This is good. This data will eventually help influence game developers to support Linux. It won't happen over night, but we this trend continues, it'll eventually start getting some attention.
Okay, I finally installed a new SSD yesterday so I could dual boot and put CachyOS on it. Played a few games and it worked surprisingly well.
But it did take quite a bit more doing than installing Windows. The USB drive wouldn't boot when made with Rufus and I don't quite get how to manage the games installed in Proton (like where is their virtual C: drive?).
I plan on migrating more of my stuff onto Linux in the coming days and will see if it can't replace Windows eventually for me.
Welcome to gaming on Linux!
how to manage the games installed in Proton (virtual C drive)
They can be found in: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata//pfx/drive_c/ For Elden Ring for example the path is: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1245620/pfx/drive_c/
Biggest blockers are games with invasive and unsupported anti cheat or very new games. Check https://www.protondb.com/ for the latest reports on games.
I've had a lot of success using Ventoy for my USB drive writing needs. Every steam game has it's own folder for it's virtual windows directory. You want to look in /home/your_name/.steam/steamapps/compatdata The folders are all strings of numbers, each being the ID of the respective steam game. You can find the ID for any steam game just by going in it's store page and looking at the URL. You don't usually need to mess with this though, just browse the game files in your /steam/common folder.
Yeah Ventoy did the trick for me eventually but then I ran into the next issue, namely that the instructions said to place the ISO on the drive. What I actually needed to do was to mount the ISO and to copy the files contained therein to USB.
Thanks for pointing out the folder location. That was it. Now I don't have to launch the Battle.Net installer each time I want to play Hearthstone (added it to Steam as an external game, which is not a bad idea, if a bit awkward).
Next will be how to share my Steam libraries between OSes and retain access to my (cloud) saves. Making first steps there with mounting my existing drives... but now I have to learn how to edit FSTAB... sigh.
Just putting the ISO directly into the ventoy folder on the USB should just work, it's odd that you had to mount it and drag the files. If you're trying to use games installed on one drive between windows and Linux, I do not recommend attempting that. Windows can't natively read Linux drive formats like ext4, and if you try to play games on an NTFS drive on Linux you WILL run into problems. Your cloud saves should just work normally though.
if you try to play games on an NTFS drive on Linux you WILL run into problems
What kind of problems? I REALLY don't want to have hundreds of gigabytes in duplicate files on my system.
They just won't function properly. There are permissions problems and while some games might work, you will run into games that simply won't launch, or that have regular crashes, among other issues. I recommend installing the games you want to play on Linux there, and the ones you can't on windows.
For fstab editing, try running "mount " and check if it succeeds before rebooting, so you can still edit if there are mistakes. FYI if you do a sytax mistake in fstab the entire OS might fail to boot. If it happens don't panic, it's easy to fix: you can use the install usb drive to edit fstab on your disk and try again (no need to reinstall!)
There are also graphical tools. I never used them, but it might be easier if you are not feeling super sure on what to do: https://superuser.com/questions/346606/is-there-any-gui-tool-to-configure-etc-fstab
I also use steam to manage external launchers. It's a bit clunky, but it keeps proton updated and works quite well once it's set up.
Welcome to linux, and do ask around for help / tips if you need!
Microsoft Recall and Steam Deck and Proton are why.
It would be so hilarious to see historians refer to the market shift as "The Great Microsoft Recall" as like a literal recall in addition to the name of the feature.
I tried setting up Windows 10 in a virtual machine recently and damn, what a miserable experience that was. "Please wait. We're getting things ready . . . please wait . . . We're getting things ready. Hey, you want Cortana? Tough shiat, we're installing it anyway. Do you need an Office App? Well we're going to install Live365, whether you like it or not. Also, we really want your email address. You don't have a choice. Just give us your damn email address. And your phone number, too."
Installing Linux: 15 minutes later: "You're done. Enjoy."
Haiku, 30 seconds later... Your all set
I've been running Bazzite OS on my living room big screen gaming PC since May. It's a really slick fedora-based distro that installs out of the box with Steam, proton, and graphics drivers ready-to-launch for gaming. It was really easy to use, and my games worked perfectly.
My high school age son got a new AMD proc/mb for his birthday, and I was surprised when he said he wanted to try dual booting Bazzite and Windows when we set it up. 2 weeks later, and he decided to kill the Windows boot and just use Bazzite full time. He has no linux experience and just figures it out.
Windows 11 is shit and Linux alternatives are prettier, easier to use, don't shove AI down your throat, and don't steal your data for profit. The time has come.
Your son is a badass.
Linux really is in a good place I've been on it for some months now. It feels like win 7, it doesn't get in your way, it does what you want it to do when you want it to. And if you fuck something up its because you fucked it up... go fix it...
Yeah, by a whole permille I bet.
If all you do is game, outside of a few key games (Destiny 2, uhh,couple others) the experience on Linux is better for many folks.
The success of Steam Deck has helped a lot. Prior to that Linux ports tended to be very perfunctory and they weren't tested or supported very well. I guess that now there are actual Linux gamers (via Steam Deck), that support has improved. That said, I think outside of Steam Deck and SteamOS, your experience of gaming is going to be extremely dependent on your GPU, driver support and a number of other factors. Things are far more likely to work well on Windows than they would for Linux.
I could drill down into the work that went into DXVK before Proton came about, enabling the Steam Deck, but that's a boring history lesson. I will concede that newer bleeding edge hardware is far more likely to be plug and play on Windows, but one of the leading reasons I transitioned was Windows removing support for the audio chipset on the motherboard for my Ryzen 1600. Every time I rebooted, I'd have to unpack a zip file and reinstall the audio drivers, it was maddening.
In my experience (so, totally anecdotal), my hardware is stable longer on Linux than Windows.
Every time I rebooted, I’d have to unpack a zip file and reinstall the audio drivers,
The OS would autoremove them?!
Yeah, it was super fun. I tried reformatting, I bought a new drive and put new Windows on it and the same thing happened.
It's probably Windows update "fixing" you drivers by updating them to the Windows version because it is newer. I had to turn off Windows driver updates, because it kept updating my already fully working 5.1 Dolby digital driver to a newer one that only has dual channel audio, and it also broke the optional optical out my sound card supports (and has installed).
My experience with Linux with Nvidia drivers was basically - hey execute this ".run" file and you get drivers. Okay that worked but then if the kernel updated, the drivers broke and had to be reinstalled. And if the dist upgraded to a new version then the drivers broke completely. And NVidia gave up providing drivers at all for their older GPUs and I was stuck with Noveau which is better than nothing but useless for gaming.
Conversely, some dists are supported by graphics manufacturers with proper packages but there is always that gap where the driver dependencies and the kernel dependencies are out of sync. Or the graphics driver only works on the last couple of dists and support disappears after that. Or you upgrade the dist and then discover there are no drivers for it yet.
I know it rankles some purists, but really there should be an long term, versioned ABI for graphics drivers on Linux. The kernel devs hate binary APIs but it should be in the interests of the likes of NVidia / AMD / Intel to develop and support one for their needs. i.e. a driver works across multiple versions of a kernel and multiple dists and makes it far less onerous for users to install drivers and for manufacturers to support them.
It's not so much about users switching, it's more about the ones that will stick with it. And that we can't know for a few years yet.
Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don't think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
MS optimization = maximize revenue streams = more ads = more spyware
I don’t believe a thing MS says is ever meant to improve the customer experience.
I've been using Arch for a little over a year, and it's been fun. I've learned so much more about computers and Linux itself. I highly recommend trying out Linux and you can do it here: https://distrosea.com/ - It's a website where you can try out different Linux distros in your web browser.
I've been running Linux on my desktop for more than 30 years, so I've switched for a while. And while I'd certainly like to see it become more commonplace, I'm not sure a few decimal points are really going to change anything. It's nice that it's making progress, of course, but all in all, it's rather insignificant.
While it's under 10, or more likely 15%, nobody will care about it.
Developers already care about it. Not all of them, not all the way, but many are aiming for steam deck compatibility via proton. It's not perfect, and some devs are vehemently holding out, but it's progress!
That doesn't seem to take a lot of effort. It's still a windows binary. And it's unfortunately simpler than figuring out if the user runs X or not.
11% month on month expansion is fucking crazy. You can see from the data it's mostly Windows 10 users deciding to upgrade to Linux...and even OSX.
Glad to be part of a trend, for a change!
It was written in the scrolls. The day prophezised for hundreds of years: the year of the linux desktop.
Lemmy Linux copium is one of the strongest in the world.
How else are we going to achieve nuclear fission?
How do you know if someone owns a Steam Deck? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
So anyway, a couple years ago I bought a Steam Deck. And since I bought it, virtually all of my gaming is on the Deck. Prior to that, virtually all of my game time was on a Windows PC. So, for me personally, there's been a big shift towards Linux for gaming.
The other big change that's coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can't be upgraded to Windows 11. These computers are perfectly functional and do everything the users need them to do, and they have no inclination to go out and buy a new computer just because. Especially in this economy. Additionally, there are quite a few people with computers that are capable of running Windows 11, but they have no desire to upgrade to a worse experience and an experience that is randomly different in a myriad different ways for no good reason. Both groups are ripe for the picking in terms of a switch to Linux. No, the year of the Linux desktop is not here, but the conditions for such a change are building. And this Steam data may present a picture of the larger trend. Who knows?
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