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Comment by spicyusername | Hacker News Reader

The only reason I use Windows in 2023 is for video gaming. Every other non-gaming PC I own is running Linux.

Windows has become inferior to Linux in every other way. More upgrade headaches, worse resource utilization, worse desktop environment, more crashes, data collection, and now embedded ads.

These technology companies have really demonstrated over the past few decades that they are unable to maintain reliable products over the long term. Every piece of good software (and even hardware in many cases) degrades almost immediately into an inferior product due to laziness and greed.

These companies would rather destroy their flagship products chasing the smallest prospect of extra revenue, than leave what works alone and innovate on something new.

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Beginning with the XP I became a heavy Windows user until version 7. Those releases were the heyday for Windows IMO. But since 8 and, worse of all, 11 I ditched it altogether and none of the computing devices in the house run Windows.

This is all to say that my main gaming rig runs Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Gnome, heavily tweaked, to look and behave like MacOS and.... Its a dream.

Heck, in fact I like it so much that I prefer it to MacOS in every possible way. The only issue is, still, the lack of Adobe support.

And that is why I still have an Apple machine.

Give it a try. You will be surprised by how well so many games run.

What kind of graphics card are you using and have you run into many issues for multi display and/or high refresh rates (assuming you're running this)?

I'm so close to dumping windows and my final concern is gpu and multi monitor support. I only ever run linux on servers or VMs, so no real experience on bare metal.

Not the person you asked, but I run Kubuntu with an RTX 4080 and a 4K 144hz display and every single thing works out of the box. Not every game I want to play works with Proton, but close. Gaming performance vs Windows has been indistinguishable, and it boots up much faster. My Windows drive sits at a half-loaded desktop with no icons for like a minute... No idea why.

Dual monitors will work well if they're similar, but I wouldn't mix hi-dpi with low-dpi or different refresh rates. I've heard most of that doesn't work or is poorly supported.

I am on an ancient 1080 ti but that still gets the job done on the games I want to play (Total War series, RDR2 and some indie games).

About high refresh rate games: I have gamed on 144hz/120hz (one gaming monitor and another OLED TV) but I prefer to lower it so I can increase quality of graphics.

Multi monitor I can't say I have much experience with them connected at the same time but I have used the OLED+Gaming monitor few times but I can't say I do it often.

What I do very often is to leave the machine running and use RDP/Steam client to connect to it and game/work.

Linux support, and Ubuntu and Gnome for that matter, improved leaps and bounds since last LTS.

I've been looking more and more at this since I got a Steam Deck and found surprisingly good compatibility on almost every game. If Steam OS was made available for your run-of-the-mill gaming rig I'd install it in a heartbeat and give it an earnest test run.

That said, there is still a latent unease from my last misadventure with a Linux gaming PC from 2017, which ended in a LOT of restarting into Windows whenever the guys wanted to play a game I couldn't get working

I haven't tried it yet but: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

My only speedbump at this point is non-steam games, specifically in my case overwatch2 and diablo4. Can I run the battlenet launcher and it's games on steam os .. can i do it and not be banned by their 'anti cheat' spyware?

I saw that page right after I made the comment and googled it, but it seemed a little light on details and I was suspicious that it was the old Steam Machines distro as opposed to the frankly quite pleasant distro on the Steam Deck.

EDIT: Yep [1], it looks like that page is for the old SteamOS

[1] https://repo.steampowered.com/steamos/README.txt

Try Bottles (use bottles.com).. I smashed through the Diablo 4 Beta on VanillaOS and Bottles and can also confirm that Overwatch, Hearthstone, StarCraft and Diablo 3 works. The scaling / DPI for the BattleNet client is a little small on my 4K monitor, but other than that, it works well.

> This is all to say that my main gaming rig runs Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Gnome, heavily tweaked, to look and behave like MacOS and.... Its a dream.

Would you mind sharing your setup? I would absolutely love to get something like this going on my Linux boxes.

> The only reason I use Windows in 2023 is for video gaming. Every other non-gaming PC I own is running Linux.

It was the same for me until a month ago. Thanks to the recent developments of WINE and Proton, gaming on Linux has been reliable enough that I could switch entirely to Linux and not look back. Couldn't be happier about it.

Unless you only like to play the most recent AAA releases, I suggest you give it a try.

I have an HDR monitor and Windows 11 autoHDR is genuinely great. I've been considering moving my gaming PC to Linux but I really don't want my monitor features to go to waste. Maybe I'll just sit in WSL2 unless absolutely necessary but I'm sure there's a bunch of random headaches that would come with that

Can I play Valorant on Linux? I don't think Riot Vanguard works on it.

Never played Valorant.

A quick search tells me that the "anticheat" malware that comes along with this game is not supported to run with Proton.

They made a big mess out of it, and I must admit I dont know if it really is malware, but IIRC the main drama was about it being kernel level, totally ignoring the fact that basically every major anticheat was running in kernel for years beforehand.

Or VR. I've heard bad things about the Oculus stack on Linux. This is why I never bothered with proton.

If it weren't for games, I'd swap over too.

But having to swap between either physical computers or dual-boot is just asking too much for me. I like my convenience. Having one OS that does whatever I want is good. Linux is getting closer with stuff like WINE, but I play too much obscure, old, heavily modded, or just games that have issues as it is - and don't want to add the OS into the mix. I like not having to worry about my OS being the problem. Just the other day I found out Old School Runescape's new launcher won't have Linux support, and I play that daily. :/

Some of the defaults in Windows suck, and I've had to disable some tracking and other crap I didn't like, but other than that it's been seamless for as long as I've had computers. That's good enough for me, even if it's a hodgepodge mess in terms of design.

> but I play too much obscure, old, heavily modded, or just games that have issues as it is - and don't want to add the OS into the mix.

This is sort of my ballpark. Generally, I play new games on PS5. When I'm playing on the computer it's either something on RetorArch or an older PC game (case in point, I'm currently playing a modded Heroes Of Might and Magic III on Linux).

For older games, I found that it runs as well as on Windows, sometimes better. When I had a Windows machine, quite often I had to tinker with compatibility mode to get shit to run properly, while on Linux I've been having no issues.

You mentioned OldSchool RuneScape, and for that you can just install the Steam version directly. Seems to be fully supported by Proton with no issues [0]

[0]: https://www.protondb.com/app/1343370

Regarding OSRS, there is a very popular user-made client called Runelite. Going forward, it will only work when launched through the Jagex launcher. So most players will be stuck with Windows. The Steam client is improving, but it's still nowhere near as functional.

> having to swap between either physical computers or dual-boot is just asking too much for me.

Funnily enough I found myself in the same situation but with the reverse outcome. The computer I currently use daily dual-boots Fedora and Windows 11, but I don't think I've touched Windows in months, probably not since I first set it up actually.

I do sometimes get issues with very specific games, but my philosophy is that I'd rather miss out on a piece of software than have it tie to me a specific OS, though it sounds like your more into gaming than me so I can see why that'd be more of an issue for you.

No Jagex Launcher on Linux really kills it for me. I play RuneScape 3 primarily (but I did just start an OSRS Ironman to have something to do while I play on my RS3 Iron), and there being seemingly no easy way to have all my Jagex account characters on Linux is keeping me on Windows. I really hope that the RS3 community finds a way to get around that.

I recently had the choise building home server with Windows or Linux, and due to diminishing and frustrating experience, not least with the unavoidbale spinning fans on my windows computers (I call them vacuum when I talk about them to my wife), due to the misfortune I have to work with Windows I started to dig myself into Linux matters instead and now have a satisfactory quiet and cheap home server setting at home.

Games are my only reason too. Fortunately LTSC saves me most of the madness.

How do I get LTSC? I'm going crazy with Windows 11. It's one of the worst OSes I've ever used.

If you aren't part of a company that buys several licences, you basically cant get it legally. Thank Microsoft.

I routinely downloaded it from a pirate site, but I see that it's available here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/download-windows-...

Works well without activation, if you don't mind the overlay. But what I did is that I pointed it at a KMS emulator, which is a piece of software that responds to every activation request as a positive. The internet is full of lists of servers like these, but I host it myself - basically just built and compiled this one: https://github.com/Wind4/vlmcsd

Gaming on Linux is really good these days.

Install Heroic Launcher and Steam and you're basically in a better place than most Windows users. Proton rarely struggles with anything.

There’s basically nothing on steam that you can’t play on linux now. It’s just the few games with their own specific anti-cheat

I haven't done the research but I think if I could get overwatch2 (and diablo4 if they don't fuck it up) running on my steamdeck I'm not sure keeping a windows box around makes much sense to me anymore because... yeah, it's pretty much an expensive xbox at this point.

If you’re keen on moving away from Windows gaming, try VanillaOS. Preinstalled game drivers and apps, flatpaks and ABRoot for other Linux sub-systems.

Proton GE and Bottles works well for 95% of my ‘Windows’ games. I have no trouble running Steam, Blizzard and EA stuff.

I haven't booted up my gaming PC since I got the Steam Deck last fall.

BUT I don't play AAA online multiplayer shooters, so I'm a bit of a weirdo that way.

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