
I guess I understand.
For myself, though, not being a big fan of FPS/RTS games, basically anything I play is fine as long as it's around 30 and most of it is 10+ years old and/or indie game... I'm pretty much in the phase when if the game does not work on my OS (which is barely the case), the game has to go.
It's rarely the case for me though, last time I really did that was like 7 years ago with Doom 3: I haven't realized that it's Windows-only so I ended up asking for money back on Steam. Nowadays, with Steam Deck & Proton it's not a problem; I actually got Doom 3 on Steam again, and I can play it just fine. (Well, "fine" with the exception that the monsters are scary so I'm scared, but the game is fine!)
I'm not posting this to feel smug, cos I'm not. It's 100% legit to want your games to look and feel awesome, you deserve that.
I'm posting it just as a flag, that for people with far less demanding taste, Linux is just fine. I can't think of a game right now that I would want to play so much that I would be willing to install Windows.
Oh, I actually can. Gnomoria. Which is like 10 years old, unfinished (pretty much playable, though) but AWESOME indie , dwar-fortress-inspired colony sim, does technically have Linux build, but the Linux build has a horrible bug where it corrupts your save after getting to a certain advanced point in the game. For that one, my dear beloved Gnomoria, I actually ended up installing Windows 10 in a KVM a year or so ago :-D.
That's sweet to hear somebody talking about a long-forgotten game like Gnomoria so fondly. I hope somehow that reaches a dev. :D
I have this one sitting in my library too, and it did make me sad that it's forever unfinished. Didn't know about that nasty Linux bug! Wish at that point, they would just open source it lol.
In the meantime I've really been enjoying Rimworld as a DF-like experience. :)
This is one of the reasons I'm glad I don't have a strong desire to play most games. I'm able to run a couple from Steam and I've got an Xbox that I rarely play (unless I find a great game and play a bunch for a while). It's not like I'm running Linux on my daily driver cause I'm a Mac guy, but it's one less avenue for MS to pollute my life.
Linux is great if you don't play competitive games. Anything with any amount of anti-cheat will not work.
Everything else works great. I game on Linux all the time and it's solid.
This is false info. Counter Strike works, Hunt: Showdown works. To fix your comment it would look like this:
I am glad the anticheat doesn't work. It is a feature to have less malware
100% the same. Never been a huge gamer but years back I did get very serious into a handful of games over the years. I even developed a fairly popular companion app to TFC to manage class-based preferences, scripts, bindings etc.
But today I just don’t have the interest. I like the occasional retro and sometimes I’ll jump back into any of my 30 or so Guild Wars characters. But every day I find myself being happier and happier with Linux. It just takes some willingness to learn. You can’t be the type that just wants everything to work for you, because those kinds of software just make a thousand decisions on your behalf and now they’re no longer even trying to do what’s best for you.
Good luck with Windows 11 as 10 is going to be EOL next year.
If they get their hands on an LTSC ISO they can hold out on Windows 10 a little longer.
True. But Windows LTSC version seem bizzare to me. I heard in many companies it's less expensive to prolong Windows 10 support and then ditch it completely then to move to Windows 11. 😆
Yeah Windows 10 & 11 are basically viruses that ALSO allow you to sometimes use the computer. Meanwhile most of the time they’re working for their masters at Microshaft.
When I tried stripped out gaming version of the Windows (AtlasOS) I was sad and amazed at the same time. Amazed how everything snappy is and sad that's Microsoft's Windows engineers work is enshittified with bloat. As Linux user I love Windows (closed but necesarry evil), but nothing more than that so many many bloat, forced pushed closed software that could be backdoors suuuuuucks.
Well, Linux is like a juggernaut that's inching ever closer in all sorts of areas (while already dominating in some areas). The time frame where it makes sense for Microsoft to spend increasing amounts of resources to maintain and further develop Windows is closing, and if you look closely, they've pretty much shown that Windows is not at all priority #1 anymore since at least Nadella became CEO. We also live in a world which is increasingly becoming OS agnostic, which is bad for Windows' dominance and great for Linux, MacOS, and others (because there's less and less relevant applications specifically requiring Windows). Of course, Linux on the desktop also grows stronger and more mature year after year, which further accelerates the change.
There will also be some points in time which hugely accelerate things, like Valve going all-in on Steam Deck and Proton and to make Steam a more independent store/community platform, and also Microsoft making Windows worse and more user-hostile over time. From a business perspective, it makes sense for MS - they want to go full cloud (= full control), almost full removal of control for the user, and full ingestion of as much data from the user as they can - to sell it, utilize it for own purposes, and train AIs with it. It's what increases profits in the short-term. A lot of companies are doing that kind of stuff. MS is just one of the more ruthless ones, which, again, makes sense, because they still have a big userbase to exploit. In the long-term, they're damaging, no, DESTROYING Windows' reputation as a half-decent OS (even among Windows fans) and driving more and more users to the alternatives. It's kind of inevitable. MS' striving for profit has doomed Windows, and soon, when no single company will be able to compete with the ever evolving Linux ecosystem anymore, Windows is also doomed. It's kind of a law of nature now. It's not a question of if, just when.
(I've used both Windows and Linux extensively, Windows since MSDOS/Win3.x, Linux since 1998. About 10 years ago, I've switched exclusively to Linux and banned Windows into a VM only that gets booted less and less [I think it's been off for 2 years already]). I, for one, welcome our new old Linux overlords.
Mostly curious here, can you elaborate on the issues that are fixed with a reboot?
Is it related to poor performance or other aspects of the diaplay like VRR? Can you tell us which games this has happened with?
You mentioned in a comment that you used Arch, Debian and EndeavourOS. Though, historically, Wayland has been adopted first on Fedora. Therefore, I wonder if underutilizing Fedora (and/or derivatives like Bazzite/Nobara) might have been the main culprit in this case.
Seconded that. Debian is pretty much always outdated, DIY Arch is easy to get wrong but I think Endeavour would have worked even though I don't know all to much.
However saying Linux is not stable enough without trying Ubuntu is not fair IMO.
Let’s use bazzite.
I just need this one package.
Wait, it’s all read-only? Always has been.
What's preventing you to install that single package through
rpm-ostree?It’s a steering wheel driver. And virtualbox.
Could you perhaps be more precise? Is it a specific one? Or are there a multitude of steering wheel drivers that satisfy your needs?
Do you specifically need VirtualBox? Or would Qemu/KVM satisfy your needs?
IIRC VirtualBox requires kernel mods. Therefore, you would have to create your own images 😅 in which said kernel mod is included. FWIW, both uBlue's templates and BlueBuild do a wonderful job at streamlining this process.
Or..., as alluded before, you don't necessarily need VirtualBox. But, instead, Qemu/KVM perfectly satisfy your needs. Then, you can just run
ujust setup-virtualization. After which you reboot, and you would be good to go.Im describing a use case of my friend whom I convinced to use linux instead of windows for gaming. His steering wheel is on this list: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/901
While not being tech illiterate he wasn’t thrilled to build his own fork of the OS and I don’t blame him. He also wanted to use virtualbox, and I won’t force him to switch to qemu or kvm because Im not a gnome developer to invalidate someones use cases. He settled for endeavor os and is very happy with it.
IMO immutable distros aren’t a best fit for a desktop computer. It can do so much more than gaming and turning it into a dedicated console is a step back if a normal linux distro can do just as well.
Thanks for clarifying!
I would personally nuance this to: "Current iterations of 'immutable distros' that have evolved from traditional distros haven't matured sufficiently yet to tackle 99.99% of the use cases 'easily'." The exact number on the percentage I don't know. I believe most people that use their PCs as a glorified app launcher should be more than fine. But we start experiencing major difficulties the very moment that (a)kmods are involved; some of which are *'supported'*~ish, while others certainly aren't.
But, I simply fail to see why a future iteration would not be able to solve related issues.
I personally dual boot windows and linux precisely because gaming can be frustrating on linux sometimes. I use windows exclusively for gaming and linux for everything else. I have plans to try and game on linux again sometime though. Maybe one day the experience will be good enough to ditch windows altogether. (Hopefully before the end of Windows 10 Support)
What games?
I second this. What games?
Some games I had issues with are Asseto Corsa, Beam.NG and ETS2 external mods (base ETS2 runs superb). I have seen that competitive racing is a genre which has a slight intolerance towards Linux. Many racing games also require hardware mods which may need some hacking to get it working. I understand it's a niche hobby but it is a problem.
I'm surprised the wheels hardware wouldn't just work.
Hmm, I don't play racing games. Are they not just a combination of efficient frame generation and pretty graphics? What makes racing games different from other games when it comes to software running on Windows vs Linux?
Yeah what games? Excluding malwares like Valorent or League what games that's not working on Linux?
I get it. I'm a year in and was pulling my hair out dealing w/ frustrating issues for the first few weeks/months. Smooth sailing now, but I don't deny the learning curves that are possible.
I have a fun issue. I want to be on Linux but for whatever reason there is no audio support (and I'm not able to add code to the kernel to fix it) for my Lenovo Legion 7.
Seems to only be affecting a certain chipset but no audio is a problem. Bluetooth at least works but that isn't good enough unfortunately.
Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with your distro. It can happen, not all hardware behaves equally well on Linux and differences between distros are huge. Some even don't run the latest kernel.
Out of curiosity, did you try Fedora, Ubuntu, KDE Neon, Kubuntu or Linux Mint? These are in my opinion great general public distros that are very stable. Ubuntu and Mint notably is lacking in Wayland support but KDE Neon and Fedora are very good at it.
Also, did you try running the desktop with X11 instead of Wayland?
I'd also recommend having another drive with the Linux distro so you can jump back and forth easier and test out new distros without having your computer potentially unusable.
I recently tried out my desktop PC for gaming with mint. I removed my windows drive from the PC, installed mint on a seperate drive, tried out several games, shut PC down, put windows drive back in PC, windows won't boot.. Had to nuke both drives and reinstall windows...
I just tried to make the switch and sadly went back also. I tried Nobara, PopOS and Mint and while I had little to no issues with gaming, other issues caused me to return. I have Lian Li V2 fans and they won’t work without their Windows or Mac software. If the PC is shut down, they spin at their lowest speed and disappear in my BIOS. Lian Li is more to blame here but I don’t want to replace 3 fans that work fine. I had tons of really weird sleep issues on all 3 distros too. Usually after a fresh reboot, it would sleep as expected but after that, it either wouldn’t sleep at all or immediately wake up. I use WOL to turn the PC on when I want to game in the basement so while a minor gripe, this coupled with my fan issues was so frustrating. I also resisted Linux for a while due to no or little HDR support, but missed it less than I thought I would and I know it’s coming very soon. Loved how lightweight the OS was and miss the simplicity. I shall try again someday…
Now that you know better, make sure to keep an eye on Windows or MacOS only dependencies in the future, and avoid those.
Most of us had a moment like this I think. Sometimes it lasts months, sometimes it lasts forever.
I have been looking a LONG time for a consistently stable distro, ill let you know when I find one in approx 20 years
This is why I have a single dedicated Windows machine for gaming, kitted out with the beefiest GPU and hooked up to the home theatre.
Edit: downvotes, no replies. Is my personal experience wrong in some way?
Sounds like a skill and/or distro issue
Your OS being the cause of massive problems running common programs should not be something you have to have the skills to fix in the first place. And distro issue? How the hell are you even supposed to pick a distro when if you ask 10 linux users what distro you should use you'll get 11 different answers? Sure, you could just try them all, but it takes a long time to evaluate an OS, plus just making sure that all the programs you want to run don't just shit themselves.
Programs not designed for Linux somehow manage to run on a completely different operating system through something I can only explain as fucking technological black magic, and you're wondering that it doesn't work quite like it's native environment? The fact that this is even possible is incredible
Go make the game devs release a proper Linux version and we won't have those issues anymore
You’re right, but that’s not the point. The other poster said it’s a skill issue. Sure, if the person can’t run commands in a terminal or doesn’t know what’s an executable that’s a skill issue.
Getting stuck because the game is having weird glitches that show off once in a while and you need classes on computer graphics to debug isn’t skill issues imo. Otherwise are all gonna establish that Linux isn’t for non programmers then?
Rather skill than distro
Linux was never and will never be there for crowds which just want their "computer to work" on each and every usage scenario.
Neither is windows
So according to your definition: which OS makes your "computer just work" ?
My OS makes my computer just work. I'm on KDE Neon which is "unstable" but in my case just works. Ubuntu just works. Fedora just works. Mint just works. Debian just works. Windows just works. For every use case? No.
Windows is just another OS. It's a good one, but not for every use case.
80% of people in the world would disagree with you. If you ask them which OS just works they will answer Windows, esp. if they have a bit of experience in dealing with Linux or tried it out for a brief time.
80% of people have never tried Linux and I'm pretty sure 80% of people only use computers for browsers, email and basic word processing. For those use cases almost every Linux just works. Meanwhile Windows is dropping support for old hardware so it'll just stop working.
I mean, sure, if you buy a computer with Windows on it it'll most likely just work for most of it's lifespan but if you buy a Tuxedo laptop it's pretty much supported for life.
In my opinion the UX and customization in windows is complete garbage so it very much doesn't just work for me.
...for you. The goes for me. But we are a minuscle minority.
Bugs on Linux is far easier to debug than bugs on Windows imo
Windows is better for gaming than Linux.
With Linux you have to be ready to play only what works.
Which is a lot, to be sure, but it's not everything.
Windows doesn't play dos games. With Windows you have to be ready to play only what works
So you're gaming on Wayland, which is a bad idea, but instead of just using X11 you're heading back to Windows?
I mean, you do you, but it kinda seems like you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here...
X is way worse than Wayland. It is buggy and doesn't work well with modern harhardware
linux is free if you don't value your time.
Windows is free if you don't value your freedom.
But Windows isn’t free!
That line is outdated.
To use Linux properly, you've got to "unlearn" everything you know about computers and go back from the ground-up. And breaking yourself free from bad habits (that only Windows gives you) such as relying on installers to do the job for you -- i.e "double-clicking your cares away". Which can be a fun experience when compiling (The "turbo nerd way" to install things on linux) becomes "second nature", giving you the ability to taste "true freedom" of making (pretty much) anything work the way as you may seem fit.
...
No, really. You'll have a heck of a nerdgasm when you compile something that is not "normally supported" on an obscure pc/distro. You will feel like a demigod.
t. That is how I felt the first time I compiled a half-life openBSD port... on Linux. I did it "by following my gut" and everything "werked".
I like clicking my problems away.
Relying on easy, simple stuff does not (always) mean a good thing let alone being good for you and your mental health. Even less so allowing proprietary, capitalism-driven developers to do whatever they want with your PC (which makes me wonder what you are even doing in this community in first place if you just "don't care"), but hey... you do you.
What is it with people on Lemmy and being absolute cunts? You start out okay, but with each sentence you just go lower and lower until finally you’re resorting to personal insults.
You must be a very unliked person.
I'm gonna make my life extra hard just to make a point against capitalism...
Pretty sure you don't have to unlearn everything to use Kubuntu or Linux mint