That’s fine if you just want some linux applications, but is totally not solving the problem if you
don’t want to buy a windows license / subscription
don’t want Microsoft dictating your update schedule (without screwing around disabling windows update which leaves you vulnerable to malware)
want the improved network performance and system responsiveness
don’t trust Microsoft from an end user privacy perspective
That third point is worth re-iterating. Windows 10, without spending a lot of work to clean up and strip things out of, smashes the shit out of your CPU consumption doing all manner of background tasks like AV, update checks, etc.
If you haven’t run say, a web browser on a clean linux box up against a fresh out of the box windows install on the same hardware for a while… do it. It’s freaking night and day different.
It comes pre-installed and even if you did it is extremely easy to get it discounted legally. It can be found for $25.
Yes, because a gaming box is running mission critical software. And you can control it in pro (see my discount comment)
Then run BSD the difference between Linux and windows doesn’t matter in RL performance
That is an entire can of worms that can be its own thread
What are you running a netbook? Yeah that 1% CPU usage really is what holds you back in esports
Maybe on very low end hardware run both Windows, FreeBSD and Kubuntu and see really no difference in Firefox/chromium across them.
At the end of the day Gaming on Linux is more effort if the game isn’t native (even that sometimes can be more work) Proton, Wine and Luton is more work, picking out the proper version and prefixes, sweet.
Games in Linux are bonus just as WSL in Windows is a bonus. I do qt development so I switch between OS’s regularly for testing.
If you want to game Windows is the less fuss option.
Other opinions may differ, mine is based on using and building PCs since 1992, and being employed to professionally support them since 1997, you won’t change it.
I was stating reasons why installing Windows is not solving the problems people want to get away from. They’re legitimate for many people, if you’re willing to tolerate them (along with a myriad of other usability issues such as the wrong path separator, wrong line termination in ASCII files, included shitware out of the box, etc.) then fine, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
People don’t normally consider a switch to linux to just run some linux applications.
Well not going to get into a measuring Contest over experience but been an Unix (Solaris, BSD and Linux) User and dev for about 25 years.
I just think selling Linux as a Gaming Platform is a bad idea. Case in point any time LTT or L1T do a video on it the amount of help desk shoots up. If they want the tool set of Linux but want to core game Windows with WSL is the better option.
Now if you are doing development and don’t want to dual boot Native/Proton/Lutris isn’t a bad option. But say you want to play Doom Eternal or Master Chief Collection you are going to have issues.
KVM or Xen is alright if you have the hardware to do it and basically are running Compiles/simulations/analytics on one monitor and want to play a DRM laden AAA in another that would be ideal. But that adds more complexity overall.
I just get very worried when Linux is sold as full parity gaming platform when it isn’t. Seen people rage quit the OS because they feel they were lied to.
I think anyone coming into linux willingly had a vague idea what they should expect. No one comes to the dark side without the taste of their own blood in their mouth, so to speak.
Uh…Gaming. Ever tried Gaming on a linux box? Same thing with MAC. Everyone hates on Windows but you know what…it works.
I never heard anyone ever say “Does it work on Windows?” You know why? Because it just does. However since there is so many different types of programs integrating with Windows, it causes issues. Windows could be like MAC and be very restrictive but also be very limited as to what developers can do with their products. Or be like linux where you have to sudo everything and look up how to do this and that.
Im just saying …windows is the best for just working. Run some auto updates and youre golden pony boy. If there is an issue…no worries…if its a big enough bug it will be addressed next tuesday.
The point you’re obviously ignoring is that no platform has every game. If you just can’t live without Forza, you won’t buy a Playstation. If you need to play Killzone, a Switch isn’t for you. Same with Linux. I already said that not all games will work on linux. But the fact is a fuckton of them will. Especially on Steam or from GOG.
I still have Windows 10 Pro/64 on my own PC, because the games I enjoy (ATS, ETS2, a few flight sims) and DAZ Studio are for Windows. Also I’m learning Unreal Engine that’s pretty much Windows-based*.
But, after Windows borked my dad’s PC, he put Linux and so I can learn on it too, and I alrady use Blender on it instead of mine because its so much faster. We already use open source stuff like LibreOffice, so I’m alrady used to that and its super ez to switch. The hardest thing I think is learning Gimp or Krita when I alrady got so used to Photoshop, but I’m sure I can (plus i still have Ps on my own PC).
So, really, games or special applcations (3DS Max, Maya, etc) are the only reasons I can think of to put Windows on a new PC.
*I see that we can build UE for Linux, so I want to try that.
So yesterday, one of my drives died on me, with a load of stuff, work, games, etc. Thankfully I use cloud based solutions for my work, whether you’re talking about GitHub or GDrive, you get the idea, nothing has been lost as such, more so a mild ball ache.
Anyway, due to that happening, I was a bit but hurt & thought, screw it, what better time to give it a whirl? So… I’m currently running Pop OS, so far so good, but obviously it’s still very early days. As a starting point for the whole gaming side of things, I’ve tried out Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, I was surprised that I didn’t have to tinker at all, I saw online that a large number of people reported that they had to tinker with the config for Wine, but I was very fortunate in that respect. But… One thing that has blown my socks off is how I’m getting better FPS in this game with Proton than natively in Windows, I can’t answer as to why, I wouldn’t say so much if my drivers in Windows were super old or something along those lines…
I’m gonna try & stick to it, test out a bunch of other things, since my work includes mostly Java development & a bit of DevOps type work, you can’t really beat Linux in my experience. Getting Docker with Windows 10 Home is annoyingly bad, not painful or anything, it just seems silly, though I understand why it’s the way it is…
That’s literally my thought process right now & as time goes on, for myself, the number of programs that are on Windows but not on Linux is constantly shrinking.
I totally support that!
Summary - So far
Amazingly, I’ve not had any issues so far, not one, not even a slight hiccup, I’ll continue to try it out for a good few months. I guess if I do run into any major issues, I can come to an unbiased conclusion, at the moment, I am leaning more towards 100% Linux.
But I’d imagine there’s something that may make me reconsider.
I love the freedom that you get with Linux, like right now, I’m just messing around with different window managers, desktop environments, etc. That is something that you just don’t get with Windows, unless someone wants to update me on something?
The only silly complaint I have is that with my wireless keyboard, the K780, there’s a very slight delay when I hit the caps button, if I’m typing really fast, then sometimes I end up with words that have 2-3 upper case characters at the start. It’s hardly a big deal for me, but I’ll also have a gander to see if there’s anything out there that’ll solve this, it’s safe to say this isn’t a subject matter I have much knowledge in…
For the time being, I’m just gonna keep my mind open to keeping Windows around, but from my tests so far, it’s looking like I’m going to say bye bye to Windows…
I think it may be that under certain circumstances Vulkan (which is what DX is being translated to) is making better use of the hardware OR is taking some shortcuts in rendering quality somehow.
Just because there’s a translation shim in there, doesn’t mean it has to suck, it (the shim) doesn’t really do much vs. the total processing time involved for doing the actual work (which is either native DX on windows or Vulkan in Linux).
Either way, Witcher 3 works better for me under Linux than it does native, at least as far as I can remember.
This is most definitely not true for every game (and plenty don’t even work at all or have serious problems) but when it does work, it’s sometimes very good, sometimes better than native as you have discovered.
I did that for years (literally, 2 decades plus) and it’s a bit of a trap. You boot windows to game, then can’t be bothered rebooting and end up slipping non-gaming use into it. Also/OR every time you want to game you end up with windows updates running (at least I did because I didn’t game that often on it - so windows update only ran when I wanted to game say once every few weeks), which cuts into game time.
Plus you give up a lot more disk space, etc.
Being Windows free gets rid of all of that crap, and I (personally YMMV) feel that it is worth losing some incompatible games for.
If I run into anything that I can’t fix or if there’s something that fries my little peanut, then that’s my back up plan. But if this runs fine for a good number of months, I see no need to dual boot.
I have heard that Witcher 3 runs incredibly well with Linux, apparently it’s a similar situation where you don’t need to get into the config or anything.
I mean that’s more than what I’ve got… Seems logical!
As proven, it’s been running a lot better than I had expected, not so much just because of this, but I was very skeptical regarding drivers & general issues.
To be fair, that’s very true, I wouldn’t expect every game in the world to run smoothly in Linux if at all! … At least not at this point in time anyway.
This is a solid point. I used to dual boot all the time, but eventually I just ended up forgetting that I even had a partition on one of my drives with a Linux distro on there. I mean before/after a gaming session, it’s not something that just pops into your head, like “ahh, now it’s time to switch to my other OS because…”.
Your comment about the updates, that would seriously piss me off after a while…
i’m a wokaholic anyway, so gaming is something that I’ll do when I just wanna relax, even then, I don’t play or buy many AAA titles because I’m cheap & tight, I know you can buy copies at very low prices at certain times, but eh, I’ve got more than enough games to keep me busy & entertained for some time!
Edit
I’ve decided to continue using Pop OS, but for my desktop environment I’ve decided to go with KDE Plasma & it’s so good!
I’ve also decided, I may try out Linux from scratch at some point, just as a quick run through to make sure that I’ve at least covered some of the basics, etc.
