I remember a gamedev complaining about this on Twitter but the outcome he came to was that he hated that Linux users submitted bug reports, stating the OS itself was broken and he refused to help any of them.
Well that’s certainly a way to look at it. I’m sure some of the issues reported were Linux specific, but most were probably applicable to Windows, and Windows users probably just bailed on the game.
“One thing that I think is clear at this point, is that the […] traditional Wine to X11 server is becoming less and less relevant as time goes by, and I don’t think it’s going to be an important consideration in the long term.”
I’m sure it’ll still work for the next 20 years, but RIP DEs and other Unix OSes that don’t move to Wayland by then. Wine was originally made to target X11, so the fact its willing to shift its base ideology so much shows that it’s still a nimble project.
If you’re using a LTS release then you should be aware that many of the programs in the repository will only get bug-fixes and security updates until the next LTS is out. You can get around this by using the Flatpak versions of those programs instead of the distribution’s versions.
If you’re using a LTS release then you should be aware that many of the programs in the repository will only get bug-fixes and security updates until the next LTS is out.
Nonsense. Long-term support (LTS) generally lasts until either a predetermined date or until multiple subsequent releases are out. I don’t know of any that stop when the next LTS release arrives, but if such a distro exists, it is atypical.
I don’t mean that the security updates will stop, I mean that you’ll only get security updates. If you want to get feature-updates between LTS releases you’ll need the Flatpak versions.
Plasma is the only good Linux desktop left. Gnome has shit itself, all the other alternative DEs are too feature-poor, and WM “desktops” are for people who have more time on their hands than common sense. I’m just afraid that just like the past, Plasma will discover new ways to screw itself over and become trash again and have to climb back out of being complete garbage back up to usable again.
Plasma is the best for me also. Ever since GNOME 3 went “convergence,” I’ve been looking for a traditional desktop experience. Xfce, cinnamon, and budgie all have good things going for them. I choose to use KDE because I love the customizability of the desktop and the settings menu is easy to use. The theming is also very nice on KDE.
Default gnome has a great keyboard based workflow or the option for a pointer-device based workflow. It doesn’t copy the outdated windows workflow and actually succeeds in pushing its own ideas.
I’ve had a significantly better experience with EndeavourOS than I ever had with Nobara, or literally any other distro, and the list of them I’ve run through is pretty long. Nobara was good, and I’d be curious to see how its improved, but at this point I’m so happy with Endeavour that I don’t know when I’d ever get around to putting Nobara on bare metal again.
I’ve been working on my CLI skills and knowledge over the past year, and moving to an arch based system was a little confusing for me. Using yay, pacman, and git cloning were a little over my head after being used to apt and flatpak. After the first week, it all started to click, and now I’m fine, and I definitely feel more competent in the terminal, and no longer use any gui front ends for package management.
Mint and Pop had issues, steam would lag like crazy for the first five minutes after launch. Then after updating to the latest version of mint, steam stopped launching period. I’m sure it’s fixed by now, but that’s what drove me to jump ship, and it’s been the snappiest, cleanest experience I’ve had yet. I also love space, and the color purple, so it’s the first distro where I used their native theming and wallpapers, and shit it looks good.
The forum has also been a pleasant experience, the community is very friendly.
I second this, switched back to EndeavourOS after a brief stint with Nobara and I couldn’t be happier. I haven’t really found that solid OS I had been looking for until Endeavour, and I think everyone should give it a shot. They literally lay out everything you need to do after the install to get things up and running with their welcome tool.
You didn’t mention it in your post, did you make sure you set proton to run for non-verified games in steam settings? Also did you try proton experimental and/or Proton-GE?
HUMANKIND seems to be a mixed bag but the others are reported to run well.
I did indeed try Proton. Proton is basically why I even bother to install Steam on Linux these days, but Humankind, a game I very much enjoy, does “almost” run. It’ll go to a black screen, and then it’ll freeze. I’ve tried different combinations of games and settings (incl. Proton settings)and launch settings, but not a lot seem to want to launch or work.
Again, I’ve been a general Linux user for years, and I’ll keep using it, but the dream is to completely ditch Windows. It doesn’t look like we’re quite there yet (to me, at least).
Note that I’m not making this post to hate on Linux or Fedora, even though it may seem a little… ya. I just want to game without booting into Win 11, and it doesn’t let me - yet.
Also, since you’re already on Fedora, you should check out Nobara, which is gaming-optimized Fedora-based distro made by GloriousEggroll, the guy who makes Proton-GE.
How much of that unknown is linux tho? I feel like linux computers are most likely to be unidentifiable (ignore the 5 ppl who use templeOS and freeBSD)
The bump in Unknown is Windows. If I recall correctly, there was a Windows update (in March, I believe) that caused it to stop registering as Windows with the site. A subsequent update fixed the problem. That’s why, if you look at another chart on the site, you’ll see an equivalent increase in Unknown as Windows decreases during that same time period. Then it reverses after the update.
This isn’t the whole reason, and likely only a small fraction of it. There are a whole lot of other OSes that don’t fit into these categories, or that simply refuse (on purpose) to share their OS type. That wouldn’t be Windows.
I edited to include the chart I’m talking about (here). It includes a section for Other as well. I’m not saying it’s the whole picture, but it’s the reason for that bump in Unknown which may be increasing the overall percentage depending on when that data in the OP was pulled.
No Microsoft GamePass. Or none that actually matters, as the only solution is to pay for the higher tier and stream the games - so no game actually runs on the desktop. No, thanks.
Why “no thanks”? I use GamePass with xCloud and it works pretty well on Linux, and it’s a perfectly viable option - unless you’ve got really poor internet, or you’re into competitive FPS games or something that requires ultra-low latency.
NVIDIA support for Linux is far from being on-par with that on Windows, especially the open-source drivers. Is this still true?
Yes. If you’re planning to game on Linux, I’d highly recommend getting an AMD card instead, the AMD open-source drivers are excellent and see frequent improvements - both in terms of features and performance.
Many devices, especially those for gaming, might not have good (or even working) compatibility drivers for Linux. I know my UWQHD monitor works flawlessly on Windows, but requires quite a bit of tinkering on Ubuntu
“Many” -> citation needed. In my experience, depending on the hardware, you may find a better out-of-the-box experience with Linux compared to Windows. For instance, on my ThinkPad Z13, everything worked out-of-the-box on Nobara (Fedora) - including Fn keys, Wi-Fi, accelerated graphics/video drivers… everything. Same with my AMD desktop, didn’t have to install any special drivers or anything. But when I tried to install a fresh copy of Windows on my Z13 (dual-boot), there were almost no drivers - I had to manually install the Wi-Fi drivers first, and then grab the rest of the drivers via Windows Update, which was painful - took like 3 reboots to get everything installed, with long reboot times cause of updates. Painful.
In saying that, I’m surprised that your monitor - of all things - needed tinkering, when they’re usually mostly dumb devices that need no drivers or anything. But then again, it’s Ubuntu so… ¯*(ツ)*/¯. FWIW, I have a fairly recent QHD monitor from AOC and it worked just fine on Nobara, no tinkering required.
The advantages: What else am I not thinking about?
Performance. Thanks to no bloatware like unnecessary background services/Defender/telemetry/Cortana/Bing etc, Linux in general would perform better, at least in theory. YMMV of course, depending on the game/hardware/distro. The good thing is if you use the right distro, or are willing to go the extra mile with tweaking, you can eke out way more performance, such as by using custom gaming-optimised kernels, fstab mount option tweaks and more. Using a gaming-optimised distro means most of these tweaks are built-in, saving you some time.
Arguably, a better gaming-focused experience, when you go for a gaming-focused distro like Nobara, or if you want to go the full mile and make an exclusive gaming box, you could install something like ChimeraOS, which is basically a community Steam OS. Imagine your PC booting straight to Steam, in the fastest possible time, with no distractions like Windows Update, Defender or other nonsense. Basically a console experience, with the power and flexibility of PCs and Linux.
What distro?
Nobara. It’s based on Fedora but optimised for gaming, made by the same guy who makes Proton-GE and Wine-GE (GloriousEggroll), so you know it’s the good stuff. Obviously comes with ProtonGE/Steam/Lutris etc out-of-the-box, custom kernel, patched Discord, codecs, nVidia drivers and more. Definitely give it a go if you’re considering Linux for gaming.
I don’t understand why, but I don’t see your message on the post, only in my notifications. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
Why “no thanks”?
Because I have a powerful enough desktop to run games that I would be streaming then. It takes away some of the rights I have regarding my collection of games and creates a need that I did not have. I also just bought an NVIDIA GPU, I won’t buy a new one to be able to switch to Linux.
“Many” -> citation needed.
On two different computers running Ubuntu, my DELL monitor was not correctly recognized. I had to switch from Wayland to Xorg and define the actual monitor resolution through xrandr - not impossible, just quite annoying. Similarly, my Logitech G403’s buttons to change the sensitivity never have never worked correctly on Ubuntu, and there is no official Logitech software to make them work. Those buttons are just not seen by an Ubuntu computer.
Performance.
That’s one I didn’t think of! Although I don’t think backgrounds services impact that much performance nowadays on a higher end PC, it leaves that much more headroom to be used on the game instead. On the other hand, isn’t performance on a non-native software already impacted negatively? So all in all, which would have the greater impact?
Nobara
Thanks for the recommendation! I know have examples of Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch based distros optimized for gaming. As for which to choose, I will probably get as many answers as persons I ask. And ChimeraOS seems to be a nice project, it just doesn’t fit my needs.
I used Nobara for the past year or so and liked it for the most part but it had too many issues. Most annoying is every update broke my controller it was something to do with their Xbox configs. Then there were a few games that wouldn’t work despite working on my steam deck. Most notably it was uncharted. Finally I’m just done with RH and needed to move away. I switched most of my machines to Debian but the TV gaming rig is on Solus now that they finally updated their image. It boots way faster than nobara and uncharted and controller work flawlessly. So far I’ve been happy with it.
Good to know! Which version of Solus are you using? Although it doesn’t seem to really matter as I don’t think any of them are really dedicated to gaming.
4.4 budgie it was just released. Not a gaming distro but they do have a custom steam runtime app that used to work wonders but I find breaks things more than helps now that proton is a thing. So make sure to turn that off if you go that route. I like it for the TV PC as I don’t want to do as little maintenance on I as possible. Just launch steam or some light web browsing but i didn’t want to go the steam os route.
For your screen, try a live ISO of another distro that’s not based on Debian. I struggled for years with my 1440p monitor on Wayland when plugged in to my laptop. Turns out, there’s something wrong with the way Debian’s kernel decodes my monitor’s EDID. On Fedora, it worked out of the box.
About Nobara, I’m not sure it’s better than vanilla Fedora for a beginner. Sure, there are a lot of nice things baked in and rpmfusion enabled by default, but the dual system update thing is… not great. I’m still running my gaming rig on Nobara tho. YMMV.
About nVidia and their drivers… yeah, they suck. And they will continue to suck for the foreseeable future. That’s why I built my system around an AMD GPU from the start. People like to complain about Wayland and that it’s not ready for prime time and that Wayland sucks. Well, nVidia drivers are to blame. I’ve been running Wayland almost exclusively for the past 4 years on Intel iGPUs and AMD GPUs, it’s always been nice and reliable.
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