this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Unless you run some really niche software or are a heavy gamer, you'll likely have no problems and enjoy it. Most software that you need for daily use has a FOSS equivalent that's equal or better. Usually those are also available straight from the package manager (if not there, then most likely Flatpak).
Just stick with a well supported distro like Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, or PopOS, and it'll be super easy.
I'm actually looking forward to the perfectly good Linux boxes that are bound to be popping up at yard sales or on ebay once that happens.
Why I am still hesitant to make the leap. Not just do I mostly use my PC for gaming but I have a tendency to jump into a new game for like 3 weeks and then off to the next like the horrid ADHD having fuck that I am. I don't want to possibly have to work to make a game work each and every time. I know its gotten a lot better about that but still. Convivence has me trapped yo.
I was in the same boat. But Valve seriously made it easy to install and play games on Steam. If you have a spare drive, give it a shot.
Things I had to do were to turn on proton in the steam settings and installing vulkan drivers for my AMD card.
I honestly might with my next build this summer.
In a desktop (which is what you want for gaming anyways) why not? Easy enough to slot in a new drive and dual boot from there, no need to muck about with partitions like with a single-drive laptop.
If it doesn't work out, oh well, go back to Windows. But maybe Linux is finally there, and you'll find you don't need to go back
I was surprised by this.
Admittedly, I haven't played many video games in the past few years but I was a little disappointed when the list of Steam games for Linux was quite short.
Then I read about Proton. The first Windows-only game I tried worked great so I'm happy.
I play older games on a 1060 so I don't have a good sense of what the performance is compared to playing directly on Windows though.
as long as it's not a competitive multiplayer, it's more likely than not that it'll work out of the box.
Check ProtonDB. The overwhelming majority of games work just fine on Linux with Steam's Proton. I encounter a game that genuinely will not work on Linux only like once or twice a year.
How is graphics card stuff with them, all okay in terms of drivers? I assume VR might be an issue?
Graphics drivers are fine. No idea about VR since I don't use it personally.
I haven't tried my VR on Linux because the general consensus of people who have say it's bad. It's impressive how far Linux has come in terms of gaming in such a short time. Proton is incredible.
That being said, niche things like VR, or running multiple monitors with different high refresh rates and freesync simultaneously are still rocky.
The biggest issue in see however is multiplayer competitive gaming. There's no easy path to that in sight due to aggressive anti-cheat software.
As such Linux is currently relegated to mostly single player games that don't do anything crazy. That's honestly good enough for a lot of people, but misses the mark with a lot of gamers.
Not really an issue anymore with most Wayland compositors (KDE and wlroots, soon to be fixed with Gnome). That's mainly an X11 specific problem.
You're attacking this from the wrong angle. Tinkering every few weeks with something new on linux can keep your ADHD occupied ;-)
As someone with ADHD this is exactly what happened to me when I switched to Linux. Continues to keep me occupied 3 months later
As an intermedia Linux user prior to making the jump 2 years ago, if you mainly game on Steam you're fine. Wine and Proton are mature developed now that most games 'just work'. Almost all the problems I've run into for gaming on Linux have come from trying to do something outside steam (although Blizzard and Activision games seem to be pretty low effort).
Once you get outside that, it's hit or miss (sometimes good hits. Sometimes bad misses).
What you'll have to say goodbye to is alphas, betas, and release weekends. They CAN function (I did all 3 Diablo 4 beta weekends last year with no issues at all), and there's plenty of early access stuff on steam that works fine even though the developers didn't care about Linux one bit. But usually if you're reporting issues on opening weekend for a new game, they're more concerned with making their game launch work for the 95%+ of users instead of the 5%. If you want stuff to 'just work' and don't want to spend your weekend tinkering with waiting for hot fixes or patches, you'll probably not want to make the switch. Or will want to change your mentality about which games you play and when.
That being said, the experience is constantly getting better. So in a year or two it may be a different story.
I run Pop!_Os. Steam with Proton is a gamechanger. Yet to find a game that doesn't just work with zero configuration.
There has been a LOT of progress since the SteamDeck launched. The only real barrier now is multiplayer games that run anticheat. And even some of those have been figured out.
Only thing I've found to really not work is head tracking. That's pretty niche though and I'm expecting someone to figure that out eventually. Almost every game ran no problem.
Like VR you mean? lol my next build is when I want to finally get into VR and try all the games I haven't been able to play yet :(
No, not VR. Headtracking. The head is tracked with something like a webcam to move the camera.
oooh spiffy.
Wouldn't you look away from the screen?
You calibrate it so that a small head movement translates to a large camera movement.
That sounds better than the silly example I had in my head.
https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack Used this years ago in Elite without issues.
Try dual booting so you can test if it just works or if the friction involved is acceptable.
Actually with ADHD it's nice. Making something work under Wine (following the instructions from winehq.org) is a bit similar to a game itself
EDIT: Oh, there's another such comment.
If you have a spare drive, install Pop_OS! on it. Don't let people let you think that everything is a piece of cake. It can be a little frustrating. A lot of guides jump to "the rest of the fucking owl" or are made on older versions of software. Steam does make it easy but most games are not a matter of simply hitting install because they do not have a native Linux version. You have to right-click on the game, go to Manage, and then set compatibility to Proton (generally although some games need other settings added which you can often find in protondb.com). Is it worth? I like it. There are some basic things that can be annoying like my fingerprint reader not working even though fprintd supports it but I'm too lazy to make a bug report.
Try dual boot. Ideally install both OSs on separate drives and do windows first. Best of luck!
I suggest Mint for new users (and lazy old users like me). All of the simplicity of Ubuntu, without Canonical's shit
I almost went back to Mint on my last rebuild, but ended up going with Debian + Cinnamon. So far so good.
Not a good choice for people who want to play games. Debian focuses on stability so their packages are typically outdated.
Ubuntu without snaps or nagging about Ubuntu Pro. I was annoyed with both so I switched over from Ubuntu Mate to Linux Mate and have been enjoying it.
What about Arch? I was told:
Mint is for people who generally don't want to do weird shit, which is most new users. If you do, it's not any harder than doing it on Ubuntu or Debian.
If you want in-depth tinkering, go with Arch. If you want newer packages than a Debian base but not necessarily much tinkering, go with Tumbleweed. You're just going to have to learn a different package manager for each.
I personally am most comfortable in an environment that has
apt, and I don't change much on my systems, so Mint is nice. My servers are straight DebianSounds like neckbeard bullshit honestly, Mint is just fine. Arch is "better" if you like tinkering
Even heavy gamers are getting a much better experience on Linux these days (yay Proton!). There are a couple of anti-cheat systems that are still trouble some, but honestly if the developers don't want to to put in the much smaller amount of effort to make it work on Linux, I don't want to give them my money.
Sadly I have niche software and I'm a heavy gamer. But now it's becoming as much of a headache to deal with Windows threatening dumb upgrades that I might as well switch and fight with compatibility.
The more we do it, the more companies will be incentivised to make Linux work.
I'm kind of a power user.
Gaming. Multimedia (Video, Image, Audio). Application development. Web development. Getting into cybersecurity, so using a lot of VMs. Watching videos.
I've been making a Linux transition. So far, the stuff I still need to iron out:
-Adobe. Make it work somehow or replace. Can use it on a windows VM 🤷♂️. Happy to replace because fuck em. Working through options.
-VST managers for digital audio workstation. Most aren't on Linux (spitfire audio, iZotope, IK multimedia, iLok). Haven't begun trying to make them work. I e heard most can be configured in WINE.
-old MIDI program not working. No audio for MIDI. One program works, another doesn't 🤔
That's it. Everything else is working. Big challenges Ive had:
-bluetooth gaming controller took a lot of effort. Works great now.
-Epic games through heroic... Through steam on Linux... Through remote play on my phone... That was difficult. But it works!!
-remote desktop troubleshooting. Works fine now.
Oh and I can't get windows subsystem for Linux to work in my windows VM on my Linux machine. 🤷♂️
Ignoring the blasphemy of that, the fact it doesn't work may prove that we are, indeed, living in a simulated universe. lol
My Win10 machine is an audio workstation (DAW) so I am curious how the migration to Linux will work out. Reaper has a Linux port so that should be OK. Hopefully all the VSTs will still work and I’ll have to check on my Focusrite Scarlett. I am not buying a new machine just to run this stuff as it’s just a hobby.
I haven't powered it up in several years, but I keep an old Windows XP machine with my DAW software on it. I just always ran it offline and moved files with a thumb drive. That said, I never did try a native Linux solution.
Check out Bitwig Studio too if you haven't already. It can even open Ableton and FL project files.
Niche hardware meaning an asus laptop