Hacker News Reader

Comment by whizzter | Hacker News Reader

I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines? A new machine for an enterprise or gamer will probably retain windows because it's needed but people not using their computers for more than surfing will be happy enough.

On that side-note I would also not be surprised if people are leaving "computers" altogether in favor of phones, it's a capable enough computer today for most lay-people, my ex and her parents don't have computers anymore and my daughter hardly uses her either.

Those that actually need computers such as developers are more prone to use Linux anyhow (especially when Microsoft is pushing annoying features such as forced reboots for those dropping their computers anyhow onto powerusers).

View on HN

Anecdotal evidence, but Steams' Proton compatibility layer that lets you run Windows-only games on Linux works really really well. I haven't had to log into years and years by now.

Same. Finally no reason to boot Windows on any machine.

I’ve been wanting to do this for years on an old (and severely underpowered) MacBook Pro which I use with Windows exclusively for Games.

Do you have any recommendation for an extremely lightweight Linus distro which installs and runs Steam fine? It would be used exclusively for that, so it shouldn’t run a ton of background stuff.

Depends on your view of lightweight, but probably XFCE Ubuntu (Xubuntu) will serve you great. Full featured without a ton of bloat, historically.

> Depends on your view of lightweight

Basically, what I care is that as I’m running the game, the system is consuming as few resources as possible. It’s an outdated machine, so every bit matters.

> probably XFCE Ubuntu (Xubuntu)

Thank you. Will check it out.

I'm a big fan of Linux. My small business and personal life run on it. You can download XFCE/Ubuntu spin at https://xubuntu.org/download/. If you develop on your Apple system, it will be pretty similar except

- App Installation via repositories is more common than single program installs. No DMG files. There is a similar concept to DMG with "snap" installs. Steam should probably be installed via a snap. You trust the producer (Valve). But most software and security should come through repos (in CLI, sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade)

- Home directory is /home/<username>

Much of the rest is similar -- Apple's BSD and Linux share a common Unix design progenitor.

Linux is way open to rewipe, just pay attention that you don't lose files. My first day on Linux in the mid 2000s, I somehow overwrite the file system allocation table with the content of an MP3. It was recoverable!

Good luck, and have fun!

Check out Bazzite. It started as a way to approximate SteamOS for general hardware.

Or if you have an AMD GPU, you could even try SteamOS itself, though it's intended for handhelds.

I thought about SteamOS but didn’t seem viable for that Mac.

Bazzite looks to be the next best thing. Probably what I’m looking for. Thank you.

You can login directly to steam big picture mode using gamescope if you have no need for a traditional desktop: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam#Big_Picture_Mode_from...

I've been gaming on Linux for about a decade now full time, and somewhat before that too. I don't have a single Windows machine any more. My laptops are running Arch, my wife's personal Laptop runs Mint, her work machine is Windows because it has to, my work machine is Ubuntu, and my 5yo plays Minecraft on an Arch + Gnome laptop.

7-8 years ago it was pretty frustrating to spend £4k+ on a gaming rig to be unable to play a bunch of titles but I will not use Windows, I just accepted it.

Fast forward to today, and I'm playing Helldivers 2, with its anti-cheat and everything online with my nephew who's on Windows and getting far, far better performance (granted my PC is also more powerful). I can play the modern DOOM games with better performance than if I was running Windows on the same hardware.

My point is, Linux gaming is only getting better, I now also own a ROG Ally which I "flashed" (installed the same way you would any other Linux distro) with Bazzite straight out of the box without even booting Windows and I can play the single-player games I like to while travelling, or can have a quick game of Helldivers with my nephew if I'm not near my PC but have a stable connection. When I need/want to I can plug it into a monitor/kb/mouse with a single cable and have a full desktop with HDR, VRR etc.

I'm mostly a Mac user but I tested Windows 11 versus Bazzite in VMs in my Unraid server, and the Windows 11 install was a nightmare to then be left with a nightmare UI and a bundle of GPU driver issues, meanwhile Bazzite took two clicks and worked.

Obviously there are very cutting edge drivers you can't get on Linux, and Nvidia support is questionable, and some anti-cheat doesn't work, etc, but if you mostly play games released in [current year - a few] on hardware released [current year - a few] it's really a much more enjoyable experience.

I hate W11 to the point that I am still running W10 (IoT) on my machines (I also run Solus and Mint). That said, I have never experienced what you say in the first paragraph.

Windows has at least three screens in the install that are upsells on other Microsoft products, plus a screen where you have to disable multiple analytics trackers. The GPU driver issue might have been a VM issue but to get even basic support I needed to install the AMD drivers, and ended up in some endless loop of the installer telling me it could install drivers for my GPU, installing them, then saying it wasn't supported. I figured the issue out eventually, after watching the AMD installer (with ads!) run for the Nth time, but like I said I'm not trying anything cutting edge, so drivers baked into the OS that I don't have to think about are much nicer.

That is not what I referred to, I referred to the comment:

> I'm mostly a Mac user but I tested Windows 11 versus Bazzite in VMs in my Unraid server, and the Windows 11 install was a nightmare to then be left with a nightmare UI and a bundle of GPU driver issues, meanwhile Bazzite took two clicks and worked.

> Obviously there are very cutting edge drivers you can't get on Linux, and Nvidia support is questionable, and some anti-cheat doesn't work, etc, but if you mostly play games released in [current year - a few] on hardware released [current year - a few] it's really a much more enjoyable experience.

I've never really used old hardware, and generally I've not had too many issues using the latest hardware with Linux. I don't tend to buy PC hardware on release day either, so within a few weeks/months of release when I'm buying, drivers are usually available. I've been through a half dozen generations of Intel laptop for work usually with Nvidia GPUs but my current one is the first with an Intel Arc GPU, for which there are no Ubuntu 24.04 drivers as far as I'm aware, and I'm not entirely sure whether it is/can run the dedicated GPU right now or if I'm using the iGPU; but my work doesn't require GPU accel beyond my desktop and my IDE and terminal (Alacritty).

The biggest issue I find is external devices that need firmware flashing require some crap piece of Windows software from the manufacturer in order to flash, so I'll spin up a Windows VM and USB passthrough to do the update then blow it away again.

I hear this all around and I am myself running GNU/Linux almost all the time, but running games on Steam on my default OS, which is a Debian with KDE currently, that is more miss than hit. I even know someone who has almost the same hardware, also runs a GNU/Linux system and for them almost all games work using Proton. For me however they don't. I already tried proprietary graphics card drivers instead of the ones that come with the OS for amdgpu, HWE kernel, another distro, using Steam installer downloaded from website ... nothing seems to fix the issue. When I click on the big green "Play" button in Steam, for many times it loads for a moment, and the button turns into a blue "stop" button, but then just turns back into a green "play" button, never starting the game. Mind, some games work, like Stardew Valley for example. But I think those are mostly already made to work cross platform.

I have no idea what I can still try, and it annoys me, that for most games I still have to reboot into Windows to play them. I seem to have had more luck following guides for using WINE for specific games in the past, when I made games like StarCraft 2 work better than on Windows, than I have had with Steam and Proton so far.

So anecdote. It is not smooth sailing for everyone yet, unfortunately, and I don't know what the issue is.

Debian is just not going to have access to as much up to date software as it probably needs, even with testing back ports, to run well. I say this as a very long time Debian user that is really struggling in this day and age to find a place for Debian among my devices at this point.

Out of curiosity, what distribution have you been using lately instead of Debian?

Anecdotally, I've been using Fedora Workstation for a few years already, and my Steam + Proton Experimental experience has been fantastic with an AMD GPU using the drivers that come with the kernel.

Although I must admit, I miss having a Debian-based distribution sometimes, because in some situations I can't find rpm packages for more specific things I'm trying to do in my system. The problem is I just don't know any other distribution that's not Debian Testing that could work like Fedora Workstation but with .deb packages.

Fedora Workstation (42)

I add flathub.org and remove the fedora flatpak repo. The few other things I need are in copr/terra, but honestly they are very rare. I think I have maybe 1 piece of software per thing that doesn't release a native .rpm (ghostty is one)

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ https://terra.fyralabs.com/

When it comes to Steam, I go to steam -> settings -> compatibility -> Enable Steam Play for all titles

I have used Nvidia GPUs and more recently switched to an AMD 6700. No issues with either.

Which steam do you use? I have heard that some people have issues with the Snap, Flatpack or Native versions. Also for proton there are different "versions" you can try, experimental or 9 is usually what I run.

    $ dpkg --list | grep -i steam
    ii  steam-devices                                               1:1.0.0.75+ds-6                      all          Device support for Steam-related hardware
    ii  steam-installer                                             1:1.0.0.75+ds-6                      amd64        Valve's Steam digital software delivery system
    ii  steam-libs:amd64                                            1:1.0.0.75+ds-6                      amd64        Metapackage for Steam dependencies
    ii  steam-libs:i386                                             1:1.0.0.75+ds-6                      i386         Metapackage for Steam dependencies
    ii  steam-libs-i386:i386                                        1:1.0.0.75+ds-6                      i386         Metapackage for 32-bit Steam dependencies

I am not using Snap, or Flatpack. I either used apt or an installer from their website. I don't quite remember.

When a game doesn't work and the described symptoms happen, I usually try a few different Proton versions via the game's settings, but this has not helped me make a game run. If anything for some games it has reprocessed shaders or similar things that Steam games do before launching, maybe. But the result stays the same. Game is not starting, button changing back to "play" button.

Hang in there for Trixie. Some things should be better there, especially around WINE performance, cause of the upgraded kernel

For me Proton works sometimes, but I've had much more success with the third party Glorious Eggroll versions that include the Microsoft Codecs used by many games for in-game video.

The case that this is true is only if you don't have an Nvidia GPU or don't play D3D12 games.

I tried it, discovered that Nvidia has a known regression that causes anywhere up to 25% lower performance compared to Windows in GPU limited games in D3D12, and immediately went back to Windows.

I'll never understand why people keep championing Linux for gaming when it has such a severe regression on the most common gaming GPU vendor. Steam says 75%. An Nvidia employee even stated that the fix is not trivial so they're not committing to a timeline for a fix. This is a year+ old issue. They're never fixing it because it doesn't affect CUDA.

https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/issues/164#issuecommen...

Add it to the list of the death by a thousand cuts of Nvidia as a gaming powerhouse. I would have said that they would have fixed it eventually to be chosen by Valve for a Steam Deck, but they’re gorged on AI money at this point. I don’t think they’re the future of gaming GPUs at all. They’re very slowly abandoning the market through those cuts.

> I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines?

I know that a large portion of our business is to other resellers and businesses. FWIW, long before I started working here, I replaced XP with Xubuntu on my parent's computer about 15 years ago. I told them that "it works like Windows[0]", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer and scanner worked great! I expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)

[0] If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that most people don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. They care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs.

One thing I wonder about with people moving to linux is whether "it works like windows" can act as a safe and comfortable landing point, but then how many people explore and prefer the options that they then have access to.

One aspect MS has been criticized for over the past few versions of windows is that they are opinionated about how the base windows UI operates and looks for a very large number of users. One of the things I find interesting on the subreddits for some distros is a lot of posts is showing off how they've customized things, so you can nudge people towards the theming support or panel components you can swap out, or that you can have drastically different DEs with different operation models yet handle the same applications.

> I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines?

I got my hands on a Dell that was retired out of an office somewhere for $30+shipping. Add the cost of a couple HDDs, time spent removing a disc drive and installing Linux, I got myself a cheap backup server on my LAN.

They're great for machines you don't want to drop a lot on for basic utilities.

Would just like to add it’s not needed so much now. I’m a pretty avid gamer and I’ve been using Bazzite as my OS now for months without issue.

Proton has completely changed the game (pun not intended). All that’s really missing now is the big studios who won’t release their anticheat for Linux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com