So thankful for the Steam Deck! It made me have enough courage to move my gaming desktop from Windows 11 to Pop!_OS. Glad to be a part of this growing community!
Frankly I kinda wish EAC and others just sorta enabled it. There isn't any reason for a developer not to enable compatibility other than laziness or malice. A lot of developers turn an intentionally blind eye to switching it on just because they don't know better and don't want to bother so even by making it opt-out rather than mandatory you'd expose developers since they couldn't hide behind "not hearing about it" or some such. I know of someone on the steam forums who apparently contacted Paladins support directly about them breaking their EAC compatibility and they blamed proton. Yes, they blamed the compatibility layer which hadn't changed (you could test on the same version) for why their EAC was now broken despite working previously. And it IS an EAC issue since you can play in the training room flawlessly. A lot of devs hide behind ignorance when it comes to linux compatibility and I'm really sick of it. If you don't want linux compatibility come out and say it, then get mocked for it because there isn't any reason to avoid linux compatibility. Hiding behind ignorance is just taking advantage of people's generosity in giving benefit of the doubt. Now, to be clear, there are cases where the incompatibility is legitimate, like having customized the anti-cheat engine, the game itself not being compatible, etc. but those aren't what I'm referring to. I'm referring to games which could play just bloody fine through proton, but don't because the developers CHOOSE to not let them.
@@robonator2945 I'd say it has more to do with EAC running in user space on Linux rather than at Kernel level on Windows. They don't like the idea they can't take over your entire OS.
What surprised me was how well an aging card still works in Linux. I’m running an i7-2600/HD 6870 1GB classic gaming system that I dual boot with XP and Pop. StarCraft II runs in Pop amazingly well - wine3D drivers and Proton have come such a long way, even without being able to use any Vulkan features.
My mom has a 2012 MacBook Pro with a 3rd gen i5 and integrated graphics (Not sure which off the bat). What's awesome is that under Linux, this iGPU works natively with Vulkan under Linux, yet there is no support under Windows or MacOS.
I knew about PS and Nintendo controllers working better out of the box on Linux. I was not expecting Microsoft's own controller to have the same behavior.
Me neither. When I played Ori on Windows once, it took me around 40 min. to get the controller running. I wasted almost 20 minutes, because I didn't know that Microsoft doesn't include support on fresh installations anymore
This is true, everything is easier and works better now since a year ago that I started to use linux on my gaming PC. You still have to tweak stuff and troubleshoot to get stuff running but it is getting so much better
Linux had a chicken and egg problem for years - nobody developed support for Linux because nobody played games on Linux, and nobody played games on Linux because the support for it was such absolute garbage. Valve single-handedly changed that with Steam Proton and the Steam Deck, creating both Linux support and a sizeable userbase that would demand further Linux support - which is now driving more people to adopt Linux, and thus encouraging more developers to support Linux.
@@arthurwintersight7868 That's the benefit of not having investors breathing down your neck and actually being able to invest in things that will only pay off 10-20 years from now.
linux actually lets you fix your own bugs too, hell the command line if you keep a terminal open tells you any errors, i know next to nothing about linux but i can read and use google damn it! works fine only thing i cant set up is openrgb it hates my mobo
Linux gaming has been improving by leaps and bounds in the last several years, and it makes me really happy. I hope that the experience will be completely on par with Windows by the end of the decade.
@@eklipsegirl This message comes to you since you are acustomed to ads everywhere on you OS. no other reason than just making you feel at home. with ads, even tough this is not an real ad. Just to make you feel right at home...since you know Windows has alot of ads and bloat installed for the get go...so this is here to make you feel right at home....
@@Ormgryd WTF did I just read? I would get a notification about your comment on Linux as well, depending on my settings. And I don't get ads on Windows, maybe because I don't have a virus installed.
Been on linux for 2 years now as my main driver. Got tired of Windows, especially with 11, as it became nothing but bloat, ads, and instability central. (Not to mention my disagreement with their new TPM requirement. But thats another story) It was a rocky start on Linux, but thats mostly because I was unfamiliar with the environtment. After you take time to learn something that you aren't used to, it becomes easy over time. Most people have negative impressions of Linux because they think you need a genious IQ to run, when all it really is, is that you are unfamiliar with it. I run most of my games perfectly on Linux, I think there are maybe 2 games in my library I "NEED" Windows for. And I hope in due time with the coming of the Steam deck, that those games will be compatible too.
The thing that really convinced me was that I managed to get Fallout New Vegas with a lot of mods to work properly on Linux. I saw it as a bit of a challenge for both myself and the system. Knowing New Vegas sometimes doesn't even want to run on some Windows releases and how buggy and finicky it can be. On Linux Mint 21 it was a bit of a pain doing it the first time but I got it and Mod Organizer 2 to work. After upgrading to Mint 21.1 and doing a fresh install it all worked out of the box. It's probably not the most impressive game to get running to show off the power of Linux but I'm running it on my laptop I use for uni that has integrated graphics. I think it shows the level of compatibility with Windows software is rather good.
Did you install your mod library from MO2 or NMM:CE within the Proton instance? Manually or preloaded from Windows? Even Skyrim will run fine on Linux if you precompile your order in Windows, but last time I tried making the switch in 2022 I couldn't get MO2, NMM:CE, or even Vortex working, let alone any of the tools like FNIS and xEdit. SCK ran somewhat happily other than some insescent flickering before you load a cell though.
@@KiraSlith I did everything on manually on Linux. There is an issue that apparently also happens on windows where I need to have MO2 closed when I start the mod download otherwise it starts complaining that there is an instance of MO2 already running. So I can only install one mod at a time. I hadn't tried Skyrim yet but I think it would be a nice experiment. If you got any other questions I'd love to try and look into it.
@@kenansabic2901 "Manual" in this context would mean you were setting up the mods without a mod organizer. Also, I remember that bug, that was fixed all the way back in 2018 on Windows. If it's still doing that, the cause isn't likely to be MO2.
Correct video! And an other intresting point is the ram usage. The OS RAM usage under Windows is around 3-3.5GB, while it is usually less than 1GB on a Linux distro. So by running Linux, you will have more free ram for your game. And that +2GB can be verry important for memory hungry titles like Cities Skylines. In these days, I only use Windows for a specific cad software that not fully working with wine. I do everything else on Linux.
RAM usage is mostly a non issue on a modern system that is going to be used for gaming. While there are a few games that it might matter for memory is so cheap in comparison that it's always easier to have 'enough' memory in the first place.
@@MichaelNROH Star Citizen is the ultimate outlier for a number of issues for gaming on a modern PC. AFAIK it's the only game that can actually take advantage of more than 32gb memory and that a pagefile is often recommended for.
Excellent video Mr. Horn. Being new to Linux, it seems like whenever I search for answers to questions that are important to me, one of your videos pops up at the top of my list. I really appreciate all the work you put into this, as it's helping me a lot. Thank you kindly.
So glad to see lot of people jumping into linux after trying the steam deck, it's impressive how much gaming on linux has changed, tried to use linux to play aside of work for so many times throughout the years with no luck, it was not ready, but now I can use Linux as my primary OS with no problems at all. I use EndeavourOS with an AMD gpu and everything runs perfectly fine and smooth as butter. Can't share how great it feels to finally be able to use your favourite OS as the main one and windows just for few special things
I don't understand. If all my games work perfectly on Windows, if I can use Office for Windows (or any free alternative) on Windows, and if, in general, I can do anything on Windows without wasting my time on configurations, why should I migrate to Linux? In fact, why should anyone migrate to Linux? I've been drawn to Linux for years because of its philosophy and the customization it offers, but when I see that I have to invest time to do things that I can do immediately on Windows, I lose interest. It seems like Linux is an operating system designed for those who love to constantly invest time in configuring their computer and not for those who want a computer to achieve other things.
it takes a bit of effort but everything works smoother. It's basically whether you want to be rewarded for that effort or you can't be bothered and don't mind having bloatware eating up 30% of your ram.
I am really glad that gaming on Linux is getting much better than it was 4 years ago. Especially since many gaming PCs at our home can't be upgraded to Windows 11, and that will cause an issue once Windows 10 support ends.
I recently built a PC, it's not an extremely strong PC, but it's definitely not weak. Ryzen 5 4600g, RX 6600, 16 GB of Ram, anyway… The difference in performance in games playing on Windows 11 and Linux (Manjaro) is incredible. I was playing Hogwarts Legacy and felt constant lags and fps drops on Windows. On Linux, performance improved significantly, FPS went from 55~60 on Windows to 70~80 on Manjaro.
I’ve been toying with Linux more and more, it’s on my laptop now. My Windows workstation is for Game Development and Gaming. If both of those things can be done consistently on Linux, I’d be inclined to switch. I’ve tried a ton of Distros, but I really love Fedora and Gnome.
If you love Fedora and Gnome you should check out Nobara project. It's exactly that with gaming optimizations applied to the kernel. The default distro has a modified Gnome DE, but there are options for stock Gnome and a KDE version as well. It's from the guy who maintains Proton GE.
@@Kashim_o I actually use Nobara 😉 I said Fedora because that’s what Nobara is based on haha. It’s a nice distro. A little buggy in some areas since it’s a hobby distro, but for Linux gaming it’s great.
@@Zillawill I had the same issue. Used Nobara, had issues with the Fedora base, so I switched to PikaOS. Its essesiantly Nobara but based on Ubuntu. Works way better compared to Nobara for what I do. Disclaimer: I liked it so much, that I actually joined the team, so technically I'm advertising my own thing here, but just technically.
i switched to fedora over a year ago now. been daily driving it with no problem. just picked up a steam deck, honestly feel like the main reason i got it was because it ran linux. its pretty nice to be able to use my laptop to transfer files over easily lol. also, honestly had no idea about switching to proton experimental on steam for fedora so thanks for the tip there lol. might be fun to see how they compare now.
Experimental has gotten so good that I don't even bother with Proton-GE anymore. Valve is doing a great job with deploying hotfixes for new (albeit half-broken launches recently) titles!
Its important to note that some competitive online games work well on Linux. TF2, CS:GO, and even Apex legends work on Linux. Also with all issues on Linux there is always a solution (Mutahar from someordinarygamers even manged to get valorent running under a VM). Even games like can be played on Linux (can personally confirm that it runs well).
That's been patched for along time. It was literally patched like 2 weeks after that video was made. Plus as an advocate for gpu passthru I don't recommend it anymore. More and more games are banning you for using it. Fortnite has recently joined that fray.
Isn't gpu passthrough virtualization dead now? I heard the group responsible for making it happen dissolved or disbanded. sucks because when i get a more newer computer i'd love to have windows run as an "application" in a vm instead of on bare metal
@@slaetube I just setup a remote virtualized win10 machine on my homeserver (truenas scale) with gpu passthrough, using 'Sunshine' on the VM, and 'Moonlight' on my remote linux desktop to run (these can work on intel/nvidia/amd - linux and windows). Works like a charm no noticeable lag. For remote headless VM's you need a HDMI dummy plug to get it working properly.
@@slaetube dang i had a very stable experince till the end when selling my old pc, and i mean its one still quite widely use sw from the linux community too tho, mb not as much for gaming as proton nowdays, so it could be possible of such thing happening, hopefully not🤞.
The average gaming linux experience is to constantly convince yourself that its better than windows. All the bug fixes and lack of compatibility are so frustrating that you lie to yourself that linux is better.
I'll still maintain a windows based desktop for the foreseeable future despite gaming on my deck and work laptop (which is Linux) often, but I'm happy Linux is getting better in this department.
When I switched from W10 to Mint Xfce the performance actually improved in some games. That said, I got both AMD CPU & GPU, so I got the ideal hardware for linux.
It really does depend on which specific games you played, but most people will see just as many games perform better as they do games that perform worse. And generally the difference is less than 10% FPS
If you like the concept of Steam Deck, you can get the experience on PC too, by using a custom SteamOS for desktop. It has same UI as Steam Deck and makes the PC a console. The current solution is HoloISO, a port of SteamOS until Valve releases the official desktop version. In fact Steam is serious about it because lately they have changed their "Big Picture" mode to use this new Steam Deck UI (called gamemode).
I switched from Windows to Linux several years ago, but I do still laugh when I hear how “hard” it is to install things on Windows and five seconds later the video talks about all the different packages you have to install to make a game (possibly) work on Linux. Trust me, the average Windows user does not see that as easier.
Its not easy at all, every single thing you do is a difficulty, for example I updated my Nvidia drivers, the system explained to me why I needed to Reboot and enter a password into the Bios, in order to install third party drivers. Ok no big deal right? So I re-started the system with that password written down, it gave me three options to choose from, I chose the one of the three convoluted options that looked the most like it will let me enter that password, the enter password cursor doesn't move as I type, I entered it anyway and let the system boot, I have no idea if it worked, and I get an authentication error of some sort on each boot. Is it related? Did I do it right? Who knows
Competition is always good. Although I'm not willing to make the change (I'm not a fan of Linux), it's really good to see Linux starting to make pressure on Windows (on games).
Its worth mentioning there are lots of games that run natively on linux without Steam or Proton. My top 3 lately are Factorio, Rimworld, and Starsector
I have used Arch Linux as a daily driver for years. I have managed to solve all issues without any major tinkering and I have gotten all my games in my steam library (117) to work without issues, except for rust. I have had better performance in almost every single game. There are also way more native games than you may think! Linux is actually superior in every way to windows, and I recommend arch if you have used linux for a while since it really lets you customize your system. It's not the community that needs to adapt, it's the game developers and studios. For a lot of major titles it would barely even take a few days to get a native linux build. Also i forgot to mention that I have epic games working flawlessly through heroic games launcher, and roblox through grapejuice! It might seem intimidating to switch at first, but if you have someone to guide you then it's actually a massive upgrade!
You've produced a wonderful promotional video for Linux gaming. It's just too bad that others, such as LTT with their Linux Challenge, have shown what the current situation REALLY looks like.
The LTT videos are quite old now and a lot has changed since then in terms of compatibility and usability. Especially Anti-Cheat is not as big a problem as it was back then. Don't get me wrong, many popular games still don't support it, but at the time they made the video, not even Apex was working yet
The videos are only 2 years old. How can the fundamental problems have changed in such a short time? Especially when parts of the "Linux community" are opposed to these changes. From an external perspective, not much has changed. Desktop Linux is still fragmented by an enormous number of distros. All with their own peculiarities, pitfalls and incompatibilities. And don't even get me started on the quality fluctuations in the documentation. And there is still not even a standardized way to install apps. A problem that the commercial competition, ironically including Android, solved years ago. So it's business as usual: in typical Linux fashion, everyone prefers to do their own thing. This is great for the Linux nerds, who can thus fulfill and distinguish themselves, but bad for end users and developers of third-party software. And it is poison for acceptance in the mass market. Of course, you can continue to paint a rosy Linux world in your videos where everything is peachy. That's up to you. But in the end, you are damaging Linux because you are raising expectations that reality cannot fulfill and due to a lack of feedback and pressure, Linux cannot develop in the direction we want it to. On the other hand, videos that put their finger in the many wounds are much more effective for this purpose.
Controllers are not the only thing that work better out the box in Linux. Printers, webcams, pretty much every peripheral works better on Linux (in my limited experience) except when they need companion software to work to their fullest.
I dual boot Windows 11 and Fedora. Funnily enough my Xbox X controller issue is swapped. Connects every time easily on Windows. Needs a repair every time on Linux. Also, that program you mentioned is for like remapping buttons and stuff. Windows DEFINITILY DOES have native out of the box support for my Xbox AND ps5 controller with no additional apps. Also also, why would you mention chat apps as an advantage to Linux, then talk about how Discord doesn't even support screen sharing lmao? That's the only reason I use Windows to play The Forest 2 and Portal 2. Me and my friend share each others screens while playing and keep it up on a second monitor for better communication/awareness in team situations.
Best way to start out on Linux is either a spare hard drive you can swap out of your PC or after upgrading to a new PC using the old PC as a test bed to install Linux and try gaming on. That's how I started out and was able to work out my issues with my old gaming PC so when Windows 11 rolled around I was able to go all in with Linux. Your mileage will vary with hardware/software obviously.
Great Video! I made the switch to game on linux 3 years ago. Linus posted a video about how a recent Windows update, was caught deleting peoples files. Out of curioisity I went to my music folder, and saw that some of my albums were missing songs. That was the final nail in the coffin. I made the jump to linux, and havent looked back. I started with PopOS, and then worked my way through to arch and fedora and back. I have tried many different Distros and Desktop Enviroments. For some reason I always fall back to PopOS. I like to think of Linux as the next step in the enthusiast aspect of PC gaming. So far all the games I enjoy work well. I hope more people give it a try.
It is more than what Steam reports. I was in the process of leaving Windows when the Steam hardware survey came up while I was on Windows 10. Less than a month later, I was deleting Windows completely. I run Nobara Linux, run by the guy called Glorious Eggroll... Proton GE 8-11, etc are made by him.
well i see the main problem is still "you have to look up how to install this and that". Hopefully someday, if ever, things will just just be "click and install" on linux, until then i will just be very interested in linux (15 years and counting), but never quite worth the switch.
I feel the same way. I've had the intention of migrating for over 10 years, but I don't do it for the same reasons as always: wasting time configuring things, hardware compatibility, office software, and the dishonest and toxic Linux community.
@@jmdb7895 Yeah, i still try different distros every year or two, and it never changes, downloading packages, typing in terminal to configure stuff, google every command to type in terminal, something doesn't work must go back to google and waste time finding out why and how to fix etc.... still the same as always sadly.
League of Legends works in Linux. Lutris has an install script for it which worked for me. There's also an AUR package if you're on Arch Linux which also works.
The largest thing holding me back from a full switch to linux is discord screen sharing with audio, My group of friends screenshare everything and they can't hear what I'm streaming and I cannot go without it.
For me gaming is secondary and Linux still has a ways to go. On one hand it's somewhat a non issue as I have apps I need to work with that don't work on Linux and some other deal breaking issues on my main workstation but my 'not work' machines all run Linux with varying levels of success for gaming. On the other hand the fact that Linux as a desktop for gaming has come along this far relatively quickly is a great thing. There are still a lot of games that for various reasons don't work (anticheat being the big one as mentioned) which bottom line still makes Windows the superior gaming OS regardless of how well the games that do work work. You don't need to install an app for controllers to work on windows, the app you link is for remapping keys and saving profiles, not getting a controller to work. While I happily use Linux it's not honest to call it the better OS for gaming. As with anything it *may* be better for you based on what games you play but objectively windows is still the better OS for gaming. There is also the matter of a lot of 'gaming' hardware not being supported under Linux. That's not to say it wont work, but working 100% might be another matter. Flight sticks are a big one in this category. Likely they will work but if they have windows software for things like mapping keys/macros/what have you good luck and last I checked most 'gaming' mice also had this problem with programmable buttons. Some keyboards have this problem. Easy enough to buy supported hardware if you are already a Linux user but a potential gotcha for someone coming from windows and worth mentioning.
I have seen a marked improvement over the passed 4 years I've been using Linux. The few games that don't play well with Linux I play on my PS5, Destiny 2 being a prime example. Otherwise most of the games I play on PC have worked fairly well.
Got talked into switching to Linux by the Arch Tryhards in my class about a year ago, I have been falling deeper and deeper into the openSUSE rabbit hole ever since
I'm still surprised at the amount of titles that don't have a native Linux port. I can understand for older titles, but I switched to Linux years ago mainly because I wanted to use an old laptop for portable coding. If you just want to sit down and code, Linux is an absolute pleasure.
I was in the same boat as you. I really couldn't understand. But they talked about it on the land show a couple weeks ago and Linus pointed out that, I think it was either ea, or maybe Ubisoft. Something like that, was saying that 80% of reported issues were from Linux desktop users. While at the same time Linux users accounted for only 1% of their total sales. So you have these developers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on development to fix bugs for a group of people that made them only a few hundred dollars in sales. So from that perspective, I can totally see why there aren't more Linux ports for games. I'm not saying I like it, or think that it's right, but I do at least understand it now.
@@user-mt4zr5kp7h It is difficult to determine whether the statement you made is accurate without additional context and data to support your claim. However, it is worth noting that the number of reported issues does not necessarily reflect the severity or frequency of issues. I believe Linux users are just more likely to report and document bugs, which could be due to the nature of the open-source community, where users are encouraged to contribute to the development and improvement of software. This culture could result in more reports of issues and feedback from Linux users, which is generally beneficial for software development.
Most of the games I play run effortlessly on Linux. The only one that doesn't *is* unfortunately keeping me from fully switching over. Still, I have hope that one day it'll run fine and I'll finally be able to ditch Windows completely.
I switched to ubuntu and the experience was horrible, I couldn't even download steam and everything else kept crashing. Windows 10 is so much better, I just can't find any reason to switch to that extremely horrible distro or any linux distro in general.
@@dongct2504 I'm sorry to hear that. I think you should give Linux another chance by trying another distribution, but maybe do a little more research beforehand to see if it's compatible with your hardware.
I built my own pc last September and planned to use Arch long before I started ordering the parts so i chose hardware that would cause the least amount of issues; a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and a Radeon 6700 XT. Setting up Arch + Kde was a pain but as a developer it's nothing I'm not used to. I prefer immersive single player games, so anti-cheat was never a concern for me and my gaming experience with Linux has been stellar so far. However new releases are an issue, for example I had pre-ordered the Dead Space remake and tried to play it at launch day but the game would always get stuck at the EA logo. I had to wait another week for a proton update that fixed this issue. On the other hand, the RE 4 remake worked with no issues at launch date
Bluetooth devices in general work WAY better on Linux. I have my wireless headphones paired to my PC and laptop and all I have to do to switch between them is click on the headphone in the bluetooth dropdown, it automatically switches.
gaming on windows is better for the amount of games it can easily run without the need of third party apps and since games native to windows works better achieving higher frame rate than linux but this only works if the game isnt native to linux if yes then it wouldnt matter that much and the amount of problems with the games since they were never meant to run on linux its gonna crash and its not gonna work very well
5:35 My experience with any periphery on windows including wireless controllers was always flawless - it was as simple as plug and play, every time. With linux I cant even get consistent refresh rate on my monitor, let alone controllers - they never worked
Nice video! It really pisses me off that companies try to close everything just because people are trying to run games on Linux. If they are worried with hacking then I'm pretty sure most of the Linux users that want to play their games won't even try to hack anything, and hacking can also be done in both platforms. Locking it down just don't solve it.
People will try to hack either way sadly. The only thing that might become a problem is Anti-Cheat and custom versions of Proton for example. Some who used Proton-GE got allegidly banned due to the Anti-Cheat thinking it messed with the system.
@@MichaelNROH I really wonder what's under the hood on these Anti-Cheat systems. Weird how people get banned just because of a super slight modification on their operating systems
If your favorite games doesn't run under Linux, you're in for dual boot. And that's exactly what I don't want. But it is amazing how many games are already running flawlessly under Linux.
As someone with unsupported games AND nvidia prime, gaming on linux for me is really painful sometimes, but a lot of games work really really well and for everything but gaming, linux is clearly superior by a long shot
I've mentioned it before, but I get MUCH better performance in linux for a lot of games. On windows I have to set my apex legends presets on medium-high to get good but not amazing performance. (as in, it's good enough for me to not give a shit, I'm not some frame-perfect purist who wants 240fps constantly and will write a 6 page essay to the president himself if my computer DARES to give me 239) On Linux though I can set every single setting to maximum and, once the shaders have compiled and it's stopped stuttering, the game itself reaches the "so responsive and smooth that it genuinely feels weird" level of performance. It might be placebo since, frankly minecraft's performance can feel like witchcraft at some times, but I also feel like I get MUCH better minecraft performance on linux as well. (heavily modded obviously, even a toaster can run vanilla)
I feel like due to Proton, the bottlenecks might shift a bit from CPU to GPU and vice versa, which results in a different feel. But yes, some games can perform better, especially if they already use Vulkan (or sometimes even OpenGL).
I've been wanting to switch for years, but the gaming thing always held me back. I've got it on dual boot, but as you said it's a huge hassle, so time to go research some distros!
league of legends runs fine in my linux, i just looked the subreddit about running lol in linux and they showed me, i just created a bottles with the especific wine version and it's working almost perfectly
@@ransacked they've explicitly said they're NOT switching to vanguard, because a decent percentage of users are on linux. also, it's just not needed for lol, i've never even seen a cheater.
Additionally note: using bottles and installing steam,epic,etc then and running games through that bottle is also a pretty safe bet and can help with mod support for those who like nexus mods/vortex, moddb, etc.
For me, I don't have a Vulcan compatible video card (too old). So compatibility even in games that should work is really an issue. Also, yea, the anticheat problems still have some way to go. But I find it great that it improve, especially recently (even if I wouldn't call it ready yet). Also, some games that can run still require heavy tweaking (even if they don't require it on Windows) and for some people (me included) that can still be too much. (when I want/can to play, I don't want to waste my gaming time tweaking)
I've heard a lot of people say games need tweaking, but I haven't actually ever needed to tweak anything. Proton has game-specific optimizations so, if the community finds that a specific game needs X Y or Z tweak, the next version of proton will probably already have that tweak integrated into it for that game. Even ignoring that though, the most involved "tweaks" I've even seen have been copying a single command to the steam launch properties window. That is, unless you're talking about doing some more involved stuff like installing a game manually inside of lutris or something. Even then though, once you know what to do even doing that isn't that complicated, it's mostly just hard to learn what all the terms mean initially. Took me a good week or two before I really understood what the hell a "prefix" was. After you learn those terms though it's remarkably simple to do and, again, this is when you're trying to manually install a game inside of a custom lutris environment so it's the upper-end of tweaking here.
@@robonator2945 I was more referring to what you put in the second paragraph. Because even if I can do it, it does take time and effort that I could pass gaming using windows instead. But even the first one (pasting a launch parameter in steam) can be considered too much by some people, because you have to search the tweak in the first place. (and that without counting information that don't apply to your rig (or missing info for that matter)).
@@ascrassin All tweaks you could need are already given in protondb you don't have to find them anymore than than a 1-2 minute check, (and, again, of those, most of those tweaks aren't even necessary anymore, I've only found a single game thus far which needed any tweak at all) and, again, the second paragraph is something I've only done a handful of time for a few games that I legally aquired. cough cough. I spent far more time trying to figure out what was causing Apex Legends to shit itself on windows than I did clicking "play" on linux and having it run flawlessly. The "tweaking" argument is something I really only hear either non-linux users, or more generally fence-sitters taking about. People generally don't like to offer unilateral praise, least of all for something they don't actually even use themselves, so they tend to supplement it with a negative that passes a first-hear-check just to even it out. But, again, I have had to tweak a SINGLE game and that tweak took under a minute to find and apply. And this isn't even remotely for a lack of looking, I've played games exactly like I was on windows* Here are a list of games which I've played and not had to tweak even once Apex Legends Shatterline Crysis 3 (ran better than on windows actually, on windows there is an nvidia bug that causes it to be screwy) Crysis 1 Remastered Titanfall 1 Titanfall 2 Planetside 2 Icarus Space Engineers Starbase Stationeers and a hell of a lot more. Now, if you have a particularly esoteric setup, then you can run into a few issues, but if your someone you can afford the latest and greatest, I'd wager you spend enough time playing games that you could concede 1-10 minutes to get even better and more stable performance and die happy. A lot of people mention that you need to tweak, but the only tweaking I have actually done aside from the sub-minute fix I mentioned previously was me taking a bit to test out Vkbasalt, and entirely optional post processing plugin thing. I simply have not encountered anything which would lend credibility to the argument that linux needs more tweaking. If anything, I spend far MORE time tweaking games in windows because the performance is so much less stable and janky I need to spend time in the settings window to figure out what works best. Maybe I have some magic hardware combination or something but I just plain haven't had to tweak shit on linux. *(except for two games, Paladins and Lemnis Gate, both of which are only unplayable due to developer ineptitude/laziness. Paladins literally is proton compatible, they just disabled it's compatibility and are trying to blame proton for it... the proton which didn't change mind you, you can test with the same version of proton that ran the game fine before and it won't work. As for lemnis gate the developers stopped caring about Lemnis Gate so much it's dying this year.)
Do you really believe that Microsoft will someday "lock out" third-party stores? Valve freaked out about Microsoft Store about a decade ago, but Steam and other stores have thrived on Windows during that decade. Besides, if you're looking to move away from vendors whose fortunes are tied to their stores, the Deck isn't exactly a move in the right direction 😁 Also, I think it's incorrect to say that most games are supported on Linux. They may happen to WORK - to some degree, at the moment - but that's not the same thing as actual support. On the other hand, I do think the Deck's success will expand actual Linux support from ISVs, at least on the Deck and future compatible devices.
Microsoft won't lock out third party app stores, but will essentially make it way more annoying to get them. They are already advertising Edge on every other browsers website, if you use it to download it. They will continue to do so, until people get too annoyed and slowly use Edge more often. It's a good corporate descision, but just annoying, that's all
Stream games on steam os, a great experience. Veer off that path and it's a frustrating nightmare. Reminiscent of the very early days if PC gaming with the constant fiddling and tweaking. I used to enjoy it tbh but I've grown accustomed to hassle free gaming and I have a lot less free time for tinkering as we all do as we get old and burdened with responsibilities.
Back around 1995 you had to enter many settings to start a newly installed game on Windows ! On Blood you had to set sound settings and other settings. Very strange compared to today.
My hope is that the numbers will just continue increasing to the point where anti-cheat stuff like Battleye is a given for Linux and the need for dual booting becomes a thing of the past.
I have some questions: What are the distros you consider better for gaming? Also, what are the issues (besides anti-cheat Engine), that you may face while trying to gaming on Linux, and how to fix/overcome these issues? I'm honestly inclined to swap my OS for 3 main reasons: 1) Linux being way lighter to run than Windows, which saves some memory RAM in case it's needed 2) The security is way better; and even so, it still runs lighter. 3) They don't push u the necessity of updating to a new version, like Windows does. So, I would like yer people to lift my doubts, so I consider whether it's worthy for me to migrate or not. I also would like to know if I need to configurate some stuff to ACTUALLY have a strong security, since I'm too new to the world of Linux and barely know anything. 😅 I also tend to run games from Epic Store and Steam, in case this is of any relevance
Most of possible issues come from hardware. Pop OS/Mint should have most of it working out of the box, but I can't speak for all combinations. They use semi-annual release scheme, so you got releases in April and in October. April releases of even-numbered years are LTS (long term support) releases, being supported for 5 years iirc. I am quite lucky it seems, as nothing I use caused me issues (I am on Arch, but I would not recommend it to new users, and it's rolling release, so no "releases" but updates come often). Also I don't know about availability of peripherals "control centers". Mangohud is really good (and there's GOverlay to configure it), Lutris should have no issues running the Epic games and steam is, well, steam. Archlinux wiki is one of the best sources of information, but you should still check wiki of your distro as file locations or default settings may be different. Baseline security worked well for me, so I can't say much about any changes to it. Afaiu on Windows one of main attack vectors is untrusted executables and files you don't expect to be executable being executable. Regarding first, you can trust official repositories of distro and packages outside official repositories often provide hash you can verify. Regarding second, executable flag is by default not set and does not depend on filename (extension), don't know how embedded executables work, so can't say much, but I would assume code inside is windows-specific
When Gaming on Linux, you shouldn't look into super stable distros like Debian or LTS releases (those are marked as such). The reasoning behind this is the frequency of updates that potentially improve driver and game compatibility. Speaking of, game compatibility is something that heavily depends on the games you play. As of right now, very recent games that run with DirectX12 might perform worse than on Windows, if your hardware is pretty old (like the GTX10 and RX500 series). The rest runs mostly fine, though it often depends if they have third party launchers that play nice. Genshin Impact was a game that wouldn't play at all for quite some time. Security wise, Linux is more secure because there is less malware around for it's architecture, but you still need to update your packages from time to time. But it is still way more faster than Windows since you don't install one massive one that is way overdue.
You'll get a better answer to this if you provide us with information about your hardware... but as a basic if you have NVIDIA then PopOS, if you have AMD Fedora. As for security stick with distro's that are popular and have some kind of corporate backing. To ensure your system is kept secure keep it up to date, that's all you have to do ( and stay away from web download apps that require root/admin rights to install ).
Thanks yer all for the answers man. It's good enough already to know that u don't need to configure security so it's a safer environment, cause honestly I think it'd be a pain to learn it. Regarding hardware, I actually only run a APU for now (Vega 7), but my original intention is to buy either a 20 or 30 series, or even the new Intel graphs board, which looks very interesting (though I do assume that I'd probably run into incompatibility issues, since it's a new hardware and also probably new architecture too. Aanyway, I browsed RUclips a little more after commenting here, and it seems that Nobara, a derivative from Fedora, is indeed a great choice for newcomer gamers, since they already solve driver issues on the original kernel itself... So as soon as I get an extra m2, I think I'll give it a shot
Thank you. Been waiting to finally get rid of Windows for good but I also play destiny 😁. I'm checking out Nobara, Fedora 37, Garuda and Endeavor this weekend to decide
I personally use Nobara with KDE Plasma, which has a look similar to windows and I love it, would definitly recommend. Haven't tried the other one's so I don't have a comparsion, but what I use works great.
VMs are user friendly enough, you really just need to follow a RUclips guide. though, if you want gpu acceleration in the VM you'll either need to disable your host desktop environment while using the vm or get a second gpu
I always give linux gaming a try every year and i work with linux in my job, but unfortunately i would not recommend linux even for general use, i think the linux community seems to give the impression that linux just works, but that's not the case, in reality you're gonna spend alot of time tinkering, i think that saying linux has adventages over windows in gaming or emulation is just wrong, linux has no adventage at all, windows is just better that's being said i do think linux has adventages in other fields but gaming and emulation is not one of them, in the end i do still invite people to try linux i think it's an interesting experience but keep your windows partition and don't dive under the impression that linux will just works.
For the most casual use, Linux Mint is probably better than Windows. There are fewer hoops to jump through and things to install to get it in a good spot for an elderly relative to use, at least. Casual users are just using a web browser for everything nowadays, lol.
I would agree with you to certain degree, yes linux is better at managing resources and it is lighter, but the problem is you're assuming that a casual user will only use his computer for casual use, in my opinion even if you're a casual you're bound to do something not casual and the chance of what you want will not just work on linux is higher than windows.
@@arajin2523 Maybe, but I'm not really convinced. For the casual users that I'm thinking of, once they're doing non-casual things, they're calling tech support (i.e. me) and then I have to get involved anyway. In those cases, I think the odds of doing something stupid are higher with Windows (e.g. downloading a random EXE to do a thing, compared to searching the software manager to find an application). So far I haven't had a problem with casual one-off things as I get settled in with Linux Mint. E.g. copying files from my phone to my PC (basically identical to Windows 10), or burning a music CD (hit up Software Manager, found K3b, which was easy to use). It might be different from what a veteran Windows user would want to do, but for a casual with no experience, the difference doesn't matter. The performance and lightness isn't even a consideration, really. The casual user just wants to do the thing, and odds are good that Linux Mint can do the thing out of the box or with an app that's a few clicks and keystrokes away. Edit: actually, now that I think about it, nearly all of my parent tech support calls lately have been related to Windows annoyances, like Windows Update popups (one of which got my dad to update to 11, which he dislikes, lol) or emails from Microsoft (real or alleged) that he didn't understand. Needing to do new things is basically a non-issue because everything is happening in a web browser nowadays.
@@ordinaryhuman5645 Yeah i do agree with what you said, but i was talking about something more general, you can't predict what you will do in the future, for example i have a friend who does not play games at all, he uses his desktop for writing documents and browsing web, one day he just wanted to play world of warcraft for nostalgia, and in my environment we don't have something called tech support so people use youtube or call their friends, and as someone who get called a lot i find it easier to guide people on windows than linux. In the end i do think what you said is valid too.
Linux is simply amazing. It really pains me to see that most developers have not even considered it or outright refused when it would not even be that difficult.
been using arch linux for over a year now. gaming works better than it did on windows, apart from a few games that refuse to run because of the anticheat.
At least for me, your take about trying Linux, if you only use your PC casually, is kind of weird. From my experience, productivity is where Linux shines in particular. Even outshines Windows, for software development and document creation, with professional tools, like LaTeX. While gaming is still very much hit or miss on Linux, even for games that should be compatible.
The only gaming miss I've had on Linux has been Elden Ring, which generally works... except for sporadic crashes (which also happens on Windows, judging by Steam forum posts). Otherwise everything else has been a hit. Guild Wars ran better with Wine than it did on Windows 10 regarding skill template saving/loading. Diablo 2 also ran better with Wine than it did on Windows 10, which required extra work to get running.
The problem is, that "productive" can also mean niche. And operating in a niche is not always that simple, since the amount of software is typically lower
@D Reaper I feel like we must be from different realities or something. Less than Half of my Steam library works on Linux, and an absurdly small number of my niche games work on Linux (at most 5%). Meanwhile, all but a few of my games (including both old and niche games) still run fine on Windows 10, and require a fraction the amount of effort to get working. Don't get me wrong, gaming on Linux has come a long way in the past few years (pretty much exclusively thanks to Valve), but it's still fairly lackluster in my experience.
Nice content. I wish more would highlight the largest elephant in the room, the cost factor. Linux is completely free and open source. So entry into a linux platform is less cost.
@Michael Horn everything is free after you buy it. LOL I may be confused with what you're saying. It's my understanding that Windows is still $139 at least unless you get it from school or something (which can cost far more). I understand there are ways to aquire it, some legal, some not, but the normal buyer cost is about $140 and up. If you buy a system with it preloaded, it is figured into the price. Trust me that they are not giving it to you for free. Linux is free to 99% of the user base. When talking about the average budget gamer putting together a gaming system between 500 and 1200 bucks, that is a big percentage.
@@thomaslange2262 Modern Windows operating systems are free, to my knowledge, with the option to pay to register the OS. As far as I'm aware, I think that you're locked out of a customization option or two, and it's labeled as unregistered in the lower right of your desktop, or something. So yes, Windows is free to use. You may have to deal with it being labeled as unregistered, but otherwise, I'm pretty sure it's completely functional for browsing, gaming, and pretty much everything else.
about that "Xbox Accessories", controller support comes with windows. You only need it if you want to configure/test your controller, or update xbox controller firmware, otherwise it's not necessary
The last two updates on Windows 11 made gaming a nightmare. Failure to launch and limiting fps? First time I went through and fixed all the things they turned off by default. The second time I removed Windows 11 I figured it would only get worse with each new update. Now happily playing on Linux Mint. Frame rates are back to normal and games launch.
Linux und deren Distributionen sind wunderbar und einzigartig, gab für mich persönlich noch nie einen Grund das effektiv zu nutzen. Wären meine Lieblingsspiele nativ unterstützt ohne großartigen Aufwand zu betreiben, würde ich auch auf lange Sicht wechseln. Wenn die Performance zusätzlich stimmt, in FPS Spielen essenziell, oder sogar ein %+ zu erwarten wäre, stehe dem nichts im weg und man könne Windows getrost den Rücken kehren. Schönes Video :)
I really love that if you want to install a game, lutris will do everything for you. Installs the launcher and all you have to do is login an that's all. Pro tip: if you have an HDD or SSD dedicated only for games, you should format it to Btrfs instead of EXT4 because it will use less space for wine prefixes.
@@Sharkia-1 On Wikipedia you can find what is it and why. TL:DR: - Why: It has a feature that if there are multiple files on disk, instead of writing every file, creates a "link" to the file, this way it will use much less space (eg. I copied GTA V 10 times without using space and all of them are acting as regular file). - How to do: A program like gnome-disks can be used to format a disk. (top right click three dots, Format Disk and at the step that requires to select a file system, select Btrfs and that's it). Disclaimer: Be careful when you are formatting disks, make sure you are reading correctly and understand what X or Y does. Good Luck!
I love linux but for gaming... no way. It leaves way to much on the table as far as performance. I don't understand why even complain that you need to install software for the controller. It is there for a reason and windows provides an unparalleled experience with sheer compability. Stuff just works. For all that Linux does great such as window mangement with I3 or bspwm, gaming is decent to good, but not amazing or even close to that level.
Great video Michael and I am going to try and run Blair Witch on PopOS I am having an issue with the video in OBS but everything else seems to be fine! I love your videos keep up the good work!
I honestly think dual boot is a great idea for those that want to play any online competitive games, but otherwise prefer Linux. It can be a bit finicky yes and I wish there were some better guides on full builds to make it more accessible, but it isn't that hard ultimately, especially on a desktop.
The problem with dual booting isn't setting it up, that is easy, the problem is that microsoft likes to delete GRUB without warning during some updates, and that will break your system so you can only log into windows at best, possibly neither OS
@@coopercummings8370 GRUB is crap anyway, use rEFInd instead. It's also best practice to have each OS on a separate drive to avoid conflicts like that.
My laptop works around 3-4 hours on windows when browsing While on Ubuntu, 6-8 h And they be saying "global warming" while half of users want to just browse or use office suite Sure, on Linux, if you want to do something more than web browsing, basic gaming, office, you need some tinkering, it takes time, and time for companies is money Also, if you have old, or not that powerful PC, and you mainly play Valve games, try Linux, f.e. on old office PC "HP 6305" with AMD A6, in CSGO, I got 30 FPS on windows, on Ubuntu I got 50-90 with Vulkan
Linux gaming is definitely getting better, but it's far from being as good as on Windows, mostly because of compatibility. I'm still having many issues running Blizzard games on Linux, I'm a Diablo fan so that's a big deal for me. But since I challenged myself to try and fix any problems I found, it's just a matter of patience and lots of learning.
6:34 Proclaiming 92% is "playable" an outright lie regarding ProtonDB stats. Here's what those numbers actually mean: 33% (Platinum) is "playable" with no additional qualifiers. 54% (Gold and Silver) can be made "playable" using a specific Proton version and/or Protontricks tweak(s), with Silver additionally having some minor Proton specific bugs. 11% (Bronze and Borked) are unplayable, with Bronze being "functional" to some degree but broken enough to not be "playable" and Borked being outright non-functional.
Linux Main since 2001 and my dependency on Windows shrank every year. Nowadays i use a Steam Deck as my main desktop with Arch installed, didn't like that SteamOS overwrites any changes to the root file system on every update, and i am happy with my low power battlestation. Especially with German energy prices right now having a setup with two screens and some other shenanigans that eats up to around 40 watts makes me a happy kitty. My previous setup, a Ryzen 5 1600, could go up to 350 watts and idle at 100 watts.
I've been on and offing with Linux for a few years - and I came from a Mac background, which despite my love of cRPGs (which reward strong processors it seems) - didn't easily scratch that itch once Divinity II hit... I've had problems, lots of problems, I've learned lots of Linux stuff... lots... of... terminal... In the last 6 months or so, something changed. Everything just started working way better than before. Even rolling release Linux distros... I used to get corrupted drivers, or inappropriate updates. Not now. I have a Windows 11 PC... I built it to game. It has my best components. I game on a Mac Pro 5,1, very upgraded, with Pop OS, very customized. I also run a CRT, slightly overclocked, with this system. Almost exclusively now I game here. It's that good. My Titan Black isn't my main rigs RX 6600, but it's just... a better experience between Linux and the outdated tech that I was able to fully use in a modern sense. My more powerful desktop system now checks my E-Mail and watches You-Tube videos.
The thing is, that I've had similar issues when I was still on Debian or my beginnings on Fedora, but as it turns out, less is more. Besides for some videos, I didn't use bash for more than half a year now.
So thankful for the Steam Deck! It made me have enough courage to move my gaming desktop from Windows 11 to Pop!_OS. Glad to be a part of this growing community!
Pop OS is great!
@@gospodnchovek why?
Nice one Cruzzi! I moved from console to PC after the steam deck came out.
ill probably end up switching if I switch to an amd gpu or once more anti cheat games run
@@gospodnchovek why lmao?
If publishers enabled their anticheats for Linux, I'd be switching over permanently. It's the main thing keeping me on windows.
Same here!
Oh yeah.
Frankly I kinda wish EAC and others just sorta enabled it. There isn't any reason for a developer not to enable compatibility other than laziness or malice. A lot of developers turn an intentionally blind eye to switching it on just because they don't know better and don't want to bother so even by making it opt-out rather than mandatory you'd expose developers since they couldn't hide behind "not hearing about it" or some such.
I know of someone on the steam forums who apparently contacted Paladins support directly about them breaking their EAC compatibility and they blamed proton. Yes, they blamed the compatibility layer which hadn't changed (you could test on the same version) for why their EAC was now broken despite working previously. And it IS an EAC issue since you can play in the training room flawlessly.
A lot of devs hide behind ignorance when it comes to linux compatibility and I'm really sick of it. If you don't want linux compatibility come out and say it, then get mocked for it because there isn't any reason to avoid linux compatibility. Hiding behind ignorance is just taking advantage of people's generosity in giving benefit of the doubt. Now, to be clear, there are cases where the incompatibility is legitimate, like having customized the anti-cheat engine, the game itself not being compatible, etc. but those aren't what I'm referring to. I'm referring to games which could play just bloody fine through proton, but don't because the developers CHOOSE to not let them.
@@robonator2945 I'd say it has more to do with EAC running in user space on Linux rather than at Kernel level on Windows. They don't like the idea they can't take over your entire OS.
@@robonator2945 at least it works for starcraft 2 so I'm all good, I don't play other online games.
What surprised me was how well an aging card still works in Linux. I’m running an i7-2600/HD 6870 1GB classic gaming system that I dual boot with XP and Pop. StarCraft II runs in Pop amazingly well - wine3D drivers and Proton have come such a long way, even without being able to use any Vulkan features.
My mom has a 2012 MacBook Pro with a 3rd gen i5 and integrated graphics (Not sure which off the bat). What's awesome is that under Linux, this iGPU works natively with Vulkan under Linux, yet there is no support under Windows or MacOS.
I have a similar config.
I knew about PS and Nintendo controllers working better out of the box on Linux. I was not expecting Microsoft's own controller to have the same behavior.
Me neither.
When I played Ori on Windows once, it took me around 40 min. to get the controller running.
I wasted almost 20 minutes, because I didn't know that Microsoft doesn't include support on fresh installations anymore
it doesn't
It's crazy, I used to run like 2 programs to use controllers on windows, but on Linux it's plug n play
I just wish it were simple to flip A and B/X and Y buttons on non-steam games for the Nintendo controller :/
@@AhmedMohammed23 It does, you can connect with Bluetooth or cable
This is true, everything is easier and works better now since a year ago that I started to use linux on my gaming PC. You still have to tweak stuff and troubleshoot to get stuff running but it is getting so much better
Linux had a chicken and egg problem for years - nobody developed support for Linux because nobody played games on Linux, and nobody played games on Linux because the support for it was such absolute garbage. Valve single-handedly changed that with Steam Proton and the Steam Deck, creating both Linux support and a sizeable userbase that would demand further Linux support - which is now driving more people to adopt Linux, and thus encouraging more developers to support Linux.
@@arthurwintersight7868 That's the benefit of not having investors breathing down your neck and actually being able to invest in things that will only pay off 10-20 years from now.
@@seeibe And Valve knows that they can get a lot of money with more independent solutions.
linux actually lets you fix your own bugs too, hell the command line if you keep a terminal open tells you any errors, i know next to nothing about linux but i can read and use google damn it! works fine only thing i cant set up is openrgb it hates my mobo
Linux gaming has been improving by leaps and bounds in the last several years, and it makes me really happy. I hope that the experience will be completely on par with Windows by the end of the decade.
Given the fact of how much support Linux takes lately, if it takes it until end of the decade, it will not even be an impressive task.
@@dreaper5813 how is linux better gaming platform when there is issues with nvidia drivers and game compatibility issues
Yeah I believe in the end of the decade most people like me who are still on Windows due to praticity will migrate to Linux.
Switched my main gaming system to Linux 6 years ago and it gets better every year.
Stayed on Windows. Gaming is as good as ever, still better than Linux.
@@eklipsegirl This message comes to you since you are acustomed to ads everywhere on you OS. no other reason than just making you feel at home. with ads, even tough this is not an real ad. Just to make you feel right at home...since you know Windows has alot of ads and bloat installed for the get go...so this is here to make you feel right at home....
@@Ormgryd WTF did I just read? I would get a notification about your comment on Linux as well, depending on my settings. And I don't get ads on Windows, maybe because I don't have a virus installed.
Been on linux for 2 years now as my main driver. Got tired of Windows, especially with 11, as it became nothing but bloat, ads, and instability central. (Not to mention my disagreement with their new TPM requirement. But thats another story)
It was a rocky start on Linux, but thats mostly because I was unfamiliar with the environtment. After you take time to learn something that you aren't used to, it becomes easy over time. Most people have negative impressions of Linux because they think you need a genious IQ to run, when all it really is, is that you are unfamiliar with it. I run most of my games perfectly on Linux, I think there are maybe 2 games in my library I "NEED" Windows for. And I hope in due time with the coming of the Steam deck, that those games will be compatible too.
@@eklipsegirl You have ads on windows, it's built-in. But yes, the comment was to make you feel at home, it's bloat :D
The thing that really convinced me was that I managed to get Fallout New Vegas with a lot of mods to work properly on Linux. I saw it as a bit of a challenge for both myself and the system. Knowing New Vegas sometimes doesn't even want to run on some Windows releases and how buggy and finicky it can be. On Linux Mint 21 it was a bit of a pain doing it the first time but I got it and Mod Organizer 2 to work. After upgrading to Mint 21.1 and doing a fresh install it all worked out of the box. It's probably not the most impressive game to get running to show off the power of Linux but I'm running it on my laptop I use for uni that has integrated graphics. I think it shows the level of compatibility with Windows software is rather good.
It's not the most impressive game to showcase the abilities of Linux gaming, but it sure is a good game to showcase your exquisite tastes in gaming !
Did you install your mod library from MO2 or NMM:CE within the Proton instance? Manually or preloaded from Windows? Even Skyrim will run fine on Linux if you precompile your order in Windows, but last time I tried making the switch in 2022 I couldn't get MO2, NMM:CE, or even Vortex working, let alone any of the tools like FNIS and xEdit. SCK ran somewhat happily other than some insescent flickering before you load a cell though.
@@KiraSlith I did everything on manually on Linux. There is an issue that apparently also happens on windows where I need to have MO2 closed when I start the mod download otherwise it starts complaining that there is an instance of MO2 already running. So I can only install one mod at a time. I hadn't tried Skyrim yet but I think it would be a nice experiment. If you got any other questions I'd love to try and look into it.
@@kenansabic2901 "Manual" in this context would mean you were setting up the mods without a mod organizer.
Also, I remember that bug, that was fixed all the way back in 2018 on Windows. If it's still doing that, the cause isn't likely to be MO2.
@@KiraSlith Ohh you meant without MO2. Yeah I installed most things with it.
Correct video! And an other intresting point is the ram usage. The OS RAM usage under Windows is around 3-3.5GB, while it is usually less than 1GB on a Linux distro. So by running Linux, you will have more free ram for your game. And that +2GB can be verry important for memory hungry titles like Cities Skylines.
In these days, I only use Windows for a specific cad software that not fully working with wine. I do everything else on Linux.
RAM usage is a tricky thing, but yeah, most are just less demanding
RAM usage is mostly a non issue on a modern system that is going to be used for gaming. While there are a few games that it might matter for memory is so cheap in comparison that it's always easier to have 'enough' memory in the first place.
@@nadtz Star Citizen would be a great example. Upgraded to 32 GB, still 100% usage 😅
@@MichaelNROH Star Citizen is the ultimate outlier for a number of issues for gaming on a modern PC. AFAIK it's the only game that can actually take advantage of more than 32gb memory and that a pagefile is often recommended for.
How do you have a setup where you use only a single software on windows and game on linux? Do you have 2 computers or dual boot?
Excellent video Mr. Horn. Being new to Linux, it seems like whenever I search for answers to questions that are important to me, one of your videos pops up at the top of my list. I really appreciate all the work you put into this, as it's helping me a lot. Thank you kindly.
I switched to Linux 2 years ago and i 've never had a single moment where i had regret doing it
So glad to see lot of people jumping into linux after trying the steam deck, it's impressive how much gaming on linux has changed, tried to use linux to play aside of work for so many times throughout the years with no luck, it was not ready, but now I can use Linux as my primary OS with no problems at all. I use EndeavourOS with an AMD gpu and everything runs perfectly fine and smooth as butter.
Can't share how great it feels to finally be able to use your favourite OS as the main one and windows just for few special things
I don't understand. If all my games work perfectly on Windows, if I can use Office for Windows (or any free alternative) on Windows, and if, in general, I can do anything on Windows without wasting my time on configurations, why should I migrate to Linux? In fact, why should anyone migrate to Linux?
I've been drawn to Linux for years because of its philosophy and the customization it offers, but when I see that I have to invest time to do things that I can do immediately on Windows, I lose interest. It seems like Linux is an operating system designed for those who love to constantly invest time in configuring their computer and not for those who want a computer to achieve other things.
This is the same way I feel for linux, but I still use it anyway lol, I guess curiosity is literally my only point.
it takes a bit of effort but everything works smoother. It's basically whether you want to be rewarded for that effort or you can't be bothered and don't mind having bloatware eating up 30% of your ram.
I am really glad that gaming on Linux is getting much better than it was 4 years ago. Especially since many gaming PCs at our home can't be upgraded to Windows 11, and that will cause an issue once Windows 10 support ends.
That's my plan. Ride W10 till Linux can run the games I want as I'm used to them.
I recently built a PC, it's not an extremely strong PC, but it's definitely not weak. Ryzen 5 4600g, RX 6600, 16 GB of Ram, anyway… The difference in performance in games playing on Windows 11 and Linux (Manjaro) is incredible. I was playing Hogwarts Legacy and felt constant lags and fps drops on Windows. On Linux, performance improved significantly, FPS went from 55~60 on Windows to 70~80 on Manjaro.
I’ve been toying with Linux more and more, it’s on my laptop now. My Windows workstation is for Game Development and Gaming. If both of those things can be done consistently on Linux, I’d be inclined to switch. I’ve tried a ton of Distros, but I really love Fedora and Gnome.
If you love Fedora and Gnome you should check out Nobara project. It's exactly that with gaming optimizations applied to the kernel. The default distro has a modified Gnome DE, but there are options for stock Gnome and a KDE version as well. It's from the guy who maintains Proton GE.
@@Kashim_o I actually use Nobara 😉 I said Fedora because that’s what Nobara is based on haha. It’s a nice distro. A little buggy in some areas since it’s a hobby distro, but for Linux gaming it’s great.
I use Ubuntu myself when I use linux, I love gnome but dunno what it is I can't get on with Fedora
@BainWrangler That’s what I use 😋 I said Fedora bc Nobara is just tweaked/patched Fedora haha
@@Zillawill I had the same issue. Used Nobara, had issues with the Fedora base, so I switched to PikaOS. Its essesiantly Nobara but based on Ubuntu. Works way better compared to Nobara for what I do.
Disclaimer: I liked it so much, that I actually joined the team, so technically I'm advertising my own thing here, but just technically.
i switched to fedora over a year ago now. been daily driving it with no problem. just picked up a steam deck, honestly feel like the main reason i got it was because it ran linux. its pretty nice to be able to use my laptop to transfer files over easily lol.
also, honestly had no idea about switching to proton experimental on steam for fedora so thanks for the tip there lol. might be fun to see how they compare now.
Experimental has gotten so good that I don't even bother with Proton-GE anymore. Valve is doing a great job with deploying hotfixes for new (albeit half-broken launches recently) titles!
Its important to note that some competitive online games work well on Linux. TF2, CS:GO, and even Apex legends work on Linux. Also with all issues on Linux there is always a solution (Mutahar from someordinarygamers even manged to get valorent running under a VM). Even games like can be played on Linux (can personally confirm that it runs well).
That's been patched for along time. It was literally patched like 2 weeks after that video was made. Plus as an advocate for gpu passthru I don't recommend it anymore. More and more games are banning you for using it. Fortnite has recently joined that fray.
tf2 isn't really a "competitive" online game but it works perfectly on linux
Isn't gpu passthrough virtualization dead now? I heard the group responsible for making it happen dissolved or disbanded. sucks because when i get a more newer computer i'd love to have windows run as an "application" in a vm instead of on bare metal
@@slaetube I just setup a remote virtualized win10 machine on my homeserver (truenas scale) with gpu passthrough, using 'Sunshine' on the VM, and 'Moonlight' on my remote linux desktop to run (these can work on intel/nvidia/amd - linux and windows). Works like a charm no noticeable lag. For remote headless VM's you need a HDMI dummy plug to get it working properly.
@@slaetube dang i had a very stable experince till the end when selling my old pc, and i mean its one still quite widely use sw from the linux community too tho, mb not as much for gaming as proton nowdays, so it could be possible of such thing happening, hopefully not🤞.
The average gaming linux experience is to constantly convince yourself that its better than windows. All the bug fixes and lack of compatibility are so frustrating that you lie to yourself that linux is better.
I'll still maintain a windows based desktop for the foreseeable future despite gaming on my deck and work laptop (which is Linux) often, but I'm happy Linux is getting better in this department.
Thanks mate, another very helpful video. Glad I found your channel yesterday. Content made it easy to subscribe
Welcome aboard 😉
When I switched from W10 to Mint Xfce the performance actually improved in some games. That said, I got both AMD CPU & GPU, so I got the ideal hardware for linux.
It really does depend on which specific games you played, but most people will see just as many games perform better as they do games that perform worse. And generally the difference is less than 10% FPS
Oh my god I haven't used team speak in a decade and you showing me that gui brought back my wow days. I feel so old!
Happy to catch one of this videos so early! Been binging your content and it's been fun to watch along with my Linux journey. Much love!
If you like the concept of Steam Deck, you can get the experience on PC too, by using a custom SteamOS for desktop. It has same UI as Steam Deck and makes the PC a console. The current solution is HoloISO, a port of SteamOS until Valve releases the official desktop version. In fact Steam is serious about it because lately they have changed their "Big Picture" mode to use this new Steam Deck UI (called gamemode).
I switched from Windows to Linux several years ago, but I do still laugh when I hear how “hard” it is to install things on Windows and five seconds later the video talks about all the different packages you have to install to make a game (possibly) work on Linux. Trust me, the average Windows user does not see that as easier.
Word!
Its not easy at all, every single thing you do is a difficulty, for example I updated my Nvidia drivers, the system explained to me why I needed to Reboot and enter a password into the Bios, in order to install third party drivers. Ok no big deal right? So I re-started the system with that password written down, it gave me three options to choose from, I chose the one of the three convoluted options that looked the most like it will let me enter that password, the enter password cursor doesn't move as I type, I entered it anyway and let the system boot, I have no idea if it worked, and I get an authentication error of some sort on each boot. Is it related? Did I do it right? Who knows
As a long time Linux user the recent improvements made me a gamer again.
i dont want to use windows anymore, but trying to use linux seems like a pain in the ass
Competition is always good.
Although I'm not willing to make the change (I'm not a fan of Linux), it's really good to see Linux starting to make pressure on Windows (on games).
Its worth mentioning there are lots of games that run natively on linux without Steam or Proton. My top 3 lately are Factorio, Rimworld, and Starsector
My top native linux game is hollow knight.
Rimjobworld
Nobody knows that games lol
@@lussor1 you're a casual then
I have used Arch Linux as a daily driver for years. I have managed to solve all issues without any major tinkering and I have gotten all my games in my steam library (117) to work without issues, except for rust. I have had better performance in almost every single game. There are also way more native games than you may think! Linux is actually superior in every way to windows, and I recommend arch if you have used linux for a while since it really lets you customize your system. It's not the community that needs to adapt, it's the game developers and studios. For a lot of major titles it would barely even take a few days to get a native linux build. Also i forgot to mention that I have epic games working flawlessly through heroic games launcher, and roblox through grapejuice! It might seem intimidating to switch at first, but if you have someone to guide you then it's actually a massive upgrade!
You've produced a wonderful promotional video for Linux gaming. It's just too bad that others, such as LTT with their Linux Challenge, have shown what the current situation REALLY looks like.
The LTT videos are quite old now and a lot has changed since then in terms of compatibility and usability.
Especially Anti-Cheat is not as big a problem as it was back then. Don't get me wrong, many popular games still don't support it, but at the time they made the video, not even Apex was working yet
The videos are only 2 years old. How can the fundamental problems have changed in such a short time? Especially when parts of the "Linux community" are opposed to these changes.
From an external perspective, not much has changed.
Desktop Linux is still fragmented by an enormous number of distros. All with their own peculiarities, pitfalls and incompatibilities. And don't even get me started on the quality fluctuations in the documentation.
And there is still not even a standardized way to install apps. A problem that the commercial competition, ironically including Android, solved years ago.
So it's business as usual: in typical Linux fashion, everyone prefers to do their own thing.
This is great for the Linux nerds, who can thus fulfill and distinguish themselves, but bad for end users and developers of third-party software. And it is poison for acceptance in the mass market.
Of course, you can continue to paint a rosy Linux world in your videos where everything is peachy. That's up to you. But in the end, you are damaging Linux because you are raising expectations that reality cannot fulfill and due to a lack of feedback and pressure, Linux cannot develop in the direction we want it to.
On the other hand, videos that put their finger in the many wounds are much more effective for this purpose.
I switched to Linux mint this past year on all my devices. I don't regret it and have said goodbye to Windows forever I think.
Controllers are not the only thing that work better out the box in Linux. Printers, webcams, pretty much every peripheral works better on Linux (in my limited experience) except when they need companion software to work to their fullest.
I dual boot Windows 11 and Fedora. Funnily enough my Xbox X controller issue is swapped. Connects every time easily on Windows. Needs a repair every time on Linux.
Also, that program you mentioned is for like remapping buttons and stuff. Windows DEFINITILY DOES have native out of the box support for my Xbox AND ps5 controller with no additional apps.
Also also, why would you mention chat apps as an advantage to Linux, then talk about how Discord doesn't even support screen sharing lmao? That's the only reason I use Windows to play The Forest 2 and Portal 2. Me and my friend share each others screens while playing and keep it up on a second monitor for better communication/awareness in team situations.
Thanks to Valve now that developers finally take Linux gaming seriously
Best way to start out on Linux is either a spare hard drive you can swap out of your PC or after upgrading to a new PC using the old PC as a test bed to install Linux and try gaming on. That's how I started out and was able to work out my issues with my old gaming PC so when Windows 11 rolled around I was able to go all in with Linux. Your mileage will vary with hardware/software obviously.
Regarding TeamSpeak, Guilded works flawlessly and offer native Linux support
Great Video! I made the switch to game on linux 3 years ago. Linus posted a video about how a recent Windows update, was caught deleting peoples files. Out of curioisity I went to my music folder, and saw that some of my albums were missing songs. That was the final nail in the coffin. I made the jump to linux, and havent looked back. I started with PopOS, and then worked my way through to arch and fedora and back. I have tried many different Distros and Desktop Enviroments. For some reason I always fall back to PopOS. I like to think of Linux as the next step in the enthusiast aspect of PC gaming. So far all the games I enjoy work well. I hope more people give it a try.
It is more than what Steam reports. I was in the process of leaving Windows when the Steam hardware survey came up while I was on Windows 10. Less than a month later, I was deleting Windows completely. I run Nobara Linux, run by the guy called Glorious Eggroll... Proton GE 8-11, etc are made by him.
well i see the main problem is still "you have to look up how to install this and that".
Hopefully someday, if ever, things will just just be "click and install" on linux, until then i will just be very interested in linux (15 years and counting), but never quite worth the switch.
I'm not sure why you would think going to a graphical app store and clicking install is a "Problem" but whatever.
I feel the same way. I've had the intention of migrating for over 10 years, but I don't do it for the same reasons as always: wasting time configuring things, hardware compatibility, office software, and the dishonest and toxic Linux community.
@@jmdb7895 Yeah, i still try different distros every year or two, and it never changes, downloading packages, typing in terminal to configure stuff, google every command to type in terminal, something doesn't work must go back to google and waste time finding out why and how to fix etc.... still the same as always sadly.
League of Legends works in Linux. Lutris has an install script for it which worked for me. There's also an AUR package if you're on Arch Linux which also works.
Until all the games I want to play can be natively run on Linux it simply is not even a contender for gaming.
I think that's a fair demand.
The largest thing holding me back from a full switch to linux is discord screen sharing with audio, My group of friends screenshare everything and they can't hear what I'm streaming and I cannot go without it.
For me gaming is secondary and Linux still has a ways to go. On one hand it's somewhat a non issue as I have apps I need to work with that don't work on Linux and some other deal breaking issues on my main workstation but my 'not work' machines all run Linux with varying levels of success for gaming. On the other hand the fact that Linux as a desktop for gaming has come along this far relatively quickly is a great thing.
There are still a lot of games that for various reasons don't work (anticheat being the big one as mentioned) which bottom line still makes Windows the superior gaming OS regardless of how well the games that do work work.
You don't need to install an app for controllers to work on windows, the app you link is for remapping keys and saving profiles, not getting a controller to work.
While I happily use Linux it's not honest to call it the better OS for gaming. As with anything it *may* be better for you based on what games you play but objectively windows is still the better OS for gaming.
There is also the matter of a lot of 'gaming' hardware not being supported under Linux. That's not to say it wont work, but working 100% might be another matter. Flight sticks are a big one in this category. Likely they will work but if they have windows software for things like mapping keys/macros/what have you good luck and last I checked most 'gaming' mice also had this problem with programmable buttons. Some keyboards have this problem. Easy enough to buy supported hardware if you are already a Linux user but a potential gotcha for someone coming from windows and worth mentioning.
I have seen a marked improvement over the passed 4 years I've been using Linux. The few games that don't play well with Linux I play on my PS5, Destiny 2 being a prime example. Otherwise most of the games I play on PC have worked fairly well.
Got talked into switching to Linux by the Arch Tryhards in my class about a year ago, I have been falling deeper and deeper into the openSUSE rabbit hole ever since
I'm still surprised at the amount of titles that don't have a native Linux port. I can understand for older titles, but I switched to Linux years ago mainly because I wanted to use an old laptop for portable coding. If you just want to sit down and code, Linux is an absolute pleasure.
I was in the same boat as you. I really couldn't understand. But they talked about it on the land show a couple weeks ago and Linus pointed out that, I think it was either ea, or maybe Ubisoft. Something like that, was saying that 80% of reported issues were from Linux desktop users. While at the same time Linux users accounted for only 1% of their total sales. So you have these developers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on development to fix bugs for a group of people that made them only a few hundred dollars in sales. So from that perspective, I can totally see why there aren't more Linux ports for games. I'm not saying I like it, or think that it's right, but I do at least understand it now.
@@user-mt4zr5kp7h It is difficult to determine whether the statement you made is accurate without additional context and data to support your claim. However, it is worth noting that the number of reported issues does not necessarily reflect the severity or frequency of issues.
I believe Linux users are just more likely to report and document bugs, which could be due to the nature of the open-source community, where users are encouraged to contribute to the development and improvement of software. This culture could result in more reports of issues and feedback from Linux users, which is generally beneficial for software development.
Most of the games I play run effortlessly on Linux. The only one that doesn't *is* unfortunately keeping me from fully switching over. Still, I have hope that one day it'll run fine and I'll finally be able to ditch Windows completely.
What game is that?
I switched to ubuntu and the experience was horrible, I couldn't even download steam and everything else kept crashing. Windows 10 is so much better, I just can't find any reason to switch to that extremely horrible distro or any linux distro in general.
@@dongct2504 Have you tried Manjaro? Comes with good driver support built in and is essentially plug n play
@@MrKilljay Smite but recently the developers have spoken about trying to get it to run under Proton so I have hope.
@@dongct2504 I'm sorry to hear that. I think you should give Linux another chance by trying another distribution, but maybe do a little more research beforehand to see if it's compatible with your hardware.
gaming on linux is fine nowadays, the only thing that holds me back from using linux is compatibility with software that I need to use
We've had a lot of bumps and bruises, but things are actually in a legitimately great place on linux finally (no memes)!
I built my own pc last September and planned to use Arch long before I started ordering the parts so i chose hardware that would cause the least amount of issues; a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and a Radeon 6700 XT. Setting up Arch + Kde was a pain but as a developer it's nothing I'm not used to. I prefer immersive single player games, so anti-cheat was never a concern for me and my gaming experience with Linux has been stellar so far. However new releases are an issue, for example I had pre-ordered the Dead Space remake and tried to play it at launch day but the game would always get stuck at the EA logo. I had to wait another week for a proton update that fixed this issue. On the other hand, the RE 4 remake worked with no issues at launch date
I’m having flawless experiences playing BG3 and No Man’s Sky on desktop Linux Mint.
Bluetooth devices in general work WAY better on Linux. I have my wireless headphones paired to my PC and laptop and all I have to do to switch between them is click on the headphone in the bluetooth dropdown, it automatically switches.
gaming on windows is better for the amount of games it can easily run without the need of third party apps and since games native to windows works better achieving higher frame rate than linux but this only works if the game isnt native to linux if yes then it wouldnt matter that much and the amount of problems with the games since they were never meant to run on linux its gonna crash and its not gonna work very well
5:35 My experience with any periphery on windows including wireless controllers was always flawless - it was as simple as plug and play, every time. With linux I cant even get consistent refresh rate on my monitor, let alone controllers - they never worked
Nice video! It really pisses me off that companies try to close everything just because people are trying to run games on Linux. If they are worried with hacking then I'm pretty sure most of the Linux users that want to play their games won't even try to hack anything, and hacking can also be done in both platforms. Locking it down just don't solve it.
People will try to hack either way sadly.
The only thing that might become a problem is Anti-Cheat and custom versions of Proton for example.
Some who used Proton-GE got allegidly banned due to the Anti-Cheat thinking it messed with the system.
@@MichaelNROH I really wonder what's under the hood on these Anti-Cheat systems. Weird how people get banned just because of a super slight modification on their operating systems
If your favorite games doesn't run under Linux, you're in for dual boot. And that's exactly what I don't want. But it is amazing how many games are already running flawlessly under Linux.
That literally annoys me the most. Especially if it's only for just a few games.
As someone with unsupported games AND nvidia prime, gaming on linux for me is really painful sometimes, but a lot of games work really really well and for everything but gaming, linux is clearly superior by a long shot
funfact: linux also supports way older programs way better thsn windows, through wine
I've mentioned it before, but I get MUCH better performance in linux for a lot of games. On windows I have to set my apex legends presets on medium-high to get good but not amazing performance. (as in, it's good enough for me to not give a shit, I'm not some frame-perfect purist who wants 240fps constantly and will write a 6 page essay to the president himself if my computer DARES to give me 239) On Linux though I can set every single setting to maximum and, once the shaders have compiled and it's stopped stuttering, the game itself reaches the "so responsive and smooth that it genuinely feels weird" level of performance. It might be placebo since, frankly minecraft's performance can feel like witchcraft at some times, but I also feel like I get MUCH better minecraft performance on linux as well. (heavily modded obviously, even a toaster can run vanilla)
I feel like due to Proton, the bottlenecks might shift a bit from CPU to GPU and vice versa, which results in a different feel.
But yes, some games can perform better, especially if they already use Vulkan (or sometimes even OpenGL).
I've been wanting to switch for years, but the gaming thing always held me back. I've got it on dual boot, but as you said it's a huge hassle, so time to go research some distros!
If its not a very ancient one, then most will do. If you want peek performance then you could try Chimera OS or Nobara.
I am a full time linux user and hardcore Destiny 2 player. Life is hard for me 😢
Welcome to the Club
@@dreaper5813it's crazy for u to tell a hardcore gamer to stop playing a certain game lol
While Linux gaming has certainly improved, its still pretty abysmal, it has a ways to go before being viable
amazing video :)
I'm watching this video while playing New World on my fresh Nobara install. :)
league of legends runs fine in my linux, i just looked the subreddit about running lol in linux and they showed me, i just created a bottles with the especific wine version and it's working almost perfectly
Didn't League already switch to Vanguard, the Kernel level Anti-Cheat? I thought they did
@@MichaelNROH not yet it's still coming soon (TM)
@@ransacked What's your source? Riot said that they will never use games where it is not necessary and specifically naming League under that.
@@ransacked they've explicitly said they're NOT switching to vanguard, because a decent percentage of users are on linux. also, it's just not needed for lol, i've never even seen a cheater.
Heroic Game Launcher is good for Epic and Gog accounts, it supports non Epic/Gog games and applications as well.
Additionally note: using bottles and installing steam,epic,etc then and running games through that bottle is also a pretty safe bet and can help with mod support for those who like nexus mods/vortex, moddb, etc.
This is great!!! Freedom Makes Perfect, after all.
For me, I don't have a Vulcan compatible video card (too old).
So compatibility even in games that should work is really an issue.
Also, yea, the anticheat problems still have some way to go.
But I find it great that it improve, especially recently (even if I wouldn't call it ready yet).
Also, some games that can run still require heavy tweaking (even if they don't require it on Windows) and for some people (me included) that can still be too much. (when I want/can to play, I don't want to waste my gaming time tweaking)
I think that you might want to upgrade your GPU in the near future though 😅
I've heard a lot of people say games need tweaking, but I haven't actually ever needed to tweak anything. Proton has game-specific optimizations so, if the community finds that a specific game needs X Y or Z tweak, the next version of proton will probably already have that tweak integrated into it for that game. Even ignoring that though, the most involved "tweaks" I've even seen have been copying a single command to the steam launch properties window.
That is, unless you're talking about doing some more involved stuff like installing a game manually inside of lutris or something. Even then though, once you know what to do even doing that isn't that complicated, it's mostly just hard to learn what all the terms mean initially. Took me a good week or two before I really understood what the hell a "prefix" was. After you learn those terms though it's remarkably simple to do and, again, this is when you're trying to manually install a game inside of a custom lutris environment so it's the upper-end of tweaking here.
@@MichaelNROH I want to do that.
but i don't really have the money yet (it's the whole pc that i have to change)
@@robonator2945 I was more referring to what you put in the second paragraph.
Because even if I can do it, it does take time and effort that I could pass gaming using windows instead.
But even the first one (pasting a launch parameter in steam) can be considered too much by some people, because you have to search the tweak in the first place.
(and that without counting information that don't apply to your rig (or missing info for that matter)).
@@ascrassin All tweaks you could need are already given in protondb you don't have to find them anymore than than a 1-2 minute check, (and, again, of those, most of those tweaks aren't even necessary anymore, I've only found a single game thus far which needed any tweak at all) and, again, the second paragraph is something I've only done a handful of time for a few games that I legally aquired. cough cough.
I spent far more time trying to figure out what was causing Apex Legends to shit itself on windows than I did clicking "play" on linux and having it run flawlessly.
The "tweaking" argument is something I really only hear either non-linux users, or more generally fence-sitters taking about. People generally don't like to offer unilateral praise, least of all for something they don't actually even use themselves, so they tend to supplement it with a negative that passes a first-hear-check just to even it out. But, again, I have had to tweak a SINGLE game and that tweak took under a minute to find and apply. And this isn't even remotely for a lack of looking, I've played games exactly like I was on windows*
Here are a list of games which I've played and not had to tweak even once
Apex Legends
Shatterline
Crysis 3 (ran better than on windows actually, on windows there is an nvidia bug that causes it to be screwy)
Crysis 1 Remastered
Titanfall 1
Titanfall 2
Planetside 2
Icarus
Space Engineers
Starbase
Stationeers
and a hell of a lot more.
Now, if you have a particularly esoteric setup, then you can run into a few issues, but if your someone you can afford the latest and greatest, I'd wager you spend enough time playing games that you could concede 1-10 minutes to get even better and more stable performance and die happy.
A lot of people mention that you need to tweak, but the only tweaking I have actually done aside from the sub-minute fix I mentioned previously was me taking a bit to test out Vkbasalt, and entirely optional post processing plugin thing. I simply have not encountered anything which would lend credibility to the argument that linux needs more tweaking. If anything, I spend far MORE time tweaking games in windows because the performance is so much less stable and janky I need to spend time in the settings window to figure out what works best.
Maybe I have some magic hardware combination or something but I just plain haven't had to tweak shit on linux.
*(except for two games, Paladins and Lemnis Gate, both of which are only unplayable due to developer ineptitude/laziness. Paladins literally is proton compatible, they just disabled it's compatibility and are trying to blame proton for it... the proton which didn't change mind you, you can test with the same version of proton that ran the game fine before and it won't work. As for lemnis gate the developers stopped caring about Lemnis Gate so much it's dying this year.)
Do you really believe that Microsoft will someday "lock out" third-party stores? Valve freaked out about Microsoft Store about a decade ago, but Steam and other stores have thrived on Windows during that decade. Besides, if you're looking to move away from vendors whose fortunes are tied to their stores, the Deck isn't exactly a move in the right direction 😁
Also, I think it's incorrect to say that most games are supported on Linux. They may happen to WORK - to some degree, at the moment - but that's not the same thing as actual support. On the other hand, I do think the Deck's success will expand actual Linux support from ISVs, at least on the Deck and future compatible devices.
Microsoft won't lock out third party app stores, but will essentially make it way more annoying to get them.
They are already advertising Edge on every other browsers website, if you use it to download it.
They will continue to do so, until people get too annoyed and slowly use Edge more often.
It's a good corporate descision, but just annoying, that's all
Stream games on steam os, a great experience. Veer off that path and it's a frustrating nightmare. Reminiscent of the very early days if PC gaming with the constant fiddling and tweaking. I used to enjoy it tbh but I've grown accustomed to hassle free gaming and I have a lot less free time for tinkering as we all do as we get old and burdened with responsibilities.
Back around 1995 you had to enter many settings to start a newly installed game on Windows ! On Blood you had to set sound settings and other settings. Very strange compared to today.
My hope is that the numbers will just continue increasing to the point where anti-cheat stuff like Battleye is a given for Linux and the need for dual booting becomes a thing of the past.
Me too 🥹
I have some questions:
What are the distros you consider better for gaming?
Also, what are the issues (besides anti-cheat Engine), that you may face while trying to gaming on Linux, and how to fix/overcome these issues?
I'm honestly inclined to swap my OS for 3 main reasons:
1) Linux being way lighter to run than Windows, which saves some memory RAM in case it's needed
2) The security is way better; and even so, it still runs lighter.
3) They don't push u the necessity of updating to a new version, like Windows does.
So, I would like yer people to lift my doubts, so I consider whether it's worthy for me to migrate or not. I also would like to know if I need to configurate some stuff to ACTUALLY have a strong security, since I'm too new to the world of Linux and barely know anything. 😅 I also tend to run games from Epic Store and Steam, in case this is of any relevance
Most of possible issues come from hardware. Pop OS/Mint should have most of it working out of the box, but I can't speak for all combinations. They use semi-annual release scheme, so you got releases in April and in October. April releases of even-numbered years are LTS (long term support) releases, being supported for 5 years iirc. I am quite lucky it seems, as nothing I use caused me issues (I am on Arch, but I would not recommend it to new users, and it's rolling release, so no "releases" but updates come often). Also I don't know about availability of peripherals "control centers".
Mangohud is really good (and there's GOverlay to configure it), Lutris should have no issues running the Epic games and steam is, well, steam. Archlinux wiki is one of the best sources of information, but you should still check wiki of your distro as file locations or default settings may be different.
Baseline security worked well for me, so I can't say much about any changes to it. Afaiu on Windows one of main attack vectors is untrusted executables and files you don't expect to be executable being executable. Regarding first, you can trust official repositories of distro and packages outside official repositories often provide hash you can verify. Regarding second, executable flag is by default not set and does not depend on filename (extension), don't know how embedded executables work, so can't say much, but I would assume code inside is windows-specific
When Gaming on Linux, you shouldn't look into super stable distros like Debian or LTS releases (those are marked as such).
The reasoning behind this is the frequency of updates that potentially improve driver and game compatibility. Speaking of, game compatibility is something that heavily depends on the games you play.
As of right now, very recent games that run with DirectX12 might perform worse than on Windows, if your hardware is pretty old (like the GTX10 and RX500 series).
The rest runs mostly fine, though it often depends if they have third party launchers that play nice. Genshin Impact was a game that wouldn't play at all for quite some time.
Security wise, Linux is more secure because there is less malware around for it's architecture, but you still need to update your packages from time to time. But it is still way more faster than Windows since you don't install one massive one that is way overdue.
You'll get a better answer to this if you provide us with information about your hardware... but as a basic if you have NVIDIA then PopOS, if you have AMD Fedora. As for security stick with distro's that are popular and have some kind of corporate backing. To ensure your system is kept secure keep it up to date, that's all you have to do ( and stay away from web download apps that require root/admin rights to install ).
Thanks yer all for the answers man.
It's good enough already to know that u don't need to configure security so it's a safer environment, cause honestly I think it'd be a pain to learn it.
Regarding hardware, I actually only run a APU for now (Vega 7), but my original intention is to buy either a 20 or 30 series, or even the new Intel graphs board, which looks very interesting (though I do assume that I'd probably run into incompatibility issues, since it's a new hardware and also probably new architecture too.
Aanyway, I browsed RUclips a little more after commenting here, and it seems that Nobara, a derivative from Fedora, is indeed a great choice for newcomer gamers, since they already solve driver issues on the original kernel itself... So as soon as I get an extra m2, I think I'll give it a shot
@@RulezAPower If gaming is your goal AMD is the choice for new hardware. The others cannot currently compete.
Thank you. Been waiting to finally get rid of Windows for good but I also play destiny 😁. I'm checking out Nobara, Fedora 37, Garuda and Endeavor this weekend to decide
Can you do a how to setup for gaming on Fedora 37? 😁
I personally use Nobara with KDE Plasma, which has a look similar to windows and I love it, would definitly recommend.
Haven't tried the other one's so I don't have a comparsion, but what I use works great.
endeavour os is not a beginner distro, i would recommend fedora
Thanks for the recommendations
EndeavorOS is great
VMs are user friendly enough, you really just need to follow a RUclips guide. though, if you want gpu acceleration in the VM you'll either need to disable your host desktop environment while using the vm or get a second gpu
With proton-ge you can run more games
I always give linux gaming a try every year and i work with linux in my job, but unfortunately i would not recommend linux even for general use, i think the linux community seems to give the impression that linux just works, but that's not the case, in reality you're gonna spend alot of time tinkering, i think that saying linux has adventages over windows in gaming or emulation is just wrong, linux has no adventage at all, windows is just better that's being said i do think linux has adventages in other fields but gaming and emulation is not one of them, in the end i do still invite people to try linux i think it's an interesting experience but keep your windows partition and don't dive under the impression that linux will just works.
For the most casual use, Linux Mint is probably better than Windows. There are fewer hoops to jump through and things to install to get it in a good spot for an elderly relative to use, at least. Casual users are just using a web browser for everything nowadays, lol.
I would agree with you to certain degree, yes linux is better at managing resources and it is lighter, but the problem is you're assuming that a casual user will only use his computer for casual use, in my opinion even if you're a casual you're bound to do something not casual and the chance of what you want will not just work on linux is higher than windows.
@@arajin2523 Maybe, but I'm not really convinced. For the casual users that I'm thinking of, once they're doing non-casual things, they're calling tech support (i.e. me) and then I have to get involved anyway.
In those cases, I think the odds of doing something stupid are higher with Windows (e.g. downloading a random EXE to do a thing, compared to searching the software manager to find an application).
So far I haven't had a problem with casual one-off things as I get settled in with Linux Mint. E.g. copying files from my phone to my PC (basically identical to Windows 10), or burning a music CD (hit up Software Manager, found K3b, which was easy to use).
It might be different from what a veteran Windows user would want to do, but for a casual with no experience, the difference doesn't matter.
The performance and lightness isn't even a consideration, really. The casual user just wants to do the thing, and odds are good that Linux Mint can do the thing out of the box or with an app that's a few clicks and keystrokes away.
Edit: actually, now that I think about it, nearly all of my parent tech support calls lately have been related to Windows annoyances, like Windows Update popups (one of which got my dad to update to 11, which he dislikes, lol) or emails from Microsoft (real or alleged) that he didn't understand. Needing to do new things is basically a non-issue because everything is happening in a web browser nowadays.
@@ordinaryhuman5645 Yeah i do agree with what you said, but i was talking about something more general, you can't predict what you will do in the future, for example i have a friend who does not play games at all, he uses his desktop for writing documents and browsing web, one day he just wanted to play world of warcraft for nostalgia, and in my environment we don't have something called tech support so people use youtube or call their friends, and as someone who get called a lot i find it easier to guide people on windows than linux. In the end i do think what you said is valid too.
Linux is simply amazing. It really pains me to see that most developers have not even considered it or outright refused when it would not even be that difficult.
been using arch linux for over a year now. gaming works better than it did on windows, apart from a few games that refuse to run because of the anticheat.
At least for me, your take about trying Linux, if you only use your PC casually, is kind of weird. From my experience, productivity is where Linux shines in particular. Even outshines Windows, for software development and document creation, with professional tools, like LaTeX. While gaming is still very much hit or miss on Linux, even for games that should be compatible.
The only gaming miss I've had on Linux has been Elden Ring, which generally works... except for sporadic crashes (which also happens on Windows, judging by Steam forum posts).
Otherwise everything else has been a hit. Guild Wars ran better with Wine than it did on Windows 10 regarding skill template saving/loading. Diablo 2 also ran better with Wine than it did on Windows 10, which required extra work to get running.
The problem is, that "productive" can also mean niche. And operating in a niche is not always that simple, since the amount of software is typically lower
@D Reaper
I feel like we must be from different realities or something. Less than Half of my Steam library works on Linux, and an absurdly small number of my niche games work on Linux (at most 5%). Meanwhile, all but a few of my games (including both old and niche games) still run fine on Windows 10, and require a fraction the amount of effort to get working.
Don't get me wrong, gaming on Linux has come a long way in the past few years (pretty much exclusively thanks to Valve), but it's still fairly lackluster in my experience.
Nice content. I wish more would highlight the largest elephant in the room, the cost factor. Linux is completely free and open source. So entry into a linux platform is less cost.
Windows is technically free as well once you have it, so that's not really an argument
@Michael Horn everything is free after you buy it. LOL I may be confused with what you're saying. It's my understanding that Windows is still $139 at least unless you get it from school or something (which can cost far more). I understand there are ways to aquire it, some legal, some not, but the normal buyer cost is about $140 and up. If you buy a system with it preloaded, it is figured into the price. Trust me that they are not giving it to you for free. Linux is free to 99% of the user base. When talking about the average budget gamer putting together a gaming system between 500 and 1200 bucks, that is a big percentage.
@@thomaslange2262
Modern Windows operating systems are free, to my knowledge, with the option to pay to register the OS. As far as I'm aware, I think that you're locked out of a customization option or two, and it's labeled as unregistered in the lower right of your desktop, or something.
So yes, Windows is free to use. You may have to deal with it being labeled as unregistered, but otherwise, I'm pretty sure it's completely functional for browsing, gaming, and pretty much everything else.
I've been dual booting for a few years, finally removed winblows for good a few months ago.
about that "Xbox Accessories", controller support comes with windows. You only need it if you want to configure/test your controller, or update xbox controller firmware, otherwise it's not necessary
The last two updates on Windows 11 made gaming a nightmare. Failure to launch and limiting fps? First time I went through and fixed all the things they turned off by default. The second time I removed Windows 11 I figured it would only get worse with each new update. Now happily playing on Linux Mint. Frame rates are back to normal and games launch.
For all the League of Legends Players: I play league for over a year now on Linux(Fedora to be precise) and I have little to no problems with it.
Linux und deren Distributionen sind wunderbar und einzigartig, gab für mich persönlich noch nie einen Grund das effektiv zu nutzen. Wären meine Lieblingsspiele nativ unterstützt ohne großartigen Aufwand zu betreiben, würde ich auch auf lange Sicht wechseln. Wenn die Performance zusätzlich stimmt, in FPS Spielen essenziell, oder sogar ein %+ zu erwarten wäre, stehe dem nichts im weg und man könne Windows getrost den Rücken kehren. Schönes Video :)
I really love that if you want to install a game, lutris will do everything for you. Installs the launcher and all you have to do is login an that's all.
Pro tip: if you have an HDD or SSD dedicated only for games, you should format it to Btrfs instead of EXT4 because it will use less space for wine prefixes.
what btrfs and why and how to do it
@@Sharkia-1 On Wikipedia you can find what is it and why.
TL:DR:
- Why: It has a feature that if there are multiple files on disk, instead of writing every file, creates a "link" to the file, this way it will use much less space (eg. I copied GTA V 10 times without using space and all of them are acting as regular file).
- How to do: A program like gnome-disks can be used to format a disk. (top right click three dots, Format Disk and at the step that requires to select a file system, select Btrfs and that's it).
Disclaimer: Be careful when you are formatting disks, make sure you are reading correctly and understand what X or Y does.
Good Luck!
@@alexandrubossro it is bad for hard disk
@@Sharkia-1 Nope, it's safe for HDD's and SSD's, it's been 14 years since it was introduced so basically, it's stable and safe to use.
@@Sharkia-1 The only problem it have on HDD is fragmentation, but as NTFS does that as well, you can't complain if you use Windows
I love linux but for gaming... no way. It leaves way to much on the table as far as performance. I don't understand why even complain that you need to install software for the controller. It is there for a reason and windows provides an unparalleled experience with sheer compability. Stuff just works. For all that Linux does great such as window mangement with I3 or bspwm, gaming is decent to good, but not amazing or even close to that level.
Great video Michael and I am going to try and run Blair Witch on PopOS I am having an issue with the video in OBS but everything else seems to be fine! I love your videos keep up the good work!
What are the issues?
Maybe I can be of assistance?
I honestly think dual boot is a great idea for those that want to play any online competitive games, but otherwise prefer Linux. It can be a bit finicky yes and I wish there were some better guides on full builds to make it more accessible, but it isn't that hard ultimately, especially on a desktop.
The problem with dual booting isn't setting it up, that is easy, the problem is that microsoft likes to delete GRUB without warning during some updates, and that will break your system so you can only log into windows at best, possibly neither OS
@@coopercummings8370 GRUB is crap anyway, use rEFInd instead. It's also best practice to have each OS on a separate drive to avoid conflicts like that.
Gaming in Fedora is fantastic!!! (Full AMD)
GAMING in Ubuntu is a nightmare, but normal after getting it to work. (AMD Cpu and Nvida GPU)
I will still wait, specially considering that MWII still can't run on Linux
My laptop works around 3-4 hours on windows when browsing
While on Ubuntu, 6-8 h
And they be saying "global warming" while half of users want to just browse or use office suite
Sure, on Linux, if you want to do something more than web browsing, basic gaming, office, you need some tinkering, it takes time, and time for companies is money
Also, if you have old, or not that powerful PC, and you mainly play Valve games, try Linux, f.e. on old office PC "HP 6305" with AMD A6, in CSGO, I got 30 FPS on windows, on Ubuntu I got 50-90 with Vulkan
The master sword poster chilling on the back
Yes
Yeah the deck and steam's efforts made it quite 'safe' to switch to linux for me. Running on pop_os with steam and indeed lutris :p
Linux gaming is definitely getting better, but it's far from being as good as on Windows, mostly because of compatibility. I'm still having many issues running Blizzard games on Linux, I'm a Diablo fan so that's a big deal for me. But since I challenged myself to try and fix any problems I found, it's just a matter of patience and lots of learning.
6:34 Proclaiming 92% is "playable" an outright lie regarding ProtonDB stats. Here's what those numbers actually mean:
33% (Platinum) is "playable" with no additional qualifiers.
54% (Gold and Silver) can be made "playable" using a specific Proton version and/or Protontricks tweak(s), with Silver additionally having some minor Proton specific bugs.
11% (Bronze and Borked) are unplayable, with Bronze being "functional" to some degree but broken enough to not be "playable" and Borked being outright non-functional.
Linux Main since 2001 and my dependency on Windows shrank every year.
Nowadays i use a Steam Deck as my main desktop with Arch installed, didn't like that SteamOS overwrites any changes to the root file system on every update, and i am happy with my low power battlestation. Especially with German energy prices right now having a setup with two screens and some other shenanigans that eats up to around 40 watts makes me a happy kitty. My previous setup, a Ryzen 5 1600, could go up to 350 watts and idle at 100 watts.
I've been on and offing with Linux for a few years - and I came from a Mac background, which despite my love of cRPGs (which reward strong processors it seems) - didn't easily scratch that itch once Divinity II hit...
I've had problems, lots of problems, I've learned lots of Linux stuff... lots... of... terminal...
In the last 6 months or so, something changed. Everything just started working way better than before. Even rolling release Linux distros... I used to get corrupted drivers, or inappropriate updates. Not now.
I have a Windows 11 PC... I built it to game. It has my best components.
I game on a Mac Pro 5,1, very upgraded, with Pop OS, very customized. I also run a CRT, slightly overclocked, with this system.
Almost exclusively now I game here. It's that good. My Titan Black isn't my main rigs RX 6600, but it's just... a better experience between Linux and the outdated tech that I was able to fully use in a modern sense.
My more powerful desktop system now checks my E-Mail and watches You-Tube videos.
The thing is, that I've had similar issues when I was still on Debian or my beginnings on Fedora, but as it turns out, less is more.
Besides for some videos, I didn't use bash for more than half a year now.