I’m curious as to what everyone’s reasons are! The Linux desktop has came quite a far ways in the last few years and is improving every day. I’d say for most people, Linux could easily replace Windows as their daily driver nowadays.
Vidia gaems
And I’m scared of learning a new operating system.
I’d say a large majority of games run on Linux either natively (quite a lot of games have been ported because of the Steam Deck, which runs Linux!) or under Proton just fine, at least in my experience. The only troubles you will have are games with DRM (things like Denuvo) or anti-cheats (things like BattlEye or Easy Anti-Cheat, which both have Linux support, but the developers have to opt-in to it and not many do). There’s actually a website called ProtonDB that has an extensive catalogue of games and the status of their Linux support, maybe all the games you play already run!
There’s definitely a case to try gaming on Linux if you already have a reason to use it but when high end gaming is your top priority it’s come a long way but it’s still worse than windows. HDR and directstorage support are just now becoming a thing for example. And then there’s all the drivers for various peripherals that may or may not have an inferior third party solution. It’s very cool that it’s come as far as it has, and a lot of that is thanks to valve but unless you already want to use linux it’s still second best.
Hopefully HDR & color management are coming sooner than later thanks to the new Steam Deck OLED release, they’ve been working on it for a while and it seems to be coming along nicely from what I’ve seen so far.
I too am a videa gaem enjoyer and I have been running Linux as my main driver for more than a year with a dual boot setup specifically for games. The only times I have to boot into Windows are:
- Multiplayer games with anti-cheat that do not support Linux. Note that not all games with anti-cheat are Linux averse. For example I am able to run BattleBit Remastered just fine on Linux.
- Wabbajack modlists
For anything else, I just install the game on Steam, press play and let Proton do its thing. Sometimes I have to go to ProtonDB, check the comments for that particular game and copy-paste some launch settings, but that’s about it. As someone who kept delaying making Linux my daily driver due to games, I have been really pleasantly surprised by the current state of Proton.
I do not mean to evangelize. While modern distros make the OS much more approachable than in the past, once in a while, things will break and need tinkering and this is something everyone who is interested in running a Linux machine should be aware of. Personally, I mind spending the occasional hour debugging myself out of some issue much less than I abhor Windows’ intrusive features and lack of control over the OS. I have delayed switching for quite a while solely due to worrying about running my games, and I am sharing my experience for those who find themselves in the same boat.
Please keep evangelising! Microsoft and Apple suck so I do need to get off my lazy ass and consider Linux sometime. I wonder how it handles pirated PC games?
Hell, maybe I will look into Linux for my next laptop after all.
Of course avian comrade, death to Microsoft and Apple. I always advocate for Linux but I want people to be aware of what they are getting into and that a certain level of it just works will have to be sacrificed. Sadly, I don’t have any personal experience with pirated games so I cannot help you on that one.
You should give something like Bottles a try, it manages all that stuff for you so you don’t have to deal with it. Makes life a ton easier.
It really do be video games. It’s not often I run something that absolutely wouldn’t work in Linux but it happens enough that I can’t be bothered to set up dual-booting.
I use a browser and Notepad and that’s pretty much all I do on my PC. I do so little with it that learning how to use a new operating system seems far more effort than it’s worth.
Sounds like you’re a prime candidate to move over. You don’t need to learn anything if you don’t do anything outside of what you’ve listed.
This! There are plenty of distributions that cater directly to these use cases, Linux Mint for example, which is a decent recommendation for people just coming over from Windows and just want to browse the web or take notes for school. It has a familiar layout and most things you’d care about can be configured or setup with easy to use menus like how you’re used to with windows.
I’m dual booting Manjaro/KDE and W10 on my laptop. The only reason to have W10 is MS Office. I’m a scientist and a lot of time I need to accommodate my boomer co-authors who cannot handle Google docs for collaborative manuscript. I daily drive mostly on Linux, but I also have MATLAB installed on windows partition bc I don’t like filthy binary blobs on my Linux.
My workflows has gone pretty wack, I might need to keep the windows partition as an always online work desktop, and get a second pure Linux laptop to access the windows side through Parsec rather than booting on/off. Alternatively, I can fully migrate the windows partition to VM, but VM is also such an ugly bloaty installation.
I have OCD and love to keep my Linux side lean, clean, and free as freedom as I can be. Sadly that necessitates running windows on dualboot
I haven’t used Microsoft’s office suite in years, but I’m pretty sure LibreOffice can open & edit files that are made in Microsoft’s office suite just fine, although I could be completely wrong and just misremembering for something else.
Yes they can, but precise placement of objects don’t carry over even through the same .docx and .pptx files. Like for example, I would make a nice table or equation through Libre, saves as .docx and it would come up mangled when someone try to open it on Word
That’s a shame, it’s always bothered me that there isn’t a open standard for these kinds of files, rather we’re stuck with Microsoft’s undocumented proprietary formats and forced to just work with them.
