Hi. I’ve been thinking about trying out Linux for a while now (haven’t used it before). I have 1 PC which I share with my son. I mainly use it to browse the web, listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, Office for work, etc. things like that. Those things have good substitutes from what I’ve read, so not an issue. But my son plays video games like The Sims, Cities Skylines, Stardew Valley, Roblox, Minecraft, Stellaris, Slime Rancher… and from what I’ve seen it’s kind of difficult to game comfortably (stable) on Linux. As for the distro I was considering Ubuntu. Currently on Windows 10 Home. Looking forward to what you guys have to say. All advice welcome. Thanks.
Try Linux in a VM (virtual machine) for a while.
- Low hassle compared to dual booting,
- no risk of Microsoft randomly doing something to windows that breaks your Linux install.
- low/No system downtime if you decide you don’t like one distro or another and want to switch,
- no loss of game data for your son (I’ve lost so many saves because of games putting them in nonsensical places in windows; why is appdata still the default for minecraft saves!?)
In the last few years, Valve (company behind the popular Steam PC games store) has made huuuge efforts in making most games work well on Linux, because the Steam Deck console that they sell runs on Linux, and the compatibility layer they made is called Proton.
To check what games work well on Linux you should look in the ProtonDB.
If there are games that only work on Windows, you could do dual booting.
Is dual booting as simple as loading the Windows OS off of a drive in the BIOS?
Yes.
But every other year Windows seems to “accidentally” mess with Linux bootloaders on other drives/partitions.
Awesome, thanks for the info and heads up
Pretty much, yeah.
I’d recommend using two physical drives (SSD/HDD) instead of two partitions if you can, because windows update sometimes messes with the bootloader. But most laptops only have one drive so that’s not always possible.
Do keep in mind that formatting a drive (e.g. to split it in partitions) will erase all the data, so make sure you have backups!
Hi. I’ve been thinking about trying out Linux for a while now (haven’t used it before).
Welcome :)
I have 1 PC which I share with my son. I mainly use it to browse the web, listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, Office for work, etc.
Depending your 'MS Office ’ expectations, you should have no issue using LibreOffice. 100% compatibility doesn’t exist, though, but for most users it should work more than fine. For the most part, it is only a few advanced features and tools that are lacking, and some layout stuff. I write books under Linux as easily as I wrote them under, well, not a Windows PC in my case: it’s a Mac.
I am not a gamer. So, for that I can’t help much, but you have the ability to dual boot your PC and chose between Windows and Linux when it starts. Maybe that would let you use Linux while keeping a small Windows partition for your son games?
Here is one guide among many others (I have not used it myself, it’s just an example there are plenty more): https://opensource.com/article/18/5/dual-boot-linux
FYI, you can try Linux directly from a live CD (or a USB stick) without even have to install it on the computer. It’s really cool.
As for the distro I was considering Ubuntu.
You can use whatever distro you fancy, you can easily try a few different ones either by using the live CD/USB I mentioned, or by running them in a virtual machine — something I have never done myself as it’s a bit too intimidating and techy to old-and-not-much-of-a-geek me :p
I use Debian (on my desktop) and Mint (on my laptop). Ubuntu is based on Debian, and Mint is based on… Ubuntu (from which it has removed stuff I’m not happy with in Ubuntu and added a few others I like). There is no good and bad distro, only those that you like and those that you… like less ;)
Edit: to a beginner, probably more than Ubuntu I would suggest Mint, at least if I can judge on my own personal experience: everything worked out of the box, including my stubborn Apple Airpods.
Roblox will not work. The developers are actively preventing it from working in Linux.
Those other games should. If you don’t mind to tinker a bit to make sure they’re set up properly, then your son should be able to just launch them from Bottles or Lutris or whatever you set up as a games launcher.
I don’t know about Sims. I have a pirated copy of Sims 3 working just fine though.
Wow, what bad blood does Roblox have with Linux? All the Sims games are on the EA app which doesn’t seem to have a Linux version, don’t know how that would work.
The EA app (like most other games) can run with Proton, Valve’s compatibility layer for running Windows games on Linux. If you run your games through Steam they should just work. External games or Windows programs can be added to Steam and configured to use Proton.
It’s about online games and anti cheat. Many companies will not allow anti cheat to work on Linux because they “require” kernel level anti cheat, a big security and privacy concern.
You can read more about anti cheat games and their compatibility with Linux here: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Roblox works with Sober.
The games you listed all work on Linux.
Roblox sometimes has problems but currently works. You need Sober to launch Roblox.
With Minecraft it depends on the edition. Java Edition works great. Bedrock Edition is rocky. The Windows version doesn’t work at all but the Android version does through the Bedrock Launcher. You’d have to buy it on Google Play. But if he plays Java Edition he’s golden.
If it’s a fairly new computer (especially if you if you have 32 gigs of RAM), Bedrock Minecraft can run pretty decently in a virtual machine.
I recommend the Xubuntu flavor of Ubuntu.
Remember you can dual boot. You can keep the Windows install around on a separate partition for when you need to use it.
I play Stellaris, Stardew and Slime Rancer on Linux, and they seem to work last I’ve tried.
I was about to say this. Strange how you seem to be the only one (so far) to suggest this sensible solution.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of Linux gaming (started using Linux as my main OS for games) and the biggest issue I’ve run into is Nvidia drivers. They’re technically supported on Linux but that doesn’t mean it’s equal to AMD or fully featured. Waydroid (Android emulator) doesn’t work with Nvidia nor does Sunshine (game streaming server). These cases may not apply to you but if I started from scratch I wouldn’t buy an Nvidia card. Hopefully this doesn’t apply to you.
Sunshine works perfectly fine with nvidia on linux for me, what issue have you run into?
I’m running a 4070ti on the most recent nvidia open source drivers on arch for reference.
I got scared for a second, I love Sunshine. I don’t think I will have much need for it in my current situation unfortunately
From my experience, Cities Skylines works great through proton on steam (it’s a compatibility layer for windows games) and Minecraft has it’s own native launcher (which is downloadable from their site here, you need to use the debian installer for ubuntu). As far as ubuntu native, I haven’t used it a lot. Linux mint is a distro recommended for people who are used to windows most often, you can take a look around.
As far as the other games go, only slime rancher is one that I know doesn’t work through steam. For most games you can take a look at protondb, where you can just search for the game.
My daughter plays slime rancher off my desktop running Arch streaming to the steam link in her room.
I just switched to Ubuntu from windows 11. Minecraft bedrock was a bit of a project, jackbox games and rollercoaster tycoon were a breeze. I had to disable secure boot and some other things in my bios. Most of my other bumps were very easily googleable, and I actually found the post operating system process better than a fresh windows install (video card drivers, network drivers etc). I have worked in tech for a long time though so ymmv.
Dual boot 100% no doubts. Don’t unilaterally impose Linux on your Son, he will likely be cut off from many socialization on current and future popular multiplayer games that may or may not run smoothly on Linux.
Pft, just enable wobbly windows and Linux will be the shit.
For everything else God invented cloud gaming.
But seriously, my kids had the choice between Windows and Linux. They chose Linux because it looks nicer. The older one is even on Discord with friends who live further away. He finds enough current games that have anti cheat for Linux enabled. And in the end they both always get back to Minecraft and Roblox.
As long as your kids currend and future friends will be on Windows there will be potential issues. There’s also the matter of familiarizing yourself with an environment that monopolyze the professional environment…
I guess all those games work out of the box in linux through steam. I personally play just Stellaris from that list, but I do not see why the others wouldn’t.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I don’t want to start a new one for a related question. I understand I will probably have to wipe or partition my primary drive, but will I be able to use my other drives as-is, and have access to all of my files and things?
Depending on the distro, Linux may or may not be able to write to NTFS volumes out of the box.
The proper way to share drives between Windows and Linux is to format them to ExFAT.
Yes. But in terms of gaming Steam seems to have problems if your games are on an NTFS (Windows filesystem) partition. Everything else should work.
It says they do but they kinda mostly don’t. I’m playing from linux on my old steam windows folder on a very much NTFS drive and I never had an issue.
NTFS drives can be used by both Windows and Linux (you might need to install a driver for the latter but most user-friendly distros include them out of the box). So yes, if you have storage drives you’ll still be able to access them from both sides.
There can be weird issues sometimes with this setup, usually as a result of Windows freaking out because Linux modified some file, but it’s rarely anything severe. Personally I just flipped all my drives to Linux filesystems because they’re nicer for several purposes and I am actively trying to avoid ever using Windows again at this point.
I don’t know if you happen to have any other machines available to you, but I do recommend you consider giving it a go on a machine you don’t share with another person, or at least dual-booting on that machine. It could be pretty jarring to be dumped onto another operating system so quickly, especially as one works out how to use the programs they had been running just fine before.
I recently made the swap to Linux myself, and a dedicated laptop for that transition has made my life a lot easier. I still have my old laptop on Windows, heavens forbid I absolutely need it, but I do find some issues with compatibility. As another person has mentioned, Roblox does not offer native Linux support, which means you have to run a program that more or less tricks Roblox into thinking you’re playing on a smartphone. You can do the same for Bedrock Minecraft if you want to play cross-platform.
For a lot of things there are alternatives that tend to work even better in some ways. For others, there are workarounds. And for others yet, you just can’t use some applications you might have been using before.
There you go https://www.protondb.com/
Also consider that you can just try and if you don’t like it, remove it. It can be a weekend fun exploration together.
