this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Linux Gaming

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Follow-up video to https://lemmy.world/post/32690521


Spoiler alert: the main reason he says the experience "hasn't been great" is because shortly before posting the video his Linux install mysteriously broke and he had no idea why. Therefore, he recommended dual-booting Windows just in case.

Cue sea of comments explaining that the reason for the error he was getting was that Windows screwed up his bootloader (i.e. the problem was caused by dual-booting to begin with, LOL).

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 104 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

The other two main TL;DWs are that:

  • He justifiably complained about PVP games having non-Linux-compatible kernel-level anti-cheat.

  • His benchmark testing showed a big performance difference between Windows and Linux on his system, which has an AMD Radeon 7900 XTX. Being an admitted noob, he didn't notice that it was an unusual discrepancy and figured that worse gaming performance in Linux was "real," but a bunch of folks in the comments are telling him that RDNA 3 drivers have a known issue that means the card probably isn't running at full power and tweaking the settings can probably fix it.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 84 points 1 week ago (9 children)

tweaking the settings can probably fix it.

Which is another points against Linux. Stuff should work correctly out of the box. That's what average user expects.

[–] Damage@slrpnk.net 96 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Stuff should work correctly out of the box.

That's why Windows isn't ready for mass adoption

[–] Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Average users can't even remember to set their proper monitor resolution/refresh rate in windows or in games.

Or enable XMP/Expo profiles for RAM.

Or enable RE-BAR / Hypervisor support.

Smooth brains around'.

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 35 points 1 week ago

I helped my mom with her windows install when the update half a year ago nuked keyboard support (I had to use the onscreen keyboard just to login). Before thar I had to forcefully install the correct wifi driver as well to get it working properly. This is was running from their factory installation. Stuff working correctly out of the box is a problem on both platforms.

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Its not the fault of linux that the hardware manufacturer doesnt make functioning drivers tho...

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[–] glog78@digitalcourage.social 25 points 1 week ago

@TheBat @grue how do you define not working correctly ? ...

the GFX Card booted
the GFX Card rendered the desktop
the GFX Card rendered Games

... the only issue it wasn't as fast as possible ...
-> solution on windows -> you report and get a new driver or you get a new driver cause you don't know that you don't have the max performance
-> solution on linux -> you report and get a new driver or you get a new driver cause you don't know that you don't have the max performance

^^^ where is the difference ?

[–] Wfh@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh yeah because spending half a day manually downloading and installing a zillion drivers and their bloat and rebooting between each install is peak ootb-functionality.

Meanwhile I was in CP2077 literally 5 minutes after booting a fresh install of Bazzite. On the exact same computer.

Cringe.

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Which operating system works out of the box for gamers that requires zero tweaks? Is it windows? Are you sure it's windows?

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[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

But that responsibility is not on the OS. It's a vendor and publisher responsibility. When a game doesn't work on Windows, people don't blame Microsoft. Admittedly the game was made for Windows. But most publishers and developers will give the same response to gamers, “fuck off, the game was for Windows XP, not W10 or W11. We will remake it and make you pay $60 again to play a game you already played 15 years ago. You are on your own until then.” The vast majority of old games that are still playable, are so through an effort from third parties. Like mod developers and vendors like Valve and GOG keeping compatibility alive.

Linux, as it has become abundantly clear after the SteamDeck and Proton, already makes gaming out of the box extremely easy and entirely viable. It was the other side of the equation who were being dickheads. Or, as an example, like Epic, or Genshin Impact, who intentionally go out of their way to break Linux viability for their games with utmost hatred.

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[–] noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org 41 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He justifiably complained about PVP games having non-Linux-compatible kernel-level anti-cheat.

I'm tired of people conflating gaming as a whole to extremely mainstream titles that fit into "online PVP with malware anti-cheat" such as Apex Legends, Valorant, and Battlefield, and then bashing Linux for "poor gaming experience".

Their experience with titles they enjoy is very valid, as valid as any other, but it's not the entirety of gaming and OS experience, at all. There's tons of games that run extremely well on Linux, even out of the box, no tinkering required, both on Nvidia and AMD hardware.

Grrr.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Personally, I find the Linux incompatibility with games that want to do shit to the kernel a plus so I don't accidentally install one without realizing it comes with malware.

[–] Zikeji@programming.dev 36 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To your first comment about incompatible anticheat - in must cases it's a conscious decision the publisher makes. Are We Anti-Cheat Yet it's a good resource. Personally I find my OS preventing me from being able to run a privacy invading rootkit to be a pro as well.

To the second comment, a good amount of games bench better on Linux, not sure what's going on with his system so I agree.

Definitely unfortunate to see a creator publishing content without first doing some research but that's more and my common nowadays.

[–] RobotZap10000@feddit.nl 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This YouTuber in particular does indeed just frequently throw out statements without properly checking whether they are even true at all.

[–] BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 week ago

It’s a big problem with this guy for sure, but also he’s usually pretty good at admitting when he’s wrong and calling himself out on it. I wonder if he’ll look into this again to get some clarity.

[–] astrsk@fedia.io 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wait, I have a 7800x3D and 7900 XTX and feel like I’m getting exactly the performance I’d expect for 1440p gaming. What do I need to look into to see if I’m leaving performance on the table? I’m using Arch so latest rolling kernel drivers seem to be working fine based on my monitoring of card stats and “feel” when playing modern games. Since performance has been fine out of the box, I never suspected I could be missing something so it would be nice to verify one way or another.

[–] DeviantOvary@reddthat.com 6 points 1 week ago

This is what I had to do couple of years ago: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1500#note_1854170

It seems it has been fixed since.

[–] million@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I am kind of shocked about the 7900 xtx. I have the same GPU and I am getting good performance under Linux.

I did some just for fun benchmarking on Doom The Dark Ages last night and I expected Linux to be slightly slower due to the built in ray tracing but I actually got better avgs under Linux. The max frame rate was slightly higher under Windows but the lows were way better under Linux. Overall fairly close performance with a slight edge to Linux.

Maybe Bazzite is doing some magic here. What distro was he using?

Edit: I watched a bit of it, he is running Bazzite, no idea why he is seeing such crazy different numbers. I typically run Proton GE, and I assume he is running Proton Stable, so that would make a dent. People are mentioning low power mode in the comments, but I never have had any issue with that and my 7900 xtx. I haven't had to do anything weird or out of the ordinary.

I think it’s most likely due to me not playing the same games he is, Stalker 2 is basically the only he is playing that I have played in the past and I've haven't done a comparison of that game on Linux vs Windows.

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[–] july@leminal.space 53 points 1 week ago (1 children)

average tech youtuber not knowing anything about tech

[–] grue@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (14 children)

Hey, at least he's up-front about it and didn't type in yes, do as I say! like Other Linus did.

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[–] who@feddit.org 52 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you for including the spoiler. This tech vlogger's irresponsible headline would normally have earned a downvote from me.

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[–] ISolox@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As someone who games on Fedora as my main OS, we need to stop pretending that Linux gaming is all sunshine and rainbows.

Yes, fuck Windows, and it probably did fuck his boot loader, but it doesn't invalidate his other poor experiences he had with the OS.

Hell, I don't think that even that was necessarily an invalid experience just because it was caused by Windows. Dual booting is a thing people have to do, especially if they want to play the games that just don't work on Linux. Even if you don't like the games personally, they are huge and a lot of people want to play them. Even my main Linux group dual booted recently to play the BF6 beta.

Being elitist and calling people stupid because they had a bad experience will do nothing but hurt Linux gaming. Instead of calling JayzTwoCents stupid because he dual booted for a valid reason, explain alternatives that he could have done to prevent the issue. If we want to grow as a community, we need to provide actual helpful feedback, not by being toxic.

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago (7 children)

The real problem is people refusing to learn a new workflow. Which is why anyone would need Windows and dualbooting. Yes you can't tun every software on Linux that you can on Windows and vise versa; which is the whole damn point. There is software which lets you do the same thing just in a different way - but no one wants to explore the option, if it doesn't look and work exactly the same, people run away.

I play on Linux. I can count on one hand what games won't launch. One of them was my main game and their decision to drop Linux off a cliff last year has just grown my hatred for them and Microsoft, which I think is a much healthier and normal response than to submissively bend-over backwards and rush to install Windows which is exactly what they were counting on like we're some kind of sheep; like all the dual booters out there licking boots.

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[–] dontmindmehere@programming.dev 40 points 1 week ago (6 children)

the idea that you can just jump to linux with zero research needs to go

  • no you can't have every game and program you're used to
  • no you can't translate windows or mac knowledge
  • yes you have to know what partitions, desktop environments, distros, and other bunch of terms mean
  • yes you may have to type terminal commands (no one complains about ipconfig when figuring out whether it's ISP or DNS problem)
  • yes there are a bunch of shit tutorials online with copy-paste commands that don't work
[–] monkeyman512@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I want to make sure I am understanding what you are intending to communicate correctly. At first I thought you were basically saying, "normies need to get good". But in reflection you could be attempting to say, "Linux advocates are communicating unrealistic expectations which lead normal people to frustration and disappointment." Or is your intent something else?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I'm not OP, but I agree with the latter.

Go in expecting to need to learn some stuff, and you'll probably need to learn less than you expect. Set aside a couple hours for the setup process, you probably won't need it, but you might. Figure out where to go for help before you start. Leave yourself a backup plan in case you don't finish.

Linux is pretty easy to use these days, but it's a new thing and will take getting used to. Expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised when things work out.

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[–] sylveon@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve been gaming on Linux on both Deck and Desktop for a while now and I like it, but I also have to admit that it’s not without issues. Thanks to Steam and Proton, most games really do “just work”, but some, especially non-Steam games or related tools like launchers, plugin/mod managers can cause issues and may need more effort to get running, which can be difficult for people with little Linux experience. I also recognise that not everyone wants to have to deal with that and I think that’s fair. And I get the impression that many Linux gamers underestimate their own skills and how much the average non-tech person would have to learn to be able to have a similarly good experience.

Updates can also just break games. I’s happened to me with Trackmania when the stupid Ubisoft launcher suddenly wouldn’t work anymore, or Blizzard games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2, which started having graphical issues. Slay the Spire, after a patch, always launched on the wrong screen and refused to let me move it to the primary one.

Disclaimer: I’m on a non-gaming focused, but popular distro (Fedora).

[–] moody@lemmings.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Slay the Spire in particular has a Linux native version. You shouldn't have any issues with that.

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[–] Malix@sopuli.xyz 20 points 1 week ago (14 children)

It's not an unreasonable to think that a backup os is a good thing to have, even if in this case it's the one (most likely) being the reason Bazzite broke.

Now, I did listen to the video on my way to work, so I might have missed some details, but after checking the comments it seems like Jay's performance wasn't really where it should have been. Got to wonder if there's some funky gotcha with the gpu module or proton settings.

Also, does Bazzite default to xorg or wayland? I honestly have no idea.

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[–] EldenLord@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

channel name JayzTwoCents

look inside

tfw opinions aren‘t even worth a penny

[–] Dequei@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I had a problem with dualbooting windows because i always have to shutdown it using shift+shutdown, because windows kidnaps my ssd and hdd.

[–] Bronzie@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Also had issues with dual booting until I removed the Linux drives when installing Windows to make sure the boot partition was created on a separate drive.
Zero issues since.

Biggest downside is Windows always rebooting after updates, and if I don't sit there, it boots back into Linux as it's the first option in Grub.

At least now I have the option to fire up Windows when I can't solve something in Mint.

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[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 12 points 1 week ago

I unsubbed from that channel. Every title is clickbait. I'm not going to watch a video that is like "this is a game changer", no idea what it's about, no idea if it's relevant.

[–] dreugeworst@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've been dual booting for ages without any windows-caused issues. is it windows 11 specifically that messes with dual booting or did I accidentally work around it by installing Linux to a separate ssd

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Different disk is fine. Same disk, Windows is a little colonialist ass and on every update will rewrite the boot partition, screwing up Linux.

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[–] dafta@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago

Yeah, if you've got two EFI partitions on separate disks and one is for Windows while the other is for your Linux, you're good. Windows likes to reinstall its bootloader which sets it as the default and sometimes overwrites the Linux bootloader, but not if it's on a different EFI partition, then it doesn't "know" about it.

[–] Agility0971@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

What do you think the problem is? Grub is present so windows update cannot be the culprit on this one. Initramfs works, but the root partition is not found. Both the primary and fallback. A broken update sequence? Would be nice to get the logs

Edit: at 23:32 it says the logs have been generated at /run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt and that the user can save it to /boot or usb stick. Since /boot was mounted successfully and grub was working, then the probably a broken update from bazzite.

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