I made the switch almost a year ago when they started announcing all the spyware coming to win11. The distro you choose matters a LOT. After several that were buggy and frustrating I landed on Garuda dragonized. Setup was easy with their assistant finding the drivers I needed and I have yet to have any system breaking updates. Better track record than windows TBH. Performance is great, and steam integrates so well with proton that my experience is honestly just as good as windows native. I should probably go make a donation to the Garuda project, now that I’m thinking about it.
Not all games are created equally.
There are still lots of reasons that stop people from jumping 100% into Linux. Gaming is less and less one of them.
True, but network effects are important to that.
There were huge numbers of people that wouldn’t move to Linux because it didn’t support all of their games. Now it does, and lots of people are moving.
There are lots of people that won’t move to Linux because they have a random bit of hardware that’s not supported, or a highly-specific bit of software they need to do their job that only runs on Windows. The manufacturers wouldn’t support Linux because not enough people used it. Ah, but now we have all the gamers, so there are quite a lot of people using it.
Each domino that falls encourages the rest. Steam Linux users are more than 3x Steam macOS users, and we’re not that far from overtaking it for general desktop usage. In some regions, that’s already the case, and while the Windows 10 exodus can move to Linux easily, they’d need to buy new hardware fo use the Mac operating system. Not many companies would question providing Apple support; once Linux has a comparable share, it would be foolish to leave that out of consideration as well.
Well, I’m 90% proud of Linux!
I’m installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it’s easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.
Windows 10 did that to us. My work workstation and my wife’s laptop suffered with W10, so I searched alternate OS and found Linux. Luckily our CAD software had a Linux version and I got productivity back.
My wife’s 2010 laptop on w10 was not usable. Its super fast with Linux. Faster than my work issued brand-new Lenovo laptop with W11. The only performance problem would be rendering video or other hardcore tasks.
This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I’ve experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
hit as many different corporate metrics as possible
ah yes. product roadmaps where every stakeholder gets their share except the users
Well yeah their business isn’t to “serve users.” It’s to “farm consumers.”
That’s why I’m glad I do embedded systems in a niche industry. I’m not trying to drive engagement across the globe. I’m just making a device that serves the needs of a user who has other important work to worry about.
https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.protonvpn.www You are welcome :)
That did it! Thank you so much!
BASH will be your best friend for any Linux distro.
Ill definitely look into this.
Yeah, once you get the basics of BASH down Linux becomes really easy.
Open up your Console/Shell/Terminal and type “help” it will give you the list of commands that let you navigate the shell.
It’s honestly surprising how bloated Windows has become, and for no clear reason either. Even with all of the obvious bloat disabled and resource-intensive features turned off there’s still a significant overhead, it’s just so constant that you don’t notice it. Then you load up Linux on the same hardware and realize what you’ve been missing.
If you have a look at phoronix.com (probably the best linux news site) you can find loads of articles on linux gaining 0.2% of performance in some superspecific workload.
The Linux performance is what happens when thousands of people do these kinds of micro improvements for decades.
In comparison Windows is what happens if everyone follows the new cool trend and tries to lamd the next big thing.
Protonvpn has a flatpack. Check your distro’s app store for it.
In my opinion this the unique milestone linux has to achive to be declared as a total winner vs windows, in the near future I would like to see non tech industries using linux instead of microsoft spyware.
There’s a chance it will happen outside the USA.
Deciding to send to the landfill every PC sold after 2018 is a decision that they saw analyzing only numbers from big American corporations. “Anyway they lease the computers and have a refresh every 3-5 years”
But the rest of the world?
Here in Italy I still see people on Windows 7
When I traveled in southeast Asia I saw people using windows XP
Or Brazil, where the import taxes make a windows 11 compatible PC ultra expensive
Regular people and small businesses , especially outside the USA won’t simply buy a new PC just because Microsoft and Intel needed the line to go up.
If we could get just one of the big tech suites to support it, I think that would help to finally break the dam and get some serious migration.
Mechanical/civil engineering software, music production, and digital art. Those are the big ones.
need some support from anti-cheat
its fine, cause no user program should run in the kernel. unless its a driver.
Just made the switch, surprised how smooth the transition went so far.
For a while I never made the switch because of gaming. I did 3 years ago and never looked back. Proton is a game changer
Ooooh, what distro did you go with?
I went full AMD and Fedora. Couldn’t be happier. All games I’ve tested work. It’s been a while since I’ve had a gaming pc so I don’t have a reference point, but everything is as smooth as I’d want to. Some games may need a library or so as stated in protonDB but, I’m so impressed. Now I have desktop running KDE, steam deck has KDE too and my laptop also with fedora.
For real, full AMD on Fedora is incredibly stable and smooth.
Hey! This is also my setup!
Can’t be Arch, else he would’ve already said that he uses Arch btw. /s
Listen…
Mint, I need my emotional support windows xp.
😂
Omg saaammeeeee
While this is awesome we still need to have the same performance on Windows. Yes, some games run better through proton for some reason, but that’s the minority. Hopefully, proton will not be needed for new games in the future and we get native builds like CS2.
I have a 3090 and heard nvidia gpus dont do very well for Linux gaming if anyone wants to quell my fears and get me off Windows
Check my post history I repeat this so often I’m getting tired of it, sorry, but basically 2080ti since it’s out, been gaming nearly daily on it, from AAA to indie, from “flat” to VR and… it just works. I just followed https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and that’s it, no tinkering.
Desktop on a 3060 Ti is doing fine. Never ran Windows on it to compare though
I have a 3070 and it runs the majority of games better than windows. The “Nvidia doesnt work good for linux” statement has become dated. Nvidia has become much better about giving support to other platforms, I think it has alot to do with being flexible for the ai market
As long as you run the proprietary nvidia drivers, performance is more or less noise for a given driver version. There IS some annoyance with slower releases for drivers to Linux but… nvidia has had much bigger problems with new driver releases over the past year.
The big issue is if you run the open source community drivers. And… if you are spending leather jacket money and then using low performance drivers… you are an idiot. Because Mistah J already has the metrics and money he wants and doesn’t care if you actually use your card after buying it.
I’m on a 5090 and bazzite has (in the majority of games and apps) just worked.
I have a brand-new lenovo workstation with an nVidia RTX card. Works great. Vulcan calculates the shader cache on first run of a game that takes a minute to run through, but after that the game runs great. I’m on tumbleweed, the only issue I had past week was kernel moved ahead but the nvidia driver wasn’t ready right away. Just meant booting the old kernel in the boot menu till that all syncs up
been running an nvidia gpu since 2019, literally switched from windows right as cyberpunk 2077 was being launched, and trust me, it was possible back then, and it’s even more performant now.
I have a 3090ti. Made the switch to Linux last year after reading that most games work. Never had a problem with the card, it works flawlessly out of the box (using the proprietary Nvidia drivers).
It still was a bit of a learning curve for me though… Using steam they work without a hitch. If they are not on steam, I found that the easiest (for me) is to install them using lutris, and then adding them to steam as non-steam games and using Proton to run them.
I don’t play that many games though, so ymmv
Did you try heroic?
My rtx2080ti runs perfectly in linux and fine on games, thats fairly old card too. My kids computers use gtx1050’s and they are also running every game including Roblox just fine.
FYI: That’s more Windows games than run in Windows!
WTF? Why? Because a lot of older games don’t run in newer versions of Windows than when they were made! They still run great in Linux though 👍
There is like a good chunk of an entire decade’s worth of games that can’t be played on PC legitimately due to either expired licenses for music (e.g. EA Trax) or lack of support for older, disc-based DRM (SecuROM etc.).
That’s before factoring older titles that no longer work due to arbitrary changes to DirectX and the Windows kernel, which break backwards compatibility.
Huh wonder whether shadows of destiny pc port works on proton.
Might be worth checking ProtonDB, or WineDB if it’s not on steam.
It wasn’t on proton but there’s a very old entry on wine. Looks like my boy Jeff’s last entry was quite recent in 2023, he rated it a silver. There’s a known bug from some graphical glitch during certain events like the protagonist meeting himself back in time and others which may prevent completion. I wonder how it works now, tempted to test it out.
But what percentage of games that use anticheat?
Probably a somewhat popular opinion in the Linux crowd already, but I think we should be pressing companies to find better ways to manage anti-cheats than kernel-level anti-cheat anyway. I’m glad I don’t play games like that because I don’t like how it works at all.
Absolutely. It’s completely possible too by using server side verification and not giving the client info they shouldn’t have, but that costs them slightly more in server costs (which aren’t significant).
It would also require designing the games code to account for this from the start, so not insignificant but definitely all reasonably possible, as in if there were magically legislation tommorow forcing all new multiplayer games to stop doing invasive anti cheat in a year, it’d be done in 6 months.
Not always, latency is a huge problem especially in action games.
The implicit implication of your comment is that sever side verification etc inherently means unacceptable latency and I see no reason to believe it; only gut feelings
No, but it is a far more complex problem than what the other comment made it sound like. That it is only because they cheap out on server hardware and it could be perfect if they just wasn’t cheap.
There isn’t a single comment in this chain that says it’s purely about server costs.
Seems about 40% working, I personally only have one game that doesn’t jive with Linux. If the game you’re playing doesn’t work that’s the fault of the specific anti-cheat developers because it’s obviously possible to do it right.
Sure, but from the end user perspective, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is - the result is you can’t play a game you otherwise just can in Windows. We know it’s their fault.
If you never play any games with anticheat that’s fine, but all it takes is one game, and then later another, and then later another, to make Linux a dealbreaker for many gamers. These are not unpopular games.
It can be the whole difference between someone sticking with Windows but itching to make the switch, and someone actually making the switch.
What good is 90% of games working if you have 3 games that you really want to play that don’t work?
What good are those 3 games you want to play if they don’t work on the OS you want to use?
It’s just a matter of priority, about 8 years ago, I just made the decision to not play a game if it doesn’t work on Linux.
The game doesn’t become inherently less enjoyable just because your system doesn’t meet the requirements to run it.
There is a big problem in having to change your worldview so that no longer being able to enjoy a game you wanted to experience becomes a non-issue.
I 100% get what you are saying. But I’m also 100% fine with voting with my wallet by not supporting game developers that demand kernel-level access to my machine.
Think about the EA stuff. You install one of their games, and now Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner* have kernel-level access to your machine. Why, why the hell is that worth it for just a game?
*I wish I was joking
I used to be huge into Battlefield. Even on Linux, I played the shit out of BF4. But I will never be sad about avoiding kernel level anticheat. I don’t even feel like I’m missing out, quite the opposite really, especially after Saudi Arabia bought out EA. Why would I ever want kernel level anything from them? They’d have to pay me.
I guess that’s all to say that I just don’t play those games, and I’m better off for it. I think we should be educating other gamers on what they’re sacrificing to play these games for little reduction in cheaters (BF6 has them, I’ve seen videos of it). Is it really worth it to have a Saudi rootkit on your computer to play that game? Are they willing to sacrifice their security, privacy, and digital freedoms so they can play a game for a couple of hours a day or week? If so, that’s fine, but games that use kernel level anticheat tend to try to mask the risks of running them, which is fucked.
Those are likely shit games.
The rust entry is kinda wrong. Linux friendly community servers do run they just need more active players to be fun
I think the lack of EAC support is a red flag for some users that there may be more cheaters compared to windows (and more bugs). At least that was my perspective when I was reading the Reddit posts and forum posts at the time.
That’s the thing, though, EAC can run on Linux if the devs allow it. There are games that use EAC that run just fine on Linux.
Had a quick look into this, this is the best related info I could find on the situation with Rust.
As a former RUST addict, I can tell you that Facepunch didn’t really know what they were doing initially with the game on Linux (although they gave an honest try).
Later, they basically said, “Look, we don’t really have the knowledge to support this, so you can ask for a refund if you exclusively bought the game to play on Linux, and if you are using Proton/Wine/etc, you can play on non-EAC community servers” (since official servers use Linux incompatible EAC). They aren’t hostile to the Linux community, but Gary and the team feel like they aren’t up to the task, so they don’t officially support things anymore.
I mean, you get what you pay for with games that have anti cheat software mandatory.
Less cheaters?
I don’t know what you mean.
Linux Mint here. I have had only 1 issue with a game on Linux and honestly, it was an easier fix then getting some games working on Windows which I have experienced plenty of as well. Linux really is just as easy as “Install from Steam, play”.
Drivers are easy now today too, just like Windows. Honestly, if you gamed on Windows, you have all you need to game on Linux.
I’ve found Bazzite and Arch-based distros like SteamOS tend to fare better when it comes to gaming (probably due to their different update model compared to Mint), but if what you’re after is stability and familiarity and don’t play super new games, Mint’s awesome. Glad you’re having fun with it :)
A bit sceptical of this number. Most popular games have some form of anti cheat which the game not run on Linux. Some other games sometimes have weird bugs that do not occur on windows. - source: I am on Linux 😩
This is by amount of games, not by player count. Most games (including non-popular ones) are not live service multiplayer games but small indie titles that do not try to break Linux compatibility on purpose. So yes, 90% sounds plausible.
When you are talking about “popular” games, you mean service games that are often some kind of multiplayer games. Each of them binds a lot of players and is big and popular, indeed. But these are only a few compared to the amount of games that have been released in the past decade. Let alone released games from 2024 that are listed on imdb.com are 1551 Imdb.com
So yes, I can imagine 90% is right since the most games are no service games and do not require some shitty kernel level anti cheat.
For bugs: I have no idea since I only use linux for non-gaming tasks.
Some games with Kernel Level Anticheat do work on Linux, because the KLA doesn’t actually check if it has access. Drag can imagine that the next generation technology of Linux gaming will be add-ons to WINE that lie to KLAs and tell them they have access. Like how yt-dlp lies to youtube and says it’s a browser.
Corporations will claim using these programs violates terms of service and is grounds for a ban. Players will respond to the bans by submitting refund requests for games they got banned from. And if we’re lucky, Valve will respond to the refund requests by demanding corporations support Linux in some form, whether it be removing the KLA or making it work on Linux.
Another possibility is, microsoft drops access to kernel level. This would solve all these problems at once. No more cheats on kernel level, no more anticheat on kernel level are needed.
Unfortunately I think Microsoft will avoid doing so, because it would remove one of the last barriers to switch to linux.
Okay, but how far back does this go? It can’t really be that all games in existence that ran on Windows is being counted. Is it?
The chart is based on ProtonDB, which covers all Steam games.
When you go far enough back less games work on windows then Linux just because you need emulation and compatibility software anyways for both of them.
And they tend to be better support on Linux.
Which is always a fun time.
…Wine Is Not an Emulator
First paragraph indicates that it’s pulling from ProtonDB’s list of games:
However, the most recent stats from ProtonDB (via Boiling Steam) highlight that we are edging towards a magnificent milestone. The latest distilled data shows that almost 90% of Windows games now run on Linux.
You completely glossed over the question he was asking.
90% of Windows games…but, from how far back? Are we talking 1988 with Windows 1.0? Are we talking 1995 onwards with Windows 95? Are we talking modern Windows with Windows 10 onwards? Are we strictly talking Windows 11?
There are a lot of logical jumping off points for where you can start measuring, each with a logical arguement with why you start there, but also with multiple logical arguements for why thats a bad idea.
There’s a missing implied knowledge they forgot to mention: ProtonDB tracks games on Steam. So it’s 90% of windows games available on Steam (without a native Linux build)
Strangely, the search page for ProtonDB shows the ‘proton rating’ for games which have a ‘native but abandoned / broken’ native Linux build, whereas the actual page for the game just shows ‘native’ and I can’t see the button to show the rest of the information. I’m sure it used to be there; they’ve started hiding a lot of stuff in favour of making the ‘steam deck’ results more prominent. But in some cases, ‘proton rating even with a native Linux build’ is quite important.
eg. Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising.
- search page shows ‘gold’
- actual page says ‘native’, but ‘loads of rendering issues, really slow, broken on multi-monitor setup, use proton instead’.
Mark of the Ninja: Remastered:
- search page says ‘platinum’
- actual page says ‘native’, but ‘frequent deadlocking issues makes game unplayable, use proton instead’.
Yeah and it’s also bizarre that these companies released a native version, then… not test it? Why even bother?
