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Today, I left windows behind for good

I did it. For a few years now I’ve wanted to make the jump but lazyness and a bit of worry that my main game wouldn’t work very well kept me from it.

Then some effing windows update caused ridiculous stuttering on games (or maybe it was a auto-update of some other hidden thing, I couldn’t figure it out) so I decided that if I needed a system wipe, might as well as try gaming on linux.

Honestly? Much easier than I expected. Install Steam, turn two options on and 90% of your library is ready to go. I had to tinker with getting freesync to work (ended up just switching to wayland, which just worked) but other than the plugins I use for my main game requiring a bit of more work, smooth as butter really.

So yeah, if you are a lazy gamer like I am, next time you do a system wipe or get a new computer, try installing linux first. Don’t even bother Dual booting it, if you don’t like it just reinstall (setup your usb drive with ventoy and the images you want to try out.)

oscardejarjayes ,
@oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net avatar

Exciting! Sort of interestingly, I never dual booted or anything, I just jumped straight to Linux.

Honestly, it’s really not that bad. Linux has come a long way since I started out, and while I usually make it harder for myself than it needs to be, I’ve seen young middle schoolers installing and using Linux, I’ve seen retired professional musicians with no technical background install and use Linux. Especially with all these new fancy atomic desktops, like Silverblue, Bazzite, and Kinoite. Admittedly, I have managed to break a Kinoite installation (doing stuff I probably shouldn’t have been doing), but fixing it felt magical. Just roll back to when it wasn’t borked, then update it.

I did a lot of not so nice things to that installation (it was a bit of a test, to see how fragile it was), and it’s still running now!

Diplomjodler3 ,

I always knew there was still good in you.

Baaron87 ,

Nice! I left Windows behind a few months ago as well. Had been dual booting Ubuntu and Windows since Windows 7.

Tried to primarily game on Ubuntu about a decade ago but it just didn’t work out well at the time so I had to keep Windows around. Fast forward to this past year with Windows 10 quickly approaching EoL and (me personally) not being a fan of the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu I started looking at other options.

Ended up learning about Bazzite and haven’t looked back. Was able to play almost my entire game’s library without much effort. I had planned on dual booting two Linux operating systems so I could separate work from play, but decided to stick with one.

s12 ,

Congratulations!

rickdg ,
@rickdg@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve used linux on the side for years. In my experience, people talking about it usually forget to mention issues that might be fatal flaws for someone. Like audio sources not being saved between reboots or monitor resolution seeming a bit off. You have to go in expecting problems and being comfortable with that. If you’re the kind of person that’s going to blame linux when the first thing goes wrong, it will and you’ll want to go back to windows. And then windows will also have problems but more people will be able to help you.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

Some tips for lazy Linux gaming setup:

Install flatpak and flatpak steam

Install the ProtonPlus flatpak if you need custom proton versions for some games, I usually just add the latest proton-ge and don’t have to bother with anything else

Fedora, Arch, EndeavourOS, Nobara and Bazzite are all pretty good bases for a gaming setup. They all have their pain points so I’d boot a couple and see how you like them before making a decision.

inferno69 ,
@inferno69@mastodon.social avatar

@seaQueue @lorty I always have controller problems with flatpak steam. Some games will work with a controller and some won't Even if steam says control is compatible. I have the same problem with Debian and steam too. That's why I always game on arch Linux and Fedora Linux. I have no problem with controller support but those two.

JackbyDev ,

I wouldn’t describe rolling release distros where you need to fix breakages for lazy gamers.

seaQueue ,
@seaQueue@lemmy.world avatar

99% of breakages on a rolling release distro are solved by downgrading the broken package so it’s not much worse than windows. You want to be chasing recent releases of pretty much everything if you want the best performance for gaming. You could run Debian but you’ll be waiting 18mo for any new performance improvements to land.

baggins ,

I do keep a Windows drive just in case, had to use it once for an online exam.

Frozyre ,

I don't think you're lazy if one tiny inconvenience was enough for you to overhaul your system to get a different OS.

You know, I can think of more reasons to jump to a different OS than just a brief bit of stuttering. But you do you.

lorty OP ,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

Maybe I wasn’t clear in the OP but it was not a bit of stuttering: I could go to certain areas in game and get consistent stuttering and frametime problems, which is worse than just lowered but consistent FPS.

lorty OP ,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

Maybe it sounds overdramatic but if the point of a computer is to play games (and I did spend a lot of money for it) and it stutters consistently to the point that the “80” FPS I’m getting looks worse than a consistent 30, then yeah, I’m going to do something about it. And since the simplest way was wiping the system and reinstalling, then going for linux at least at first makes sense.

SteveFromMySpace ,

I’m a pretty tech savvy guy but not a “coder” by any stretch. Pretty comfortable using terminal commands so long as the instructions are clear.

I’m considering building a gaming PC within the next 6 to 12 months, and I pretty much want it to be strictly a Linux machine for gaming. I want my hardware to work out of the box as much as possible and maximum compatibility with my games with minimal tinkering. Again I can handle getting some things to work, installing drivers, tinkering with game settings. But a lot of what has kept me from going whole hog into PC gaming is I am a dad with a full-time job and sometimes I just want to fire up and start playing. Steam deck has been nice but obviously very underpowered compared to a dedicated tower I’d build.

Which Linux OS would folks recommend? OP asking you as well haha.

PoorPocketsMcNewHold ,

You’ll get plenty of answers with different suggestions, so I’ll suggest checking in that community for plenty of previous answers. I would say to stick with “main” known distribution and to ditch specialized ones. linux-myths.pages.dev/Single-Maintainerlinux-myths.pages.dev/Distros

I’m on Nobara but despite the fantastic work of GloriousEggRoll, it did had it’s lot of breakage which made me want to switch to the suggested uBlue Fedora atomic builds, per those criterias.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Thank you! I messed with Mint once and it was easy enough to get up but wifi didn’t work out the box which was irritating. Is that common in your experience?

Full disclosure it was an intel MBpro lol

PoorPocketsMcNewHold ,

Mint is a good choice ! They have a decent help forum where you could ask for such help. Like this one for example. forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=228884Feel free to give more details here too, maybe i, or someone else here could help you with your specific Mac problem.

just_another_person ,

I’ve said this before around here, but y’all REALLY need to stop recommending immutable distros to people who are new and just trying to figure stuff out. It’s confusing as hell for them, and counterproductive overall. Why don’t you just say “Use Fedora” if you have a suggestion.

solarvector ,

It’s always the top 10 once enough people chime in, because any can work and it’s easy enough to install or select what you need on most of them. (I’d probably recommend mint).

But… hardware is probably more important. Cutting edge GPU might not have good drivers yet. AMD is probably going to be much better supported. Networking you’re probably good now, but getting more popular stuff means it’s more likely to already have had the kinks worked through years ago. If you play popular multiplayer shooters with shitass anti cheat malware it probably won’t work.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Luckily MP competitive games aren’t really my thing,n the few MP games I play are generally social/collaborative. Valheim and such.

Thanks!

polarbearulove ,

I made the switch 2-3 months ago, and I went with Kubuntu. It’s absolutely fine, but if I knew then what I know now I’d likely have gone pop or mint, just to not bother with snaps (although they’re pretty easy to get rid of).

As others have said, get Ventoy on a USB stick, use that to have a play with a few live environments and get a feel for what desktop environment you might want to use. KDE and Cinnamon I think are pretty good Desktop Environments if you’re used to Windows, but have some fun with it and also try a few that are very different to windows, you might find yourself liking them (I really like using i3 on my laptop where the screen is fairly low res)

JackbyDev ,

GET AMD INSTEAD OF NVIDIA. While everyone talks about how Nvidia is better than it used to be and stuff, AMD basically has zero problems on Linux.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Yeah I think AMD is the route I want to go for several reasons tbh.

RelativeArea0 , (edited )

As much as I want to agree to this, a part of me screams “STOP FANBOYING CORPORATIONS”

Lemme tell you a short story about bait and switch

We all know that android is a collaboration of companies to have an open handset ecosystem (which is weird, because these are companies driven for profit)

one of these companies is quallcomm, they were so nice that they released an open source “bridge” for devs to thier hardware called codeauroraforums

Thier marketshare grew and the performance of thier hardware were miles ahead the competition

Then it came when these “subpar” and cheaper semicons caught up on thier performance and also…covid happened

it shrank quallcomms earnings, made them to make some “decisions” and one of them is killing codeauroraforums, switched thier “opensource” stuff to codelinaro in which, all of the hardware supported are devkits of thier struggling snapdragon x

In addition to these decisions to increase earnings, they also made a deal with microsoft to make laptop chipsets (just like what apple did. Unfortunately, barebone windows on arm is different from windows on snapdragon unlike apple with thier walled garden wherein they’ve designed thier chips inhouse)

now they’re finger pointing who’ll support that thing, lmao

So…uhm…yea, stop fanboying corporations and thank you for listening to my ted talk

btw AMD is cool with linux…for now

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

I’ve gone through several installs (mint, neon, vanilla, tumbleweed, manjaro). The distro I’ve ended up sticking with has been EndeavourOS.

For three simple reasons:

  • when I want to install something, someone has usually already put in the work and made it easily available on the AUR
  • if something breaks, there is an easy way to recover as long as you set it up in advance (snapshots)
  • bleeding edge, you get updates quickly, latest KDE, latest kernel, latest everything

Basically, the low ease of use of arch is addressed by EndeavourOS, and its “instability” is addressed by timeshift. All you’re left with is how easy it is to get your system to run whatever you might want it to run.

What I did is install EndeavourOS with btrfs, then first thing run sudo yay -S pamac to install a GUI for managing software discovery, installation and updates.

Next, timeshift, timeshift-systemd-timer and timeshift-autosnap. The systemd package enables timeshift to maintain scheduled snapshots, and the autosnap package automatically creates snapshots whenever you install or update something, so you can always go back to right before changing your system.

Run timeshift to set it up, and you’re good to go.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Thank you!

7U5K3N ,

I’m not amd guy… I’ve used Intel and Nvidia for ages and ages… when my last upgrade failed hardware wise… I bought a Intel minipc from Beelink with an Intel ultra 5 125h.

It came with windows 11.

I’m a dad of a 1 yr old. who is playing stardew with his wife right now.

Ive formatted a handful of times to different Linux distros to see which felt better for me on this PC.

Manjaro, kubuntu, Debian, kde neon.

Currently I’m running kde neon. Out of the box it likes to reboot on updates… so I found a non-sudo needed cli command to fix that. (It’s a setting apparently in settings)

Anyway…l say all this to say… the way steam is now… and how graphics cards are… you can pretty well run what you want.

Granted it’s antidotal from me… But as long as you’re not buying the absolute latest stuff from a hardware vendor… You’d be fine.

If I was buying now I’d probably not buy the Intel chips that are having troubles but the gen before that… and probably some 3xxx Nvidia card.

And not hesitate to run any distro I wanted.

Ps I like apt… because that’s what I’m comfy with. So I tend to use distros that use apt. Tho manjaro is nice because of the aur… But they have issues company wise

PerogiBoi ,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve been bouncing around Linux distros since 2007.

I’ve been a big Ubuntu fan but Bazzite has absolutely blown me away, especially for gaming. Everything just works out of the box. No tweaking, no driver installations, no troubleshooting.

My multi monitor display and dock with peripherals (including webcam and wireless headset) just works with a single USB connection on the dock.

Call me a shill for bazzite but if you are just using the pc like a windows user would to play games, you won’t go wrong with it. I could basically say the same for any Ubuntu or Fedora distro but from my experience, those require some tweaking for everything to work nice.

SteveFromMySpace ,

I’ve seen a few bazzite advocates here so it’s definitely top of the list for checking out right now. I’m a big fan of SteamOS and wish I could just install that lol but this seems like a great alternative so far

geeper ,

I was in the same boat a month ago. I decide to get a System76 desktop. While a bit more expensive than building my own, the time and grief saved has been wonderful. They are great machines if you can spend a little more to save headaches.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Ngl these are pretty slick. I think I’d rather try my hand at a build but if it had more disposable income I’d probably go for it.

kusivittula ,

mint. my distrohopping always ends back in mint. heard good stuff about zorin too, i intend to try that next.

lorty OP ,
@lorty@lemmy.ml avatar

Well I had downloaded a few to try out, but the first one I installed (Pop OS) just worked right away so I stuck with it.

Although if you are considering a new PC, do go for an AMD GPU. Will save you a lot of hassle (like it did me).

SteveFromMySpace ,

Bazzite and Pop are top of my list currently

XiozTzu , (edited )

If you value your time and want to save money before you go the hardware route try a cloud gaming platform like Geforce Now. Get the top tier account, you will always have the best graphics, you can run on any of your existing hardware, and you can fire up additional rigs for your children/friends. If the games you like are available, you never have to wait for updates. If you enjoy modding games this is not for you. All that money you were going to throw at the cpu etc can, if you want, be put towards a really nice monitor and controllers both of which typically outlast the cpu anyway.

SteveFromMySpace ,

I have a founder’s account at $5/mo so I have no interest in upgrading lol. As for updates, I remember with BG3 frequently having to wait for updates to go through in the early months specifically on GFN after release while my steam deck could just get right back into it.

I like GFN but some games are unplayable with the latency, despite how impressively low it is. And while the library is pretty decent it’s definitely not comprehensive.

I’ve been juggling steamdeck / GFN / Xbox for years and I’m sort of ready to just go whole hog on a $1500-$2000 tower.

lapo ,

@lorty Did the same (and discovered Ventoy) just recently myself too. So far, on a "secondary PC" but it's going so well that I will probably do it on the primary one as soon as something bad happens to it.

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