I dunno. I’ll probably get hate for this, but it’s not ready. It’s better. But Linux isn’t a good replacement for Windows yet. I love Linux. Love the customization, the *NIX filesystem makes sense, and it’s beautiful. Also no ads in my start menu!
I want to use Linux regularly, and I tried last week. It failed. Kind of miserably.
I need to pick a distro. Mint and Pop_OS were consensus recommendations.
Try mint: Installing dual boot alongside windows was beautiful. But no internet connection, says cable is unplugged (it’s not). Realize I downloaded an earlier version (20). Get the most recent version, and problem resolved. It’s kind of odd to me that even a pretty recent version wouldn’t support my adapter, but whatever. I tried to update and install Nvidia drivers: update fails because dependencies were not installed. Okay… Why not prompt me to install them? Why make me apt-get all the dependencies by hand? I don’t expect handholding, but some things should be. If I NEED something as a pre-req for what I’m trying to do, queue it up!
Fuck it. Let me try Pop_OS, instead - that has some gaming chops, right? Dual boot was more challenging to stand up, but it all worked. Nice. Fire up game: get ~20 fps drop compared to windows (108 from 130) with the same settings. I don’t want to troubleshoot the performance hit. It should just work. I want a tool not a project.
Never mind if you want HDR support. That seems to vary by distro. Variable refresh rate also seemed to be spotty from what I read in gaming distro recommendations. ALSO, do you need UEFI support? RIP. Enjoy toggling that on and off when you have to jump back and forth between Windows and Linux. Nvidia driver support I chalk up to those arseholes only now starting to open source some things.
And I don’t care that you were able to run everything fine. You had a flawless experience: great. Love that for you. I didn’t. I’m not a computer novice - I know to Google shit and how to implement it. I remember trying to fuck around with Ubuntu back in 2002.
I’m gonna continue trying to stand up Linux for everyday use because I love Linux and I want to use it, but it’s pretty clear that even as someone that wants to use Linux. I’ve been trying to switch to Linux every few years for decades. It’s still far short of being ready for average users.
This comment is tough because in its wrongness, it reveals a greater problem with Linux gaming. I think you’re right that it’s probably not ready outside of SteamOS. But it’s not correct to say it’s not ready in general. They are several distros that have all the latest features for modern gaming, the issue is you weren’t recommended even one of them. Pop_OS is currently outdated since they are working on their new desktop and mint is on the Ubuntu LTS version meaning they are both significantly behind. The community needs to take that into account when recommending things. That’s the reason I only recommend Bazzite. Cause it’s the closest to a SteamOS experience.
I appreciate your comment! I’ll take a look at Bazzite. How does it do with everyday tasks? Any other distros you’d recommend?
If what I said was so wrong, I feel even more like there’s a fragmentation issue with Linux (or something). This is especially true if some of the most well known distros have issues with gaming. It only fuels my urge to make a table of features for each distro and then evaluate pros and cons of what distro has what. But distro choice shouldn’t matter outside of UI, pre-installed programs, and maybe package management.
I was just super bummed that I didn’t have one of the perfect experiences that I had seen so many people talking about lately.
Honestly Bazzite does great with pretty much everything I’ve had it do. Some things were difficult in the beginning (I’ve been on it since nearly the beginnimg), but these days everything just works. It’s really matured. I’d also like to make an honorable mention for VanillaOS which would be my second pick for general stuff and my number one for development and sysadmin.
Distro choice really shouldn’t matter but unfortunately not all systems are created equal. There’s tradeoffs to everything. What you get by having the latest features you sacrifice in compatibility with older hardware. The stability benefits you get from waiting update packages may cause you to miss out on needed performances improvements or bug fixes. Tradeoffs to everything. Immutable distros handle most of those problems fairly elegantly, but lose out somewhat when it comes to ease of package installation.
I hope in the future you get to have a perfect experience friend.
Maybe, but as someone who spent a summer school breaks worth of time in 2002 getting drivers for a Nvidia GeForce 2 card to run under Mandrake (oh the kernel panics…) to play counter-strike 1.X on wine… It’s come a long fucking way.
I use Debian for everyday work and on my private machine nowadays and struggle with the shitty experience of windows when helping someone out now and then. Granted, I don’t have much time for games these days, and often fire up the PS for that, but I feel experience can vary as long as you know what you want and manage expectations.
Hey! Sorry you had these bad experiences.
My setup is on Debian testing and is documented on this blog post: https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming
I don’t have an Nvidia card but other than that, this should give you a head start, including virtual surround on headphones if that’s your thing!
I promise it’s not a lot of work and I tried to make it all easy to follow (feedback welcome though!).
If you decide to give it a go, let me know how it went!
Man i wish, to this day, no matter the distro its like russian roulette with a revovler loaded with 5 bullets
And when it even starts im lucky it even runs reasonably well
Solus was the only one that worked a little better
And than enadeavouros AFTER several hours of stupid searching and installing some random crap i never found again
If you really want to have a go of it you should either buy well supported hardware next time you buy or even better buy hardware that actually comes with Linux by an OEM that has already done the research and selection and then don’t run a kernel older than your hardware. Stick with boring well supported stuff neither bleeding edge nor ancient.
It’s great that you can at this point pick hardware out of a hat and have a lot of it supported by Linux but it doesn’t mean you should buy hardware this way if you want to have a good experience.
im running well supported stock pc with the only “custom” part being more ram no, the problem is not me, i have heard it many times
linux users specifically always like to push the problem at the user and not at the system
Man i wish, to this day, no matter the distro its like russian roulette with a revovler loaded with 5 bullets
So there are absolutely millions of Linux users. Either we are all masochists living in constant frustration because we are brothers in brokenness or few long term Linux users have an experience that is similar to yours and are simply trying to help you avoid non-obvious pitfalls that may otherwise lead to a shitty experience
A) First off “well supported” herein means that your hardware is known to be well supported by Linux not that its common, good, expensive, or useful. If you are having a shit experience then there is a good chance its actually not well supported.
B) Lots of “stable” distributions ship with old kernels often as old as 2-3 years old. This means that hardware that came out within the last 2-3 years isn’t supported at all and even older hardware for which support was added recently wont work as advertised. There is no profit in running either the kernel that came out 10 minutes ago or the one that came out 3 years ago. This to me seems to be a common issue. Just run a recent kernel.
C) The barrier to entry to create your own distro is incredibly low. The effort required to make a good one is a lot higher. If you stick to the major distros that have stuck around over the years you will have a more consistent experience.
D) X11 is less experimental than Wayland and less hassle
E) Simple environments like XFCE and Cinnamon and window managers are more consistent and predictable than gnome
F) Flatpaking all the things brings exciting new challenges not forseen by the developers who don’t actually distribute flatpaks. Stay away from unofficial flatpaks and if the developer suggests a system package or an appimage use whatever the developer recommends.
If all this advice seems awfully complicated it could be shorted to buy hardware that comes with Linux and run Mint.
Then don’t install Linux, if Linux doesn’t work for you then don’t use it. Nothing Linux has to offer is worth the pain you’ve gone through. As for the system, Linux has to build itself around hardware rather then the other way around which is why problems occur.
That’s cool games thar require anti cheat measures or have sports are generally speaking games I’m not interested in as a rule.
“We need kernel access to prevent cheaters from ruining our game” is the dating equivalent to a guy asking for your phone password on the first date.
More like asking for access to your email and keys and phone pin code, or (if people have it) their password wallet, to make sure you aren’t hooking up with other guys on the side.
Just as crazy
It’s not even that. I have zero interest in multilayer games even less so “seasonal” games. Basically all the stuff AAA says is dead I like and all the stuff they say I should like I dislike
The season nomenclature is fucking stupid and I hate it. If a game makes its DLC or quarterly updates and calls them “Seasons” I am revolted.
I play with Mods, unfortunately. It’s the one thing keeping me back atm.
You can mod things on Linux, it’s just slightly more of a pain because you have to usually manually place files in the right locations, since the mod managers are kinda hit or miss on Linux.
That being said, I was recently able to mod Minecraft and Valheim pretty extensively with mod managers (I forget which one for Minecraft, but I used r2modman for Valheim which worked great), and I got the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition mod manager working enough via wine that I could mod that too.
I like linux but this is stoopid.
