I’m on Linux full time for programming and gaming. I play battle.net games (WoW, hearthstone, overwatch, HoTS, WoW classic), League of Legends, and a lot of steam games. I have virtually no issues. I have a ryzen 5900x and a RTX 3080.
The key to Linux gaming (outside of steam) is Lutris. You just search the game you want to install, and it installs all the dependencies needed automatically and you can launch the game from one place. They even have a simple 1 click button for adding steam games too if you want a single launcher for every game you have (this is what I do).
The only issues I really have are with EAC, like DKO didn’t work for a bit after it came out (but does now), and Valorant/Fortnite don’t work (they can easily enable Linux EAC but choose not to). I happen to not play these games so it’s a non-issue for me, but worth mentioning.
League of Legends is also worth mentioning as having more issues than the rest. Usually I can run the game for months or even a year+ with no issues, but earlier this year the game was virtually unplayable on Linux for about 6 days due to a bug Riot Games added. This bug also effected Windows users, but to a much less extent. They would get disconnected once every couple games, while Linux users would get disconnected once every couple minutes. The League of Linux community is amazing though, and people were troubleshooting it constantly and making it more and more playable (getting to Windows parity on the bug), until Riot Games fixed it on their end.
I even helped my brother swap from Windows to Linux recently. He isn’t super into Linux or anything, but he was having consistent issues on Windows with his monitor turning off in games, specifically League. We tried reinstalling drivers, watching temps, reinstalling League (since it didn’t happen in other games), and uninstalling certain apps that can add overlays (though they were disabled). Some of these issues seemed to fix it until it returned usually hours or days later. Eventually we gave Linux a try and the issue is entirely gone. It’s likely that resetting windows would work too, but he dual boots and it’s easier to not have to reinstall everything.
For me this even smells like “kernel module that has to be loaded”. I highly doubt this is even worth trying. There are already only a few Linux gamers. How many of them will switch distribution just for a game?
<span style="color:#323232;">Release notes
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The Wine development release 9.10 is now available.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">What's new in this release:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bundled vkd3d upgraded to version 1.12.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">DPI Awareness support improvements.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">C++ RTTI support on ARM platforms.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">More obsolete features removed in WineD3D.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Various bug fixes.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">The source is available at https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/9.x/wine-9.10.tar.xz
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Binary packages for various distributions will be available from https://www.winehq.org/download
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS for the complete list.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Bugs fixed in 9.10 (total 18):
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#23434 Race management software hangs & jumps up to 100% processor load
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#34708 Silent Hill 4: The Room crashes after first videoscene when trying to go to the door.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#45493 SRPG Studio games need proper DISPATCH_PROPERTYPUTREF implementation
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#46039 Paint.NET 4.1 (.NET 4.7 app) installer tries to run MS .NET Framework 4.7 installer (Wine-Mono only advertises as .NET 4.5)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#46787 Notepad++ rather slow (GetLocaleInfoEx)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#50196 can not copy words between wine apps and ubuntu apps
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#50789 Multiple .NET applications crash with unimplemented 'System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.get_Owner' using Wine-Mono (Affinity Photo 1.9.1, Pivot Animator 4.2)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#52691 FL Studio 20.9.1 Freezes on start-up
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#54992 EA app launcher does not render correctly
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56548 reMarkable crashes on start
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56582 vb3 combobox regression: single click scrolls twice
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56602 DualShock 4 controller behaves incorrectly on Darwin with hidraw enabled
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56666 BExAnalyzer from SAP 7.30 does not work correctly
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56674 Multiple games fail to launch (Far Cry 3, Horizon Zero Dawn CE, Metro Exodus)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56718 Compilation fails on Ubuntu 20.04 with bison 3.5.1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56724 New chromium versions don't start under wine anymore
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56730 Access violation in riched20.dll when running EditPad
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#56736 App packager from Windows SDK (MakeAppx.exe) 'pack' command crashes on unimplemented function ntdll.dll.RtlLookupElementGenericTableAvl
</span>
Kernel anticheat is just like gaming piracy, where developers are constantly fighting ghosts rather than tackling the social issues that encourage the behaviours they want to avoid.
there are no social issues you can ever fix to be found here. give a 11 year old an auto-win button for counter strike that he can press whenever he loses a single round and feels his pride hurt - he’ll press it.
i think that anti cheats display a disrespect to the customer, because in an ideal world he should then run two computers instead of one. one for online banking, the other one for every company’s favorite rootkit with questionable maintenance.
the only way out, in my view, is going to server side ai cheat detection.
But my point is: What makes that player want to push the “auto win” button? There are lots of games with cheating, but also many more that dont suffer nearly as much from cheating, if at all.
Competitive games, especially ones that lean towards eSports and “real prizes” are going to have some incentive to cheat, but even in this genre there’s games known for cheats and others that have better reputations. The question is what game design decisions can improve the urge of players to seek cheats in the first place.
Even tho I don’t own a Steamdeck seeing all games I want running on it is what got me to give Linux a serious go.
I’m now considering grabbing one of the older LCD models 2nd hand since I’m away from my PC a lot more lately. Last portable gaming device I owned was a PSP!
I can say that I was a little dubious about how much I’d use it. I also left portable gaming many years ago. I now have a nice, beefy desktop with a nice 240Hz monitor with good sRGB coverage, and I have a Steam Controller. Why would I want something smaller and weaker?
While it’s still obviously weaker from a hardware standpoint, it’s nevertheless very capable, and the fact that I don’t have to abscond to my computer just to play games and can instead play them on the couch or in bed, the fact that I can put the Deck into sleep mode at a moment’s notice, the fact that I can take it on a plane or to another city and still play things from my library, the fact that it’s a regular computer underneath and can do anything a Linux-based computer can do—these are all aspects that made me glad I bought it.
I sometimes get buyers remorse, even if just from spending a lot of money on something I really wanted, but I haven’t once experienced that with the Deck.
the fact that I can put the Deck into sleep mode at a moment’s notice, the fact that I can take it on a plane or to another city and still play things from my library
This is the largest thing for me. It’s insanely convenient just like the switch when taking the train or the bus, except that I have a full library of my Steam games and it runs way better.
I don't have any use for a handheld but I use Linux on the desktop for a few years now, since I did not want to switch from W7 to W10 or god forbid W11 (especially after dabbling with the W10 upgrade nuked itself along with my C: partition and all its data). If you don't play competitive multiplayer stuff and have a half decent technical understanding of things under Windows then it's a fairly easy switch. Not saying there are no caveats or bumps but those also exist with Windows, to a point where it became a bigger hassle for me than Linux.
The nice thing about the Deck for me is that I barely even have to look up things on ProtonDB anymore because most things just run out of the box or with little tweaking, and already have the Deck playable image on the Steam store page. It also kinda pushed the OS past OSX now and the handheld formfactor makes it a bit unique to the point where developers just get interested in it. And if they support the Deck, they'll basically also support my desktop by proxy. Win win.
my last hand held gaming device is a Gameboy… After that PC only not even console. But with the steamdeck having my PC gaming experience in my backback would be a great intresting.
That makes sense. I’ve done both team green and red on linux now, Ubuntu and PopOS. My personal thoughts:
NVidia for compute, hands down, it wins. Any AI or compute, you can’t compare. But the drivers are worse and a pain to install, and conflicting versions left and right and it’s just hell. PopOS saved me by having all of that set up for me.
AMD GPU drivers are still not great if you’re running a non “official” distro, but I eventually got it to work. AMD definitely feels more “stable” over NVidia. Way less fiddling with Steam and games too, most seem to “just work” compared to fiddling with env variables with NVidia.
Pros and cons. Personally, I’m leaning Team Red right now. They’re really bringing it. I don’t see any reason to spend more on an nvidia card unless you are doing massive compute loads.
I have an nvidia GPU and tried popOS and Nobara and I cannot get games to run at all. Keeps crashing or going to a black screen and the game never actually launches. Definitely going to be going team red next round to get off windows finally
I did and same with nobara, tried twice with pop and once with nobara and gave up a few weeks ago. Couldnt get platinum protondb games to run at all or would run at like 14fps on a 3080
Really? I’m having a very dissimilar experience, and am also on Manjaro. Drivers were a peach to install and I get at least as good as performance on windows…to the extent that the dual boot has (over the years) become just a single boot. I’m even running a valve index on it - Alyx runs smooth. Built in 2019.
TBH I’m surprised at a lot of these threads about Nvidia as it’s just been a few times that the drivers didn’t work out on an update and I had a black screen. But I’ve had almost as many breaking issues from non Nvidia related stuff in its lifetime.
What’s your build like? I have an i5 6600k and a GTX 1660. I have two displays one connected to the 1660 and the other to the iGPU, so I might have been accidentally using the latter. Wayland seems to not work even on my other PC with a single GPU (3060 ti) tho.
Honestly, it’s possible that I just don’t notice low framerate as I’m a product of the Atari/NES gen of console gamers; my standards may be co-opted. I’m just reporting that my experience has been positive. Fair to say though that Wayland is still hit and miss, and still is. I general avoid it and stick to x while using steam, and tinker around with it when X’s idiosyncracies bother me enough. Nvidia in general just hasn’t picked my berries like it seems to have for others. Certainly not enough to ever make me retreat to a windows install 😁
They have a few distros hardcoded in their amdgpu install script. I had to go add pop into a line with debian|ubuntu|pop like that so it wouldn’t kick me out of the script.
I had the nvidia flavor of pop first, and had to purge everything nvidia. Afterwards all I can say is that I got a black screen of doom after purging them. All that repaired it was installing amdgpu… so… idk. Halfway to just reinstalling it after that ordeal, I’m pretty sure X is confused upside down and sideways
Desktop linux has become great since I first tried installing it in 2002. I remember being in my barracks and I had to switch back to windows because I had no way to get the modem drivers I needed.
As amazing as the linux desktop experience has become, windows has really done this to itself. The windows experience 10 years ago was ‘fine’. Like it wasn’t amazing, it could be improved upon, but it did what it needed to do without bothering the user much.
Windows the OS has lost the thread completely. Its a travesty. I no longer recommend for non-power users to build their own PC (I’ve helped several family members who were going down the “I want a powerful computer, should I buy a mac?” direction and would steer them to build-a-pc+windows) strictly because Windows has become something entirely different than an operating system. Unfortunately, no Linux desktop experience is quite to the point where I could recommend it and not-expect to get a constant barrage of calls from a family member when they need to install a basic piece of software or their blue tooth headphones wont connect. Because of what Windows has decided to become, after decades of being anti-mac because of their ‘ecosystem’/ anti-collaborative approach, I’ve turned a corner and now recommend Macs for non-power users, but linux for every one else.
This increase in popularity has the potential to create a sea-change in that regard, especially if we can get people to support (financially) the teams that are putting these distros together. I really need a linux distro to recommend that won’t get me calls where I have to hop in and figure out why an nvidia driver that was working suddenly stopped working, what the hell is blueman doing, issues with audio drivers, issues with software compatibility.
Like I cant reasonably put my MIL on a linux laptop that I put together for her and expect her to have a good experience. So she gets a mac. But my nieces and nephews? No they are starting linux from day 0.
Cus I don’t want to get woken up at 6 AM to do tech support. I’m just not going to put Linux in front of someone who can’t do their own trouble shooting.
You can, no complaints from me, but I’m not going to do that.
I have, actually. I’ve converted both my elderly parents and aunt and uncle, over a decade ago, to Linux. They were first running Xubuntu, and now they’ve been running Zorin for the past couple of years. Both of them use an pure-Intel PC/laptops (no nVidia, no proprietary drivers) and they have zero issues. All they need is a browser for Facebook/email/etc, some light document editing, and the occasional prints/scans.
Linux works 100% perfectly for their needs, since all they’re doing is basic computing tasks. In fact the whole reason why I switched them over in the first place back then was because I got tired of doing tech support every time their Windows crapped out.
Yes. I even bought a generation previous in bluetooth hoping it would be issue free for my work machine I have to use windows on. I regularly have to turn it off and turn it back on completely. i also get random extreme video lag sometimes when bluetooth connects.
While I get the „windows bad“ point, linux works for your mother in law a lot better than for you because point and click has always worked well for linux from the reports I read. Please do not steer the tech illiterate to apple. It is dumbed down exactly to attract these figures. If you install a stable distro and dont go with need newest everything that linux elitists spew around, you‘re golden. System76 and Tuxedo Computers are the way to go as far as I can see atm. They even have their consumer ready builds of linux.
I’ve had two System76’s. Neither was a fricitonless experience. Its MUCH better than it used to be. But its not frictionless. I
If you arent committed to doing your own tech support, and lots of it, don’t expect things to go smoothly. They are way better than boutique linux distros, but by no means are they perfect.
We shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking something is some way when it isn’t, just because we wish it was. The Linux desktop experience is 100x smoother than it was 25 years ago. The Linux desktop experience this year is 10x better than it was 10 years ago. But its still not quite there yet. Its not frictionless. It doesn’t ‘just work’, when people need to use software like MS office or teams. If I put someone on Linux who isn’t committed to the work it takes to run Linux (and it takes work; its easier than ever, but it takes work), I’ve just created an ‘anti-linux’ user; some one who will never be convinced to convert because they had a negative experience. One bad experience is all it takes to turn someone off for life. If my goal is to convert as many people as possible to Linux, I’m better off stratifying the users into those I can convert now, and those I may have to wait another 2-5 years for Linux to ‘get there’ in terms of a frictionless experience.
I think desktop linux will get there, but its important to be realistic about where its at.
You will never get a frictionless FOSS experience. Not today, not in 100 years.
For one simple reason:
It’s not human for something to be frictionless. The reason we are used to „frictionless“ is because us using this software makes them money. Its the crazy perfectionism some of us experience when overly stressed. Its unachievable.
I use apple products and it is everything but frictionless. My sonos app is a buggy mess, the linux version works without fail. It looks worse but it functions 10 times better.
Frictionless is marketing speech, an image we reiterate to ourselves because we were manipulated into believing it. Showing you ads for new apps while you drive is another example why apple is making everything as smooth as they can. 30% of every sale goes to apple, for absolutely nothing. For the service that apt and flatpak provide and which snap tries badly to recreate.
Apple is a kiosk system, you can only change very few things. Replicating that in gnome for example isnt very hard once it is set up. Put debian stable under it and an amd gpu and your MIL has a machine that works pretty much forever.
But yes, linux is definitely not „frictionless“ and you absolutely need to throw away the tinker mindset when designing a consumer ready device. Partly because they have been shown how great autocracy works.
I mean, I would argue that today that some Linux experiences are smoother out of the box experience than windows. I did a highend gaming rig with windows set up for a neighbor who wanted to be able to do a racing sims (chair, wheel, pedals, the whole shebang). I couldn’t believe how difficult it all ended up being. All on the part of windows and what it has become as an OS. Like jaw dropping difficult.
Windows is actively adding friction to their experience, so Linux just needs to do better than that. And the friction points with Linux remaining are frankly, minor and solvable. The issues for me always seem to be WiFi/ Bluetooth/ and audio drivers. The second big friction point is software instillation. I don’t want to jump in on the flatpack drama, but being able to install software and have it ‘just work’ is the other issue with Linux. Oldschool windows got this completely right. You download an exe, double click, press yes a bunch of times, and now you have software that works.
Those two pain points, which I think will be solved in 2-5 years in some version of desktop Linux (and even more likely to be solved with increased adoption), and Linux could easily replace windows as the dominant desktop operating system. Great progress in all of this has been made. We’re very close.
So I’ll swap out ‘frictionless’ for ‘less friction than the competitive equivalent’. It just needs to be a bit better. We’re very close. A couple more years, a bit more adoption, and it wont even be a question. In some cases, the Linux experience is less friction than windows. In a few years, I hope that most Linux experiences will be less friction than windows. Once that’s the case, the whole paradigm shifts.
Okay, that I can agree with. Thanks for elaborating. Quick follow up question: what flatpak drama? I know of snap and their proprietary bs and recent scamware issues but besides the fact that flatpak can push proprietary software from a vendor I dont know of any issues.
If I want a naive user to be able to have software ‘just work’, this has to be resolved. Its just too frustrating for any one not fully committed to slog through.
Okayyyy, got it. So the standard argument against progression. Make the system work better for consumers but dont put stuff in that actually does that. Like we use this in german „wash me but dont make me wet“. Flatpak especially works well now. The fact that you cant actually break dependencies (no idea if that has been the case) now is also very cool. Its also much easier for the dev to make the app and package it once instead for each distro - you guessed it - to make it more consumer friendly.
The flatpak hate especially feels like thinly veiled elitism. I get that it should not be proprietary so fuck snap but flatpak is okay in my book. :)
The flatpak hate especially feels like thinly veiled elitism. I get that it should not be proprietary so fuck snap but flatpak is okay in my book. :)
I agree, and for me its irrelevant because I will figure out how to make any software I need to use work. Flatpak, snap, aptget, straight from github, whatever, I don’t mind. I’ll figure it out.
But for some one who has very little patience for figuring it out, I really need a solution that for them ‘just works’.
That pretty much is flatpak (snap too but proprietary sets bad precedent). Install it, have shop, click install, it works. Used to be more of a hassle from what I hear but its easy now.
The issue for example with ubuntu is that they push snap so hard that flatpak integration seems kinda broken. If you use discover on kde/debian its like flatpak is just part of the ui. I‘m gonna make a video in a couple of days just to show how easy it is. Updates too.
The issue for example with ubuntu is that they push snap so hard that flatpak integration seems kinda broken. If you use discover on kde/debian its like flatpak is just part of the ui. I‘m gonna make a video in a couple of days just to show how easy it is. Updates too.
Will try to remember. You can follow me on peertube (from mastodon, no idea if lemmy works yet) if you dont want to miss it. peertube.giftedmc.com
Edit: I checked. You can actually follow a peertube account from lemmy. Should work if you put peertube.giftedmc.com/c/haui777 in your searchbar. Takes a bit until it federates though.
I’ve had my computer-illiterate boomer parents buy Macs for over two decades now because I wanted to keep tech support to a minimum (and because I saw the writing on the wall for Microsoft’s abusiveness even back then). However, at this point their next computer is going to be running Linux because I genuinely expect it to be no more trouble than Mac OS.
(In fact, their “next computer” is really just likely to be their current Mac but with Linux installed on it, because it’s so old that the latest version of OS X it can run is EOL’d. To be clear, that is Apple deliberately making tech support trouble for me, in a way Linux never would.)
I have several idiot family members running linux.
Its been zero problems. Of course they are not power users, everything they do is pretty much via a browser. Though one does have a scanner/printer set up (that runs with no issue)
only tech support I’ve ever done is get the question once a year asking “ubuntu says I should upgrade to this new version, should I?” and I say yeup.
My non-tech literate aunt has been running her Ebay business from a laptop running Fedora with unattended upgrades for 3 years now. She manages her expenses in Libreoffice calc and accesses everything else through Chrome and prints labels on an old USB HP printer. I don’t think she’s even noticed I switched her over from Windows 10 when her machine was getting slow.
My Dad’s laptop is also on Fedora (though he mainly just uses an Android tablet these days) and I intend to install it on my Grandma’s PC when Windows 10 stops being supported. So for the people who’d be happy with something like a Chromebook, which is a good chunk of older folks, it’s perfect and I can easily provide support.
That being said if I had to deal with helping kids who wanted to game and use Bluetooth bits and pieces surrounded by RGB crap then yea outside of a few well supported options it could be a nightmare depending on what they’ve got.
One could think they forgot about a product page and needed someone to quickly cobble together something. The truly funny thing is that they include fonts and a heavy css framework for three images that don’t use any of that.
Yeah you’re right. I didn’t care that much since i was ready to be surprised as it seemed way simpler than the other options to install. You don’t even need a GUI Application, since the daemon also starts a webserver on localhost:11987 which looks like this: https://feddit.de/pictrs/image/60856ce1-183b-4d16-9e49-d912cb219722.png
Some players provided feedback indicating the continued preference for a Windows operating system.
Interesting that it wasn’t something like an “overwhelmingly majority” of player feedback calling for Windows that prompted the change, just some… At least they will continue to provide HoloISO from their website and officially support it.
Some players could mean the large majority. Without any quantification a meaningless metric.
Plus it makes sense. The type of person who wants Linux on something like this is probably more than happy to install linux on it. Vs the average Joe who doesn’t want to futs with the quirks of running games through proton/is just used to windows probably doesn’t want to or doesn’t even know how to.
This GE guy is doing some seriously good stuff for the Linux community! Gonna leave his pateron below incase people want to donate to to his Glorious Work!
Dude is making fucking $1,080/month off a free software project. I hope he’s satisified with the work he is doing for everyone in the community. Cheers for even better days to come!
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