System: 2700x, Asus Tuf x570 Gaming Plus, XFX Merc 319 6900XT 32GB ddr4 3200 (15,15,?,? I don’t remember anymore) Next upgrade will be the CPU but not this year.
Toying with the idea of Linux (probably POP OS - but I’m open) Will I gain anything in terms of gaming? (Besides avoiding Windows 11) And how much of a pain in the butt will this be?
Thanks for the advice!
Games:
Cyberpunk 2077 (slightly modded though Vortex - so not launched by Steam) Heavily Modded Skyrim - not launched through steam. Red Dead Redemption 2 (rockstar launcher from steam launcher I think?) - The Hunter - Call of the Wild (steam launched) Lightly modded (sometimes) Witcher3 Wild Hunt.
You get the idea - If I can mod it without making it worse I probably do, I often can’t use the Steam Launcher.
You will probably gain very little, in terms of gaming. Linux is still playing second fiddle, but every year it gets closer to Windows. 90% compatibility but that’s still a 10% chance any game you load will experience issues. Part is protondb not being perfect, part is shoddy development by game devs (whom are mostly pressured into it by tight deadlines), and part is EAC and it’s ilk. For single player it is more likely your game will work than not.
Most of us Linux gamers play on Linux because Linux does the other computing parts much better than Windows does, even though Windows is the better gaming system. I’d argue the best would be if games could start with a Linux-based slim virtual machine that you hook up a few dedicated cores and a GPU to. It’s only like, 200-300 MB extra these days or so, and would provide a much more reliable experience. You’d then boot the game up through VMWare or VirtualBox or something. 
That said, your games in particular:
| Game |
Protondb status |
Comments |
| Cyberpunk 2077 |
Gold |
Requires workarounds, but if you can tinker a bit it runs |
| Skyrim |
Gold |
Heavy mods might be a problem, otherwise runs great |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 |
Gold |
Requires workarounds and seem to crash a lot without those |
| The Hunter - Call of the wild |
Gold |
Seems to work well out of the box |
| Witcher 3: Wild Hunt |
Platinum |
Runs pretty much flawlessly |
As for alternative launchers, check out Lutris which will allow you to fiddle around with quite a bit of options.
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I love my PopOs. I don’t game much, but I do play Star Citizen. Lutris has this covered. From a fresh install, there are a few lines of commands, few packages to install, and a few config settings to sort out. After that, SC installs thru Lutris and works flawlessly. Is my pc performance better on Linux vs Windows? I think so, but the frame count will be slightly lower. As mentioned above, Windows tends to work a little better for gaming, but for other things, not so much.
Personally I feel the biggest gain from switching to linux from windows has nothing to do with gaming performance anyway. The biggest + is getting off Microsoft Ad revenue from their Intel ME bs and all that comes with lifelog and its installations into everyones comptuer. Just the hypotheticals are enough to make me switch and not look back.
You will have some work arounds to learn, but I think, learning them is better than relying on Windows and ignorance. TBH, if everything worked in Windows, would you learn how things actually worked? Llinux will teach you so much more about computers than how to get it runnin to game. And I think that is the other big + from switching to Linux.
I love PopOs, and I love learning linux stuff. Though I hate having issues when learning new stuff, I am getting better at it the more I do it and stick with it. If I could only go back 25 years and had been encouraged to learn compute.
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