I run to Ubuntu or Linux Mint on everything except my gaming PC. Every year or two I try out Linux for gaming and usually go back to windows. With steam deck out it seems like Linux gaming is the best it’s ever been. With that said I’m still a bit frustrated with freezing (halo mcc) and Bluetooth being super flakey on my 8bitdo controller. I guess I’m rambling, but curious if dual booting is the way to go? Have most of you axed windows all together?
Yes. I think Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 were my last “anchors” to Windows (7, at the time). I barely ever booted into it… I wanted to be NOT IN WINDOWS more than I wanted to play big fat luxury games.
But I did keep it around until there just wasn’t anything left that I wanted to run but couldn’t. The first Humble Indie Bundles with games like FEZ and Limbo had been out by that point as well as a few bigger titles like The Witcher 2. Wine was much more painful than it is now.
I’ve generally made sure not to buy too “crazy” hardware (like Bluetooth controllers… yes, I’m old and a neophobe and I don’t know what else).
I ended up figuring out the Bluetooth issue! I think I just need to give it a solid go for a month or so and see how often I go back to Windows. Maybe like you I’ll eventually stop using it all together. My main game, Deep Rock Galactic, runs great in proton. Rock and stone everyone.
I think you’re talking mostly to a community of Linux users, so it’s not going to be a great sample. Personally I dual-booted for quite a while, and eventually realized I had unintentionally not used Windows in months, so I backed up my files and removed it.
If you’re having issues with Linux, I would definitely dual-boot spend some time trying to figure the issues out instead of just going to Linux 100% and putting up with them.
I don’t game on windows just linux, but I have a windows VM on hand for the occasional bit of windows software I need. But these days that’s becoming a rare occurance. I still love my old Nikon photo editing software which lives on the VM, I just dont edit so many photos these days.
I completely abandoned Windows on my gaming PC. These days if a game doesn’t work on Linux I just don’t play it. There’s plenty of other stuff to choose from.