Hi all, I bought a gaming PC with the intention of installing Linux to play recent games. I chose AMD for the GPU because I know the drivers are more optimized on Linux.
After receiving and assembling my machine, I installed Fedora without any problem. I found a lot of software on Github to replace the proprietary software for my AIO and headphones. Everything worked the first time except… Steam! Unable to launch it, black window which restarted in a loop.
After searching on the internet, I found that it was enough to modify PrefersNonDefaultGPU on steam to solve my problem (but I understand that ordinary people do not want to bother with this kind of hack and prefer the windows experience that works out of the box).
Then I installed Cyberpunk and… well the game runs at 120fps in ultra, what more can I say… Oh yes, the keyboard preset is in Qwerty even though I have an azerty keyboard (sorry Baguette) and in the first hour of play, I was able to notice a bug in a rather disturbing shadow/light and in the drops of water on a windshield which appeared and disappeared in a strange way.
So with my €1500 machine I got a little upset… and I wanted to install Windows out of curiosity.
Installation is…complicated! No driver for my network card, a ton of software that I don’t need, in short, Windows…
I installed steam, launched Cyberpunk and… my keyboard is recognized, 120 fps too (I am offered raytracing which does not interest me and makes me lose fps but it is available) and in the first hour of play NONE bug.
So here I am, I hate Windows, but it runs my games better than Linux and I’m really lost. I’ve just discovered Nobara, I would have loved to try it but I’m tired of starting the first 3 hours of cyberpunk again and I’m convinced that I’ll have some graphical bugs with it.
(also another problem, there are too many Linux distributions, too much choice kills choice)
TDLD: I bought an expensive computer to play under Linux, but a few bugs made me reluctantly install Windows.
The Windows experience was worse, but at least your raindrops were rendered correctly.
It feels like you used a detail that you could not resolve to go back to the cozy arms of what you are familiar with.
And that’s OK. I also went back to Windows a few times until I felt at home in Linux.
Try it again sometime in the future and see if it fells more comfortable.
Sounds like his Linux experience was worse?
OP only has to force the dGPU to be used, and that’s it for Linux. For the azerty issue, the solution is usually to install qwerty as keyboard 1 and azerty as keyboard 2 and always use keyboard 2. I do that with Dvorak and most games work without needing remaps (though I’ll occasionally need to fiddle).
On Windows, OP needed to install drivers, which can be a massive pain, esp for Wi-Fi drivers. Also, most software needs to be installed individually, which can take a while vs Linux’s package manager. For me, a typical install of Linux takes about 30-45 min from installation media to having all my software installed, whereas on Windows it’s like 1-2 hours because I have to go track down every installer I need, find drivers, disable a bunch of privacy-violating stuff, etc.
So the net result was:
- azerty issue - easy fix
- rendering issue - imo, sounds minor, and it’s probably just that game; maybe fixable by tweaking in game settings
Not bad for running a Windows game on a completely different platform.
Installing WiFi drivers on Windows is actually very weird. I’ve never had to do that. Not with a dongle, not with a brand new motherboard with built-in WiFi.
Really? I’ve had to do it pretty much every time I’ve installed Windows. Sometimes I have more luck with a dongle, so I keep a couple around so I can get Internet to go find the proper driver. Sometimes its not recognized, sometimes it just doesn’t connect.
To be clear, I’m talking about installing from an ISO, not using whatever the factory installed. And almost every time I’ve done it, on board Wi-Fi doesn’t work until I find an installer. Sometimes dongles work (I think they have installers on the card?), and I think Intel NICs work, but I really haven’t had good luck.
Once I have Internet, it’s just a matter of tracking down whatever drivers Windows update can’t find (usually 3-5 of them). And Windows is really helpful here, and I have to search by hardware ID.
On Linux, it usually works fine, unless I’m using a really crappy card or something, though better drivers can help with stability. My system setup time is like 30 min from installer to using the system on Linux, and on Windows it’s like 1-2 hours. I’ll probably need to install random things on Linux here and here, but it’s just a package manager command away.
All my PCs are hand built by me since 1990-s. All Windows installations are from ISO. I haven’t installed a single network or WiFi driver since Windows 7. XP - yes, nothing worked out of the box. But W7 and above the only drivers I install are NVIDIA drivers (it works without them, but the default driver doesn’t have all game optimisations) and printer drivers. Even Bluetooth works out of the box. You don’t even need ADB driver for your Android phone anymore, everything just works out of the box.
I’m also not sure what you’re installing for 1-2 hours, it takes about 10 minutes or so over here. It might be dependent on how fast your storage is though.
This was Windows 10, and it’s mostly drivers and utilities. I had a ton of trouble getting my wife’s mic working, which apparently needed some user space utility to be configured, and this was just a simple 3.5mm mic (AMD audio card apparently). And then there was random stuff in Device Manager that didn’t have drivers that I needed to track down (motherboard level stuff, not accessories). I spent like 30 minutes messing with a weird flickering issue (only happened in games), and it was solved by switching which monitor was primary (she apparently can’t use her 144hz monitor as primary, but whatever).
The actual Windows installation process was quick (she has an NVMe drive), it’s just all the nonsense afterward to get stuff running correctly. And that doesn’t include installing applications (she handled most of that, I hate tracking down SW on Windows), this is just to get the hardware to work properly.
On Linux, I just install the system, install packages from the package manager, and I’m done. No googling anything, no configuration, I just install the handful of packages I need that don’t come with the base system and I’m done. I had more trouble in the past (muted audio, Wi-Fi cards that need to be force enabled, etc), but the last time I had anything like that was something like 10 years ago. I do pick my hardware carefully which certainly helps, but surely Windows should provide a better experience since that’s what manufacturers target.
That never works like that on Linux though :)
Linux isn’t for everyone, but jumping in on fedora might not have been the best choice. Give Pop! OS a shot. It’s a more balanced experience.
Fedora is pretty straight forward as an os for newbies, main benefit that popos has is installing Nvidia drivers
Yup. The only issues I had going from Ubuntu to Fedora was finding drivers, and that was solved with a few minutes of searching online.
I don’t use either anymore and getting NVIDIA setup hasn’t been an issue. I used Arch for a few years (just install a couple packages and reboot), and I use OpenSUSE now (just install a couple packages and reboot). It’s not a difficult problem to solve.
Maybe Pop!_OS would’ve solved the graphics switching issue and azerty keyboard thing (probably not), but the rendering thing would very likely be the same as on Fedora since it’s likely related to GPU drivers and Proton, which the distro has no control over.
Any KDE environment is much easier to get into for Windows users than those Gnome / Apple type of desktop environments.
Yes, do as I say! :P
Windows also doesn’t work out of the box like you demonstrated in your post, people are just familiar with how to get it working. Like, Linux isn’t more complicated than Windows, it’s just both complicated and unfamiliar to a lot of people.
Yup. Imo, Linux has a better OOTB experience than Windows since most drivers are already part of the kernel (esp if you buy an AMD GPU). If you only need basic software (web browser, office suite, etc), you’ll be good with any major Linux distro after a default install.
The complexity of Linux only really comes into play if you run into issues, like some hardware isn’t properly recognized/supported (frequent on cheap laptops, esp WiFi and sound), or you need specific Windows software.
That said, if you know both systems well, I think Linux is easier. It’s usually just tweaking a config file or setting up a third party repo and installing a propriety driver. And that can be nearly completely avoided by being careful when buying hardware, and knowing what to avoid takes some experience.
Dunno bro everything works for me on mint. I also have higher frame rates and better stability. Getting Stable Diffusion working on my AMD card is probably the hardest thing i have had to do. Even that is three lines in the terminal now. You may need to dick around with proton settings and read the forums to find what Cyberpunk runs on best if you want to deal with the bug.
It works on AMD GPUs now? Or just the latest gen?
I’m using Stable Diffusion on my 6000 series card and it works fine. Obviously a lot slower than Nvidia cards, but definitely usable.
Is there an up do date installation instruction for it that doesn’t require some higher degrees in terminal magic? The last time I checked, which wasn’t too long ago, I just stopped bothering when reading halfway through.
I’ve been cheating a bit and just using EasyDiffusion. It’s just a shell script that runs and configures everything for you. It’s basically a portable installation that keeps everything in a nice neat folder. I have actually gone through the whole installation process before, and it can definitely be a slog with my limited experience.
Huh, that did actually work. Except that the download doesn’t like VPNs. I did get a potential performance warning though.
MIOpen(HIP): Warning [SQLiteBase] Missing system database file: gfx1030_16.kdb Performance may degrade. Please follow instructions to install: https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/MIOpen#installing-miopen-kernels-package
Edit: Is there a way to install extensions like ReActor? The wiki has a plugins section but that seems to be not helpful at all.
I don’t recall getting that warning, but I did need to adjust a few things to get my GPU recognized. I haven’t had a chance to read too much about your message, but with a quick skim over the documentation it appears it just affects startup latency.
There is a line you need to change in one of the files so it looks for gfx1024 or whatever your card is. Its a pain.
I’ve been using it the last couple days on a 7800xt. It works but has been fairly unstable. Hopefully that’s just new hardware driver problems that will get sorted out eventually.
Is it just in Stable Diffusion or in general? I’ve been happy with my 6800xt so far, but it’s always nice to know what’s available. I keep meaning to try it with the Arc A750 I have laying on the shelf, according to some benchmarks I’ve seen it’s better than my card at image generation.
In general, unfortunately. I’ve had a couple instances of my machine hard locking up, game crashes causing the entire desktop session to restart, and have had to try many different kernels.
Hmm, that’s not good. Good to know though. I see it launched 4 months ago, so I hope it’ll get a good bit better! It’s definitely a major downside to having a cutting edge system.
There’s also Ameliorated which helps debloat hour Windows and 9/10 times get a better experience using it. There’s different playbooks which help optimise to the experience you like (eg. gaming). Could give it a try :)
Is this a good route to improve privacy in Windows
It’s not 100% private because Windows, but it certainly improves it a LOT. But do mind that it comes with a security vulnerability as Windows defender is also removed and you’re left on your own. So no shady downloads, unknown pdfs, or whatever harmful there may be. 3rd party ‘anti-virus’ software is also explained on their FAQ page, which you should check out before continuing :)
You can always dual boot, Linux for working is amazing. And your can also install a VM but I haven’t tried it for gaming
I don’t work with this computer, my company provides us one. But thanks for the idea!
VMs are slow and not suited for gaming.
You can even tunnel your hardware directly to the VM, e.g. graphics card and have like a 2% loss on the virtualization side. Not much of a deal, if you know what you’re doing. Bonus: You can restrict the VMs network, do external backups etc.
You’ll need two GPUs, no? Passing a GPU through is relatively easy, but trying to share one isn’t going to work for gaming.
But if you have the extra hardware and lots of cores, VM gaming can be a very good experience.
You can do it on a single GPU system but you can’t use Linux and Windows at the same time.
Isn’t that just a dual boot with extra steps? Or are you saying you could have a SW rendered Linux GUI while Windows is using the GPU, then switch Linux to use the GPU later? I thought there were lots of issues with swapping GPUs between host and VM without a reboot?
Could you provide more info?
It’s just like a dual boot but slightly faster. You also don’t need to worry about having two drives, messing around with partitions or having Windows overwrite your boot loader.
As you pass your GPU to the VM, Linux can’t use it anymore so all you see on your screen is the VM. When you start and shutdown the VM, a script runs to prepare the VM to boot or to hand over the GPU back to the host.
So can you launch it straight from a graphical desktop and just suspend the graphical bits somehow? Or do you need to drop to a vtty first? Does it work properly when loading from a snapshot, or do you have to boot each time?
I don’t need to use Windows very often, but it would be nice to run a script to get into it, then he back where I was after closing out.
software for my AIO and headphones
wtf kind of headphones require extra software?
Everything worked the first time except… Steam! Unable to launch it, black window which restarted in a loop.
What package exactly did you install and from which source?
the keyboard preset is in Qwerty even though I have an azerty keyboard
If you set the layout correctly during installation of the system / in your system settings then that’s not really Linux fault.
I was able to notice a bug in a rather disturbing shadow/light and in the drops of water on a windshield which appeared and disappeared in a strange way.
Very well explained.
So here I am, I hate Windows, but it runs my games better than Linux and I’m really lost. I’ve just discovered Nobara, I would have loved to try it but I’m tired of starting the first 3 hours of cyberpunk again and I’m convinced that I’ll have some graphical bugs with it.
Why restart? Back up your home folder to a different drive, install the OS and copypasta the home folder back into the new system. This is literally easier than under Windows because everything non system related is in the home folder. Games, save & config files, everything.
it runs my games better than Linux and I’m really lost.
You already answered your own question/experience – do some “duckduckgoing” (even if it means falling back to the basics once again, “How to run a windows game on linux”) and then come back here. Because yes, GNU/Linux is 100% viable for gaming and can even run games better than on Winblows – if you know how to setup things properly.
A word of advice however, Linux tend to be a bit “sensitive” regarding some system elements/packages – you’ve got to provide all possible info to everything – theres no “ready out of the box” in these lands.
“duckduckgoing”
I prefer “quacking”. ;)
can even run games better than on Winblows
Some games, others run worse. It’s usually within 10% either way, which isn’t something I’d personally pick an OS over. You can probably tune things to eek out an extra percent or two, but imo that’s not worth it unless you’re really into that kind of thing.
theres no “ready out of the box” in these lands
That’s just not true. Most of the time, Linux works great out of the box, but there are some common areas where that’s not the case:
- laptops with dGPUs - Linux just doesn’t handle graphics switching as well as Windows, but the solution is easy as OP found out
- crappy WiFi cards - just buy Intel NICs
- crappy sound cards - less of a problem these days, but sound can still be a massive pain
And that’s pretty much it. If you buy quality hardware, your OOTB experience is probably going to be great! If you buy an AMD GPU, it’ll be even better since you don’t even need to install graphics drivers! I had zero issues on my desktop switching between distros (everything just works), and my only issue with my laptop was using very recent hardware, which was fixed with kernel updates (there was a known bug with sound over HDMI on my AMD laptop).
Imo, Linux is much more likely to “just work” than Windows, assuming you’re installing the OS yourself. Every time I’ve installed Windows, I’ve had to track down a bunch of drivers, downloading Wi-Fi drivers on my Linux computer and installing them with a USB stick. That sucks.
I prefer “quacking”. ;)
I like that, I’ll have to remember to use it sometime!
I ran arch for years then Manjaro. I had zero issues running doom eternal except if I switched workspaces then back. I’d have to kill -9 the app and relaunch. Was enough to make me dual boot to beat that game. I’ve been running Manjaro since, because I don’t have the time like I used to to fuck around with settings. I still prefer Linux overall as my daily drive though. It’s not a slow, buggy, ad ridden pile of shit. Imo windows is so buggy and slow since like 8 or 10
Do you use workspaces on Windows?
Tbh I didn’t know that’s a thing
I do doubt Windows didn’t work out of the box, as with the thousands of installations I’ve done, I have had ZERO issues since Win7. Very few to none in Vista. The issues were prevalent in XP and before but that was the before times when the similar Linux issues were 10000x worse.
The only gripe I have is moving people to online accounts. Just run the oobe command from the installer to limit network requirements and voila, local accounts created.
All that extra bloat can be removed but who cares. The stuff that sits there barely affects anything, like you saw the frame rate is the same.
If Windows works for you, as it does for 90% of consumers, then use it. If you want to tinker forever with Linux, then do so. Some find that fun. I’ve moved into the “my OS is an appliance” phase of life.
If you need any help in french even through vocal, PM me
Merci beaucoup !
Avec plaisir :)
Won’t speak for anyone else but I’ve been running ChimeraOS for a couple of weeks now and it’s WAAAAAY better than using Windows.
Could you explain why?
I mean how much time do you have? 😂
On Windows I get pop-ups for unknown reasons, I have no control over what software is on my PC or what it is doing, trying to fix that usually breaks other things. I can use a controller for just about everything I need. I can boot it up and load up a game in about 10 seconds. I can change the volume, change the speakers, adjust game settings, adjust the HUD, all without leaving the game. Exiting games is a generally laborious process full of menus and loading screens, where on GamepadUI you just hit “exit game”. My internet connection seems more stable for reasons unknown. I could go on…
Maybe try another distro:
I decided to install LM Cinnamon as the main OS on my new PC, and I can’t get GOG Cyberpunk to work for the life of me - tried Lutris where it doesn’t launch at all, and Heroic where it launches but has no sound. I’m ready to give up and go back to Windows at this point.
Use proton and/or a distro actually meant for gaming (Linux mint is simplified, more for beginners imo and not one I’d personally recommend). Try Pop!, Manjaro or Garuda.
As someone contemplating a move, posts like this and many others make me nervous. I have used mint a few weeks for just documents and browsing and had planned it for my main PC. Now you say it isn’t meant for gaming?
Sometimes reading about Linux is a mix of you can do anything with anything but shouldn’t do anything with somethings.
Linux mint specifically is great for documents and browsing but other distros are gonna have better gaming presets is all I was saying. Imo, It’s a “typing laptop” OS when you probably want Pop! Instead. That or the other ones I listed have extra drivers and whatnot by default. Just trying to be helpful!
I jumped right into Mint without trying other distros because I was coming from Windows, and it sounded like Mint is the least-needy next step. But my experience so far has been: If it’s not easily fixed with a version upgrade/downgrade, it’s not getting fixed. There are lots of forum posts to look at for guidance, but the fixes are always really specific to the OP’s system and not applicable to mine. I’ve seen a lot of people on Lemmy using Pop!; maybe I’ll try that next before giving up completely
You absolutely should, sounds perfect for your use case. It’s meant for gaming PCs, and as you’re starting out don’t be afraid to take advantage of the several different package managers out there (I think pop has one built-in but there are others like snap). Finding and installing programs via command line isn’t as hard as you might think either and is usually more secure/ideal. If you need something more cutting edge and are willing to dive into stuff like that I’ve had great experiences with garuda and manjaro too. There are lots of FAQ’s out there, and it can be really daunting at first but I promise it’ll be rewarding somehow. I personally love all the different free software repositories and having apps like fortune run when I start my machine- there’s something so cozy about configuring a PC to be a little fun and reflect your own personality a bit.
I switched to Pop_OS and everything had been working great;thanks for the rec 👍
Love to hear it! Hope that does what you need it to for a long time! being a commercial product (kinda, system76 mostly makes money off hardware with it iirc) there should be great support and I’m pretty sure it has its own forum too like many other distros. Good luck!
I greatly appreciate the help. So then something like Pop caters more with drivers one may need.
I’m just tying to make sure my step into Linux is a good one. I have only used Ubuntu and Mint a bit and not what I would call extensively.
I was tempted by Arch but I don’t salivate at the idea of creating my own desktop environment like others seem to. Hmm. I have my research to do as I had not looked at Pop.
If you don’t like it there are always other options (if you like a lot about arch, Garuda or Manjaro would be my next suggestion) but I do think Pop is great for those adjusting to the new ecosystem from windows
Disclaimer: my experience is only with Arch Linux (daily drive for 2 years) and a little bit of Linux Mint on a relative’s PC.
For me I found it more tedious to get games working through WINE on Linux Mint compared to on Arch Linux, some packages I wanted seemingly don’t exist in the apt repositories (wine mono and wine gecko) and had to be manually installed.
I also had some trouble because the package names were different compared to on pacman, especially the lib32 ones, but to be fair I would probably have had the same issue on Arch if I first used Linux Mint then Arch so not having the same package names isn’t inherently a fault of Linux Mint.
But it wasn’t that it wasn’t doable, it was just more tedious, and to be fair daily driving Arch for 2 years compared to using Linux Mint every once in a while means I’m way less familiar with Linux Mint.
Arch sounds both wonderful and terrifying. I’m still watching videos to pick a distro but aur sounds like the wild west. I also am not sure how much effort I want to put into creating my own desktop environment. Videos talk about building it all but provide little info on what length of effort and maintenance that will take. Are things more likely to break? I’m unsure and trying to find out.
Arch is made out to be a lot harder and unstable than it really is. And AUR is a great resource but realistically you won’t even use it that much. At least I haven’t. I used it for Brave Browser package before switching to Firefox, some WINE gst plugin, and some other small stuff I don’t remember.
Also keep in mind even if it’s a AUR package, you can just install the package like normal if it’s a binary (it will be named with a
-binat the end, likebrave-bin), so just because you’re using some packages from AUR it doesn’t mean you have to build lots of packages from source every time you update.People hear scary stuff about some random update breaking the system but it’s exaggerated.
You definitely can break stuff with user error and sometimes if you’re not paying attention while updating you can get problems (combination of bad defaults + user error).
Main problem is that you can do whatever you want, but you might not actually know what you really want to do or you might not be doing what you meant to do, and Arch Linux will let you do it even if something breaks due to it.
And well that’s going to be same regardless of OS but it’s more accessible on Arch.
However you shouldn’t be too worried about it, in the basically worst case scenario you might need a Live USB and another device with an internet connection to look up and what you need to do to fix what’s wrong, but you can always count on that there’s a fix.
Most other OSes if you have a problem, depending on what it is you might just be stuck with it.
Biggest noob mistake I recall doing was that I had my old windows hard drive as extra storage and slowly moving stuff over once in a while, so I hadn’t reformatted it and I also wasn’t aware of that the default Linux NTFS driver wasn’t very good and that I should’ve gotten NTFS-3G if I weren’t going to reformat.
Well one day while not paying attention while updating my system through pacman (yay actually) I was also copying files from my old windows hard drive and I didn’t even look before just pressing accept on some AUR package rebuild.
Well it turns out that package was formerly part of Extra repository and thus it used to be a binary package, but now since it was moved to the AUR and it didn’t have
-binit was changed to a package to be built from source, and if I were to continue using it I should’ve changed which package.But I just hit accept and it started chugging away, and it needed more RAM that I have and apparently there’s no safe guard for this (at least not by default) and by the time I noticed that my RAM usage was getting to high the system already got too sluggish and I was too late to end the process.
I also didn’t know about
SysRqat the time so the only option I knew was to force shut down by holding down the power button for 5 seconds.My actual system was still fine and all but my old windows hard drive that was transferring files got borked. It wasn’t completely bricked so I eventually salvaged it and it’s since been reformatted too, but I thought I had bricked it at the time.
Well that might still seem a bit scary but that was me making several user errors in a row, and at the end of the day it still wasn’t even a big problem.
I chose a distro with Steam preinstalled, it was ualinux (not maintained any more so i’m not recommending it). If your primary use case is games I recommend a gaming specific distro, everything works out of the box.
Also, how do the French people walk in games? ZSAD?
French keyboard is called “azerty”
So they would move with
Z Q S DNot to be confused with the Belgium azerty which is 90% similar. But different enough to be annoying if you’re used to one or the other.
