I went full Linux a few months ago and haven’t looked back. Steam has superb support for basically everything I could want to play – in some cases I feel like Linux actually performs better than Windows on the same hardware. I really appreciate the huge investment Valve made into making Linux gaming work.
I’m in the process of swapping over now. Certainly some speed bumps after many years of Windows, but it’s been kind of fun.
There are a few games I’ve hit that I can’t play, but that why I’m dual booting for the near future. Linux as the daily driver and then back to windows when I have to.
Yeah a lot of games with really strong anti-piracy just don’t work at all. I was shocked that Roblox was one of the few ones that just wouldn’t make the jump, for example, Grapejuice notwithstanding.
Except Roblox is currently working on providing unofficial support to Wine (and by extension Roblox). See the post from one of their employee: https://devforum.roblox.com/t/why-did-roblox-stop-supporting-linux-users (Need to be logged in)
in some cases I feel like Linux actually performs better than Windows on the same hardware
What are those cases?
Im may not be the person asked but i can still give you 1 particularly impactful case: minecraft. Now Minecraft (java) has native linux support so this isn’t valve’s doing but i get a massive performance lift in minecraft. On my old pc on windows i had barely 50 fps. On Linux i had 80 that’s 30 fps more with the exact same mods and settings
Windows actually can run the games faster if there’s wasn’t so many BS Microsoft ad services and antiviruses running in the background holding it back. I have a dual boot setup with a lite version of windows packaged by some Russian guy i don’t trust and it runs things was faster than the normal MS windows.
@Llewellyn
File system operations are often faster. This is in part due to Windows doing more; it has a more complex and more flexible permissions system.
Spawning threads and processes is also normally faster. Linux apps thinks nothing of spawning lots of processes with abandon, then have them opening and closing files all over the place. If you move it straight over to a Windows machine it will tend to run very badly as a result.
In addition to the differences in permissions and kernel behavior you’ve pointed out, there’s also a huge difference in the filesystems themselves.
Windows’ default filesystem is NTFS. Linux’s is EXT4.
EXT4 is significantly more modern (2008 vs 2001) and featureful (no fragmentation, handles small files much better, journaling, etc) than NTFS.
I really appreciate that I can buy first-party hardware from Valve and then install and run GoG games on it without any BS barriers or workarounds.
I got some GoG games on sale yesterday. Installed Heroic Games Launcher. Logged in. Installed the games. Clicked “add to Steam library” and boom, there they are in the Steam launcher alongside my other Steam games.
This is just such a breath of fresh air in a modern world consumed by proprietary bullshit. Valve is the anti-Nintendo.
Only thing so far is other game launchers, and VR. I’m still dual booting, especially for VR.
I’ve always wondered how good proton is when the hardware is less standardized than a console/pc hybrid. Can you really just slap in any modern x86 CPU and Nvidia Card and just go? How’s driver handling? It’s been years since I’ve used a linux desktop environment, so I’d be coming to it with navigational/file-handling skills in terminal alone.
Should work out of the box, if you want a better experience I would definitely recommend an AMD gpu. Nvidia drivers are a huge mess on Linux since Nvidia actively refuses to support Linux
What? You just have to install the proprietary drivers, they work perfectly fine. I get that if you don’t want any proprietary stuff NDIVIA is not the best experience (opensource drivers are not good because of lack of support) but I’d hardly call that a huge mess.
They’re an extra thing you have to install, which makes them less plug and play than AMD, but a huge mess? It’s far from being that bad nowadays
