Right‽ The brand new Steam Deck Killer! Better in every way, except it costs 3x as much and weighs more because it's got a giant battery (or conversely the battery life sucks).
Like, no shit you can make something more powerful, finding the happy medium of performance to battery life and then making it cost effective AND actually portable are the most difficult parts of what Steam did and those are the things the competitors just seem to completely ignore.
And for how expensive portable consoles can be, I’m not calling anything a “steam deck killer” until I’m also confident it can be repaired and upgraded for years after I buy it.
What cope. I still run into countless compatibility issues which bars Linux from daily use for me. Stop trying to downplay proton compatibility, it just makes your arguments appear disingenuous.
I would fully switch over to Linux in a heartbeat if there was no compatibility problems.
first, file a report. so devs are aware of your problem.
second, i feel you. i’m in the same situation. if i switch to linux right now, my stream deck will lose features and i probably on’t be able to use my steering wheel anymore. plus i really struggled to install fusion360.
There are still a lot of proton games where I encounter the weirdest bugs and when I report those the game devs don’t do anything about it and say it’s a proton/linux issue what they don’t support. For some games, especially VR, windows is mandatory.
I have a WMR headset, am still on a dual-boot of Pop!_OS and Windows 10 with my gaming pc. I have an Nvidia RTX 3080 and don’t want to worry about compatibility with kernel so Pop!_OS fixes that for me. I also love window tiling, which it does pretty well (not as good as Sway and Hyprland but close enough).
At this point, I can do everything on Linux except for 1 thing: Use my HP Reverb VR headset. It’s a Windows (WMR) headset and doesn’t work on Linux. But it is essential for my gaming, as about 80% of my gaming time is spent flying aircraft and helicopters in DCS: World in VR. I got a whole simpit setup with crazy good stick, pedals and throttle and everything.
I am really hoping to switch the headset out for a SteamVR-native headset and ditch Windows before Windows 10 support ends in 2025. First step is to install DCS on Linux and start flying it outside VR to help find bugs and assess when it is good enough to switch VR headsets.
And yes, I did consider upgrading to an AMD card for the improved Linux performance but the RX 7900 XT didn’t do DCS in VR (on Windows) well, even after the big driver update this Summer that was supposed to fix the stutters.
More like, “doesn’t matter – not being tracked > all.” :^)
Even so, Linux is easier to use than Windows (yes, I went there.) because of a single and only fact:
Configuration files.
Does the average Windows user can configure EVERYTHING through a SINGLE configuration/text file, that explicitly says “what does what”? Video, sound, window size, hotkeys…?
Linux is easier if you’re already comfortable with a computer. A lot of users wouldn’t understand how to edit a config file / would be uncomfortable doing so, especially those who grew up with modern phones and apps. Even if a 30 second edit took 30 minutes in a GUI, lots of people will prefer the GUI.
Unfortunately most people find Windows / MacOS “just works”. If Linux was that easy, adoption would be higher. I love my Arch setup but the average user would probably find it unusable LOL
No it’s not. That’s a flat out typical year of the Linux desktop mentality.
I have commits to TF and cncf. I ran lfs like 6 years ago. I use Windows DE because it’s a far better experience now that WSL does 99% of what I need. Not because I’m uncomfortable in Linux.
People use what comes on the computer. OS usage on the Steam Deck is overwhelmingly Linux because that’s what comes on it. This indicates that Linux is perfectly fine for the average person, it just needs to come pre-installed. Very few people install their own OS either way, Linux or Windows.
100% - I was thinking more about adoption for gaming in relation to the article (which I should have been clearer about), but pre-installation is the #1 reason for the lack of general adoption. But I think if the perception of Linux was a little less intimidating, and some aspects were easier (NVIDIA drivers, I’m looking at you LOL), I think people putting together a new PC would have a much more difficult choice to make when flashing the pen drive :P
That’s an incredibly wrong assessment. People don’t use Linux because it’s not pushed like drugs by hardware manufacturers. It’s that simple. Linux is at a point where it’s actually way easier to install, use and maintain than the 2 other major players out there. Add to this the diversity of DEs, ways to make things work, customization, etc.
I think 5 or 6 years ago, I would agree with this. But I’m not talking about being comfortable with Windows, I’m talking about computers as a whole - a lot of younger people have grown up on app-based devices like iPads, deeply entrenched in “ecosystems”. I’ve found myself in situations where when working with people younger than myself, I regularly find myself having to explain things as mundane as how files work since they’re used to things like Google Drive. Sure, if you took someone with no computer experience and put a Linux and a Windows machine in front of them? I’m sure both have a similar learning curve, and maybe an arguably easier one for Linux. But realistically, when growing up surrounded by devices is now the norm, we can’t really ignore the prior experience.
This is true, and frankly a huge issue. It’s ironic that right now “older generations” (like myself) know more about computers than younger ones. When I was growing up the widely accepted concept was that the younger generation was always going to do circles around the older ones when it comes to technical and computer concepts. You have no idea how many younger ones know nothing about computing. Like asking if a laptop with “8GB of memory is enough to store all their music”. It’s kind of alarming.
I agree to an extent, but most games just work in Linux with no slowdowns or glitches. And I’ve had to mess with many games in Windows over the years to get them to run.
I don’t agree whole heartedly, but I understand where you are coming from.
I recently installed Win11 for work related reasons. Not entirely happy with that, but keep learning or die. If I’m gonna have to support Win11, I should probably run it for a while, lol.
I will say it was nice to just install steam, vortex, download game and mods, and just play without any further tinkering required.
I’d love to see Linux have that sort of native support, not just from the gaming industry, but the community as well.
I’ve been using arch and manjaro for the past 3 years with awesomewm and gnome (can’t get awesomewm to behave with second monitor while gaming so I switch to gnome when using the second monitor, using laptop) and this has pretty much been my experience. Windows is bloated and it never"just works".
I have to agree. I love Linux but Windows really does just work. Especially when it comes to gaming. I applaud anyone that enjoys Linux gaming but don’t act like it’s anywhere near as simple as on windows.
For me it has been that simple, but to get to that simplicity took a lot of work. I’ve tried Windows 11 and it just sucked for gaming. Stuttered like mad on Cyberpunk and Bluetooth had major latency problems, and neither occurred on Linux.
Yeah. In all the time I’ve been using windows I never had a problem that people constantly report; even BSOD happened quite rarely. I never got my pc to randomly shut down and update either…
Like, I switched to Linux cause i saw it as cool, wanted to try it out and liked how customisable it was and mostly to spite the megacorp
I’m creating my own desktop environment and deal with bugs here and there that I fix on my own since it’s my own product. It’s designed with my needs in mind created by someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time.
There are absolutely awesome products like gnome and kde that just work. You can use them to get a stable environment that are designed to work in multitude of situations for general public. Windows never just works, you just learn to ignore its shortcomings. Like updating in the background even when you need the bandwidth, lack of central update station for your apps, dealing with lengthy custom install processes trying to impose bloatware you didn’t ask for, uninstall processes begging you not to uninstall the sweet sweet spyware.
You just learn not to let these problems bother you. And that’s not anything personal against you, it’s just how a bad product with good marketing works. Linux is objectively better.
You may want a few products that are built for Windows and are not available on Linux and you wouldn’t want to try an alternative that may even work better objectively and that is absolutely your choice and is respectable. You may not want to learn a new environment and stay in your safe zone and that’s respectable. But you can’t use your safe zone to decide what’s better. A free product that provides better hardware support, faster communication bus, easier user experience with much faster bug fix and release cycle, tons and tons of choice is objectively better. You are free not to try it.
Those things aren’t it not working. They’re just things you don’t like. They all work.
The vast majority of users don’t give a shit about manual os updates and just want it done. You can absolutely pause updates. I think by default it gives you two weeks before it starts complaining. So you just need to do your updates manually at a time that suits you.
Winget allows you to install a huge amount of software. It works as your central update location.
You can normally run uninstalls silently.
The default configuration is for an average user. It’s can be customized quite a bit.
I find Linux users complaining about the default configuration funny.
Same can be said about Windows users. The default is what defines the just works statement. The default is shit, you just learn to ignore it or find ways to make a bad product sort of work for you. You need to do basic stuff the hard way and still believe the product is alright. “you can pause updates for two weeks” translates to “the product is designed to assume you own it for up to two weeks”. It’s not a feature mate, it’s not a skill to circumvent it, it’s bending over backwards and paying money to do so.
Nearly always something random breaks for me on windows, and it’s a huge pain to fix it. I hate dealing with windows, Linux is easier, because it isn’t a black box.
My parents can’t use windows but they can use Linux - their windows was covered in “you need to update” and OEM thingies asking them to consider the premium package and shutting down against the user’s will and adverts for onedrive and that ridiculous universal search feature that can find things on Bing but not your My Documents folder and the antivirus showing distressing messages about how your PC is dangerous unless you pay for the deluxe service. Not all of that is “Windows” it’s true but it’s partially Windows fault that uninstalling things is so difficult - some things are on the “add and remove software”, some aren’t. All of that is standard part of the Windows experience on the Windows ecosystem, even if it’s not all intrinsically Windows. So I put Linux on their laptop and GNOME just lets them easily use their browser, email and files without needing to dig through settings to disable tracking, without shutting down against your will, without saying you have to buy new hardware to update versions.
So there are points on both sides but don’t say that Windows is unarguably easier.
Edit: not to mention that using a package manger’s GUI is clearly easier - and easier to do safely - than getting software by surfing the internet for MSIs and EXEs.
Believe it or not, but since I switched fully to linux things have been running a lot more smoothly to me. The biggest issue, if anything, being bad support for the operating system from some applications, but that excuse doesn’t work for windows.
Dunno bro everything works for me on mint. I also have higher frame rates and better stability. Getting Stable Diffusion working on my AMD card is probably the hardest thing i have had to do. Even that is three lines in the terminal now. You may need to dick around with proton settings and read the forums to find what Cyberpunk runs on best if you want to deal with the bug.
I’ve been using it the last couple days on a 7800xt. It works but has been fairly unstable. Hopefully that’s just new hardware driver problems that will get sorted out eventually.
Is it just in Stable Diffusion or in general? I’ve been happy with my 6800xt so far, but it’s always nice to know what’s available. I keep meaning to try it with the Arc A750 I have laying on the shelf, according to some benchmarks I’ve seen it’s better than my card at image generation.
In general, unfortunately. I’ve had a couple instances of my machine hard locking up, game crashes causing the entire desktop session to restart, and have had to try many different kernels.
Hmm, that’s not good. Good to know though. I see it launched 4 months ago, so I hope it’ll get a good bit better! It’s definitely a major downside to having a cutting edge system.
Is there an up do date installation instruction for it that doesn't require some higher degrees in terminal magic? The last time I checked, which wasn't too long ago, I just stopped bothering when reading halfway through.
I’ve been cheating a bit and just using EasyDiffusion. It’s just a shell script that runs and configures everything for you. It’s basically a portable installation that keeps everything in a nice neat folder. I have actually gone through the whole installation process before, and it can definitely be a slog with my limited experience.
I don’t recall getting that warning, but I did need to adjust a few things to get my GPU recognized. I haven’t had a chance to read too much about your message, but with a quick skim over the documentation it appears it just affects startup latency.
Good point. I had a lot of trouble with my Nvidia card before switching to pop os. I ended up switching to AMD anyhow, but the reason I even landed on pop os was this fact.
I have a 2060 super. It has all the performance I currently need. I would like to buy a non nvidia graphics card but I can’t justify buying a new card for that reason alone.
One issue with developing for linux is that userspace isn’t consistent between repos. Steam has solved this by vendoring all of the most commonly used libraries like zlib or whatever.
Assuming the bug is in-game then this information would definitely be useful for developers.
Umm… Zlib is everywhere. It just works. Even without steam. Even 20-years old games can run on moderns distros while using system libraries. Like UT2004 does.
Managed to delete my comment by mistake (sorry for the two notifications)
If a common library like zlib is in a non-standard place or is not symlinked to a standard place then I’ve seen GOG games fail to launch. Steam’s vendoring approach makes supporting a variety of distros much easier.
I’m glad OP’s linux gaming experience is so much better than it is on windows. I don’t say this to cast aspersions but if the results were reliable and repeatable, people like christitus, gardiner and many others would make daily videos on the topic just to get all the views(dollars) it would surely generate. It would cause a seismic shift in the PC gaming space.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but I don’t think OP’s claims are extraordinary. I think he’s only saying “I’ve noticed Linux can outperform Windows on programs that are optimized for Windows. Kinda unexpected, but here are the benchmarks.”
OP is not claiming that this is true in 100% of cases. For example, in this thread he points out that Windows outperformed Linux on Doom.
Honestly I would prefer Linux even if I lost 25% of the performance in games and that’s like the main thing I use a computer for. Windows 10 was such a hassle to set up so it wouldn’t annoy me that I don’t ever want to do it again.
There are like 30 GPO setting needing to be set on a fresh install plus 3th party software to fix issues. I can’t 100% remember what all of it was since I used Windows years ago last but these were some of the issues needing fixing with those:
Setting updates to manual. Once it rebooted to update when I was hosting a server during a lan party, never again.
Disabling driver updates via Windows update. It installed wrong drivers for my sound card so whenever it tried to play a sound I got a BSOD. It also unistalled the correct drivers just to install the wrong ones.
Fixing the start menu search. After Windows 7 that search has been very buggy and it commonly finds a folder or a Web page instead of a locally installed application. In Windows 8 a software named Classic Shell fixed that issue along with making the start menu normal but I can’t remember if I used that in Windows 10 or something else.
Printer compadibility. May be reversed now but one update for Windows 10 broke old printer compadibility intentionally and you needed to add 2 registry settings for my printer to be usable.
One bug windows 10 had that I never did fully solve was my ethernet connection would hang if I tried to transfer a lot of data over local network and the only way to get the connection back was rebooting so the only solution was to limit transfer speed via 3th party software. This issue did not exist in any Linux install or Windows 7 and 8.
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