A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck.
If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming.
I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean that the marketshare will increase more likely than it will decrease.
I'm a huge fan of the work Valve is doing, both in gaming hardware and Linux support, but I'm unconvinced helping game-oriented malware run on Linux is good period, let alone the "greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming".
My brother wanted to play CoD Warzone with me and of course it doesn't work with Proton. After attempting and failing to dual boot into Windows (how hard could it be to create a bootable Windows installation usb key?), yesterday I decided to try vfio. It actually was quite straightforward and way simpler than one would expect from the very intimidating archlinux wiki page. I spent more time getting a nice grub vfio menu entry than actually setting up the VM.
Of course now I expect I'll be eventually banned for running under a VM.
Proton support for anti-cheats can't come soon enough.
Client side anti-cheats are getting disrupted anyway. You can already buy ML and external hardware cheats that are obviously impossible to detect using the same old methods. It can work for games being streamed locally or over the internet, Stadia, game consoles, anything with a screen.
I really hope the work Valve is doing with Proton will help to get Office (no, the browser versions aren't a substitute), Adobe software and Touchdesigner working on Linux. I don't game, and would love to switch to Linux but I need those apps to work on it.
I really wonder how they're gonna do that tho, like implementation wise. I suspect either they are gonna have some sort of deal where VAC can be swapped in, or they're working on some secret sauce kernel module that implements Battleye and EAC.
Interesting question on how to create same level of protection. On Windows I think the general idea for a bypass is find a vulnerable signed driver and exploit that, but Linux doesn't have the same paradigm for kernel modules as the Microsoft-signs-everything approach on Windows.
Please no. Keep all those poorly-written proprietary privacy-invading vulnerability-enabling anti-cheat kernel modules as far away from Linux as possible.
i’ve been using linux as my daily driver for just over a year. steam on linux has been great, and proton (wine) has been indispensable. big title games i’ve played with _no_ issues at all:
* Cyberpunk 2077 (ok that has issues, but it has the same issues for windows users..)
* Dying Light
* Titanfall
* The Division
along with _many_ other indie/small games.
honestly the only thing left is titles that include invasive anti-cheat. when that day comes, i don’t know if most of my friends will have any reason to remain on windows.
and who could blame them? finally, they won’t need to deal with a company that collects data from them without their knowledge, runs ads in their taskbar, demands they have a useless microsoft account, restarts their machine on a whim for updates, etc.
i hate that i’m going to say this out loud, but could 2022 really be the year of linux on the des- why does it feel so wrong to say that? :)
Just to be fair and balanced I'm a hardcore linux user and gamer and I've tried gaming on linux and I've hit many issues. 365 games on steam and while some windows games work I've hit probably just about every possible issue you can hit with other games. Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots.
Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
Linux is surely not up to par with windows, but it is definitely getting better. Not only supporting more games but becoming more accessible.
Linus tech tips did a video recently on installing and gaming on Linux using pop_os which I think is great service for the mainstream user.
So yeah, long way ahead, but we are living the first step, becoming mainstream. If this trend continues, you won't have to be a hardcore Linux Fan to game in Linux.
> I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion
I see your point but consider this: 20 years ago you could make the same argument for all aspects of linux, not just gaming. Why use some hobby level OS for serious work when you have Solaris, HP-UX, AIX?
Today we have a very usable Linux desktop and pretty much total dominance in the server arena, only because people were at one point "delusionally enthusiastic" about making it work.
> Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots.
I have seen similar on Windows. For example when Bioshock Remastered Freezes there is no way to exit it, windows still responds, but there is no way to close the game because everything you open is hidden by it. Also the amount of Graphical glitches I encountered in Skyrim is just hilarious. DotA 2 seems to sometimes glitch out when you hit alt tab while it loads. That is just the games I played the last few weeks, I think there is not a single game that isn't somehow broken on Windows either.
I'm not a hardcore gamer but with some games that work reasonably well on a mid-class PC without an SSD drive I've noticed one thing in comparison. Windows keeps doing things that are hard to trace down while Linux (Mint in my gaming case) keeps its feet still. That is an important issue for me because some random System process may freeze up my games randomly. Not nice...
Overall I get a better performance on Linux at the cost of some graphics performance, which is a good deal for me. I'm really not playing the most current games to be fair. And I'm running on a 5400rpm HDD
I think at this point most of the issues (not all) that the average gamer experiences are caused by incompatible libraries and the like, it will be interesting to see how good linux gaming gets when the Steam Deck/SteamOS 3 release on which Valve will have better control on what users run.
I don't understand why people insist on this shoehorning either.
It's like some obscene tribal topos that refuses to die.
KDE 1.0 came out in 1998 - 23 years ago (O god I'm old).
The discussion of "Linux to replace windows desktop" is over two decades old.
In computer age this is something geological. It's like... well, Macintosh came out in 1984. Xerox Alto came 1973. If we go back 5 years we reach Englebart's Mother of All Demos in 1968 which I think can be considered the intellectual precursor of those.
So there is 5 years from a tech demo on high-end research platform to a (more or less) commoditized consumer offering - even though Xerox had no idea what to do with it. Steve Jobs visits Xerox 1979 and five years later they deliver Macintosh.
So, with engineering talent PLUS business drive they copy the idea, implement their own hardware and software stack and are instant hit (well, let's say for the sake of this discussion they are a hit).
In FIVE years.
Linux is trying to copy the software stack, of an existing platform, and has been "attempting" this for two decades.
This is not an engineering problem. This is not a community problem. It's a "lack of business interest problem".
Honestly, the Linux desktop is quite usable. I'm quite sure two decades are enough for the open source software stack to find some local optimum for the desktop offering.
But really, copying and supporting a continuously moving target needs real capital and real business drive to sustain the boring, mind numbing support work that is needed to actually sustain an industrial quality platform.
Linux is fantastic in lots of things.
I'm not sure reverse engineering Windows stack on Linux is very effective way of spending our civilizations engineering resources.
I appreciate masochistic Rude Goldbergish feats of engineering as much as the next geek, but I just don't see the value of individuals detached from the corporations that are implementing the master stack trying to reverse engineer everything on top of a third party platform.
Native Linux support? That would be nice. Native drivers and all? That would be nice.
If it works for someone that's very cool and satisfying - but I still think reverse engineering based gaming stacks for modern platforms that are alive and well are not perhaps the best way to spend engineering effort.
To add a datapoint, the bioshock games would crash while loading/saving on win 10, which seems to be a common issue. None of the suggested adjustments worked for me. Very little problems running on Ubuntu, there might've been graphical glitches but at least the games were playable.
I've had a similar experience. I would love to stop using Windows but I have found that ProtonDB wildly exagerrates the compatibility of games. I had game breaking issues with 50% or more of "gold" rated titles and even some with a "platinum" rating.
Windows and Mac are not great for productivity and not easily customisable so if I want to be productive I need to work from a Linux environment and a Linux UI.
I don't game that much and rebooting / having another dedicated machine is a PITA.
I honestly don't remember experiencing that many issues with proton or wine for that matter. Maybe having to follow a wiki or installing something and a few minor issues. Proton automated most of that.
Sure, it's not perfect but for an occasional gamer like me it's less than the hassle of rebooting.
After the hype related to the Steam Deck I decided to give Pop_OS with a GPU passthrough setup another chance. I got a single card setup functional but could barely get a dual-card setup working. Problems included:
* Needed a USB input switcher and two video outputs to use it correctly. I tried Looking Glass but it doesn't work well with NVIDIA cards unless you have one of those $15 HDMI dummy plugs which are all made by sketchy Chinese vendors...
* Because I only have one USB controller, all USB 3 ports got stolen by the VM, leaving only USB 2 for Linux.
* Weird audio pops that I thought I fixed but would come back on reboot.
* Difficult to monitor certain temps.
* Random crashes during long sessions, even on low graphics settings. Hard to debug - you have to pick through both Windows and Linux logs.
* Random FPS drops, especially in LoL.
* Lived in fear of getting banned from some games (Also LoL)
* NVIDIA drivers would sometimes crash trying to rebind the cards when I closed the VM, so I had to reboot the computer anyways, might as well have dual-booted.
* Setting up OBS takes extra work.
Gaming in Linux natively was, for all intents and purposes, the same. The games I play (mostly online multiplayer) are either unavailable or unplayable.
After over two weeks of my computer being semi-functional and my friends asking me for the fifth time when I was going to be back online, I decided it wasn't worth it. I see so many people in these threads praising Linux gaming, saying it's now functional and simple to set up. They must either only play single-player indie games, know something I don't, or are being dishonest.
Yeah, people are definitely trying to oversell how well gaming works on Linux, especially now that the Steam Deck is coming out. I've had games rated Platinum and Gold on protondb be completely unplayable due to graphical issues, or fail to even launch. I've also run into Linux specific issues even for games that have native ports, for example, holding down a single key for a long time randomly causes the OS to stop sending signals for it until you release it and press again. It's gotten me killed quite a few times in fast paced shooters when holding down the movement key stops working.
What graphics card and which drivers? It's especially problematic with older GPUs, but with modern ones it's largely fine and none of these issues show up as much as they apparently did for you.
while it's theoretically possible for this to be caused by software, it seems more likely considering the other issues you've listed that there are some hardware issues here. linux drivers exercise the hardware differently from windows, and usually more efficiently. if your hardware is weak (particularly PSU), it can fail during intense loads. see: people blaming prime95 for crashing their computer.
> I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion?
Nothing wrong with being honest. We sometimes have to keep hiding the fact that when we use something on a system that is not officially supported and comes with tons of issues or bugs, we quietly fix it ourselves with hacks and workarounds and try to move on if possible.
Unfortunately with most users, they cannot tolerate 'Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots' and would simply give up and use something fully supported like Windows.
> Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
If it says it is designed and optimised to run on Windows, then that's a hint that it will perform badly on other systems. You can 'try again' on other systems but obviously the help-desk guys will say: 'Sorry, that's unsupported.'
Better to go for something that has official support and move on, not half way there. Or wait until the other system has official support.
I made Linux Mint the primary OS on my son's first laptop some 3-years ago when he was around 12, and he's taken to it like a fish to water. He's even taken to using regolith as his (tiling) window manager now, and prefers to use vim for programming (python/julia/c) rather than any IDE.
Also have Mint installed on my mom's laptop - she only uses the browser and is ok with it - she has no idea of what an OS even is.
IMO, the only thing preventing Linux's more widespread adoption is the reputation that it's only meant for developers, and OEMs not providing an option to have it pre-installed.
I'm so thankful that Valve is embracing Linux. They obviously have commercial interests behind it and fear the Windows Store [1] and vendor lock-in by Microsoft, but they have made gaming on linux better, even for non-steam games and embraced the open source ideals of linux, at least for their work on steam os and proton. I'm happy I don't have to have any windows systems for gaming anymore and I pretty much have valve to thank for that (and all the other great people working on wine, lutris and co of course)
I'm not a gamer, but annecdotally, the pandemic has given me enough screentime that I've finally been able to switch to Linux as my primary OS. I wonder how many others are in the same boat.
I've been gaming on linux for almost a year now and I've had no issues at all. I've mainly been playing popular titles but Proton makes every game feel like it's a linux native game.
I hope Linux with this Proton compatibility layer doesn't go the way of OS/2 of being so easy to run Windows games that nobody writes Linux ports anymore and as a consequence the performance and overall experience is never as good.
I switched from Mac to Linux more than 3 years ago, and I've been gaming on Linux for 2 years. I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but I got back into gaming just because I wanted to see how far Linux gaming had come. I was pleasantly surprised. I've played quite a few native games, but also some running on Proton. I was amazed when Doom (2016) ran with excellent performance. The Witcher 3 is another one with great support. I only cracked and started dual booting Windows when I couldn't get Doom Eternal running properly. It felt like such a betrayal! But since then I've decided to be more pragmatic about things.
I still prefer running things on Linux where possible, and I sometimes buy native Linux games even if I don't know when I'll get around to playing them. There are definitely some rough edges, but I think there's a future for Linux gaming. I think it's mostly due to Valve, which is why I get all my games from Steam.
What is the point of these surveys when we know how many "level farming" operations[1] are going on in China, etc.? Casual CSGO has become unusable these days. Of course, apart from farming operations, cheaters come from across the world. And AFAIK, most cheats software is available only for Windows. Valve's esports-grade games like CSGO, and DOTA2 are free. There is no penalty for getting banned in such a context. It is easy for the "farmer" or cheater to create a new account, and start playing again.
I would be more interested in knowing what percent of paying customers run whatever OS. This info would be useful to new game developers too.
[1] I won't post links because my comment might get auto-flagged as spam, but interested readers can find them easily by searching for something like "Buy CSGO High Tier Accounts".
Anecdata: I finally bought GTA V on Steam Linux now that protondb reports flawless single player operation (which I’m happy to report is accurate). It allegedly runs 20% slower than on Windows, but because I’m living 8 years in the future, relative to its release date, I now have a PC powerful enough that it can run at 60fps and max settings regardless of that 20% hit.
Steam has defiantly been putting in the work promoting Linux based developers and developing Proton (their wine package). Over the last year I've played a half dozen AAA games on Linux through steam, all of them working near perfectly.
I'm surprised the Linux market share isn't higher than 1%, giving the resources they seem to be dedicating to Linux.
Personally, on some level, I don't even notice difference working macOS, Linux and Windows. Other than platform specific development work, it doesn't really matter in the big picture.
Other than that, only Linux allows me true visibility to its innards. Fast to fix almost any issues, should they happen. And I say this as someone who has for example no problem debugging Windows kernel remotely. Or reverse engineering using Ghidra etc.
I buy games and purely use Linux and Steam for this purpose. It works perfectly, including AAA titles! Love from here to the Proton team at Steam. Even Penguins want to have fun.
I was always dismissive of people complaining about Linux as I’ve been using it for the last 15 years without issue. But then I got an nvidia optimus laptop as a gift recently and I just gave up using Linux on this machine.
1. Suspend on lid close simply didn’t work. I’ve tried all kernels I could get my hands on. I resorted to remapping the bogus key that the lid close was sending to suspend.
2. My laptop have the hdmi output wired on the dGPU. So I have to live with a world of pain that is mixed DPIs on Linux where only wayland have proper support.
3. Wayland got some nvidia love on 477 drivers but, in my test, it was a big mess.
So yes, I stopped dismissing people complaining about Linux and went back to windows on this laptop.
I assume that nvidia and high DPIs are a common enough usecase in 2021 that I would not recommend anyone to go through this experience.
My experience is that many times the (emulated) Windows version runs better than the 'native' Linux version, which can have not-so-subtle bugs or not run at all.
This especially happens for older games which haven't been receiving regular updates. Apparently Windows userland bitrots much less.
The Windows 11 announcement is what made me transition to Ubuntu in the last few weeks. So far, I made the transition on 4 out of 5 of my windows PC.
It's far from smooth enough to become mainstream (with ubuntu at least.)
A few example: Steam wouldn't launch on my PC with an Nvidia card. (At to install some x86 package to make it work).
File sharing just didn't work at all without manually edit the smb.conf file.
Ubuntu randomly ignore my router DNS settings. All my self-hosted stuff requiring local DNS randomly stops working unless I force ubuntu to use my own DNS server.
Some games just don't work on any of my PCs (even if they are gold/platinum in protondb).
And many more stuff that works out of the box with windows. Overall, despite the issues, the experience is still positive and i'm not going back.
I've started playing a lot on Linux because it is the only place I can play some of my games. A lot of old 32-bit games are starting to become unplayable on Windows 10 but are perfectly fine on Proton or Wine. Proton has been the best thing ever for me. I no longer have to keep two versions of Steam on my laptop (Windows and Linux)
On the other hand. There is rarely a moment I play any non-linux native game on Proton that I don't have to fiddle with something. Also a lot just end up not working. It's gotten a lot better recently, but stuff like controllers sometimes end up not working at all and needing a hack to work.
[+] [-] Zhyl|4 years ago|reply
If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming.
I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean that the marketshare will increase more likely than it will decrease.
[+] [-] tl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judge2020|4 years ago|reply
> We’re working with BattlEye and EAC to get support for Proton ahead of launch.
[+] [-] gpderetta|4 years ago|reply
Of course now I expect I'll be eventually banned for running under a VM.
Proton support for anti-cheats can't come soon enough.
[+] [-] aitchnyu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomasBaneUK|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worldmerge|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acharp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sourceless|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShrigmaMale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxhill|4 years ago|reply
* Cyberpunk 2077 (ok that has issues, but it has the same issues for windows users..)
* Dying Light
* Titanfall
* The Division
along with _many_ other indie/small games.
honestly the only thing left is titles that include invasive anti-cheat. when that day comes, i don’t know if most of my friends will have any reason to remain on windows.
and who could blame them? finally, they won’t need to deal with a company that collects data from them without their knowledge, runs ads in their taskbar, demands they have a useless microsoft account, restarts their machine on a whim for updates, etc.
i hate that i’m going to say this out loud, but could 2022 really be the year of linux on the des- why does it feel so wrong to say that? :)
[+] [-] deltasixeight|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
[+] [-] gchamonlive|4 years ago|reply
Linus tech tips did a video recently on installing and gaming on Linux using pop_os which I think is great service for the mainstream user.
So yeah, long way ahead, but we are living the first step, becoming mainstream. If this trend continues, you won't have to be a hardcore Linux Fan to game in Linux.
[+] [-] terlisimo|4 years ago|reply
I see your point but consider this: 20 years ago you could make the same argument for all aspects of linux, not just gaming. Why use some hobby level OS for serious work when you have Solaris, HP-UX, AIX?
Today we have a very usable Linux desktop and pretty much total dominance in the server arena, only because people were at one point "delusionally enthusiastic" about making it work.
[+] [-] josefx|4 years ago|reply
I have seen similar on Windows. For example when Bioshock Remastered Freezes there is no way to exit it, windows still responds, but there is no way to close the game because everything you open is hidden by it. Also the amount of Graphical glitches I encountered in Skyrim is just hilarious. DotA 2 seems to sometimes glitch out when you hit alt tab while it loads. That is just the games I played the last few weeks, I think there is not a single game that isn't somehow broken on Windows either.
[+] [-] eloeffler|4 years ago|reply
Overall I get a better performance on Linux at the cost of some graphics performance, which is a good deal for me. I'm really not playing the most current games to be fair. And I'm running on a 5400rpm HDD
[+] [-] bluecatswim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsloth|4 years ago|reply
It's like some obscene tribal topos that refuses to die.
KDE 1.0 came out in 1998 - 23 years ago (O god I'm old).
The discussion of "Linux to replace windows desktop" is over two decades old.
In computer age this is something geological. It's like... well, Macintosh came out in 1984. Xerox Alto came 1973. If we go back 5 years we reach Englebart's Mother of All Demos in 1968 which I think can be considered the intellectual precursor of those.
So there is 5 years from a tech demo on high-end research platform to a (more or less) commoditized consumer offering - even though Xerox had no idea what to do with it. Steve Jobs visits Xerox 1979 and five years later they deliver Macintosh.
So, with engineering talent PLUS business drive they copy the idea, implement their own hardware and software stack and are instant hit (well, let's say for the sake of this discussion they are a hit).
In FIVE years.
Linux is trying to copy the software stack, of an existing platform, and has been "attempting" this for two decades.
This is not an engineering problem. This is not a community problem. It's a "lack of business interest problem".
Honestly, the Linux desktop is quite usable. I'm quite sure two decades are enough for the open source software stack to find some local optimum for the desktop offering.
But really, copying and supporting a continuously moving target needs real capital and real business drive to sustain the boring, mind numbing support work that is needed to actually sustain an industrial quality platform.
Linux is fantastic in lots of things.
I'm not sure reverse engineering Windows stack on Linux is very effective way of spending our civilizations engineering resources.
I appreciate masochistic Rude Goldbergish feats of engineering as much as the next geek, but I just don't see the value of individuals detached from the corporations that are implementing the master stack trying to reverse engineer everything on top of a third party platform.
Native Linux support? That would be nice. Native drivers and all? That would be nice.
If it works for someone that's very cool and satisfying - but I still think reverse engineering based gaming stacks for modern platforms that are alive and well are not perhaps the best way to spend engineering effort.
[+] [-] dsego|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chevill|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokethrowaway|4 years ago|reply
I don't game that much and rebooting / having another dedicated machine is a PITA.
I honestly don't remember experiencing that many issues with proton or wine for that matter. Maybe having to follow a wiki or installing something and a few minor issues. Proton automated most of that.
Sure, it's not perfect but for an occasional gamer like me it's less than the hassle of rebooting.
[+] [-] subjectsigma|4 years ago|reply
* Needed a USB input switcher and two video outputs to use it correctly. I tried Looking Glass but it doesn't work well with NVIDIA cards unless you have one of those $15 HDMI dummy plugs which are all made by sketchy Chinese vendors... * Because I only have one USB controller, all USB 3 ports got stolen by the VM, leaving only USB 2 for Linux. * Weird audio pops that I thought I fixed but would come back on reboot. * Difficult to monitor certain temps. * Random crashes during long sessions, even on low graphics settings. Hard to debug - you have to pick through both Windows and Linux logs. * Random FPS drops, especially in LoL. * Lived in fear of getting banned from some games (Also LoL) * NVIDIA drivers would sometimes crash trying to rebind the cards when I closed the VM, so I had to reboot the computer anyways, might as well have dual-booted. * Setting up OBS takes extra work.
Gaming in Linux natively was, for all intents and purposes, the same. The games I play (mostly online multiplayer) are either unavailable or unplayable.
After over two weeks of my computer being semi-functional and my friends asking me for the fifth time when I was going to be back online, I decided it wasn't worth it. I see so many people in these threads praising Linux gaming, saying it's now functional and simple to set up. They must either only play single-player indie games, know something I don't, or are being dishonest.
Still want a Steam Deck though.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hn8788|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nemetroid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Darvokis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hello71|4 years ago|reply
while it's theoretically possible for this to be caused by software, it seems more likely considering the other issues you've listed that there are some hardware issues here. linux drivers exercise the hardware differently from windows, and usually more efficiently. if your hardware is weak (particularly PSU), it can fail during intense loads. see: people blaming prime95 for crashing their computer.
[+] [-] Taek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weare138|4 years ago|reply
https://www.protondb.com
[+] [-] rvz|4 years ago|reply
Nothing wrong with being honest. We sometimes have to keep hiding the fact that when we use something on a system that is not officially supported and comes with tons of issues or bugs, we quietly fix it ourselves with hacks and workarounds and try to move on if possible.
Unfortunately with most users, they cannot tolerate 'Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots' and would simply give up and use something fully supported like Windows.
> Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
If it says it is designed and optimised to run on Windows, then that's a hint that it will perform badly on other systems. You can 'try again' on other systems but obviously the help-desk guys will say: 'Sorry, that's unsupported.'
Better to go for something that has official support and move on, not half way there. Or wait until the other system has official support.
[+] [-] msravi|4 years ago|reply
Also have Mint installed on my mom's laptop - she only uses the browser and is ok with it - she has no idea of what an OS even is.
IMO, the only thing preventing Linux's more widespread adoption is the reputation that it's only meant for developers, and OEMs not providing an option to have it pre-installed.
[+] [-] dtx1|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377
[+] [-] yosito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Taek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bantunes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daveungerer|4 years ago|reply
I still prefer running things on Linux where possible, and I sometimes buy native Linux games even if I don't know when I'll get around to playing them. There are definitely some rough edges, but I think there's a future for Linux gaming. I think it's mostly due to Valve, which is why I get all my games from Steam.
[+] [-] qart|4 years ago|reply
I would be more interested in knowing what percent of paying customers run whatever OS. This info would be useful to new game developers too.
[1] I won't post links because my comment might get auto-flagged as spam, but interested readers can find them easily by searching for something like "Buy CSGO High Tier Accounts".
[+] [-] mhitza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl6|4 years ago|reply
Fortunately I have no interest in multiplayer.
[+] [-] ecocentrik|4 years ago|reply
I'm surprised the Linux market share isn't higher than 1%, giving the resources they seem to be dedicating to Linux.
[+] [-] vardump|4 years ago|reply
Personally, on some level, I don't even notice difference working macOS, Linux and Windows. Other than platform specific development work, it doesn't really matter in the big picture.
Other than that, only Linux allows me true visibility to its innards. Fast to fix almost any issues, should they happen. And I say this as someone who has for example no problem debugging Windows kernel remotely. Or reverse engineering using Ghidra etc.
[+] [-] unixhero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arepublicadoceu|4 years ago|reply
1. Suspend on lid close simply didn’t work. I’ve tried all kernels I could get my hands on. I resorted to remapping the bogus key that the lid close was sending to suspend.
2. My laptop have the hdmi output wired on the dGPU. So I have to live with a world of pain that is mixed DPIs on Linux where only wayland have proper support.
3. Wayland got some nvidia love on 477 drivers but, in my test, it was a big mess.
So yes, I stopped dismissing people complaining about Linux and went back to windows on this laptop. I assume that nvidia and high DPIs are a common enough usecase in 2021 that I would not recommend anyone to go through this experience.
[+] [-] yyyk|4 years ago|reply
This especially happens for older games which haven't been receiving regular updates. Apparently Windows userland bitrots much less.
[+] [-] Flott|4 years ago|reply
It's far from smooth enough to become mainstream (with ubuntu at least.)
A few example: Steam wouldn't launch on my PC with an Nvidia card. (At to install some x86 package to make it work).
File sharing just didn't work at all without manually edit the smb.conf file.
Ubuntu randomly ignore my router DNS settings. All my self-hosted stuff requiring local DNS randomly stops working unless I force ubuntu to use my own DNS server.
Some games just don't work on any of my PCs (even if they are gold/platinum in protondb).
And many more stuff that works out of the box with windows. Overall, despite the issues, the experience is still positive and i'm not going back.
[+] [-] foxyv|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand. There is rarely a moment I play any non-linux native game on Proton that I don't have to fiddle with something. Also a lot just end up not working. It's gotten a lot better recently, but stuff like controllers sometimes end up not working at all and needing a hack to work.
[+] [-] seltzered_|4 years ago|reply
Are there other, possibly better, metrics used to track desktop linux adoption?