I hate to be that guy, but why don’t you just move over to Linux already? Games work. It’s incredibly easy now. A nine year old could install and use xubuntu.
Why is this argument so common? “Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”. As if games is the only thing holding people back. My laptops are finally running Linux full time now, but I’ve been looking to switch my workstation over to Linux for 25 years now and I’m still not able to fully do it due to limited software and hardware support, and I barely play any games.
From my experience it’s still a common misconception and I think it’s the largest potential group that can switch. Sucks that your usecase is unsupported, though. Just out of interest, what software can you still not run?
You’re right that it’s a common misconception that games don’t work on Linux, and that misconception needs to be addressed. But playing games occasionally is such a common thing that you can’t treat them as one homogenous group. “Everyone” plays games. But many many of them do other things as well on their computers, and many of those would consider the other thing more important than the games.
People who use the Abobe suite for example. Digital media creation in general (massive group of people btw) is subpar on Linux. Personally my biggest hurdles right now are DTP software and a specific piece of music production software+hardware combination from Native Instruments.
Not to mention that most people are not ready to deal with a Linux installation that is having issues.
“Games work on Linux now so you can switch over”
Gaming was at one point a serious hurdle. Back in 2007 when I was forced to switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu due to a former friend’s IT fuck-up, the only Windows game I could legitimately get running was World of Warcraft, and even then the installation process was arduous.
Valve deserves much of the credit for getting Linux into the state where it can play a vast majority of Windows games with comparable or even better performance.
The true hurdle now is with anticheat.
It’s almost like people don’t care to realize there’s requirements that are out of my/their/your control. I have to run windows for my SCADA vms to work. I have to run the exact software the company uses. I am 100% not in control of the requirements.
My home lab is 100% windows free. Proxmox, truenas and basic Debian everywhere. Dual booting fedora and Arch on my personal laptop.
It’s becoming such an inarticulate argument that I’ve just taken to ignoring everyone who rattles that off as if it’s just black and white.
Why is this argument so common?
Because for decades every sincere attempt to suggest Linux as the solution to some problem was 80% of the time met with “but muh games”, so now people make the assumption that it will be the likely objection when it comes up.
You seem to have a corner case that requires you to use Windows even if you did prefer not to, and that’s totally valid.
I’m 17 years in running Linux on everything at home while being paid to support and deploy Windows at work, and my trajectory has been that each and every one of those 17 years MS has given me reason to be really happy I left them behind. Lots of other folks have similar stories, and it’s only natural that they want to share that enthusiasm with folks who are pearl-clutching about however MS has shit on their users this month.
Personally I think there are more users who could go my way than who are likely to have a corner case such as yours. (I barely even consider HW compatibility anymore for common devices except of course avoiding a very short list of wifi vendors.) But I also recognize that is my perception and anecdote and I couldn’t support that assertion with any particular data.
Because, it is really the last thing that windows did better than Linux. There are many reasons to switch Linux. Having control over your computer is the primary one in my opinion. Maybe I made a poorly worded argument, but the fact that windows can just change your system is on you is incredibly frustrating. I haven’t used Windows in almost 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve missed much. Recent advances in wine and proton make it incredibly easy to run windows software, and for the few things that don’t work there are arguably better alternatives.
There are a lot of games that work. Still some that hold out, mainly due to their shitty anticheat software.
The other day I solved my problem with one of my games from Steam not working in Linux by downloading a pirate version and installing it in Lutris, which worked without a hitch.
I thought I would share this on account of it being slightly ridiculous.
Not curious at all. Pirates remove or circumvent the DRM.
Edit: since wine’s dll’s are reverse engineered and are not allowed to have original code of leaks, DRM and Anti Cheat tools often have issues with it. Aside from the point that the more intrusive DRM want kernel level access, which fails with Linux of course.
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant… I use different environments for different purposes and there’s no good reason to leave potential functional value unused for the sake of ideological convictions or fanboyism or whatever. My problems now revolve around having a useful cross-platform account that has access to my files on any/all of my platforms/VMs. I do lean heavily on open source software, I prefer it to proprietary.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Please read this older comment of mine, it explains my point of view on this more… and if you want to do something really interesting then try to implement Qubes and actually use it for awhile.
More basically, an OS is not a food that you might like or dislike, it is a tool that you use when it is suited to the task. Discriminating against tools doesn’t make sense, it only limits your capabilities.
Only if you want capabilities that you can only achieve with the tool you dislike. I’ve had plenty of shitty screwdrivers, and it was totally reasonable not to like them. And I’m not going to deal with all the safety risks of a table saw when I really only need a hacksaw.
That’s all great for you to be platform agnostic. There’s literally zero things I want to do that I can’t do with Linux, and as someone who does get paid to use, deploy, and support Windows, the only things I find easier with Windows are goals that exist only because MS created them (such as AD integration).
Nah, you do you, but I’m quite comfortable discriminating against Windows, and with defending the fact that I do so. I’ll continue using it only when paid for that purpose, and will absolutely not voluntarily put myself in a position where I need to rely on the mess that is windows or the surveillance company that is Microsoft for anything that is important to me personally.
I am past the point of having “a” computer with “an” operating system… the concept of “moving” to another OS is basically irrelevant…
And man the entire tone of your post is early 2000’s “I don’t even own a TV” level.
I’ve been daily driving Linux for a long time. It’s honestly still not for everyone.
Anti-cheat is still a problem Roblox is still a problem. There are still plenty of programs that people are intimately married to the don’t run well under wine. You can’t just tell them you can’t have Photoshop Premier and Outlook anymore. Arguably a number of the people who don’t fall under that criteria could be running Chromebooks.
And honestly we’re not going to properly support them when their autocomplete software doesn’t run under Wayland or parsec doesn’t support server mode.
It’s great that you either have the chops to fill in the gaps or don’t run the software that has the gaps, but you really can’t ask everyone to do that right?
