I just dual booted Linux Mint yesterday when I was reminded of the Win 10 end of service date, and hope to keep with it as my main system.
Linux has come a long way with compatibility since I last tried it ~10 years ago. The fact that Steam games ran perfectly without an evening of configuring settings blew my mind.
Honestly my ability to game has what has kept me out of linux. I trialed PopOs a while ago. I will more than likely switch to it when shit starts getting super annoying.
Some multiplayer, but not all. Not that that makes it perfect, but I’ve had minimal issues with multiplayer games. I do not play popular FPS games where anti cheat software is prevalent, so that’s mostly why. I did get Ghost of Tsushima the other day, and that is not compatible for online play, but I think that’s because of Sony.
Wonder if there’s any chance the Steam Deck / Linux market share is getting large enough where gaming companies are having to seriously consider fixing this.
As of right now? It’ll probably be the drop in support next year. While I have my complaints about Microsoft or any major corporation, for that matter, I’m not the most tech savvy. If Microsoft were to come out and say support is extended, I’ll stick with W10. If they come out with an OS that allowed me to pick and choose what software I wanted and didn’t load it with a shit ton of bloat ware I’d be all over that like shit on velcro. I know these are pipe dreams, and I will most likely move. For now, I will stay the current course until it’s time to jump into the Linux pool and learn how to swim.
I set up a second SSD with Bazzite for dual booting, but it’s not practical for me to use as a daily driver yet. I have a Nvidia GPU, and the drivers just aren’t up to par with their Windows counterparts yet. I could tolerate not having HDR, but also not being able to use 2 monitors with different refresh rates at the same time is killing me.
There’s an update in the works that should fix at least the multi-monitor problem, but still no HDR.
I’m on KDE. It’s quite an odd problem. If I keep them both set to refresh rates below their max, things work fine. However, if both monitors are set to their native refresh rates, the higher refresh rate one goes blank and the lower one starts flickering. If I disable the lower refresh rate monitor, I can set the higher one to it’s max without issue though.
Essentially, when I’m booting into Bazzite, I need to either disable my second monitor or halve my refresh rate or it’s unusable.
Interesting. If you have some time, might be worth trying to live USB boot drive of something like fedora desktop kde spin or pop_os cosmic DE just to see if the issue persists for other distros.
I’m theory this should be working now, it’s too bad it isn’t. My desktop is a 4 monitor setup that I’m hoping to move to a fedora based distro as well.
Pop_OS was the first distro I tried before coming to Bazzite. Cosmic sorta worked, but was overall worse… No flickering there, but eventually, a few minutes after logging in, the desktop would freeze. Completely unusable unfortunately. I think Bazzite is fedora based iirc? I don’t know, this is my first attempt at anything beyond putting Ubuntu on old laptops.
Ya bazzite is based on fedora with an immutable file system, so it’s called fedora atomic. Fedora atomic then has variants like bazzite, universal blue etc.
I’m curious if the baseline fedora desktop would have the same issues.
Multi refresh rate on monitors is a relatively new thing for Linux so bugs are still being ironed out. It sucks that things like these are still not at parity with windows but it’s improving.
They usually do if they don’t use kernel level anti cheat. But it’s a bit more complicated than Steam. There are guides online. It’s manageable but it’s not “click play and you’re done” like steam
Blizzard games have always had good linux compatibility. Might change now that they’ve bought by microsoft though.
As for ubisoft games they probably run too, launchers are a pita but they do run, you’ll need something like lutris, bottles or heroic launcher to get you started running shit outside of steam, they’re not necessary but they make things simpler.
Afaik Steam has a compatibility layer (Proton) which makes the games run on linux, because the SteamOS which is running on the Steam Deck is Linux. There is Wine you could use for games outside Steam, or you could also try running them throuhg Steam.
Now I have no experience with any of this, but plan to set up Linux dual boot at some point and this is my understanding of things. Somebody better suited will probably chime in with mire details
There’s the new UMU launcher that allows running proton outside of steam. Winehq also works fine by itself, at the end of the day proton is just a fork of wine with a few patches and relies on plenty of shared components like dxvk and vkd3d.
I just wiped Windows from my drive yesterday and committed to Fedora after dualbooting for 15 years…I’ve been maining Fedora for a while and always kept Windows around “just in case”, but never actually seemed to need it. This recall/AI spyware was it for me though. Gaming has been a breeze for a while on Fedora/Linux due to Steam/Proton…such a great feeling to finally be completely rid of Windows!
Another great ploy by Microsoft to increase Linux adoption.
I just dual booted Linux Mint yesterday when I was reminded of the Win 10 end of service date, and hope to keep with it as my main system.
Linux has come a long way with compatibility since I last tried it ~10 years ago. The fact that Steam games ran perfectly without an evening of configuring settings blew my mind.
Honestly my ability to game has what has kept me out of linux. I trialed PopOs a while ago. I will more than likely switch to it when shit starts getting super annoying.
Gaming on Linux works like a charm now
It’s the multi-player side that is still an issue though. The anticheat software is a pain.
Some multiplayer, but not all. Not that that makes it perfect, but I’ve had minimal issues with multiplayer games. I do not play popular FPS games where anti cheat software is prevalent, so that’s mostly why. I did get Ghost of Tsushima the other day, and that is not compatible for online play, but I think that’s because of Sony.
Personally I’ve had zero issues with multiplayer. But yeah, I’m also not playing the latest twitch shooters and whatever.
This is good news to me since I don’t play twitch shooters.
I’d love to run just Linux, but I don’t want to hassle with dual boot for the couple of competitive shooters I do play.
It sucks because all the other games I play would run without a problem.
Yeah, totally understood.
Wonder if there’s any chance the Steam Deck / Linux market share is getting large enough where gaming companies are having to seriously consider fixing this.
It’s already super annoying, and this is what people always say. What’s it going to take in your case?
As of right now? It’ll probably be the drop in support next year. While I have my complaints about Microsoft or any major corporation, for that matter, I’m not the most tech savvy. If Microsoft were to come out and say support is extended, I’ll stick with W10. If they come out with an OS that allowed me to pick and choose what software I wanted and didn’t load it with a shit ton of bloat ware I’d be all over that like shit on velcro. I know these are pipe dreams, and I will most likely move. For now, I will stay the current course until it’s time to jump into the Linux pool and learn how to swim.
I set up a second SSD with Bazzite for dual booting, but it’s not practical for me to use as a daily driver yet. I have a Nvidia GPU, and the drivers just aren’t up to par with their Windows counterparts yet. I could tolerate not having HDR, but also not being able to use 2 monitors with different refresh rates at the same time is killing me.
There’s an update in the works that should fix at least the multi-monitor problem, but still no HDR.
Did you use bazzite with gnome or kde? If I recall correctly, kde plasma 6.1 has support for multi monitor with different refresh
I’m on KDE. It’s quite an odd problem. If I keep them both set to refresh rates below their max, things work fine. However, if both monitors are set to their native refresh rates, the higher refresh rate one goes blank and the lower one starts flickering. If I disable the lower refresh rate monitor, I can set the higher one to it’s max without issue though.
Essentially, when I’m booting into Bazzite, I need to either disable my second monitor or halve my refresh rate or it’s unusable.
I’m on Arch KDE and have and Nvidia 2080ti. I can’t run Wayland. Otherwise I run 3 monitors, 1 an ultra wide at 120hz. I haven’t had any issues.
Interesting. If you have some time, might be worth trying to live USB boot drive of something like fedora desktop kde spin or pop_os cosmic DE just to see if the issue persists for other distros.
I’m theory this should be working now, it’s too bad it isn’t. My desktop is a 4 monitor setup that I’m hoping to move to a fedora based distro as well.
Pop_OS was the first distro I tried before coming to Bazzite. Cosmic sorta worked, but was overall worse… No flickering there, but eventually, a few minutes after logging in, the desktop would freeze. Completely unusable unfortunately. I think Bazzite is fedora based iirc? I don’t know, this is my first attempt at anything beyond putting Ubuntu on old laptops.
Ya bazzite is based on fedora with an immutable file system, so it’s called fedora atomic. Fedora atomic then has variants like bazzite, universal blue etc.
I’m curious if the baseline fedora desktop would have the same issues.
https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/download
Multi refresh rate on monitors is a relatively new thing for Linux so bugs are still being ironed out. It sucks that things like these are still not at parity with windows but it’s improving.
Do you know if Nvidia Surround works? I’ve been gaming with a tripple monitor setup and would really like to keep it.
That I don’t know, I only have two monitors and they’re totally different sizes so I haven’t looked into it, sorry!
Do Ubisoft and Blizzard games run? I keep reading praises about Steam but I am more concerned with the other launchers
They usually do if they don’t use kernel level anti cheat. But it’s a bit more complicated than Steam. There are guides online. It’s manageable but it’s not “click play and you’re done” like steam
Blizzard games have always had good linux compatibility. Might change now that they’ve bought by microsoft though.
As for ubisoft games they probably run too, launchers are a pita but they do run, you’ll need something like lutris, bottles or heroic launcher to get you started running shit outside of steam, they’re not necessary but they make things simpler.
Afaik Steam has a compatibility layer (Proton) which makes the games run on linux, because the SteamOS which is running on the Steam Deck is Linux. There is Wine you could use for games outside Steam, or you could also try running them throuhg Steam.
Now I have no experience with any of this, but plan to set up Linux dual boot at some point and this is my understanding of things. Somebody better suited will probably chime in with mire details
There’s the new UMU launcher that allows running proton outside of steam. Winehq also works fine by itself, at the end of the day proton is just a fork of wine with a few patches and relies on plenty of shared components like dxvk and vkd3d.
I just wiped Windows from my drive yesterday and committed to Fedora after dualbooting for 15 years…I’ve been maining Fedora for a while and always kept Windows around “just in case”, but never actually seemed to need it. This recall/AI spyware was it for me though. Gaming has been a breeze for a while on Fedora/Linux due to Steam/Proton…such a great feeling to finally be completely rid of Windows!