Games

I'm going to Linux because I have an older i5 (I think 5th or 7th gen?) which isn't compatible.

I only really kept Windows for gaming but Valve has put a lot of effort into making Linux gaming more accessible and I'm willing to try it out now

Considering I'm unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can't upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.

Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I'm not holding my breath.

How to give it a go:

• Get a 256GB SSD and install it on your computer alongside the existing drives.
• Install a gaming-oriented Linux distro such as Pop!OS, Bazzite, SteamOS or similar, on that drive (don't let it touch any other drive - those things generally have an install mode were you just tell it "install in this drive" which will ignore all other drives)
• Unless your machine is 10 years old or older, during boot you can press a key (generally F8) and the BIOS will pop-up a boot menu that lets you choose which OS you want start booting (do it again at a later date if you want to change it back). If your machine is old you might actually have to go into the BIOS and change the boot EFI (or if even older, boot drive) it boots from in the boot section of the BIOS.
• Use launchers such as Steam and a Lutris since they come with per-game install scripts that make sure Proton/Wine is properly configured, so that for most game you don't have to do any tweaking at all for them to run - it's just install and launch. In my experience you still have to tweak about 1 game in every 10.
• If it all works fine and you're satisfied with it, get a bigger SSD and install it alongside the rest. Make one big partition in it and mount you home directory there (at this point you will have to go down to the CLI to copy over your home directory). You'll need this drive because of all the space you'll be using for games, especially modern ones and launchers like Steam and Lutris will install the games in your home directory so having that in it's own partition is the easiest way to add storage space for games.

As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.

When NOT to do it:

• If you don't know what a BIOS is or that you can press a key at the start of boot to get into it.
• If you don't know how to install a new drive on your machine (or even what kind of drive format it takes) and don't have somebody who can do it for you.
• If you don't actually have the free slot for the new drive (for example, notebooks generally only have 2 slots, sometimes only 1).

Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.

This year will be the year of the Linux desktop for shure. I believe in it like the years before.

I got a new PC recently so unfortunately I am now on Windows 11. I’ve been wanting to make the swap to Linux but I can’t really make a clean break because at least some of the games I play a lot won’t work on Linux. I do think I’m gonna try to set up another hard drive with Linux on it to try to slowly start learning it and ideally move over anything that I can over there eventually and just keep the windows drive for those few games.

Does anyone have any recommendations related to that? Distro for gaming/ease of use? What’s the best option for setting up the dual boot? Anything I wouldn’t have thought of that’s relevant?

I run Linux on a small mini pc for some casual browsing.

I run windows on my main pc.

As long as some kernel anticheat (fortnite, cod, etc...) doesn't run on Linux, I won't be swapping.

30+y of windows use also makes me infinitely more comfortable with windows. All the complaints I always read about are totally moot for me (I understand the issue of privacy in windows. It's the price I pay to have an OS that "just works" for me) .

While I enjoy tinkering, Linux is a royal PITA to use if you're not used to it. I spend hours trying to figure out how to fix something that takes me 5m max in windows. I understand it's a more a me than a Linux problem. But I'm certain many people struggle with the same things.

I was running mint, but had to go back to windows because of a hardware bug I'm still trying to fix where my PC will randomly not wake up from sleep and that results in corrupted drives, which windows can fix with it's automated repair at boot, but Linux has done commands that I need to run and if I fuck it up it would fuck my computer up even more, so until I can fix the hardware bug I'm stuck on windows, but by fuck do I hate it. I prefer Linux so much more over windows, so much more convenient, efficient, personalizable and it actually works in many places where windows simply doesn't even with a lot of fiddling around in settings and shit

I would like to switch to Linux on my gaming machine but me and my girlfriend play Valorant together so I can't switch just yet.

My server and laptop already run NixOS, I'm just looking forward to the day my gaming/main machine join them too

I upgraded last year, have lost no functionality

Made my jump to Arch (btw) a couple of years ago and haven't really looked back. I have Win10 as a second boot option, but that's reserved specifically for Game Pass and VR, but it's very rare I boot it. Don't care to upgrade even after EOL, and I'd never recommend Arch to anyone but the most comfortable with Linux, but it's been a great option for me.

Made the upgrade last week to Linux mint and I’m loving it. Got my Arr stacks and stuff setup as dockers and it’s never worked so well. All the connection issues I’ve had on windows is now gone.

The interface is nice and not bloated. And I’m not being tracked which feels liberating.

Already switched to linux

Steam OS, Batocera, Bazzite, Linux Mint.. so many great distros for gaming alone.

Already upgraded to Linux Mint - https://lemmy.world/post/24365609

It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.

How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it's been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research