I did it. For a few years now I’ve wanted to make the jump but lazyness and a bit of worry that my main game wouldn’t work very well kept me from it.
Then some effing windows update caused ridiculous stuttering on games (or maybe it was a auto-update of some other hidden thing, I couldn’t figure it out) so I decided that if I needed a system wipe, might as well as try gaming on linux.
Honestly? Much easier than I expected. Install Steam, turn two options on and 90% of your library is ready to go. I had to tinker with getting freesync to work (ended up just switching to wayland, which just worked) but other than the plugins I use for my main game requiring a bit of more work, smooth as butter really.
So yeah, if you are a lazy gamer like I am, next time you do a system wipe or get a new computer, try installing linux first. Don’t even bother Dual booting it, if you don’t like it just reinstall (setup your usb drive with ventoy and the images you want to try out.)
Same thing happened to me recently, like literally 2 days ago. I’ve been wanting to switch for good for years, but always ended up having some problem pop up that I would try to deal with, and eventually go back to windows.
Well, 2 nights ago, I’m playing a game on steam. Middle of a boss fight, my computer just shuts down to start installing windows updates. When it finally finished, not only did I lose my progress, but because the game was not shut down correctly, it corrupted several files and needed a reinstall.
I literally used Chris Titus Techs Win10 tool to disable windows updates until I choose to run them, as well as ShutUp10 to disable ALL M$’s bullshit.
Update happened anyway, and sure enough, all their spyware had been re-enabled. At that point, I started asking around online for recommendations on what would work best for my use cases, with a few specific tools I needed. In the past, I had used several distros that really didn’t do what I needed, or would get me 90% of the way there. Problem was, that other 10% was a pretty important 10%. Someone told me to try just regular old vanilla Fedora. I did, actually learned how to setup, configure, and use Gnome extensions to get it to look and feel the way I want it to. Been having the best experience ever; EVERYTHING just works out of the box. At this point, I have successfully and fully converted!
Edit: grammar and typos
Are you me? It pissed me off that the system was obviously designed to disregard my wishes one too many times. Luckily, gaming support has been very good.
This was me a few months ago when I started seeing ads in start menu. I love Linux and use it for work but was worried about things like VRR, scaling, HDR support, periperhal support etc. While a lot of those things are still a WIP I have had no major issues (except occasional anticheat borked but even then rarely).
I ended up going bazzite and I’m really liking it. What distro you go with OP?
I went Pop OS but I had Bazzite, Nobara and Endeavour on the usb drive ready to go if I didn’t like it.
I don’t think you’re lazy if one tiny inconvenience was enough for you to overhaul your system to get a different OS.
You know, I can think of more reasons to jump to a different OS than just a brief bit of stuttering. But you do you.
Maybe it sounds overdramatic but if the point of a computer is to play games (and I did spend a lot of money for it) and it stutters consistently to the point that the “80” FPS I’m getting looks worse than a consistent 30, then yeah, I’m going to do something about it. And since the simplest way was wiping the system and reinstalling, then going for linux at least at first makes sense.
Maybe I wasn’t clear in the OP but it was not a bit of stuttering: I could go to certain areas in game and get consistent stuttering and frametime problems, which is worse than just lowered but consistent FPS.
@lorty Did the same (and discovered Ventoy) just recently myself too. So far, on a “secondary PC” but it’s going so well that I will probably do it on the primary one as soon as something bad happens to it.
Congratulations!
Nice! I left Windows behind a few months ago as well. Had been dual booting Ubuntu and Windows since Windows 7.
Tried to primarily game on Ubuntu about a decade ago but it just didn’t work out well at the time so I had to keep Windows around. Fast forward to this past year with Windows 10 quickly approaching EoL and (me personally) not being a fan of the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu I started looking at other options.
Ended up learning about Bazzite and haven’t looked back. Was able to play almost my entire game’s library without much effort. I had planned on dual booting two Linux operating systems so I could separate work from play, but decided to stick with one.
Congratulations!
As someone who dual booted, I agree, don’t bother. If you’ve got any important files, back em up to a cloud or something, and wipe. Dual booting gave me so many issues, and eventually I broke my windows install somehow anyway. Just go with a full wipe, it’ll save you a Lotta trouble.
I always knew there was still good in you.
Depending on the distro, look that Vulkan is set up.
Some tips for lazy Linux gaming setup:
Install flatpak and flatpak steam
Install the ProtonPlus flatpak if you need custom proton versions for some games, I usually just add the latest proton-ge and don’t have to bother with anything else
Fedora, Arch, EndeavourOS, Nobara and Bazzite are all pretty good bases for a gaming setup. They all have their pain points so I’d boot a couple and see how you like them before making a decision.
I wouldn’t describe rolling release distros where you need to fix breakages for lazy gamers.
99% of breakages on a rolling release distro are solved by downgrading the broken package until a fix lands so it’s not much worse than windows. You want to be chasing recent releases of pretty much everything if you want the best performance for gaming. You could run Debian but you’ll be waiting 18mo for any new performance improvements to land.
They’re specifically talking about being lazy though.
Install the Steam deck OS and pray I guess, they’ll curate Arch for you
@seaQueue @lorty I always have controller problems with flatpak steam. Some games will work with a controller and some won’t Even if steam says control is compatible. I have the same problem with Debian and steam too. That’s why I always game on arch Linux and Fedora Linux. I have no problem with controller support but those two.
My steam install isn’t with flatpack, I just did an apt install to get it. My Dualshock 4 worked in Elden ring without any changes from my side.
Is it every game? Or only specific ones? Is your controller bluetooth or does it have a specific dongle?
@lorty only on certain games. Some games will work on my wired controller in some games won’t. I was using an original Xbox controller and Xbox One controller.
Sorry man, I haven’t used a controller for Linux gaming in recent years (outside of things like PPSSPP which worked fine.) If you can find specific error messages in your logs while you’re having trouble with the controller I’d copy/paste those into Google and see if you can find a solution that way, or make a new post in one of the Linux gaming communities and see if anyone has better information than I do.
Edit: this looks promising: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1342veq/steam_flatpak_controller_not_working_couldnt_open/
I’ve used linux on the side for years. In my experience, people talking about it usually forget to mention issues that might be fatal flaws for someone. Like audio sources not being saved between reboots or monitor resolution seeming a bit off. You have to go in expecting problems and being comfortable with that. If you’re the kind of person that’s going to blame linux when the first thing goes wrong, it will and you’ll want to go back to windows. And then windows will also have problems but more people will be able to help you.
Exciting! Sort of interestingly, I never dual booted or anything, I just jumped straight to Linux.
Honestly, it’s really not that bad. Linux has come a long way since I started out, and while I usually make it harder for myself than it needs to be, I’ve seen young middle schoolers installing and using Linux, I’ve seen retired professional musicians with no technical background install and use Linux. Especially with all these new fancy atomic desktops, like Silverblue, Bazzite, and Kinoite. Admittedly, I have managed to break a Kinoite installation (doing stuff I probably shouldn’t have been doing), but fixing it felt magical. Just roll back to when it wasn’t borked, then update it.
I did a lot of not so nice things to that installation (it was a bit of a test, to see how fragile it was), and it’s still running now!
Welcome to the club! We have punch and pie.
Nice! I wish my issues were limited to those fixable ones.
I have issues with sound card SPDIF not working and Bluetooth on the intel WiFi card not wanting to switch on. Both known bugs with no fixes in the pipeline.
Will need to wait for my next PC upgrade in 5 years time.
I got about 15% better minimum frame rates under Linux and only one of my recent games had issues with anti-cheat.
Have you been able to try a more recent kernel version? It may have improvements in the driver situation.
Even 6.9 does not have the fix yet. Seems one of the two bugs is on roadmap for 6.11
Do you know what your Intel connectivity chip is? I’m curious.
Intel ax211 was the first one. Ax210 had same problem, as did the ax411.
But the bug has something to do with how the motherboard initializes the devices.
They all work fine in other laptops
I have the ax210 installed. Interesting. Is this an intel chip on this mobo? I wonder if you’re running out of PCI address space to map the devices as there have been some changes to how this work in the kernel. You migth try
intel_iommu=offas a shot in the dark if it’s not getting detected at all, if you have an intel chip. Doeslspcisee the device at all?It’s an AMD machine, lspci sees the devices. It just can seem to initialize it, sometimes. Every now and again it just starts working if the machine was unpowered for a few days.
Just a thought, you could try getting a new Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card or just a USB dongle. Should be in the $10 usd range
I tried 3 Different models. Seems it’s actually a motherboard issue. The same WiFi cards work fine with fedora in my laptop.
