The amount of bullshit there is to make things work is… not that bad. When it comes to games, I just can’t. Having to reboot just to fix common FPS issues is too much. I’ve had a bunch of things that require a config change, which then has caused other issues.
The state of Linux Desktop is the best it has ever been and I’ll be back the moment Wayland works better. I love Linux, but for now, it’s not working out for me… Just needed to vent, thanks for reading.
No shame in having to switch back after giving it a try and running into a lot of issues. Having to reboot a lot is definitely unusual, there’s probably something wrong with your setup, but who knows where the issue is or how long it would take you to fix. Hopefully you can give it another try in a few years and those issues have been resolved.
There are too many issues to list, some caused by a different distro and some by misconfiguration that is just too much to undo. The FPS lag I have no idea what the cause is and it really only happens in newer games. Almost everything is “mild”, the games are just less enjoyable.
A few years might be a bit too many, the next round is on W10 death at the least. Before trying Desktop Linux out half a year ago, I knew Linux CLI which made most things easy. It’s just that I don’t have time to debug things I have no clue about.
Some of it to me, is just hardware selection. My laptop and egpu run windows fine. Linux gaming is rough as hell.
That said, i bought a steam deck, and it will run the same games my laptop struggles with in linux, just fine.
Sorry for the super late ping, but if they run under linux at all then it might be a distro issue. You should try out Bazzite. Hell, you should install it on your deck too. It’s designed to basically be SteamOS++ and has deck/handheld, as well as Desktop images. I run it on my Lenovo Legion Go and everything just works, as if it were a deck honestly. I have it on my desktop with an Nvidia GPU too, and it games great, at least anything that will play on Linux. It’s atomic, similar to an immutable distro, so it’s also never broken to the point of unplayable. If something isn’t working after an update, you can reboot and choose the older, working image instead.
Hm. I’ll give it a shot. I was trying it under pop!
Do “your games” run on steam? Did you check protondb for fixes?
For me I want to know how much frame latency there is since I’m suspicious and I want to try things to see the effect and I just don’t know how to get that information in an OSD like I can with msi afterburner.
If someone knows what can do this in Linux, please reply!
Instead I just stopped all competitive and cooperative gaming. Which is a bit of a shame. Sometimes I’ll load up windows to join friends but usually by the time I’ve updated whatever game I’ve gotten over it.
Don’t get me wrong, hiccups aside I’m very happy which is why I’m in Linux most of the time. But it’s not always a wonderful world.
MangoHud is the Linux equivalent of MSI Afterburner. Another tool called Goverlay is a GUI for configuring MangoHud. To make the overlay actually show up on screen, after you’ve installed MangoHud you need to add some parameters to the game launch code in Steam, like
command mangohudor some shit—I’m not at my computer so I can’t give you the exact parameter, but you should be able to find it with a quick search. Good luck.mangohud %command%
I guess I understand.
For myself, though, not being a big fan of FPS/RTS games, basically anything I play is fine as long as it’s around 30 and most of it is 10+ years old and/or indie game… I’m pretty much in the phase when if the game does not work on my OS (which is barely the case), the game has to go.
It’s rarely the case for me though, last time I really did that was like 7 years ago with Doom 3: I haven’t realized that it’s Windows-only so I ended up asking for money back on Steam. Nowadays, with Steam Deck & Proton it’s not a problem; I actually got Doom 3 on Steam again, and I can play it just fine. (Well, “fine” with the exception that the monsters are scary so I’m scared, but the game is fine!)
I’m not posting this to feel smug, cos I’m not. It’s 100% legit to want your games to look and feel awesome, you deserve that.
I’m posting it just as a flag, that for people with far less demanding taste, Linux is just fine. I can’t think of a game right now that I would want to play so much that I would be willing to install Windows.
I can’t think of a game right now that I would want to play so much that I would be willing to install Windows.
Oh, I actually can. Gnomoria. Which is like 10 years old, unfinished (pretty much playable, though) but AWESOME indie , dwar-fortress-inspired colony sim, does technically have Linux build, but the Linux build has a horrible bug where it corrupts your save after getting to a certain advanced point in the game. For that one, my dear beloved Gnomoria, I actually ended up installing Windows 10 in a KVM a year or so ago :-D.
That’s sweet to hear somebody talking about a long-forgotten game like Gnomoria so fondly. I hope somehow that reaches a dev. :D
I have this one sitting in my library too, and it did make me sad that it’s forever unfinished. Didn’t know about that nasty Linux bug! Wish at that point, they would just open source it lol.
In the meantime I’ve really been enjoying Rimworld as a DF-like experience. :)
So you’re gaming on Wayland, which is a bad idea, but instead of just using X11 you’re heading back to Windows?
I mean, you do you, but it kinda seems like you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater here…
I’ll be back the moment Wayland works better.
Why don’t you just use X11 instead?
This, I tried some newer distros with Wayland and ended up going back to Debian Stable and X11 for gaming. Got Sunshine (for Moonlight handheld client streaming) working for in about a minute.
And some people hate X11 and like Fedora’s and RHEL’s decisions to purge it lol
Are you volunteering to maintain it? It requires man hours to keep it working. Also it is a security nightmare.
But some people need it. Dropping it is just a moral question.
All the talk I’ve seen about Wayland to date has been that it’s great if/when it works perfectly but that’s rare because it’s just not ready. Shame really.
Check out massgrave dot dev, they have W11 IoT LTSC and activators. It’s the best version of Windows! No more dealing with AI bullshit being added, nor advertisements.
Bon jour. Come back soon.
Most of us had a moment like this I think. Sometimes it lasts months, sometimes it lasts forever.
I’ll be back the moment Wayland works better.
You mentioned in a comment that you used Arch, Debian and EndeavourOS. Though, historically, Wayland has been adopted first on Fedora. Therefore, I wonder if underutilizing Fedora (and/or derivatives like Bazzite/Nobara) might have been the main culprit in this case.
Let’s use bazzite.
I just need this one package.
Wait, it’s all read-only? Always has been.
What’s preventing you to install that single package through
rpm-ostree?It’s a steering wheel driver. And virtualbox.
It’s a steering wheel driver.
Could you perhaps be more precise? Is it a specific one? Or are there a multitude of steering wheel drivers that satisfy your needs?
And virtualbox.
Do you specifically need VirtualBox? Or would Qemu/KVM satisfy your needs?
IIRC VirtualBox requires kernel mods. Therefore, you would have to create your own images 😅 in which said kernel mod is included. FWIW, both uBlue’s templates and BlueBuild do a wonderful job at streamlining this process.
Or…, as alluded before, you don’t necessarily need VirtualBox. But, instead, Qemu/KVM perfectly satisfy your needs. Then, you can just run
ujust setup-virtualization. After which you reboot, and you would be good to go.Im describing a use case of my friend whom I convinced to use linux instead of windows for gaming. His steering wheel is on this list: https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/901
While not being tech illiterate he wasn’t thrilled to build his own fork of the OS and I don’t blame him. He also wanted to use virtualbox, and I won’t force him to switch to qemu or kvm because Im not a gnome developer to invalidate someones use cases. He settled for endeavor os and is very happy with it.
IMO immutable distros aren’t a best fit for a desktop computer. It can do so much more than gaming and turning it into a dedicated console is a step back if a normal linux distro can do just as well.
It’s all good. Use what makes you happy.
Hannah Montana Linux it is!
I get it, and have switched back and forth myself a few times over the years…
I’m a Linux sysadmin who is also a PC gamer.
I run Windows for my main desktop as a gamer. Greatest choice, best compatibility, it’s the primary focus for game developers, etc. I use debian on my laptops and home servers as I don’t game on those and otherwise Linux is better in most other areas.
At least for me, it doesn’t matter a huge amount what OS I use as a desktop provided it’s stable and not annoying. Sometimes lilnux is annoying because of compatibility or bugs or specific software isn’t available or work poorly, sometimes Windows is annoying because of monitoring, design choices that favour Microsoft instead of the user, changes - often hidden - to existing practices, or any of the thousand little annoyances. Neither is painless 100% of the time but they’re not really so different from a day to day driver if the software you need works well on both, which for many people is basically just a web browser.
I applaud those who game under Linux, you’re doing great stuff and opening the doors for everyone in the future.
While I’m far from being a sysadmin I’m in the same boat. Main study laptop is Linux but I just end up using Windows on my gaming PC for the same reasons.
Okay.
Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with your distro. It can happen, not all hardware behaves equally well on Linux and differences between distros are huge. Some even don’t run the latest kernel.
Out of curiosity, did you try Fedora, Ubuntu, KDE Neon, Kubuntu or Linux Mint? These are in my opinion great general public distros that are very stable. Ubuntu and Mint notably is lacking in Wayland support but KDE Neon and Fedora are very good at it.
Also, did you try running the desktop with X11 instead of Wayland?
I’d also recommend having another drive with the Linux distro so you can jump back and forth easier and test out new distros without having your computer potentially unusable.
Linux was never and will never be there for crowds which just want their “computer to work” on each and every usage scenario.
Neither is windows
So according to your definition: why OS makes your “computer just work” ?
My OS makes my computer just work. I’m on KDE Neon which is “unstable” but in my case just works. Ubuntu just works. Fedora just works. Mint just works. Debian just works. Windows just works. For every use case? No.
Windows is just another OS. It’s a good one, but not for every use case.
80% of people in the world would disagree with you. If you ask them which OS just works they will answer Windows, esp. if they have a bit of experience in dealing with Linux or tried it out for a brief time.
80% of people have never tried Linux and I’m pretty sure 80% of people only use computers for browsers, email and basic word processing. For those use cases almost every Linux just works. Meanwhile Windows is dropping support for old hardware so it’ll just stop working.
I mean, sure, if you buy a computer with Windows on it it’ll most likely just work for most of it’s lifespan but if you buy a Tuxedo laptop it’s pretty much supported for life.
In my opinion the UX and customization in windows is complete garbage so it very much doesn’t just work for me.
Bugs on Linux is far easier to debug than bugs on Windows imo
I personally dual boot windows and linux precisely because gaming can be frustrating on linux sometimes. I use windows exclusively for gaming and linux for everything else. I have plans to try and game on linux again sometime though. Maybe one day the experience will be good enough to ditch windows altogether. (Hopefully before the end of Windows 10 Support)
I just did the opposite. Ditched windows which I only used for gaming. The amount of games working in Linux now is amazing, I play a lot of sims and even stuff like headtrackers and steering wheels just work. Sure it’s not perfect and working for everybody but its getting really good really fast.
Games that do not work at all on Linux like Fortnite for example, I just ignore.
Same here. I used to dual boot but finally moved to Linux and instead shortened my games list. Plus games that I really enjoy playing are fromsoft games,hollow knight, hades, dead cells and factorio and all of them are amazing on Linux. So sorry Billy G, no more OS level big brother for me
