I like Linux, so I use Linux. Before Steam came to Linux, I didn’t play many games, and now that they’re heavily investing in Linux, I’m playing a lot more games.
It’s really that simple.
Here’s my story:
Someone gave me an Ubuntu install disk at college, so I dual booted it on my rented computer; Windows died, so I switched to Ubuntu for the rest of the school year
I declared my major as CS, and the lab computers ran Fedora Linux, so I installed it on my new laptop; it worked better than Windows (Vista at the time) for class work, so I kept using it (I needed Windows for a class, so I ran it in a VM)
I switched to using ViM and fell in love with the terminal
I eventually tried Arch and decided Windows really wasn’t for me since I liked the control
Steam started supporting Linux, so I all of a sudden had a bunch more Linux games to choose from (I had mostly been playing Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, and Minecraft, and StarCraft in WINE); this was before Proton, yet it was still a big deal for me
I’m now on openSUSE, but my experience during college showed me that I really want control over my system. Proton is also a thing, so I’ve picked up a ton more games from Steam.
If games stopped working on Linux, I’d just stop playing games. It’s really that simple, I pick the OS first, and games are secondary.
It’s very good - in some cases better than Windows. I have a MSI gaming laptop. The battery lifedin longer on linux compared to Windows.
With custom scripts you can control fan speed. However… I have a intel/nVidia card on KDE with wayland and it is hell. Nothing works as expected, so I can’t tell about gaming in itself.
It probably means that there are fewer useless background processes eating up your battery
If you’re asking about gaming performance on Linux, then the answer is that it depends on the game. Some run better on Linux (Cyberpunk made headlines recently) and some run worse.
Edit: ah, you’re asking any Armory Crate because they have the performance modes. That’s just overclocking. You can do that on Linux, but it won’t be as easy as using Armory Crate.
No, I have also found that my processes run faster on Linux than on Windows. I don’t know what is armoury crate but from the way you’re talking about it it manages CPU modes.
Whatever you do in Windows, you can in Linux (almost). But it is sometimes harder, sometimes simpler.
I'm lucky that I don't need long battery life, I'm always plugged in for gaming, so I have set the Nvidia GPU in Dedicated mode. I suspect not having both (optimus or prime) have eliminated a lot of issues, it works well with Wayland and Plasma and games like BG3 and Guildwars2 under Proton+Xwayland.
Actually it's not too bad on the battery when not gaming, despite always running NVidia.
I like to tinker with it and the lack of restrictions on low level stuff. The ability to completely change anything about he system that is restricted on other platforms. No data is sent from the system unless you actively enable it. Its stable, I have a raspberry pi that can run for months without error whereas windows bluescreened once every 2 weeks with regular usage. Its free.
Steam/Valve investing in Linux has thankfully made non-steam gaming on Linux better than ever! Proton and WINE have made it easy for the average Linux user to set up games from GoG, Humble Bundle, etc. without needing to beg a developer to release a shoddy port.
So, why use Linux and support Steam, or use Linux and use Steam?
Because Steam offers a good service. Almost as good as “hackers”.
The other problem is game developers that want DRM and blablabla.
Anyway honestly you sound a little bit way too pathethic. Maybe one day Steam just get’s out of Linux enviroment and goes with the “Steam OS” and you will lose every game you purchesed, but i doubt it because is a gaming platform, as many platforms as possible as much money comes in.
What is good about the service that is in any way similar to Linux, is my question. The two seem explicitly opposed in my eyes besides that Steam is using and therefore contributing to some Linux related projects.
It seems akin to supporting Microsoft for their implementation of WSL. MS also makes good some good products. They also have contributed. They are still anti-thetical to what I thought most Linux users want out of a company. Steam still seems anti-thetical to what I thought most Linux users wanted out of software.
@XenoStare@ZariZari yes, but some convenience is also good. In this case, being able to play windows games, as most of them are released for that platform, on linux without messing a lot with vanilla wine is a godsend. For now, it's about getting people, game studios, etc, to notice us, even if only through the lense of the steamdeck verified badge. It's only temporary I hope, but even if not, philosophi aside for a moment, it's good that we can have more enjoyment than before.
@XenoStare@ZariZari this doesn't make us evil, nor does it make valve good, they did it because they didn't want to pay for windows licenses for all the steam decks they produce, simple as that, we're collateral benefit. Not using entirely free software isn't evil. Every moment we accuse one another of not being supporting enough, idealistic enough, etc, gives the monopolies an advantage because we're squabeling pointlessly. This is what the pollitical left wing should understand as well.
I believe the platform power profiles are standard nowadays and coded in the bios, so Linux should have access to them just like Windows does. You can use the powerprofilesctl command to list and change power profiles. Gnome also has a Power Mode switcher on the top menu, it’s the same thing.
performance: Power limits to max; Aggressive fan curve with speed limit to max. Generally loud fans. I need this to play demanding games in the summer.
balanced: Power limits to max; Moderate fan curve with a medium limit. Great perf (under sane ambient temp), while not too loud.
power-saver: Lowered power limits; Quiet fans.
Those seem to correlate exactly with the power profiles in Armoury Crate: Turbo, Balanced and Silent respectively. I don’t think there’s any performance being left on the table.
Gaming laptops with AMD CPU + AMD dGPU are a great suit for Linux gaming.
Also, AMD GPUs benefit a lot from undervolting, which is safe to do. It’s free performance. I’ve made a simple systemd service to keep the undervolt always active: https://codeberg.org/jntesteves/amdgpu-tune
Are you really curious or do you just want to hate on steam for paragraphs? Because I love FOSS too but I find your tone and post in general to be annoying and obtuse.
I’m genuinely curious about why someone would use/support Linux and then use/support Steam, and how people manage to conflate the two. I’ve already posted other paragraphs in other places complaining about Steam over the course of years so I’m alr.
Liking FOSS and the ethos behind it doesn’t at all mean you are required to be a zealot who only accepts that. Further, your claim that gaming on Linux without proton is easy is just flat out wrong.
I work in science and at university, I was noticing that increasingly often, the kinds of computational work I was doing worked better on Linux. Often, there’d be software that would ostensibly run in Linux and Windows, but the Windows documentation and community would be pretty sparse.
The more I learned, the clearer it became that switching over properly to Linux was the way to go. It just provides better infrastructure. As an example, an area of science I feel passionately about is FAIR data principles, a list of guidelines on how we can make scientific data more Findable, Accessible, Interactible and Reusable. In practice, for me, this means I’ve gotten very good at using containers, which I found much easier on Linux
A very simple reason, I use Linux because when I use Linux I feel like my computer is mine and mine alone, when I use Windows I feel like I’m leasing my PC from Microsoft and I have no control over the OS. I’d rather own my PC from hardware all the way up to the software.
I use Linux because I got frustrated with Windows and decided that in my opinion, something as fundamental as an operating system should never be closed source.
I don’t mind some software, (e.g., a game store), being closed source.
I support Valve in particular because A) they have the games I want and B) because they’ve done more than any other company to improve the drivers on Linux (which is the operating system I bailed to following my distaste for Windows).
It’s worth noting, I do use Windows to play some games, but I actually use two computers to do it. I use Moonlight and Sunshine. My Linux computer continues to be “my computer” and the Windows machine is effectively a LAN console/gaming computer that I interact with via my computer.
Basically you don’t have to be an absolutionist to support free software … and free software desktops are worth using not just because they’re free, but because they’re genuinely better at getting the job done.
Yeah. Having used Linux for quite some time, I’ve watched it slowly go from being the better option for geeks and nerds to just being the better option.
One of the biggest, most useful Linux tips is:
use supported hardware
Don’t mess around forever trying to fix things that almost work. Get supported hardware instead. It’s worth it, and once it’s supported, usage is generally plug-and play - far more so than in Windows.
That aside, Linux won’t shove crap in your face, sell your data, mine your data, cause major problems for you, force you to do installations when you don’t want to (except Ubuntu’s Snap), nor will it degrade in install quality over one year to the point where you think you need a new computer.
Linux allows you to make a hardware investment, rather than driving you towards cycling out to the newest thing ASAP.
The old ThinkPads I have become media servers or home automation rigs. They sip power and chug along for years.
It started with me being creeped out with all the privacy settings everytime i reinstalled windows 10, wanting my fricking handwriting data and all that, then i saw a LTT video from anthony where he talked about trying linux instead of windows 11, and seeing previous LTT videos about gaming becoming doable on linux. I had tried linux before as a kid on my laptop, ubuntu and linux mint, but i didn’t really get it at the time. I decided to follow anthony’s recommendation and tried pop os. I was impressed with how far linux had come with playing games, but i also didn’t realize how usable linux was in general for a desktop user. I quickly went down the rabbithole after that because i really liked how customizable linux was, so i went to arch linux, i ended becoming a tiling window manager user, making some simple scripts, running windows virtualized with single gpu passthrough, and now i’ve been using void linux for a few months. I’m really happy LTT made those videos cause otherwise i wouldn’t be here now.
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