About a year ago I dumped Windows from my personal PC for good. I ran a Linux desktop at work for a decade, but my Steam collection get me with at least a bit of a tether to Microsoft. But Valve finally made Linux gaming a reality. I hope more people can make the switch someday because I'm quite happy with the system (Pop!_OS is my distro of choice these days).
I did this about three months ago in response to Windows insisting again that I must link my desktop user with my Live account. I'm blown away by how viable Linux gaming is now, entirely because of money dumped in by Valve. It's only looking better, too, the deck means people are motivated to at least make sure it boots in Wine, and if they support Vulkan the perf will likely work out well.
I installed Windows for a media PC for the first time in many years, and holy shit it’s insane. The dark patterns. The nags. It’s a given they are somehow tracking everything I do and selling all of my files. They are milking boomers who will never switch from Windows as a cash cow, longterm they know Windows is dead as a personal desktop. Their revenue is no longer dependent on Windows PC so it’s an end game scenario.
That's what finally gave me the confidence to switch to Linux a year ago. I'm running Manjaro on my main system and Valve's efforts in improving WINE/creating Proton have been fantastic. The amount of games that "just work" has been nothing short of amazing.
I also moved over to PopOS over a year ago and have been quite happy with the end result. Between Steam and Lutris I’ve been able to run everything I want to, and I don’t have to play whack-a-mole with Microsoft’s “features” that I’m not interested in.
Bonus points: I’m having fun with my computer again!
My last version of Windows was 7. After that I used a MacBook for work for a few years, and I somewhat missed windows for gaming (but mainly used a PS4 during that time so I got by). Then, a few years ago, I switched exclusively to Linux (I’ve usually had a dual boot or a second machine running Linux, but it was rarely my exclusive OS), and haven’t looked back. I’ve since also got a Steam Deck which has completely replaced my PS4, while I also play a few games like Crusader Kings on my Linux laptop.
Gaming is what kept a lot of people on windows over the years, but thanks to valve and the proton team, Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming (and some people say better than — I certainly don’t have to deal with all the crap Microsoft tries to put into windows).
Some people refuse to use Linux because they’re afraid of having to tinker with it, but that hasn’t been my experience in over a decade. Things have generally just worked for me.
Would not say that Linux gaming works as well as Windows gaming. Plenty of things won't work in Proton, at least not out of the box, and you're kinda restricted to AMD GPUs. That's fine cause I don't play video games anymore, but people who really care about that will put up with a lot of MS's BS.
AoE2:DE is one example of incompatibility. Simple game (by modern standards) with no advanced anticheat.
It's been a few months since I played but the only thing that doesn't work is Xbox login. I needed to download a DLL to get multiplayer working, which I agree isn't really userfriendly, but compared to the early Wine days Proton is a walk in the park.
What I do miss a bit is Capturage, apparently it's really hard to make it work in Proton.
There's nothing restricting you to AMD GPUs though? Proton works great on my 3090.
It's even been less troublesome than when I used to use AMD GPUs, where IIRC accelerated graphics drivers and the ROCm drivers had some sort of conflict unless installed a certain way (a few years ago now, my last AMD card was a 5700xt).
I would need to check if it’s the DE or which, but I’ve played a good bit of AoE2 on Linux through proton about two years ago without any issues. It was whatever version was recommended by the AoE2 YouTubers, not sure if that was DE.
The only problems I’ve had are that the intro video and menu for supreme commander forged alliance runs at very low frame rate (but the actual game runs without problems), and that Gothic 3 was very glitchy on steam deck. Everything else I’ve tried ran without issue.
Thanks, but I stopped playing for unrelated reasons before that was posted. Previous fixes people posted involved inserting some different DLL, which didn't work for me. Not sure if I did something wrong or they were outdated in newer game versions.
Skyrim doesn't work well at all either. I'm blown away that probably the most re-released game of all time never added Linux support. Even before MS took over.
There is no music or NPC dialogue. I spent a few hours scouring for all manner of fixes before giving up. So many "This is what fixed it for me:" that didn't work on my machine.
There were also some rendering issues, but I could let that slide given my GPU is ~10 years old.
Windows is such execrable trash now that, when my late-2014 25-inch 5K Intel iMac got orphaned, I didn't even consider putting Windows on it. Now it's running Mint, and I use my M1 MacBook Pro in clamshell mode connected to a monitor.
That monitor, incidentally, is a 25-inch former iMac. I gutted it after it suffered the widespread burned-out-GPU problem that afflicted many (most?) Macs of circa-2010 vintage, and put an LCD driver board in it.
Well as of a couple of years ago they have some of the most overpowered hardware. Its not the intel era anymore. The fact I can run many of these unsupported games on max settings through an emulation layer no less is saying something.
They made the Mac a compatibility nightmare with games, so it doesn't matter so much how fast the hardware is. And going from a 2009 Mac Pro with an RX580 to an M1 mini, every game was slower, especially csgo (before it became cs2).
And the fact that Apple didn't seem to care to cooperate much in terms of things like Metal etc. Mac would've been a much bigger ask compared to Linux, where they can usually just contribute to and work with any component that may need bug fixes or additional features.
Why? Arm macs run that software fine through emulation. The transition was an excuse to also drop support of x86 mac ports for companies that used to put these out as part of doing business. I run mac ports of x86 games through rosetta. Max graphics. The only cap is a seemingly frame locked 40fps that I think rosetta has something to do with. Seems to me if that cap were lifted the fps would rocket considering how cool and quiet it was, and this is through emulation not a native arm port.
Photo editing is my last holdout. And a European-compatible banking software.
Everything else works well on Linux. Gaming included. I've run Linux many years, in fact.
But Capture One and Lightroom are not available over there, which is what draws me back to MacOS. Of course I could just use darktable. Have done that for several years. But at the end of the day, I just prefer Capture One, and that's enough reason for me to switch my OS.
Some european banks are still struggling with the whole internet concept and have win32 apps using emulated dial up for both home and business customers.
The few I had a pleasure of using have a really good browser and mobile app support. The only problem I ran into is that sometimes mobile apps refuse to run on rooted Android devices.
Raiffeisen in Austria is/was? one of the stragglers, but I haven't dealt with them in 2 years or so - a company I worked for was stuck with it, but I noped out for Erste Sparkasse ASAP, and they let you do everything in browser. (Since 2011 at least.)
Raiffeisen in Russia let one do everything in a browser on Linux since 2008 for personal accounts. Possibly earlier, I did not have an account with them back then. For business accounts, it's since February 2016.
A good, HBCI capable software that can list transactions and make transfers from and to multiple banks. Think Quicken or MoneyMoney.
The browser will only ever log in to one bank per tab, and with different UI per bank. If you have more than one bank, it becomes a hassle quite quickly.
I switched to Pop OS in 2018 because I was in college, and I wanted to spend less time gaming. Unfortunately for me, that was also the year Valve released Proton, and my gaming didn't (immediately) drop very much :>
I think Proton is a great project (and CodeWeavers deserve credit there as well), but why does it have to be a choice?
I have been multi booting for 20 years, preferring Linux distributions the whole time, but other OSes when I want to use them.
I recently started using a dedicated Windows system for gaming and other Windows favored tasks. I am running a KVM switch, using AMD Graphics on a Linux system and Nvidia on this Windows system. I also have a macOS system, that I use as needed.
I do this with mobile devices as well. It doesn't seem worth it to squabble over choosing a path.
Not everyone has multiple desktop computers at home, especially powerful ones. (With an Apple device to top it up.)
But hardware is more affordable than ever (unless you want a really powerful GPU). What's worse is that you have to separate the tasks between OSes, you can't easily have a default computer for everything, with everything relevant locally available. It's fine if you keep Windows for gaming, and want gaming to be explicitly separate. It's harder if you need Windows for graphics / video, or for CAD/CAM, or for Office. Having important related bits and software on another box may be a hassle.
It's actually a pretty good thing to compartmentalize your computer. I use it to reduce procrastination.
Put all your fun things on one OS (or user account), and all your business stuff on another (possibly blocking distractions via hosts or firewall rules); and you've added a bunch of friction to switching from work to play. Not that it can't be done, but it needs to be a deliberate choice and you can't just bounce between them.
I've found that this only works in very specific circumstances. If you have any flexibility to your work schedule (which is a lot more common nowadays with any amount of remote work) this becomes massively inconvenient, as every small context switch means reseting your current system state (eg closing your dev tools).
I don't really have a set work schedule, so it's normal for me to jump between a work context and a play context. It's much easier to do by very rarely rebooting my computer (once or twice a month), so I can always pick up where I left off. The regularly scheduled update meetings do a good enough job of keeping procrastination in check.
If you're careful with how you handle the ESP and other shared drives on Linux's side, I found it reasonably ergonomic to suspend to disk, rather than hard shut down, when switching between OSes.
At least back when win10 was new, Proton is good enough that I haven't needed Windows in a good few years.
Author said he was using KVM switch, hence multiple computers. Also you can't install macOS on a PC. Also you might need switching between OS in real time and often.
Just some thoughts.
This is very true, most of my rescues are older laptops that said were “broke”. I offered to help figure them out what was broke because I hate calling something obsolete when I can usually throw linux on it and bring it back to like. 2 of them just need an OS install, and 2 needed a new SSD. All the owners said “I was looking for an excuse to get a new laptop anyway” so I took them off their hands.
I don't know if I'd say its a choice between a squabble or no squabble, its just a different set of squabbles.
For me, there are evenings when I am hacking away on a hobby project for 2 or 3 hours. Then suddenly just go, 'I wanna just veg out for another 2 hours then go to bed.' When I'm in that mood, I don't even want to be bothered changing machines. Just hit the steam icon and veg. Thats also bout the only time I end up gaming though, haha.
Last time I dual booted though, I remember why I didn't for along time. Did a Windows update, windows rebooted my computer and it did something with grub and I couldn't easily boot into linux anymore.
It was my experience as well. For the longest time, I had dual boot with a thought that I will switch between OSs as needed ( and as a back up if things break down ), but that never really happened and I spent majority of time on Windows ( and games ). Eventually, I just realized VM works better for me.
Works better for me as well, plus it keeps windows in a nice little bundle that I can cut off from the network at will, it’s really nice with a dedicated GPU to play games as well with pass thru
Holy mackerel, yes. Once I realized pass through can and does work, I never looked back. This is also why I dislike how nvidia seems to do everything in its power to make it as painful as possible for anything after 3060, but that is a separate rant.
I was that dude, but I hate using Windows! Microsoft kept giving me more and more reasons to stop using Windows, on a silver platter lol. So now my gaming PC runs fedora, and all of my other computers are Macs.
