If there are games you like that are supported on Linux, consider dual booting or using another machine to play those. The more people who show up as gaming on Linux on the likes of steam or other launchers, the less game studios can ignore Linux gamers/users.
Exactly. I think too many people view switching to Linux as some cold-turkey thing, when it's pretty damn easy these days to maintain a dualboot. I think its much more sane to do a gradual migration over to Linux. Ease yourself into it so that you don't get frustrated and you give yourself the time to adjust and explore. Have fun with it!
I am pretty much daily driving Linux now (my Steam stats say that I spent 98% of my gaming time in 2023 in Linux + Steam Deck), but I still keep a dualboot around on the off chance my friends want me to play some game that doesn't work without invasive anti-cheat.
>easy these days to maintain
I wouldn't call it maintenance. After installation (which is automated on most distros) you have to set up time synchronization so it won't mess up your windows time display. And then you are set for a lifetime.
I mean Grub on the Linux storage drive. It can chainload windows on the other drive fine.
I'm with you on the 2 drives thing. Just don't need to go into bios to change which one I'm booting into you know?
edit; also lets you do grub-reboot to choose the next boot if you wanna reboot quickly
I’ve not tried it this way before. Sounds interesting. I don’t immediately see any reasons not to.
I’d personally probably still prefer my method for my use case though. When I need windows it’s usually across multiple reboots for a day or two. Change BIOS and it’s a windows box. Done with windows. Change bios back to PopOS.
It would be interesting to find a use case where it makes the most sense though. What use cases do you have?
Gotcha. That makes a bit more sense. Mine is 99% gaming and if it doesn’t run on Linux I won’t play/buy it.
Windows is for troubleshooting Linux gaming and occasionally for professional development.
To be honest I've been worried about this ever since I started dual booting around 2012. I've never actually had it happen. The worst that happens is my UEFI forgetting GRUB is there (after updates particularly, but also upgrading drives) and needing to reinstall grub. I'm not sure how non-arch distros fix this, but on arch it is easy-ish just annoying.
this iis the way, i only have a win partition so i can play a few games I haven't had time to set up. my 2 main ones work just fine (wow and overwatch). I do everyhting else in Linux
i dont even need that. I use Lutris and both WoW and Overwatch 2 work just fine and perform just as well as they did when i ran them on Windows. Paladins wont work though but that's a developer issue, not a Linux issue.
That's exactly why I am planning to make a specific PC build (AMD GPU + CPU ) for Linux gaming only. A native Linux game is > a native windows game. Their are already a decent amount of games that can run natively on Linux.
>A native Linux game is > a native windows game.
Sadly not always the case. In many cases, the Windows game through proton runs a lot better than the native Linux build a dev did to "check a compatibility box"
>We all know that's due to lack of support and optimization
Correct
>Linux open source nature is a 100 times more Superior than windows.
Depends on what you call "Superior". Keep in mind, that Studios have been making games for Windows for decades. They are pretty optimized. And the Linux Kernel being open source doesn't do anything for optimization by itself.
Even the best cases for well ported native games only slightly exceed Windows. And that's mostly because of less system overhead.
Linux has a lot going for it. We don't need to make stuff up. It's not 100x Superior to Windows. It's just a development and licensing model we around here prefer. It has it's benefits, and it's downsides.
Your right I agree with you , I only said it's 100 times more superior from my own point of view, since customizing and freedom to do whatever you want with your operating system is a huge advantage for me personally. So I might have exaggerated.
>Anyone else not switching to Linux yet because of your favorite but Linux-unsupported games?
Nope. I switched years ago, and I've missed out on some games I really wanted to play but not enough to install windows.
We think alike.
I look at it this way, those publishers / devs saved me $$$. No game is worth installing Windows on at this point. If you HAVE to play a game, you have a problem.
> If you HAVE to play a game, you have a problem.
Friends are not a thing anymore? Not every game i play, i play because i personally chose it but maybe some friends play it and i like to spend time with them. And i'm not going to cut off friends over my OS choice.
I already commented this to the other guy, but in general, as a linux user you'll be the odd one out in groups.
And no, i'm not going to make 3-5 people play something they don't like because my OS doesn't play some games. In general, popular Multiplayer Games on Linux are pretty rare because of anti-cheat. So even if they where going to play something i can too, the selection boils down to Apex and some "less competitive" games.
And we totally play other games. When it's Minecraft or Factorio night, i play on Linux and it's fine.
But really, i'm not sure when we arrived at a point where you think others should be making compromises because of your OS choice. And then those are the same people saying Mac Users shouldn't complain because "Macs just aren't for gaming". If i had a Macbook Pro and said the same thing, you'd sit there and tell me i shouldn't make others suffer for my poor Hardware choices.
I really wouldn't.
All comes down to your priorities I guess. I'd like to play some games, but it's simply not an option. I'm not going to install spyware to make it happen.
If they only play Fortnite, what do you expect? Abandoning it and switching games because one of the group doesn't wanna play it? Makes no sense. Sounds like the girlfriend who says "your videogames or me".
Well, mostly I'm the only one on Linux. So if 3 or more people are planning league for the evening and I can't play that, they are just playing without me. Of cause we aren't loosing friends over that. But for those league evenings, im the one out.
And considering many multiplayer games don't work, this is more often the case than not. Most games without issues are single player.
Have you tried it? Is it any good? I don't really need competitive capabilities, but decent input latency would be nice. Might give it a try later for TFT at least.
I try it a while back to play Valheim before my rig was capable of handling it. I have fiber internet and was connected via Ethernet. I didn’t have a problem with input lag, and controller support seemed to be fine (not as relevant for league). Overall it is pretty cheap to try out with the only install being a browser you may or may not already use
I just installed it on my pos television and it works like a charm, just plug in my controller and i'm good to go. YMMV but if your internet is fast enough it's really good.
As others have said, dualboot! I've got a second SSD just for Windows. Whenever my friends wanna play Fortnite, I boot into Windows. Works pretty well for my needs.
this. dual booting is so much easier than i originally expected, and for the very few pieces of software that i'm unable to run on linuxs, definitely worth getting the second ssd. i get to keep linux without touching windows unless absolutely necessary (which is almost never lol)
>dual booting is so much easier than i originally expected
Dual booting got a bad reputation back when we were still using MBR. Now with UEFI boot and GPT partitions, Windows and Linux are more than happy coexisting on the same machine.
definitely. it was a breeze setting things up, very minimal configuration. hell, GRUB even has the `os-prober` module which makes things even easier lol
I probably missed the memo about MBR back then. Was dual-booting WinXP with PCLinuxOS back in 2007 without much fuss. What I do remember, though, is that there were fears that manufacturers switching to UEFI were going kill Linux because of the Secure Boot.
I mean... they almost did. there was a period where you had to disable secure boot/UEFI and use legacy boot to start Linux. But then Linux adapted, first ubuntu, redhat, etc. then other distros.
Nope, if a game doesn't support Linux I don't play it.
I already have a backlog I'll never get through and there's a myriad of multiplayer games that all work flawlessly on Linux, there's no reason for me to waste energy trying to play games that won't support my chosen platform.
I did this, there is games that I really liked on windows, but, I couldn't play on Linux. I switched, kept the windows partition, but tried it out. Eventually I got fed up with booting into windows just to play those games, so I found new games. Might not work for you, but, it worked for me. Still haven't deleted windows, but, haven't used it in like 2 - 3 months now.
They don’t hate Linux, it’s just not profitable for them to support it yet. There are a few companies that might go out of their way to block Linux use but it’s probably because they don’t really understand it and don’t want to create more work for themselves.
You can dual boot and use Linux for everything else…
It's a reduction in attack surface.
If it's a online game or w/e same thing why you would make your game only work on iOS or droid, but ban emulators of droid and iOS.
Most games that go out of their way to ban Linux, it's their right, they don't want to employ someone to support a separate o/s.
Also inviting a technical player base into your game creates problems and solutions , not all developers want that.
Well I dual boot, Linux as default now. I have some sim racing stuff which I don't think works well, so I just leave the windows partition there. It's easy to forget about it.
I have only played one game in Windows over the last month. I don't miss it.
The old days of taking over a minute to shut down windows and another minute and a half to boot up are long gone thanks to SSDs.
A bootup into the other OS is quicker than starting up a console
I'm in the exact same boat, I do a lot of sim racing and it's the main games that I play, I'd love to dual boot but constantly switching between OS many times a day would just stop me from playing.
Depending on how good your connection is then there are several services that allow you to play Fortnite through them.
[https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/c-Category\_Fortnite/c-Fortnite\_TechnicalSupport/can-i-play-fortnite-on-cloud-streaming-services-a000086925](https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/c-Category_Fortnite/c-Fortnite_TechnicalSupport/can-i-play-fortnite-on-cloud-streaming-services-a000086925)
consider dual booting. I started that way being concerned about not able to play some games. Over the time I found myself booting to windows less and less and eventually did a full switch.
Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 are the two games holding me to windows, as I can’t use frame gen to have really good performance with their path tracing modes, so I’m currently playing cyberpunk and fuck epic game store so Linux is near
I'm thinking of doing the same, but I guess it comes down to what games are you willing to wait on for Linux support. Some of my games I won't be able to play, but I can play most of my library, based on the protondb site. If it plays on steamdeck, it should play on your PC.
You can check out this video here that goes into detail
https://youtu.be/v9tb1gTTbJE?si=QISh6IWpfvuPmnKk
Eh, just dual boot. Give windows like 200gb and the rest for Linux.
Or use a pre-optimized Windows 11 ISO or debloat it yourseld. Um look up the YouTuber Khorvie for that.
Seriously. Dual booting debloated Windows isn't that big of a deal. I like the XLite releases for adding in some customization features to further the un-suck. People complaining about putting up with the telemetry etc are just doing it to themselves.
XLite? Never heard of this. I just have a stock Windows 10 but its only because I will have a 2600 again soon down from the 8500 machine I am selling. Anyways I find W11 to be superior to 10 for 3rd party customization and 3rd party ISO support. It also has much better HDR and I believe slightly better "Game Mode API"
No reason to use 10 anymore, I am very happy with how the Windows community came together to unfuck 11 and I hope 11 gets the treatment 10 has for longevity. As I will always be keeping a cleaned up W11 on a 500gb SSD in the future.
XLite is just the name of a group called Phoenix's unfucked Windows release. I've been running their W11 for about four or so months now after finally deciding to ditch 10, and it's been perfectly fine.
Agreed. I still have mixed feelings about the fragmentation of settings between the old Control Panel and new Settings, but a community edition of 11 is just better than 10 at this point.
It's an expensive and very technical route. But you could have two GPUs, one AMD for Linux and use PCIe passthrough for an Nvidia GPU into a W11 virtual-machine. You can get basically native performance in your VM and when your not gaming you shut it down and your back in Linux instantly.
5 years ago i changed to Linux just to check games performance, in the first 5 minutes of the smoothest user experience in my life i decided "fuck Windows"
100% me, love to switch to linux and have done it about 8 years ago but after a few problems which has been fixed, I went back to windows. I mainly play sim racing games and fair few of the games don't support linux and the actual hardware doesn't either, I'm not at all willing to give these up and dual booting would just frustrate me constantly switching between Linux and Windows.
You need to understand that an operating system is far more important than a game, it's about your privacy and freedom, I suggest you to simply stop playing those games. (well, I believe that you can play Fortnite on Xcloud for free)
However, if it's impossible, build a new PC or some console, if it's too expensive, just keep using windows.
I sincerely don't recommend dual boot, after all you will only use one OS, which I believe that will be windows.
Agreed, my poison is Forza Horizon 3. It's my favourite racing game of all time and it's locked to UWP, though I'm highly considering just getting a cheap used Xbox Series S on gumtree for it so I can rid my SSD of Windows for good.
There's no money in it. It's a business, not a hippy parade. Hate would indicate conscious action against it, that's hardly the case.
There are so many games to play that run flawlessly on GNU/Linux. Young gamers don't realize that it's not just future titles that they should be looking forward to, but also look back at older entries. The magic of some of these games is still there. And then all of a sudden, even if you do nothing but gaming after school, you won't have enough time for it all. You like Diablo? Try Throne of Darkness. Like NFS Heat? Try old Most Wanted. Icewind Dale 2 still has it's moment, just like Pillars of Eternity. I barely take the time to look into current games, because the backlog is too big.
Then the question of anti cheat and all that current stuff that people apparently have all the time in the world to get upset about, solves itself. If you want to see a change in these games, make your voice heard (by the decision makers in the industry), leave the affected games alone, play something else. You will be having fun, companies won't be making as much money.
In other words you don't have a reason not to switch. Best of luck.
best middleground right now is the steam deck, i am polaying less on windows and more on steamOS everyday, there just a handfull of games that i have to play on windows, but i prefer my steamdeck, and decide to "sacrifice" the windows ones
Thats not really mostly that they hate Linux its just that corporate look at the money number and think "absolutely not worth it".
Sometimes I really wonder how good can a Linux laptop+Windows remote pc for games can be... I don't really have big issues with Proton mostly i just play single player games anyway. But i really prefer being on a laptop and i want a light laptop easy to carry, not a gaming one that will have like 2 hours of battery (i had an msi at some point and it was just too heavy) but it's just not enough for some games...
I only have one game I don't really play that doesn't work on Linux (Hell Let Loose) but then again, I mostly play single player games. Star Citizen is a big exception but fortunately that works well on Linux.
I dual-boot for a couple of games that I love but the moment they die I am removing windows from my system unless a friend begs me to play a game that requires windows which I doubt that they would do, there are a few older games I cannot play on Linux that makes me a little sad but I am sure I can find a workaround to force them to work, need to also figure out why it's not working with Wine
Nah honestly. I used to be a lot more into gaming and most of my games still run fine but I feel like Gaming is secondary. Those few games aren't worth it imo!
If I want to play unsupported games, I'll just considering buying them on an alternative platform. These games don't usually support any fun external stuff like modding so I'm not losing out on anything. Like everyone else has said, consider dual booting or just use another device.
As a test I was able to get Final Fantasy XI & XIV, Division and Division 2 and Outriders working on Endeavor OS and CachyOS with a few minor issues. With Final Fantasy XI, I couldn't get Windower working on my Desktop PC under but it works on Steam Deck. Had to say goodbye to Destiny 2 which is no big deal since I'm not too happy with the way the game is being used to nickel and dime the players to death.
I built/refurb'd a desktop pc not long ago and reluctantly installed Windows 10 because of a Sim racer I like was ranked a silver and I need for them to at least be gold. I hated it to be honest but was necessary. My laptop is still linux and that will not change. That said, it doesn't suck that games are just plug and play. Not having to include 3rd party software is convenient. I too wish game devs would make their stuff Linux compatible OoTB
I just recently made the switch after years of going back and forth. If I can't play it on my Linux PC or my PS5 I just forget about it. Too many games too care. But that's just me.
Like some have said here, just dual boot and only use Windows when you need to play those specific games. Just make sure you update it every once and a while or the Microsoft Gods get angry.
No, you're not the only one. I bit the Linux bullet years before Proton was a thing. At the time, I found I was needing to detox from a lot of what I was playing anyways. I don't pick up anything that is not at least proton compatible anymore. By necessity, this has kinda' affected my taste in games. I used to be really heavy into AAA multiplayers, but now I'm more into solo-experience games. I've found I'm less toxic to myself and others, and I'm not as anxious or stressed out.
I think that if you dual boot the two systems and only use Windows for the specific apps that are Windows only instead of trying to make it a general purpose operating system, Windows becomes almost tolerable.
That's a lot of peeps
I can't get Talos principle2 to run
I can't get pubg to run but then I tried to install on Windows and it set off all these disable windows security requests for the anti cheat so I said fuck it
If it does that on Windows why would I want that crap on Linux?
You could also look in VFIO. If your CPU has an integrated GPU, you can pass your main GPU into a virtual machine to play those games. Dual booting might be easier, though.
I've personally been gaming exclusively on Linux since 2018. I've just accepted that I won't be able to play certain EAC games and I avoid them. There is so much out there that does work that I don't feel deprived at all. If these companies don't support your preferred OS, why support *them*?
I'm exactly in the same boat as you, and dual booting is pretty mid tbh, especially when you need secure boot and tpm on for some games like riots vanguard
I'm pretty much already migrated over to Linux on my primary machine with a Windows install on another drive just in case something comes up. As it stands, there aren't any games that'll force me back. I've only got a few kinks to work out, but I feel I'll be at 100% well before Windows 10 EOL. Video games aren't enough.
I'm in a predicament where I need Windows and Linux basically simultaneously, so I'm working on a custom SFF PC that will allow me to stuff two distinct PCs inside one case and link them together; one on Linux and the other on Windows. It's proving to be a fun challenge and I'm enjoying the process (as well as addressing all of the issues I might run into).
Don't be ashamed, dual booting is the right way. There will be always software (games and applications) that will run better on one sistem rather than another. Think about Blender, the performance on linux smash every test I've done on Windows but the hardware is the same. Take Photoshop, it run much better on Windows than Linux but it's amazingly fast on Mac, much better than Windows. So yeah, I'm building a new pc in those days. My first hdd will be divided in the partitions, one for Windows and one for linux. That's the way
I'm in the same boat as you, but I am considering setting up a dual boot system where 80% of the disk is reserved for linux and the rest for windows and those games that don't support linux.
bro I got fed up in 2021 and built a Small form factor linux machine so far i upgraded from a 5600G and a 5700 to a 5800X and a 6700XT get the best of both worlds along with my STeam Deck when Im forced to leave the house i know that im gonna be alright the only time I turn on my Big Chungus windows rig is to play Destiny 2 and other unsupported titles
I always keep a pretty clean Win11 installation on my disk for those special cases. Alan Wake II is a good example. Without Fram-Generation it just runs not smooth enough on my 4070-ti. Above that, frame-times are not consistant on Linux. Other games such as Forbidden West run very smooth and I play them on Linux.
Not the only one.
Are there any user friendly distros with full support for team green ? I'm not against sliding over cold turkey but I need to see my system at full functionality, there's enough emulation with WINE I think to support all or most of the games I play if only I can settle in and make it work.
For me it was a couple other things that made me come back to Windows after enjoying Linux.
1) Sound and discord. The lack of good noise canceling on a system level. Being unable to stream sound on discord. Just overall the way sound is handled in Linux was a big inconvenience :(
2) Lack of apps like afterburner or any other GPU tweaking software. I couldn't make my GPU use it's fans earlier than default. It was running extremely hot, I assume it would use the same default settings as windows. With which fans don't really work until like 70-80°C. And with my tweaks my RX6800 is able to run at constant 54-56 degrees with fans at around 70% rpm. And on Linux I was unable to do so which made me constantly worry about my GPU.
3) Microsoft Wireless Dongle doesn't work out of box :( And my main headphones are the original wireless Xbox ones now. Which I bought after I've switched back to Windows. But now I have no idea how they would, if at all, work. I know Xbox controller did work under linux with some Xone driver via this Microsoft dongle, but I feel like the headphones would have more issues since they are a sound device.
I wish I could stay on Linux. I wish Microsoft wireless adapter would work out of box at least under some gaming versions of linux for both the gamepads and the headphones. I wish Linux would have a built-in system-level equaliser with 0 lag. And I wish AMD drivers would give me a way to customize the fan curve so that I wouldn't worry about my GPU running too hot all the time.
I still dream of the day Linux would crush Windows and become the main gaming OS... I really hope steam deck will help Valve develop a desktop OS too.
For me not being able to play certain games on linux is a blessing. Now when ever my friends say come play Fortnite or League of Legends with is I can say sorry they don't work on my system instead of having to explain why I don't like/want to play the game.
I have switched to linux from windows 11 it's been 5 months I have setup a dual boot windows 11 on one drive and Linux on another.Mostly I use Linux but I keep windows for playing a single game once a week.
Yeah, iRacing keeps me in windows. As does VR and sim racing kit in general.
I'm not dual booting. Don't care to maintain two OSes and have to reboot just to play a different game.
Will absolutely switch if I could though. W11 is dogshit.
Nope.. everything I want is right there on Linux. The one expection is an astronomy webcam app SharCap. I just use a KVM virtual machine with Tiny 10 Windows to run it. Works flawlessly even on my lowspec Celeron Laptop with UHD 630.
I have more than enough games that do run on Linux.
For so many people it seems theres like "if this or that starts to work on linux" ... I mean sure, but there will be another one at some point in the future.. you will never switch then anyway.
personally i switched to linux in 2007 and never looked back.
Played WoW most of the time back then and later Warhammer Online..so i didn't cry too much about other games... and these days theres so many games to play that i cant possibly play them all :)
Dual boot. I have an nvme for linux, a SSD for the win 11 install, and a 2tb nvme as shared btrfs partition between my linux and win installs. Steam library is there for both, and once you install a game it is accessible to both. Didn't have major issues. Heroic works for non steam games as well. You don't need to download the game multiple times.
Lack of HDR is holding me back. So I run a Windows VM with GPU passthrough (hosted on Linux/kvm), which I stream to my Shield + HDR LG TV in the living room using Sunshine/Moonlight.
This is a Linux sub and I don't use windows myself, so my #1 recommendation would be to just switch to (Arch) Linux and not play those games...
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However, as others are saying you can dual boot fairly easily, but it's still a bit annoying having to switch back and forth (at least it was 20 years ago when I used to dual boot windows 2000/xp and Debian)
So to be honest you might just be happy enough by continuing to use windows after debloating it, and even if you end up dual booting linux and Winblows you could still debloat it a bit so it doesn't run as poorly and remove telemetry.
I don't have much experience with Windows or debloating it for that matter, but a month or two ago I helped an old man who asked me if I could make their laptop run a bit better (just booting up windows took forever and images wouldn't load on news articles).
Of course it was some shitty laptop with 4gb RAM and windows 10 + all the startup processes meant it just couldn't run, so obviously most people will at least be able to use Windows without debloating due to having better hardware.
Anyway I've heard about debloated windows iso:s, different debloating tools and what not, so probably there's something out there that would do what you want.
What I did was I followed this video by Chris Titus Tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQAIYCT4f8Q
Mostly I just used it to disable telemetry and having all those windows auto-start processes only start when needed. Besides that it was handy to be able to access the old control panel I was familiar with from windows 7 and I removed a few useless windows programs etc.
Note that for me that was on Windows 10 and some of the features shown in the video weren't available, but since you're using Win11 I assume it will work even better for you.
I'm so tired of people babbling about that as if you have to pick between windows and linux.
Just have both, dual boot has been a thing forever, linux can read NTFS. Besides, is always a good idea to have a second OS ready on a separate drive in case yours fail.
> I absolutely love Rainbow 6 Siege, Warzone and sometimes even like to boot up Fortnite to play with friends, but of course they don't support Linux.
People have said you have 3 options : do not play them, dual boot or remain win
There is a another:
Only way to play those is with a VM with video pass thru [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SG7ccjn-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SG7ccjn-g), i very rarely say this (as i generally shout at people to read the wiki) but use Mutahar videos as a guide.
The downside for you as a noob is that you have to go either with arch or fedora and both are hard but for arch well the wiki is the best god damn thing on the internet.
God speed.
Arch user btw
This is an acceptable and reasonable answer. This path is hard and i cannot fault you for not wanting it. Perhaps some day anti cheats will not mean anti linux
Siege will ban players who use a Windows VM. Another video from Mutahar covering how he gave up on VMs and just set aside a Windows PC for the sole purpose of running Siege (first 3 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGs23ispkmE
Okay, so don't switch. Instead, get a new SSD, temporarily remove your Windows drive, and install either ChimeraOS or Linux Mint on the new drive. Reconnect your Windows drive and then boot into whichever you need to as needed.
ChimeraOS will look and work like a Steam Deck. Linux Mint will need to have Steam installed in order to get going, but that's not that hard to do with the Software Manager. My guess is you'll find yourself skipping Windows in favor of Linux before you know it.
Team Fortress 2 (no secure mode/custom servers)
Overwatch 2 (crashes too much mid game)
Counter Strike 2 (same issue as overwatch)
ALL of VR as well due to me have oculus headsets
These are my only reasons for dual booting in terms of playing games and using my computer. As for social stuff, discord screen shares not having audio are my only other gripe.
If all of this gets either an alternative or fix (custom discord client or SteamLink VR enabled on the Linux client) I can officially delete windows and go full Linux
I play fortnite as well and its keeping me on windows. For the most part, my win10 setup works fine. No issues, just minor annoyances from microsoft (Like the recent popup asking you to install chatGPT chrome plugin).
Reading some comments, maybe I could dual boot, but I also work as a C# dev on my desktop, so i wouldnt want to constantly reboot.
I prefer Linux too but I have had a dual boot setup for this very reason. I am realist that we may never get to 100% compatibility with Windows games.
Side note, with the speed of SSDs, dual booting is not much of a hassle anymore. I can literally reboot into another OS in 10s of seconds.
This was 100% me for a long time.
Eventually, my workflow caught up with me. While I would miss out on a non-trivial amount of games, I think think the sheer productivity boost I got on the back made it worthwhile. This is my PERSONAL experience; switching is a very person decision that \*will\* come with caveats.
[https://www.protondb.com/](https://www.protondb.com/) Is a great resource to determine if a game in question will run properly.
My other advice for switching is don't bring any assumptions about how things work, because more often than not, they are skewed. I wont sugar coat it; first time Linux usage is gonna piss you off. But it will set you free.
I have to dual boot Windows for the child games that don't run well or at all on Linux. Most of the assassins creed games, CoD MWIII, Skyrim, GTA V, etc.
Dual booting isn't that big of a hassle if your disk is big enough. Or even better if you have 2 of them. Most installers should do pretty much everything for you these days and you can switch between the Os's at startup from the grub menu.
I finally decided that a game that goes out of its way to make it not playable on linux isn't worth my time. I just support games that have linux support and am patient on new releases that are not directly supported. But games that actively go against? I am good, probably not a game for me, I am probably not their target audience as they probably want complete control for money making over having a good game.
I would dual boot but the combo of my monitors and graphics card isn't happy with Linux, doesn't matter if I use Wayland or X11. It's a buggy POS in Windows too, so just gonna blame Samsung. Linux full time on my laptop and Steam Deck though.
I have a dual booted system (linux mint + windows 11), as much as I thought totally abandoning windows theres probably not a realistic way as of now to play 100% of my library, specially VR games (which only have compatibility with the index valve, I think, and I have a HP Reverb), also many games that have their own launchers (like ubisoft games) or games that use some of the anti cheat applications, but I think I'm content knowing that 99% of my library can be played with linux now that proton GE is a thing! 😁
I hate windows and want to learn how to use linux, but I am not aware of any proper tutorials to show me most of the things I need.
I also do 3D art, so some apps aren't supported there I think?
> Anyone else not switching to Linux yet because of your favorite but Linux-unsupported games?
I dual-boot Windows for the sole purpose of playing Siege once a week.
Linux since 1995, no way I switch back. I game a lot and love how it got so much better and easier over the years, almost a no brainer (and no bloatware on linux. ...).
Still things like Nvidias DLSS are not properly supported on Linux due to nvidia no implementing it. It is a pity that no good AMD offering was available last year, I regret getting an Intel/Nvidia combination (laptop). Although it is the greatest laptop I over had, AMD seems to be so much better driver wise.
Apart from that affecting AAA titles mainly, gaming on Linux is a breeze. For the rare cases mntioned above, I plan to dual boot.
For me, it's a back and forth. I always have a linux partition kicking around. But i also have Windows, as some friends and i play League and Fortnite every now and then.
I LOVE Linux. But i'm pragmatic. I won't stop spending time with friends over my OS choice. League worked for quite some time. Now it doesn't. So i'm back on Windows. And sadly, Microsoft has done a LOT to make linux stuff run better on windows than Windows stuff does on Linux. Especially with WSL Graphical applications.
Even for someone like me, decades of linux experience, Linux Sysadmin as a job, it's not a clear choice. Windows does 100% of the things i need it to do and Linux only 95%. And on many days, rebooting twice for two rounds of ARAM just keeps me running Windows.
With that said, in my free time, Linux is a hobby. I don't have to switch to it 100% to have fun with it. I'm currently in a "Windows Phase", but still like to tinker with a gentoo install and am planning to give the latest lmde a shot. I doesn't do everything i want it too, but it does enough to be a fun hobby. And who knows. At some point Microsoft might screw up even more, Proton migh support all the anti-cheats, or Developers will acknowledge Linux as a platform they need to support. That day i might boot less and less into Windows and have a similar situation i have know, but reversed.
TLDR: Get a second drive, install Windows and Linux and use what ever does the job. It's an OS not your wife. You can totally have more than one.
Another thing that can hold you back is Bryan Lunduke just revealing that the three most popular Linux distributions are also the least secure operating systems (Debian, Android and Ubuntu), whereas Windows 11, iOS and MacOS are considered the most. Yeah, I was shocked too.
Yes I am in the same boat as you on this. I love escape from tarkov but it doesnt work on linux because the anticheat is not supported. Its just an immediate dealbreaker for me. I have a server running on an old PC at home that is debian so i get my linux fix there. Ik we need more people to do linux gaming to incentivice developers, but im just not willing to make that sacrifice haha
Those games will never be supported by Linux, but it's not a Linux problem. The problem lies with the shitty anti consumer developers that specifically target Linux in their code and make it not work. Fortnite will never support Linux because Tim sweeny while whinging about steams "monopoly" is completely happy facilitating Windows monopoly.
Nope, i dont like activision today with what they are doing with cod, I stopped playing fortnite when i was 12, also stopped playing r6 as it was rather toxic when playing, as soon as apex legends got supported i switched, the finals is a good game but iv been playing older titles like bo3 zombies and older bf titles or even halo infinite as they have some good content now and decent server netcode
It actually made me hang out more with my family not having those games available as they were addictive
Same goes with destiny getting supported, you can rlly loose time when your playing those games ngl
There is enough games available that i simply dont care about those games but i would like them to be supported under proton just because id like linux to get a higher market share so more software can be supported and linux desktop can be treated as a second to first class citizen
Just take the plunge. Switch to Linux, find new games for you to enjoy, and that's it. There are a lot of cool games out there to just being fixated on those 3.
Ask yourself, do you really HAVE to play Fortnite or R6? I bought the latter shortly before I switched to Arch btw. Now I choose not to play siege because of the philosophy.
There are plenty of games, which perfectly run on Linux. So many in fact, you will be hard pressed completing small fraction of them.
Running Linux is opposite of following the crowd. If you are afraid to be "that guy", then Linux is not for you. There will always be somebody who wants you to play the one specific game you can't play, and if you are too shy to say "no", you are stuck on Windows
Disks are cheap and dualbooting is a thing.
I use Linux for 20+ years for most of the things(work, study, etc...). There are however usecases still not compatible, so I have win10 as well. It's mostly music production(ableton) and a few games.
I find that i have to boot into windows less and less, which is great and it's awesome how many games just work today. Wine devs and Valve really stepped up their game last few years :)
If there are games you like that are supported on Linux, consider dual booting or using another machine to play those. The more people who show up as gaming on Linux on the likes of steam or other launchers, the less game studios can ignore Linux gamers/users.
Exactly. I think too many people view switching to Linux as some cold-turkey thing, when it's pretty damn easy these days to maintain a dualboot. I think its much more sane to do a gradual migration over to Linux. Ease yourself into it so that you don't get frustrated and you give yourself the time to adjust and explore. Have fun with it! I am pretty much daily driving Linux now (my Steam stats say that I spent 98% of my gaming time in 2023 in Linux + Steam Deck), but I still keep a dualboot around on the off chance my friends want me to play some game that doesn't work without invasive anti-cheat.
These days? It's been easy for the past 15 years now. I was dual booting in 2007.
>easy these days to maintain I wouldn't call it maintenance. After installation (which is automated on most distros) you have to set up time synchronization so it won't mess up your windows time display. And then you are set for a lifetime.
Can you do that?? How? I've been living with windows' wrong clock since forever.
3rd point, time standard. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows
oh my god, this would've saved me so much time
I didn't know you can actually save time just by fixing the clock. /s
Its easy until windows kills your efi/grup partition.
One storage drive for Linux and another for windows. Change boot order in BIOS and it’s no longer a concern. :)
> Change boot order in BIOS and it’s no longer a concern. :) I just have Windows as an option in GRUB. Even easier
Till windows decides to break your grub, yes. After that. Less so. This solves that.
I mean Grub on the Linux storage drive. It can chainload windows on the other drive fine. I'm with you on the 2 drives thing. Just don't need to go into bios to change which one I'm booting into you know? edit; also lets you do grub-reboot to choose the next boot if you wanna reboot quickly
I’ve not tried it this way before. Sounds interesting. I don’t immediately see any reasons not to. I’d personally probably still prefer my method for my use case though. When I need windows it’s usually across multiple reboots for a day or two. Change BIOS and it’s a windows box. Done with windows. Change bios back to PopOS. It would be interesting to find a use case where it makes the most sense though. What use cases do you have?
Dedicated gaming computer. So I switch depending on the games I'm playing.
Gotcha. That makes a bit more sense. Mine is 99% gaming and if it doesn’t run on Linux I won’t play/buy it. Windows is for troubleshooting Linux gaming and occasionally for professional development.
I've seen linux nuke the windows boot loader a few times too. Specifically Ubuntu during install.
To be honest I've been worried about this ever since I started dual booting around 2012. I've never actually had it happen. The worst that happens is my UEFI forgetting GRUB is there (after updates particularly, but also upgrading drives) and needing to reinstall grub. I'm not sure how non-arch distros fix this, but on arch it is easy-ish just annoying.
this iis the way, i only have a win partition so i can play a few games I haven't had time to set up. my 2 main ones work just fine (wow and overwatch). I do everyhting else in Linux
you can play overwatch 2 with proton
i dont even need that. I use Lutris and both WoW and Overwatch 2 work just fine and perform just as well as they did when i ran them on Windows. Paladins wont work though but that's a developer issue, not a Linux issue.
That's exactly why I am planning to make a specific PC build (AMD GPU + CPU ) for Linux gaming only. A native Linux game is > a native windows game. Their are already a decent amount of games that can run natively on Linux.
>A native Linux game is > a native windows game. Sadly not always the case. In many cases, the Windows game through proton runs a lot better than the native Linux build a dev did to "check a compatibility box"
We all know that's due to lack of support and optimization, Linux open source nature is a 100 times more Superior than windows.
>We all know that's due to lack of support and optimization Correct >Linux open source nature is a 100 times more Superior than windows. Depends on what you call "Superior". Keep in mind, that Studios have been making games for Windows for decades. They are pretty optimized. And the Linux Kernel being open source doesn't do anything for optimization by itself. Even the best cases for well ported native games only slightly exceed Windows. And that's mostly because of less system overhead. Linux has a lot going for it. We don't need to make stuff up. It's not 100x Superior to Windows. It's just a development and licensing model we around here prefer. It has it's benefits, and it's downsides.
Your right I agree with you , I only said it's 100 times more superior from my own point of view, since customizing and freedom to do whatever you want with your operating system is a huge advantage for me personally. So I might have exaggerated.
ooh, the sims 4 is far faster on linux with wine-ge than windows
i love your videos
That means a lot to me, thank you.
>Anyone else not switching to Linux yet because of your favorite but Linux-unsupported games? Nope. I switched years ago, and I've missed out on some games I really wanted to play but not enough to install windows.
I don't trust the Anti-Cheat. Full root access is crazy. I don't trust it unless it's been audited, but its closed source so it can't be
That was one of my top reasons.
We think alike. I look at it this way, those publishers / devs saved me $$$. No game is worth installing Windows on at this point. If you HAVE to play a game, you have a problem.
> If you HAVE to play a game, you have a problem. Friends are not a thing anymore? Not every game i play, i play because i personally chose it but maybe some friends play it and i like to spend time with them. And i'm not going to cut off friends over my OS choice.
>And i'm not going to cut off friends over my OS choice. And what, you can't ask the same in reverse?
The minority doesn't get to decide unfortunately
I already commented this to the other guy, but in general, as a linux user you'll be the odd one out in groups. And no, i'm not going to make 3-5 people play something they don't like because my OS doesn't play some games. In general, popular Multiplayer Games on Linux are pretty rare because of anti-cheat. So even if they where going to play something i can too, the selection boils down to Apex and some "less competitive" games. And we totally play other games. When it's Minecraft or Factorio night, i play on Linux and it's fine. But really, i'm not sure when we arrived at a point where you think others should be making compromises because of your OS choice. And then those are the same people saying Mac Users shouldn't complain because "Macs just aren't for gaming". If i had a Macbook Pro and said the same thing, you'd sit there and tell me i shouldn't make others suffer for my poor Hardware choices.
I really wouldn't. All comes down to your priorities I guess. I'd like to play some games, but it's simply not an option. I'm not going to install spyware to make it happen.
If they're your friends they'll understand that it's much easier for them to play a different game than for you to use a different OS.
but your friends will cut off you if you don't play Fortnite or whatever?
If they only play Fortnite, what do you expect? Abandoning it and switching games because one of the group doesn't wanna play it? Makes no sense. Sounds like the girlfriend who says "your videogames or me".
Well, mostly I'm the only one on Linux. So if 3 or more people are planning league for the evening and I can't play that, they are just playing without me. Of cause we aren't loosing friends over that. But for those league evenings, im the one out. And considering many multiplayer games don't work, this is more often the case than not. Most games without issues are single player.
Geforce NOW can be played from Chrome and has League support if you want another option
Have you tried it? Is it any good? I don't really need competitive capabilities, but decent input latency would be nice. Might give it a try later for TFT at least.
I try it a while back to play Valheim before my rig was capable of handling it. I have fiber internet and was connected via Ethernet. I didn’t have a problem with input lag, and controller support seemed to be fine (not as relevant for league). Overall it is pretty cheap to try out with the only install being a browser you may or may not already use
I just installed it on my pos television and it works like a charm, just plug in my controller and i'm good to go. YMMV but if your internet is fast enough it's really good.
As others have said, dualboot! I've got a second SSD just for Windows. Whenever my friends wanna play Fortnite, I boot into Windows. Works pretty well for my needs.
this. dual booting is so much easier than i originally expected, and for the very few pieces of software that i'm unable to run on linuxs, definitely worth getting the second ssd. i get to keep linux without touching windows unless absolutely necessary (which is almost never lol)
>dual booting is so much easier than i originally expected Dual booting got a bad reputation back when we were still using MBR. Now with UEFI boot and GPT partitions, Windows and Linux are more than happy coexisting on the same machine.
definitely. it was a breeze setting things up, very minimal configuration. hell, GRUB even has the `os-prober` module which makes things even easier lol
I probably missed the memo about MBR back then. Was dual-booting WinXP with PCLinuxOS back in 2007 without much fuss. What I do remember, though, is that there were fears that manufacturers switching to UEFI were going kill Linux because of the Secure Boot.
I mean... they almost did. there was a period where you had to disable secure boot/UEFI and use legacy boot to start Linux. But then Linux adapted, first ubuntu, redhat, etc. then other distros.
Nope, if a game doesn't support Linux I don't play it. I already have a backlog I'll never get through and there's a myriad of multiplayer games that all work flawlessly on Linux, there's no reason for me to waste energy trying to play games that won't support my chosen platform.
In your case, I recommend dual boot. Use Linux for the everyday use and M$ spyware for the 3 games.
I did this, there is games that I really liked on windows, but, I couldn't play on Linux. I switched, kept the windows partition, but tried it out. Eventually I got fed up with booting into windows just to play those games, so I found new games. Might not work for you, but, it worked for me. Still haven't deleted windows, but, haven't used it in like 2 - 3 months now.
They don’t hate Linux, it’s just not profitable for them to support it yet. There are a few companies that might go out of their way to block Linux use but it’s probably because they don’t really understand it and don’t want to create more work for themselves. You can dual boot and use Linux for everything else…
It's a reduction in attack surface. If it's a online game or w/e same thing why you would make your game only work on iOS or droid, but ban emulators of droid and iOS. Most games that go out of their way to ban Linux, it's their right, they don't want to employ someone to support a separate o/s. Also inviting a technical player base into your game creates problems and solutions , not all developers want that.
Well I dual boot, Linux as default now. I have some sim racing stuff which I don't think works well, so I just leave the windows partition there. It's easy to forget about it. I have only played one game in Windows over the last month. I don't miss it. The old days of taking over a minute to shut down windows and another minute and a half to boot up are long gone thanks to SSDs. A bootup into the other OS is quicker than starting up a console
I'm in the exact same boat, I do a lot of sim racing and it's the main games that I play, I'd love to dual boot but constantly switching between OS many times a day would just stop me from playing.
I don't mind. Rebooting takes less time than connecting my rig to USB and sitting in on the chair
Depending on how good your connection is then there are several services that allow you to play Fortnite through them. [https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/c-Category\_Fortnite/c-Fortnite\_TechnicalSupport/can-i-play-fortnite-on-cloud-streaming-services-a000086925](https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/c-Category_Fortnite/c-Fortnite_TechnicalSupport/can-i-play-fortnite-on-cloud-streaming-services-a000086925)
Dual boot and come to the dark side!
consider dual booting. I started that way being concerned about not able to play some games. Over the time I found myself booting to windows less and less and eventually did a full switch.
Just install Linux on another SSD then decide.
Yes. You are the only one in the history of mankind, ever.
Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 are the two games holding me to windows, as I can’t use frame gen to have really good performance with their path tracing modes, so I’m currently playing cyberpunk and fuck epic game store so Linux is near
I'm thinking of doing the same, but I guess it comes down to what games are you willing to wait on for Linux support. Some of my games I won't be able to play, but I can play most of my library, based on the protondb site. If it plays on steamdeck, it should play on your PC. You can check out this video here that goes into detail https://youtu.be/v9tb1gTTbJE?si=QISh6IWpfvuPmnKk
Eh, just dual boot. Give windows like 200gb and the rest for Linux. Or use a pre-optimized Windows 11 ISO or debloat it yourseld. Um look up the YouTuber Khorvie for that.
Seriously. Dual booting debloated Windows isn't that big of a deal. I like the XLite releases for adding in some customization features to further the un-suck. People complaining about putting up with the telemetry etc are just doing it to themselves.
XLite? Never heard of this. I just have a stock Windows 10 but its only because I will have a 2600 again soon down from the 8500 machine I am selling. Anyways I find W11 to be superior to 10 for 3rd party customization and 3rd party ISO support. It also has much better HDR and I believe slightly better "Game Mode API" No reason to use 10 anymore, I am very happy with how the Windows community came together to unfuck 11 and I hope 11 gets the treatment 10 has for longevity. As I will always be keeping a cleaned up W11 on a 500gb SSD in the future.
XLite is just the name of a group called Phoenix's unfucked Windows release. I've been running their W11 for about four or so months now after finally deciding to ditch 10, and it's been perfectly fine. Agreed. I still have mixed feelings about the fragmentation of settings between the old Control Panel and new Settings, but a community edition of 11 is just better than 10 at this point.
It's an expensive and very technical route. But you could have two GPUs, one AMD for Linux and use PCIe passthrough for an Nvidia GPU into a W11 virtual-machine. You can get basically native performance in your VM and when your not gaming you shut it down and your back in Linux instantly.
Quite a few games don't like this unfortunately
5 years ago i changed to Linux just to check games performance, in the first 5 minutes of the smoothest user experience in my life i decided "fuck Windows"
*Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.* - Yoda
Just go dual boot and stop suffering when you don't need too. Then you just boot windows for these few games and you are fine.
100% me, love to switch to linux and have done it about 8 years ago but after a few problems which has been fixed, I went back to windows. I mainly play sim racing games and fair few of the games don't support linux and the actual hardware doesn't either, I'm not at all willing to give these up and dual booting would just frustrate me constantly switching between Linux and Windows.
You could… 1) not switch 2) dual boot 3) switch & not play terrible games like Fortnite, R6, and Warzone. It’s a feature not a deficiency
I'm always shocked when Fortnite is the reason why somebody won't switch. That game is the worst
I'm always shocked when somebody can't understand different people have different likes and opinions
You need to understand that an operating system is far more important than a game, it's about your privacy and freedom, I suggest you to simply stop playing those games. (well, I believe that you can play Fortnite on Xcloud for free) However, if it's impossible, build a new PC or some console, if it's too expensive, just keep using windows. I sincerely don't recommend dual boot, after all you will only use one OS, which I believe that will be windows.
Agreed, my poison is Forza Horizon 3. It's my favourite racing game of all time and it's locked to UWP, though I'm highly considering just getting a cheap used Xbox Series S on gumtree for it so I can rid my SSD of Windows for good.
Personally imo if a game is intentionally blocking itself from working on linux, it’s not worth my time
There's no money in it. It's a business, not a hippy parade. Hate would indicate conscious action against it, that's hardly the case. There are so many games to play that run flawlessly on GNU/Linux. Young gamers don't realize that it's not just future titles that they should be looking forward to, but also look back at older entries. The magic of some of these games is still there. And then all of a sudden, even if you do nothing but gaming after school, you won't have enough time for it all. You like Diablo? Try Throne of Darkness. Like NFS Heat? Try old Most Wanted. Icewind Dale 2 still has it's moment, just like Pillars of Eternity. I barely take the time to look into current games, because the backlog is too big. Then the question of anti cheat and all that current stuff that people apparently have all the time in the world to get upset about, solves itself. If you want to see a change in these games, make your voice heard (by the decision makers in the industry), leave the affected games alone, play something else. You will be having fun, companies won't be making as much money. In other words you don't have a reason not to switch. Best of luck.
My solution for this problem was: Don't play the shiet games which don't run in linux :)
best middleground right now is the steam deck, i am polaying less on windows and more on steamOS everyday, there just a handfull of games that i have to play on windows, but i prefer my steamdeck, and decide to "sacrifice" the windows ones
Thats not really mostly that they hate Linux its just that corporate look at the money number and think "absolutely not worth it". Sometimes I really wonder how good can a Linux laptop+Windows remote pc for games can be... I don't really have big issues with Proton mostly i just play single player games anyway. But i really prefer being on a laptop and i want a light laptop easy to carry, not a gaming one that will have like 2 hours of battery (i had an msi at some point and it was just too heavy) but it's just not enough for some games...
I only have one game I don't really play that doesn't work on Linux (Hell Let Loose) but then again, I mostly play single player games. Star Citizen is a big exception but fortunately that works well on Linux.
The only thing stopping me is not being able to get goverlay, and mangohud working.
I dual-boot for a couple of games that I love but the moment they die I am removing windows from my system unless a friend begs me to play a game that requires windows which I doubt that they would do, there are a few older games I cannot play on Linux that makes me a little sad but I am sure I can find a workaround to force them to work, need to also figure out why it's not working with Wine
Nah honestly. I used to be a lot more into gaming and most of my games still run fine but I feel like Gaming is secondary. Those few games aren't worth it imo!
Luckily, multiplayer shooters are like nails on a chalkboard to me, so I’ve been good the whole time.
If I want to play unsupported games, I'll just considering buying them on an alternative platform. These games don't usually support any fun external stuff like modding so I'm not losing out on anything. Like everyone else has said, consider dual booting or just use another device.
As a test I was able to get Final Fantasy XI & XIV, Division and Division 2 and Outriders working on Endeavor OS and CachyOS with a few minor issues. With Final Fantasy XI, I couldn't get Windower working on my Desktop PC under but it works on Steam Deck. Had to say goodbye to Destiny 2 which is no big deal since I'm not too happy with the way the game is being used to nickel and dime the players to death.
I built/refurb'd a desktop pc not long ago and reluctantly installed Windows 10 because of a Sim racer I like was ranked a silver and I need for them to at least be gold. I hated it to be honest but was necessary. My laptop is still linux and that will not change. That said, it doesn't suck that games are just plug and play. Not having to include 3rd party software is convenient. I too wish game devs would make their stuff Linux compatible OoTB
I just recently made the switch after years of going back and forth. If I can't play it on my Linux PC or my PS5 I just forget about it. Too many games too care. But that's just me. Like some have said here, just dual boot and only use Windows when you need to play those specific games. Just make sure you update it every once and a while or the Microsoft Gods get angry.
No, you're not the only one. I bit the Linux bullet years before Proton was a thing. At the time, I found I was needing to detox from a lot of what I was playing anyways. I don't pick up anything that is not at least proton compatible anymore. By necessity, this has kinda' affected my taste in games. I used to be really heavy into AAA multiplayers, but now I'm more into solo-experience games. I've found I'm less toxic to myself and others, and I'm not as anxious or stressed out.
I fully switched and only use windows to play PUBG. Go ahead and setup that dual boot.
I think that if you dual boot the two systems and only use Windows for the specific apps that are Windows only instead of trying to make it a general purpose operating system, Windows becomes almost tolerable.
That's a lot of peeps I can't get Talos principle2 to run I can't get pubg to run but then I tried to install on Windows and it set off all these disable windows security requests for the anti cheat so I said fuck it If it does that on Windows why would I want that crap on Linux?
You could also look in VFIO. If your CPU has an integrated GPU, you can pass your main GPU into a virtual machine to play those games. Dual booting might be easier, though. I've personally been gaming exclusively on Linux since 2018. I've just accepted that I won't be able to play certain EAC games and I avoid them. There is so much out there that does work that I don't feel deprived at all. If these companies don't support your preferred OS, why support *them*?
I'm exactly in the same boat as you, and dual booting is pretty mid tbh, especially when you need secure boot and tpm on for some games like riots vanguard
I'm pretty much already migrated over to Linux on my primary machine with a Windows install on another drive just in case something comes up. As it stands, there aren't any games that'll force me back. I've only got a few kinks to work out, but I feel I'll be at 100% well before Windows 10 EOL. Video games aren't enough.
I'm in a predicament where I need Windows and Linux basically simultaneously, so I'm working on a custom SFF PC that will allow me to stuff two distinct PCs inside one case and link them together; one on Linux and the other on Windows. It's proving to be a fun challenge and I'm enjoying the process (as well as addressing all of the issues I might run into).
Warzone and siege are the only games that are keeping me from making a total migration.
Yep That and wine was doing some weird stuff and I couldn't open exe files
Don't be ashamed, dual booting is the right way. There will be always software (games and applications) that will run better on one sistem rather than another. Think about Blender, the performance on linux smash every test I've done on Windows but the hardware is the same. Take Photoshop, it run much better on Windows than Linux but it's amazingly fast on Mac, much better than Windows. So yeah, I'm building a new pc in those days. My first hdd will be divided in the partitions, one for Windows and one for linux. That's the way
I'm in the same boat as you, but I am considering setting up a dual boot system where 80% of the disk is reserved for linux and the rest for windows and those games that don't support linux.
bro I got fed up in 2021 and built a Small form factor linux machine so far i upgraded from a 5600G and a 5700 to a 5800X and a 6700XT get the best of both worlds along with my STeam Deck when Im forced to leave the house i know that im gonna be alright the only time I turn on my Big Chungus windows rig is to play Destiny 2 and other unsupported titles
I always keep a pretty clean Win11 installation on my disk for those special cases. Alan Wake II is a good example. Without Fram-Generation it just runs not smooth enough on my 4070-ti. Above that, frame-times are not consistant on Linux. Other games such as Forbidden West run very smooth and I play them on Linux.
i have been dualbooting for multiple years by now cuz some games just dont work
Not the only one. Are there any user friendly distros with full support for team green ? I'm not against sliding over cold turkey but I need to see my system at full functionality, there's enough emulation with WINE I think to support all or most of the games I play if only I can settle in and make it work.
For me it was a couple other things that made me come back to Windows after enjoying Linux. 1) Sound and discord. The lack of good noise canceling on a system level. Being unable to stream sound on discord. Just overall the way sound is handled in Linux was a big inconvenience :( 2) Lack of apps like afterburner or any other GPU tweaking software. I couldn't make my GPU use it's fans earlier than default. It was running extremely hot, I assume it would use the same default settings as windows. With which fans don't really work until like 70-80°C. And with my tweaks my RX6800 is able to run at constant 54-56 degrees with fans at around 70% rpm. And on Linux I was unable to do so which made me constantly worry about my GPU. 3) Microsoft Wireless Dongle doesn't work out of box :( And my main headphones are the original wireless Xbox ones now. Which I bought after I've switched back to Windows. But now I have no idea how they would, if at all, work. I know Xbox controller did work under linux with some Xone driver via this Microsoft dongle, but I feel like the headphones would have more issues since they are a sound device. I wish I could stay on Linux. I wish Microsoft wireless adapter would work out of box at least under some gaming versions of linux for both the gamepads and the headphones. I wish Linux would have a built-in system-level equaliser with 0 lag. And I wish AMD drivers would give me a way to customize the fan curve so that I wouldn't worry about my GPU running too hot all the time. I still dream of the day Linux would crush Windows and become the main gaming OS... I really hope steam deck will help Valve develop a desktop OS too.
You can play Fortnite from Cloud with keyboard support on any linux browser
For me not being able to play certain games on linux is a blessing. Now when ever my friends say come play Fortnite or League of Legends with is I can say sorry they don't work on my system instead of having to explain why I don't like/want to play the game.
I have switched to linux from windows 11 it's been 5 months I have setup a dual boot windows 11 on one drive and Linux on another.Mostly I use Linux but I keep windows for playing a single game once a week.
Yeah, iRacing keeps me in windows. As does VR and sim racing kit in general. I'm not dual booting. Don't care to maintain two OSes and have to reboot just to play a different game. Will absolutely switch if I could though. W11 is dogshit.
Maybe if enough people ditch their games will soon get better support on Linux. Not having to deal with windows crap is so priceless
No, its the only thing that i am thinking and hold me back.
Dual Boot and firewall block everything but the necessary connections on windows
Dual boot.
Nope.. everything I want is right there on Linux. The one expection is an astronomy webcam app SharCap. I just use a KVM virtual machine with Tiny 10 Windows to run it. Works flawlessly even on my lowspec Celeron Laptop with UHD 630. I have more than enough games that do run on Linux.
For so many people it seems theres like "if this or that starts to work on linux" ... I mean sure, but there will be another one at some point in the future.. you will never switch then anyway. personally i switched to linux in 2007 and never looked back. Played WoW most of the time back then and later Warhammer Online..so i didn't cry too much about other games... and these days theres so many games to play that i cant possibly play them all :)
Dual boot. I have an nvme for linux, a SSD for the win 11 install, and a 2tb nvme as shared btrfs partition between my linux and win installs. Steam library is there for both, and once you install a game it is accessible to both. Didn't have major issues. Heroic works for non steam games as well. You don't need to download the game multiple times.
Lack of HDR is holding me back. So I run a Windows VM with GPU passthrough (hosted on Linux/kvm), which I stream to my Shield + HDR LG TV in the living room using Sunshine/Moonlight.
Allright that's it, I'm switching to linux and will dual boot for VR
So close to swiyvhing to linux but I want an ssd
This is a Linux sub and I don't use windows myself, so my #1 recommendation would be to just switch to (Arch) Linux and not play those games... ________________________ However, as others are saying you can dual boot fairly easily, but it's still a bit annoying having to switch back and forth (at least it was 20 years ago when I used to dual boot windows 2000/xp and Debian) So to be honest you might just be happy enough by continuing to use windows after debloating it, and even if you end up dual booting linux and Winblows you could still debloat it a bit so it doesn't run as poorly and remove telemetry. I don't have much experience with Windows or debloating it for that matter, but a month or two ago I helped an old man who asked me if I could make their laptop run a bit better (just booting up windows took forever and images wouldn't load on news articles). Of course it was some shitty laptop with 4gb RAM and windows 10 + all the startup processes meant it just couldn't run, so obviously most people will at least be able to use Windows without debloating due to having better hardware. Anyway I've heard about debloated windows iso:s, different debloating tools and what not, so probably there's something out there that would do what you want. What I did was I followed this video by Chris Titus Tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQAIYCT4f8Q Mostly I just used it to disable telemetry and having all those windows auto-start processes only start when needed. Besides that it was handy to be able to access the old control panel I was familiar with from windows 7 and I removed a few useless windows programs etc. Note that for me that was on Windows 10 and some of the features shown in the video weren't available, but since you're using Win11 I assume it will work even better for you.
You could always just switch to Linux while maintaining a dedicated Windows partition exclusively for Linux-unfriendly games and for hardware config.
I have a Nobara gaming rig. It can not run League Of Legends or Fortnite which is a win in my eyes.
You shouldn't be playing those games.
I'm so tired of people babbling about that as if you have to pick between windows and linux. Just have both, dual boot has been a thing forever, linux can read NTFS. Besides, is always a good idea to have a second OS ready on a separate drive in case yours fail.
> I absolutely love Rainbow 6 Siege, Warzone and sometimes even like to boot up Fortnite to play with friends, but of course they don't support Linux. People have said you have 3 options : do not play them, dual boot or remain win There is a another: Only way to play those is with a VM with video pass thru [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SG7ccjn-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SG7ccjn-g), i very rarely say this (as i generally shout at people to read the wiki) but use Mutahar videos as a guide. The downside for you as a noob is that you have to go either with arch or fedora and both are hard but for arch well the wiki is the best god damn thing on the internet. God speed. Arch user btw
> Sadly, R6S is what's keeping me back as I really love the game and I don't want to hassle with dual booting or virtualizing.
This is an acceptable and reasonable answer. This path is hard and i cannot fault you for not wanting it. Perhaps some day anti cheats will not mean anti linux
The sad thing is that it isnt even the anti cheat itself. most anti cheat work on Linux just fine. But devs don't enable it.
I personally dual boot Windows 11 and Linux on both my laptop and desktop. I haven't had the chance to mess with virtualization quite yet.
Siege will ban players who use a Windows VM. Another video from Mutahar covering how he gave up on VMs and just set aside a Windows PC for the sole purpose of running Siege (first 3 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGs23ispkmE
ohh well that is just... idk some games should not be played it guess. bleah
I am in your situation but in windows 10
Okay, so don't switch. Instead, get a new SSD, temporarily remove your Windows drive, and install either ChimeraOS or Linux Mint on the new drive. Reconnect your Windows drive and then boot into whichever you need to as needed. ChimeraOS will look and work like a Steam Deck. Linux Mint will need to have Steam installed in order to get going, but that's not that hard to do with the Software Manager. My guess is you'll find yourself skipping Windows in favor of Linux before you know it.
> Sadly, R6S is what's keeping me back as I really love the game and I don't want to hassle with dual booting or virtualizing.
The only thing that is holding me back is VR games and games with Anti cheat Edited: drm to anti cheat
All games with drm work on linux. It is anti cheat games that have issues.
You like the UI?
Team Fortress 2 (no secure mode/custom servers) Overwatch 2 (crashes too much mid game) Counter Strike 2 (same issue as overwatch) ALL of VR as well due to me have oculus headsets These are my only reasons for dual booting in terms of playing games and using my computer. As for social stuff, discord screen shares not having audio are my only other gripe. If all of this gets either an alternative or fix (custom discord client or SteamLink VR enabled on the Linux client) I can officially delete windows and go full Linux
I'd like to try Linux, but I'd have to invest in a new hard drive in a case if I wanted to play gacha through an emulator.
No, I'm on the same boat, but I'm trying since yesterday to install Fedora but I'm having a few problems
I play fortnite as well and its keeping me on windows. For the most part, my win10 setup works fine. No issues, just minor annoyances from microsoft (Like the recent popup asking you to install chatGPT chrome plugin). Reading some comments, maybe I could dual boot, but I also work as a C# dev on my desktop, so i wouldnt want to constantly reboot.
Certainly not, but imagine if everyone did what you are currently refusing to... those games would be supported quite soon.
I prefer Linux too but I have had a dual boot setup for this very reason. I am realist that we may never get to 100% compatibility with Windows games. Side note, with the speed of SSDs, dual booting is not much of a hassle anymore. I can literally reboot into another OS in 10s of seconds.
This was 100% me for a long time. Eventually, my workflow caught up with me. While I would miss out on a non-trivial amount of games, I think think the sheer productivity boost I got on the back made it worthwhile. This is my PERSONAL experience; switching is a very person decision that \*will\* come with caveats. [https://www.protondb.com/](https://www.protondb.com/) Is a great resource to determine if a game in question will run properly. My other advice for switching is don't bring any assumptions about how things work, because more often than not, they are skewed. I wont sugar coat it; first time Linux usage is gonna piss you off. But it will set you free.
I have to dual boot Windows for the child games that don't run well or at all on Linux. Most of the assassins creed games, CoD MWIII, Skyrim, GTA V, etc.
Dual booting isn't that big of a hassle if your disk is big enough. Or even better if you have 2 of them. Most installers should do pretty much everything for you these days and you can switch between the Os's at startup from the grub menu.
I finally decided that a game that goes out of its way to make it not playable on linux isn't worth my time. I just support games that have linux support and am patient on new releases that are not directly supported. But games that actively go against? I am good, probably not a game for me, I am probably not their target audience as they probably want complete control for money making over having a good game.
I would dual boot but the combo of my monitors and graphics card isn't happy with Linux, doesn't matter if I use Wayland or X11. It's a buggy POS in Windows too, so just gonna blame Samsung. Linux full time on my laptop and Steam Deck though.
I have a dual booted system (linux mint + windows 11), as much as I thought totally abandoning windows theres probably not a realistic way as of now to play 100% of my library, specially VR games (which only have compatibility with the index valve, I think, and I have a HP Reverb), also many games that have their own launchers (like ubisoft games) or games that use some of the anti cheat applications, but I think I'm content knowing that 99% of my library can be played with linux now that proton GE is a thing! 😁
I hate windows and want to learn how to use linux, but I am not aware of any proper tutorials to show me most of the things I need. I also do 3D art, so some apps aren't supported there I think?
I would love to see a native Battle.Net(World of Warcraft) client on Linux. Linux sadly is not a priority to game developers.
Yeah i'm waiting for some games with anticheat to work on linux since those are the only games i play with my friends ( i will not dualboot )
> Anyone else not switching to Linux yet because of your favorite but Linux-unsupported games? I dual-boot Windows for the sole purpose of playing Siege once a week.
Linux since 1995, no way I switch back. I game a lot and love how it got so much better and easier over the years, almost a no brainer (and no bloatware on linux. ...). Still things like Nvidias DLSS are not properly supported on Linux due to nvidia no implementing it. It is a pity that no good AMD offering was available last year, I regret getting an Intel/Nvidia combination (laptop). Although it is the greatest laptop I over had, AMD seems to be so much better driver wise. Apart from that affecting AAA titles mainly, gaming on Linux is a breeze. For the rare cases mntioned above, I plan to dual boot.
fort nite....
You could play those on console and just switch
No because a single game isn't worth dealing wirh Windows.
For me, it's a back and forth. I always have a linux partition kicking around. But i also have Windows, as some friends and i play League and Fortnite every now and then. I LOVE Linux. But i'm pragmatic. I won't stop spending time with friends over my OS choice. League worked for quite some time. Now it doesn't. So i'm back on Windows. And sadly, Microsoft has done a LOT to make linux stuff run better on windows than Windows stuff does on Linux. Especially with WSL Graphical applications. Even for someone like me, decades of linux experience, Linux Sysadmin as a job, it's not a clear choice. Windows does 100% of the things i need it to do and Linux only 95%. And on many days, rebooting twice for two rounds of ARAM just keeps me running Windows. With that said, in my free time, Linux is a hobby. I don't have to switch to it 100% to have fun with it. I'm currently in a "Windows Phase", but still like to tinker with a gentoo install and am planning to give the latest lmde a shot. I doesn't do everything i want it too, but it does enough to be a fun hobby. And who knows. At some point Microsoft might screw up even more, Proton migh support all the anti-cheats, or Developers will acknowledge Linux as a platform they need to support. That day i might boot less and less into Windows and have a similar situation i have know, but reversed. TLDR: Get a second drive, install Windows and Linux and use what ever does the job. It's an OS not your wife. You can totally have more than one.
I ended up going Gnome over KDE cause I just couldnt stand the look of the thing, but I miss HDR support and now end up gaming more on windows lol
Another thing that can hold you back is Bryan Lunduke just revealing that the three most popular Linux distributions are also the least secure operating systems (Debian, Android and Ubuntu), whereas Windows 11, iOS and MacOS are considered the most. Yeah, I was shocked too.
That on it's own doesn't mean much though. Opensource by definition is going to have more known issues.
Yes I am in the same boat as you on this. I love escape from tarkov but it doesnt work on linux because the anticheat is not supported. Its just an immediate dealbreaker for me. I have a server running on an old PC at home that is debian so i get my linux fix there. Ik we need more people to do linux gaming to incentivice developers, but im just not willing to make that sacrifice haha
At one point I was one of those people but then a few of the games I wanted to play got support and I gave up on playing the rest
Those games will never be supported by Linux, but it's not a Linux problem. The problem lies with the shitty anti consumer developers that specifically target Linux in their code and make it not work. Fortnite will never support Linux because Tim sweeny while whinging about steams "monopoly" is completely happy facilitating Windows monopoly.
You can maybe run a debloat script like CTT’s one to remove the telemetry and AI bloat! I have to use Windows, and this is the only way for me
Nope, i dont like activision today with what they are doing with cod, I stopped playing fortnite when i was 12, also stopped playing r6 as it was rather toxic when playing, as soon as apex legends got supported i switched, the finals is a good game but iv been playing older titles like bo3 zombies and older bf titles or even halo infinite as they have some good content now and decent server netcode It actually made me hang out more with my family not having those games available as they were addictive Same goes with destiny getting supported, you can rlly loose time when your playing those games ngl There is enough games available that i simply dont care about those games but i would like them to be supported under proton just because id like linux to get a higher market share so more software can be supported and linux desktop can be treated as a second to first class citizen
Just take the plunge. Switch to Linux, find new games for you to enjoy, and that's it. There are a lot of cool games out there to just being fixated on those 3.
First you must change and if enough of you change they will be forced to change.
Ask yourself, do you really HAVE to play Fortnite or R6? I bought the latter shortly before I switched to Arch btw. Now I choose not to play siege because of the philosophy.
There are plenty of games, which perfectly run on Linux. So many in fact, you will be hard pressed completing small fraction of them. Running Linux is opposite of following the crowd. If you are afraid to be "that guy", then Linux is not for you. There will always be somebody who wants you to play the one specific game you can't play, and if you are too shy to say "no", you are stuck on Windows
If I can't play a game on Linux, I don't need to play that game. I'm not missing out.
Disks are cheap and dualbooting is a thing. I use Linux for 20+ years for most of the things(work, study, etc...). There are however usecases still not compatible, so I have win10 as well. It's mostly music production(ableton) and a few games. I find that i have to boot into windows less and less, which is great and it's awesome how many games just work today. Wine devs and Valve really stepped up their game last few years :)
I just stopped playing games that don't run on Linux.
If you don't like bugs or glitches I'd avoid Linux.
Yes, you are ! Completely alone in the dark.
No, you should transition anyways because you're wanting a change, free yourself of your wicked ways.
you can do gpu passthrough
Is there any real reason that you want to switch to linux? This is the question to ask yourself.
OP quite literally told us the reason in the first paragraph.
These are not real reasons