Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
To anyone reading this thinking “once SteamOS comes out, I’ll switch”, you should know:
Gaming on Linux is already here. Pick a distro and game. You can take advantage of Proton right now. You don’t need to wait for one specific distro.
I’ve personally been gaming on Linux exclusively for about 3 years. Windows games, not Linux games.
Edit: based on other commenters’ suggestions, I’ll give you some.
I have gamed for those three years on PopOS. It is a distro based on Debian, ultimately, which means it’s also related to Ubuntu and Mint. Realistically, you can pick any of those 4 and you should have a nice experience.
Arch is popular with the übergeeks, and I do use it on my laptop, BTW, but you shouldn’t use it as a first distro.
The concept of “distro” doesn’t really exist for Windows, because you pretty much get one monolithic product. But basically, it is a specific mix of software that works together and relies on the Linux kernel. Imagine it as a “version” of Windows with specific goals, some of which are overlapping (e.g. Mint and Ubuntu tend to cater to the same audience).
If you get far enough into it, the freedom that Linux allows means that you can turn any distro into any other distro.
I think that is perfectly valid and I’ll happily recommend steamos to newcomers. I’m only a little worried about it being locked to flatpaks by default though. Hopefully that will change, but for most users it will be a good start.
I wouldn’t say SteamOS for new folks, tbh. Flatpaks are very different from the typical Linux flow.
This is fair. I should have given my own suggestions.
Mint is probably the choice at the moment for new folks. Also, this will be controversial, but feel free with Ubuntu. It will get you started, and that’s great.
Edit: I added some (open-ended) suggestions to my original comment.
I actually think mint is a terrible choice for beginners because it’s not kde, which is by far the best for windows people, and it isn’t immutable, which is a gamechanger for not having to maintain your system
Sons is mostly playing Valorant right now on Windows 11. I’m an old dude familiar with FreeBSD, and Debian. No clue about running games and stuff though. Would he be able to switch?
edit: thanks for the insight. Sounds like a no-go for now until anti-cheat stuff is supported outside windows.
To be 100% honest, probably not, and you may need to confirm with someone who knows Valorant. The big issue is anti-cheat, the detectors in use for major multiplayer games tend to lose their minds when they see Linux as they’re typically only built for Windows. Other than anti-cheat, it wouldn’t surprise me if it played better on Linux. Some of the low level magic has improved a lot in recent years, but official support is mandatory for multiplayer.
Yes, anti-cheat specifically is a problem. That’s you fighting against the corpos, to be clear. Not really an issue with gaming on Linux itself.
Edit: not only against the corpos, but more generally against the idea of “kernel-level anti-cheat”. If you’re giving any corporation kernel-level access to your machine, you basically no longer control your machine. That’s true of Windows too.
It’s a big issue and the lack of support on Linux is a bit of a feature, not really a bug.
It’s actually surprising how easy it is to use.
My wife was playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on her windows laptop (GOG version, DRM free) and I just wanted to see if I can run it on my Linux laptop.
Just copied the game folder from her laptop to my external SSD, plugged it into my laptop, ran through proton. Everything works without any issues. Simple as that.
I was pleasantly surprised. We could even join via LAN and had some co-op fun. After trying it out I think I’m buying the game.
I haven’t used Windows for more than a decade, and I am genuinely surprised reading your post that the game works in this manner even if with proton/wine layer.
I can’t help but think that this is an exception, and would attribute this behaviour to how the game is made. I wonder what other software function this way.
ran through proton
See, this is after where most gaming folks hop off.
In all fairness, if you just run Lutris (pre-installed on Bazzite), log into GOG from there and install and run the game through their wizard, it also “just works”.
That might be easier for most.
What you just said is so much more difficult than running games through proton isn’t it??
I’ll switch when 10 finally dies, they state Oct 2025 but if even less people go to 11 they won’t really have a choice but to keep 10 up and running. Make 10 the last Windows OS ever. Never go to 11.
Personally, my last holdout on my desktop is VR, and I’d rather not dual boot.
My laptop has been running Linux for years now, although I’ve been having some issues with it lately, possibly due to repeated in-place upgrades, so I’ve been thinking of switching away from mint to a rolling release distro. Although, I have to say, NixOS’s philosophy is really compelling.
Time & effort. Everything that you do means something else doesn’t get done. Whether that be gaming with friends or an item off your project/chore list.
We know that gaming centric distros are great for getting up & running, but it’s still a time sink, and will require effort. Not everybody has a backup drive with their games and will have to re-download everything too. There’s also a risk their favorite game isn’t compatible with Linux
Windows 10 also works just fine. I still have it on 2 of my 4 computers (2/5 if you count my Deck), and haven’t switched those over yet because I’m being lazy on one and the other is a perfect candidate for the SteamOS UX experience since it’s a HTPC. However, I have done some looking around at other HTPC experiences and just haven’t pulled the trigger. Which will be awesome, since Windows did away with their HTPC UX years ago.
For all the not super technically inclined people out there, I would recommend Linux mint with cinnamon, you’ll feel right at home and won’t face any real issues so long as you don’t want to play LoL, a few other big multiplayer games have anti cheat systems that don’t like Linux.
Tbh the vast majority of people who say “ill switch to (insert Linux distro here) when (insert accomplishment here)” will most likley never switch
Make sure your hardware is compatible. Otherwise you have to deal with kernel upgrades to get latest drivers, which is advanced linux stuff. My gpu (B580) is compatible with 6.12 and newer kernel. And I wasn’t able to install newer kernel on linux Mint 22. Ended up installing Windows. And… It’s not that bad. I haven’t seen it for a while. Everything works better in my case. And you can uninstall all you don’t need including edge. But I will go back when kernel I need will be shipped with distro.
This is generally true, but I’d also caution that the B580 is a brand new card with (somewhat lacking) Linux support.
In general, if you aren’t using bleeding edge hardware, you won’t have such issues. This is especially true of AMD hardware, which tends to be extremely Linux friendly.
