I made the move to Linux about a month ago, and it’s been super smooth (and yes I have an NVIDIA 3080). I went with CachyOS though. The ONLY thing keeping me dual-booting windows though is Cubase (DAW), which is unfortunate but whatever. I don’t really play any games that use EAC / kernel-level anti-cheat so it doesn’t affect me, but is a bummer.
i made the switch to linux about 2 years ago(2024,stopped dual booting on dec 2024), so far it has been ok (except for one hiccup where My TF2’S fps would tank but there is a workaround, i use Nvidia),apps are okay but i hate how basically the only option you have is GIMP, which i dont like how it doesnt have Content-Aware Scaling i think its called?,shapes would be nice too but its optional, i just use photopeas for the time being)
and video games:
i mainly avoid kernel level anticheat things so its really good here.
Proton/DXVK is very good and nice,but it would be nice if game devs made native Linux versions.
and GNOME 49 looks really nice i love the UI/UX,CachyOS is also a nice Distro(i did try Arch but mehh probably not for me i did install the de and utils but disk stuff was annoying),BTRFS is really handy and nice(i love snapshots).
devices i run desktop Linux on:
I3 12100F + GTX 1650 + 16GB RAM (gaming pc)
Raspberry pi 5 8GB ram (backup/home server pc, running debian/armbian with ext4 on this though)
I played d2r a lot using my Linux box last year. I even able to do double boxing to play my alt while I was at it. Bnet app works really well with wine out of the box. Just install bnet then log in and install d2r
I have a 3080 with two HDR capable high refresh rate monitors and a year ago when I switched I tried Pop and Fedora both of which just launched all games to a black screen. Installed arch which finally let me run most proton games but every couple of sessions I get FPS spikes and jittering and have to restart the games.
Going to get a 9070XT and bazzite soon
If you have set your mind to Manjaro I don’t want to dissuade you, but if you are not yet strongly convinced of the distro I always like to point out that there were some issues with the distribution in the past (someone collected them here).
If you’re just after an Arch-like distribution I think EndeavourOS is a very friendly distro without adding their own repositories on top of Arch. But again - if you’re happy with Manjaro by all means also stay with it.
I’ve only been using it for a few weeks now, but I’m having a great time with EndeavourOS. I’ve tried Linux every now and then for over 20 years now, but always bounced off for one reason or another. This time, I’ve never felt any desire to go back.
For me, my use case, and my hardware, EOS has been significantly less of a headache than Windows 11 was.
I’d suggest trying a couple through live ISOs to see what works best out of the box with your hardware. I settled on CachyOS and definitely recommend it. Bazzite is ok, very stable, but keep in mind it is immutable which may hamper its abilities as a full desktop.
Not OP. Around same timeline. Went with bazzite for gaming. Have been using bazzite daily since. Stuff just works super easy to install. Also tried and have mint still installed on another partition but haven’t used it much besides the initial installation. And installed dual boot bazzite and mint on my old gaming laptop. Use mint on there daily for internet browsing and such, no gaming. But I’m certain it would work just fine as it’s all pretty much the same besides Debian (mint) Vs Fedora (bazzite).
I don’t play AAA slop either, and a few older easy anti cheat games don’t work. Such as Fawkes revival of Defiance.
Everything else works pre installed with Steam+ proton, Or Ludis + wine, Or the Heroic launcher for GoG, Amazon and EGS.
I do get higher FPS and better temps and less hardware usage than I ever did on Win11 for the same exact games.
Arch was described as hard mode but I installed EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma about a month and a half ago and it’s been smooth sailing. Given all the programs I use have native linux clients and I don’t play kernel level anti-cheat games at all.
88 comments and nobody has noted that the article itself looks like AI slop?
Lots of signals here: the writing style, bland and wishy-washy use of statistics, bullets and formatting that arbitrarily organize without adding value, the rule-of-threes clauses, and redundant details, the intro summary list, the lack of sourcing links, and “written” by an author whose bio specifically mentions AI.
I specifically looked for backup to the assertion about higher FPS and it’s just a random unsourced percentage. Maybe it’s true but this article has no value as a source.
I’ve noticed that AI slop articles tend to have a a TLDR right before the table of contents. I’m an aquarist and they’ve made it damn near impossible to get good info on fish, taking the first few pages of results before I get a forum post with useful info.
I switched to Linux full time almost two years ago when Win 10 started saying my CPU wasn’t supported. My CPU is in the i7 family and I think they all got that treatment. Since then I’ve had no major issues with Linux Mint. As for gaming, I do get some frame drops with my Nvidia 3060, but I was getting the same on Windows.
Nvidia just works unless you have a some weird obscure hardware combo. It’s been like this for over a decade. Nvidia’s reputation is because their code is shit, their processes are shit, and they lack feature parity from windows that their competitors have shown isn’t an environment limitation (like changing the amount shared dram used as vram).
Tips:
Your distro maintaindr already did the hard part, get the driver from them instead of nvidia (unless you’re on Debian, then you’re on your own).
If you are on debian (or any of the other rare distros that don’t package the nvidia driver for you) and using xorg, back up your xorg.conf because the nvidia installer will modify it and the new one may not work. If you’re not comfortable using the terminal, make sure you take note of the location of your xorg.conf to minimize time spent there, you will need it though.
If you’re on a normal distro, it’s usually just sudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidia or sudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidia-open
I know nothing about Gamepass, but Mint runs Steam games on my 2080 just fine. It worked out of the box. I was a little surprised. To keep Steam from forcing me to update FO4, I bought it off GOG and installed it through heroic, with zero issues. It just worked.
But, no, it’s not easy-peasy to switch, you do need to be motivated to make the effort. Of course, there is a learning curve. Feel free to stay on Windows, that was always allowed.
I moved to Linux entirely because of how shit Windows is, but I do not, in general, get higher fps. It’s very case-by-case, but in general, my performance seems to be ever so slightly worse.
Gaming in particular seems to be the same, with few games having noticeable differences either way.
Productivity wise, it’s night and day. On Linux I can run simulations while doing other stuff, on windows I had to have a freshly rebooted session with nothing else opened and leave it alone for hours to, maybe, run without crashing.
I haven’t personally compared Linux performance to WIndows in 10 years. The last vesrion of Windows I used was 8.1. The games I want to play run very well on my Ryzen 7700X, 7900GRE system running Fedora. Subnautica and Satisfactory run great. I don’t care if Windows gets a few fps more, because my computer actually works and doesn’t show me ads in the taksbar or sends everything I paste in a word processing document to the cloud. I get 144 FPS with raytracing in Unreal 5 games. What’s your problem?
It tends to be AMD GPUs that have the greatest differences in favour of Linux (except for ray tracing but that is improving in recent driver releases).
I think Intel too - in other words, the Nvidia Linux driver sucks as we’ve always known. And as long as they refuse to either put effort into it or let the community see and fix their code it’s unlikely to change
I probably hate Microsoft roughly as much as most people here but in a lot of ways Windows is way more polished than Linux. The second you try something “unconventional” in Linux the shit is going to hit the fan. Fractional scale DPI - half the apps crap their pants. On screen keyboard - and don’t get me started with OSK over Firefox in kiosk mode (for example in touch screen settings). Also try to make a custom shortcut on your gnome desktop to run some application with some arguments without writing config files in random directories you have to Google and reloading some configs via a terminal.
Microsoft really went downhill fast and certainly adds a lot of crap to windows lately, but sadly in the Linux world we don’t have 1-3 well polished distros, we have hundreds of them. All good at one or two things, but suck at everything else. There a so many options the choice alone is probably the biggest reason everyday people will not switch to Linux if their device doesn’t already come with Linux. Even people thinking about switching end up with analysis paralysis because everybody tells them stuff like, try it - if you don’t like it try something else. As if they have nothing better to do than trying Linux distros all day long.
The majority of people probably can’t even get over the hump of imaging a USB drive.
I like to think of the average person as my mom. Can my mom plug in a flash drive in a computer? Yeah. Does she know what Linux is? Nope. Can she google about Linux? Yeah. Will she get confused and inundated with the hundreds of “linux” versions? Uh yeah.
And then if she does somehow download a .iso, she’d probably copy and paste the .iso onto the flash drive and have no idea what Rufus or Balena Etcher is.
And to be honest, most people don’t even need a computer nowadays. Their smart phones does everything. There is no need to have a computer anymore.
You say Linux, but I think you’re talking about Gnome specifically. I’d recommend trying KDE and seeing how it handles your problems. You can install multiple DEs and see what works best for you.
I get what you are saying and maybe I’ll find some time to do that, but I hope you also see the irony in an answer like that, because the typical user couldn’t care less about Gnome vs KDE.
I was about to comment the same - shitting itself when trying to do something nonstandard is a Gnome thing, not a Linux thing :^)
I also fully understand that new users are not aware of what the different components are and “what they do” (how they influence the UX) but they very much do make or break their “Linux experience”. Personally I dislike Gnome because it exposes barely any settings, and it’s “simple” to the point where it feels almost like a toy to me - kinda like macOS feels. Some people might be looking for that, and I don’t judge them, but I think it’s important to make an informed decision on simplicity and “guardrails” vs flexibility and customization. The same goes for immutable vs “traditional”, rolling vs releases, etc.
You don’t need to care about or understand the details, but the choice that the “Linux ecosystem” offers is one of its best parts, and understanding the implications of the ones you make is very important. It also helps avoid getting frustrated in “Linux can’t do this” situations by knowing that maybe it’s just your environment - believe me, unless it’s about running some proprietary code that the vendor is uncooperative about, “Linux” can do it. It might require some lines of code to glue together some pieces, but the “computing” things that “Linux can’t do” are very close to 0.
The typical user couldn’t care less about Windows VS Linux, but it makes it difference. I don’t know that it fixes the issues, but it might. It’s also an option you have because you’re on Linux, not Windows. You get a choice, and can figure out what works for you. It isn’t ironic, because that why you choose Linux. If you don’t want a choice and just want the garbage MS puts out, you don’t need to make any more choices. If you want options then you need to actually make choices too (though most aren’t permanent, like DEs, and you can swap between them).
This is exactly the type of shit I’ve been trying to explain to the Linux fanboys for years and all of them dismiss outright.
Until simple shit like this is easy for the average person, Linux will never replace Windows as a default OS option for regular users. 99% of people are scared of config files and the terminal, and they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
A LOT of work has been done to minimize it, but there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI. That’s not an issue for most of us here… But it is for most people. Fediverse users are a small minority.
This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.
I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.
I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.
I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.
It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.
WoW was one of the first things that was working on Linux with wine. It takes 2 seconds to setup bnet with something like Lutris and only requires the user to follow basic on screen prompts. No terminal, no configuration files.
In fact, I just googled “setup wow on Linux” and the first 10 results were tutorials for installing Lutris and just letting it do it for you. Hell even my mom figured out how to do this on PopOS and she’s not that technical.
Yup. Hi. I’m one of those people. Everytime I’ve tried to use Linux in the past has come with a massive headache and constant googling to figure out the bare minimums. Windows? Literally holds your hand and just works. Any issues I’ve had with windows I can solve in a single google. I’ve got to delve into obscure forums and try to piece shit together on my own for Linux and I am not about to make my home PC a fuckin homework problem just to use.
What do you use the terminal and config files for? I mainly use bazzite now but after a fresh install the most I do is login to steam and change some settings in Firefox. I copy paste my directory settings for imports on darktable to point to my nas but thats probably the most advanced thing I do
Also try to make a custom shortcut on your gnome desktop to run some application with some arguments without writing config files in random directories you have to Google and reloading some configs via a terminal.
Dafuck. I will have to google it in Windows too. And no, I doubt Win experience is going to be any better, unless there is a “download some .exe from random site and run it to install GUI program” shortcut, which itself is a questionable thing to do (ok-ok, Microslop taught too many people that it should be OK)
Buut
everyday people will not switch to Linux if their device doesn’t already come with Linux
Been thinking/saying this all along. Terminal and different way of doing things is not an obstacle, just walk into nearest computer store and see what OS they come with. Then ask a question whether some, say, doctor is going to even ask if <whatever OS is pre-installed> is the best choice for them. Lots of people have lots of more important things to do :)
To make a shortcut on your desktop on windows. Right click element -> shortcut on desktop. To change arguments: right click shortcut -> Properties. Done.
No try to explain how gnome does it in a comment 🤣
That linked thread is about keyboard shortcuts btw, not at all what this conversation is about. Which would be creating a link (called shortcut on windows) on the desktop that executes a program with some custom parameters.
In a well-optimized case, Linux will consume fewer resources and is more effective at task prioritization, so it will be better. If Windows outperforms Linux, it is due to the game optimizing around Windows. Granted, across the entire suite of games, the two tend to cancel each other out rather equally.
WINE has very little overhead because WINE Is Not and Emulator. It’s just a translation layer. The performance difference in games will typically come from it being faster if run with Vulkan or not.
I experience no worse fps than I would on windows. I have star citizen running better on linux then I did on the same windows machine. To each their own I guess.
I just reinstalled COD WWII recently and it really does run like shit. Framerate problems that need restarts, poor performance, the sound cuts off if it’s through HDMI for some reason.
In my experience, windows made gaming almost impossible. Stuttering and crashes and sometimes even ARTIFACTS were a constant. But Linux just works OOTB
Hot and miss for sure. I have had games run better than on windows, and also worse. But there are too many other pros to running Linux to make me happy I’m not running windows.
Title implies a big move, pretty far from the steady growth their sources say and that they explain throughout the article. But I guess a more honest title like “Linux among gamers sees new record after continuous steady growth” isn’t as click-worthy.
Tossed SteamOS onto my Legion Go last week, and the performance is sooooo much better. I was beginning to wonder why they used such a sharp resolution screen on it because Windows wouldn’t run games very well at the max resolution.
40% Server Products and Cloud Services
22% Office Products and Cloud Services
10% Windows
9% Gaming
7% LinkedIn
5% Search and News Advertising
IDK if that number is true, but it sure would explain how much they’ve put into user experience.
It does but it’s really short-sighted from MS’s part. Sure, Windows might be only 10% of its business, but the other 90% heavily rely on it. Or rather on Windows being a monopoly on desktop OSes; without that people Windows servers, Office and MS “cloud services” (basically: we shit on your computer so much you need to use ours) wouldn’t see the light of the day.
I had to dig through their annual report to find it:
Server products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub
So it includes Windows Server, but it’s way more than just that.
The worse part of vista wasn’t even that it looked awful or ran awful. Personal perfence not with standing.
It was just 3 years too early and hardware fucking sucked. Drivers went standardized and everything was too weak.
Going back to vista years after the fact show it was actually really solid.
Probably the last time Microsoft was ever ahead of the curve in terms of design. Vista then 7 were great design wise, then it was only down hill since.
This was the same era when I tried to switch, due to the shittiness of Vista. I wanna say it was Mandrake Linux was what I was trying to use, but I couldn’t get it running correctly on my hardware.
Came back some time later and discovered Mepis Linux. After that, I never went back.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Desktop revenue has been a pretty small slice for their revenue long before AI was a thing. Their main drivers were server products and O365, and now AI and Azure are also pushing a lot of revenue.
Direct revenue through Windows sales might be low, but I suspect Windows is still important to drive people to buy One Cloud, office 365 etc subscriptions. So when people move away to Linux, the other services should become less profitable with some time delay
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I made the move to Linux about a month ago, and it’s been super smooth (and yes I have an NVIDIA 3080). I went with CachyOS though. The ONLY thing keeping me dual-booting windows though is Cubase (DAW), which is unfortunate but whatever. I don’t really play any games that use EAC / kernel-level anti-cheat so it doesn’t affect me, but is a bummer.
i made the switch to linux about 2 years ago(2024,stopped dual booting on dec 2024), so far it has been ok (except for one hiccup where My TF2’S fps would tank but there is a workaround, i use Nvidia),apps are okay but i hate how basically the only option you have is GIMP, which i dont like how it doesnt have Content-Aware Scaling i think its called?,shapes would be nice too but its optional, i just use photopeas for the time being)
and video games:
i mainly avoid kernel level anticheat things so its really good here.
Proton/DXVK is very good and nice,but it would be nice if game devs made native Linux versions.
and GNOME 49 looks really nice i love the UI/UX,CachyOS is also a nice Distro(i did try Arch but mehh probably not for me i did install the de and utils but disk stuff was annoying),BTRFS is really handy and nice(i love snapshots).
devices i run desktop Linux on:
I3 12100F + GTX 1650 + 16GB RAM (gaming pc)
Raspberry pi 5 8GB ram (backup/home server pc, running debian/armbian with ext4 on this though)
I’d say that’s hardly the only option but surely the most well-known.
Does krita fit your purposes?
ohh yeah,i didnt mention/dont use it cause its more meant for “art” then “image manipulation”
I installed Bazzite on my gaming pc this weekend. It runs Cyberpunk 2077 just fine.
This immutable Fedora + Gnome 49 is a bit weird coming from Xubuntu; seems to work though.
Has anyone had any luck with Diablo 2 Resurrected?
Last I tried during 2025, it worked well when you installed the blizzard app as an external app on steam
Use Faugus launcher flatpak. So much easier than heroic or bottles.
https://github.com/Faugus/faugus-launcher
I played d2r a lot using my Linux box last year. I even able to do double boxing to play my alt while I was at it. Bnet app works really well with wine out of the box. Just install bnet then log in and install d2r
I’d love to roll back to Linux but my GPU and the drivers don’t get along very well.
I have a 3080 and run Mint without any real issues, what sort of problems have you found come up?
I have a 3080 with two HDR capable high refresh rate monitors and a year ago when I switched I tried Pop and Fedora both of which just launched all games to a black screen. Installed arch which finally let me run most proton games but every couple of sessions I get FPS spikes and jittering and have to restart the games. Going to get a 9070XT and bazzite soon
Which GPU do you have? There are plenty of distros that work just fine with Nvidia.
Gaming distros should have that sorted out of the box.
Buy AMD, I suppose
Amd doesn’t necessarily work better than nVidia. It can completely break your system if you’re unlucky.
Care to elaborate?
Did this last May & haven’t missed much. I don’t play AAA slop though.
I’m thinking about going dual boot mode soon, as Manjaro is a godsend so far on my ThinkPad.
Just remember to have your installs on independant hard drives, not just partitions.
If you have set your mind to Manjaro I don’t want to dissuade you, but if you are not yet strongly convinced of the distro I always like to point out that there were some issues with the distribution in the past (someone collected them here).
If you’re just after an Arch-like distribution I think EndeavourOS is a very friendly distro without adding their own repositories on top of Arch. But again - if you’re happy with Manjaro by all means also stay with it.
I have been over 1 year in EndeavourOS and I can’t complain, no issues at all except when I screw up.
I’ve only been using it for a few weeks now, but I’m having a great time with EndeavourOS. I’ve tried Linux every now and then for over 20 years now, but always bounced off for one reason or another. This time, I’ve never felt any desire to go back.
For me, my use case, and my hardware, EOS has been significantly less of a headache than Windows 11 was.
Which distro did you end up going with? Wanted to change my tower over from Windows. Guessing bazzite is appropriate?
Kubuntu on my main workstation & Linux Mint on everything else.
I’d suggest trying a couple through live ISOs to see what works best out of the box with your hardware. I settled on CachyOS and definitely recommend it. Bazzite is ok, very stable, but keep in mind it is immutable which may hamper its abilities as a full desktop.
Not OP. Around same timeline. Went with bazzite for gaming. Have been using bazzite daily since. Stuff just works super easy to install. Also tried and have mint still installed on another partition but haven’t used it much besides the initial installation. And installed dual boot bazzite and mint on my old gaming laptop. Use mint on there daily for internet browsing and such, no gaming. But I’m certain it would work just fine as it’s all pretty much the same besides Debian (mint) Vs Fedora (bazzite).
I don’t play AAA slop either, and a few older easy anti cheat games don’t work. Such as Fawkes revival of Defiance.
Everything else works pre installed with Steam+ proton, Or Ludis + wine, Or the Heroic launcher for GoG, Amazon and EGS.
I do get higher FPS and better temps and less hardware usage than I ever did on Win11 for the same exact games.
Arch was described as hard mode but I installed EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma about a month and a half ago and it’s been smooth sailing. Given all the programs I use have native linux clients and I don’t play kernel level anti-cheat games at all.
88 comments and nobody has noted that the article itself looks like AI slop?
Lots of signals here: the writing style, bland and wishy-washy use of statistics, bullets and formatting that arbitrarily organize without adding value, the rule-of-threes clauses, and redundant details, the intro summary list, the lack of sourcing links, and “written” by an author whose bio specifically mentions AI.
I specifically looked for backup to the assertion about higher FPS and it’s just a random unsourced percentage. Maybe it’s true but this article has no value as a source.
I’ve noticed that AI slop articles tend to have a a TLDR right before the table of contents. I’m an aquarist and they’ve made it damn near impossible to get good info on fish, taking the first few pages of results before I get a forum post with useful info.
God damn slop fuckin everywhere. Tnx man.
I switched to Linux full time almost two years ago when Win 10 started saying my CPU wasn’t supported. My CPU is in the i7 family and I think they all got that treatment. Since then I’ve had no major issues with Linux Mint. As for gaming, I do get some frame drops with my Nvidia 3060, but I was getting the same on Windows.
For what it’s worth, the “i7” branding isn’t a family, but a tier representation.
So basically it goes like:
i3 = basic i5 = midrange i7 = high end i9 = top end
The first i7s released way back in 2010, so some older i7 chips are not supported by Windows 11 while newer ones (2018 and onwards) are.
But yeah, use Linux :)
Are NVIDIA drivers still an absolute bitch to get working correctly? Is there still no way to run games off Gamepass?
Ok cool, so it’s NOT just easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to switch.
Nvidia just works unless you have a some weird obscure hardware combo. It’s been like this for over a decade. Nvidia’s reputation is because their code is shit, their processes are shit, and they lack feature parity from windows that their competitors have shown isn’t an environment limitation (like changing the amount shared dram used as vram).
Tips: Your distro maintaindr already did the hard part, get the driver from them instead of nvidia (unless you’re on Debian, then you’re on your own).
If you are on debian (or any of the other rare distros that don’t package the nvidia driver for you) and using xorg, back up your xorg.conf because the nvidia installer will modify it and the new one may not work. If you’re not comfortable using the terminal, make sure you take note of the location of your xorg.conf to minimize time spent there, you will need it though.
If you’re on a normal distro, it’s usually just
sudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidiaorsudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidia-openI know nothing about Gamepass, but Mint runs Steam games on my 2080 just fine. It worked out of the box. I was a little surprised. To keep Steam from forcing me to update FO4, I bought it off GOG and installed it through heroic, with zero issues. It just worked.
But, no, it’s not easy-peasy to switch, you do need to be motivated to make the effort. Of course, there is a learning curve. Feel free to stay on Windows, that was always allowed.
No, on popular distros they are preinstalled, or only require you to check a checkbox in system settings.
I honestly hated W11 so much that I jumped onto Linux whether I’d be gaming on it or not.
It runs great, but even if it didn’t I wouldn’t go back.
I moved to Linux entirely because of how shit Windows is, but I do not, in general, get higher fps. It’s very case-by-case, but in general, my performance seems to be ever so slightly worse.
Do you have a Nvidia GPU btw?
Linux has two major offerings for display servers: X11 and Wayland.
X11 is old asf and uses TCP/IP to send your data from the GPU/CPU to the monitor.
Wayland doesn’t do this I don’t think… But I believe it’s been known to have issues with Nvidia graphics cards.
Hope Wayland development picks up because last time I checked it still has a lot of bugs that X11 just doesn’t.
Gaming in particular seems to be the same, with few games having noticeable differences either way.
Productivity wise, it’s night and day. On Linux I can run simulations while doing other stuff, on windows I had to have a freshly rebooted session with nothing else opened and leave it alone for hours to, maybe, run without crashing.
I haven’t personally compared Linux performance to WIndows in 10 years. The last vesrion of Windows I used was 8.1. The games I want to play run very well on my Ryzen 7700X, 7900GRE system running Fedora. Subnautica and Satisfactory run great. I don’t care if Windows gets a few fps more, because my computer actually works and doesn’t show me ads in the taksbar or sends everything I paste in a word processing document to the cloud. I get 144 FPS with raytracing in Unreal 5 games. What’s your problem?
It tends to be AMD GPUs that have the greatest differences in favour of Linux (except for ray tracing but that is improving in recent driver releases).
I think Intel too - in other words, the Nvidia Linux driver sucks as we’ve always known. And as long as they refuse to either put effort into it or let the community see and fix their code it’s unlikely to change
I probably hate Microsoft roughly as much as most people here but in a lot of ways Windows is way more polished than Linux. The second you try something “unconventional” in Linux the shit is going to hit the fan. Fractional scale DPI - half the apps crap their pants. On screen keyboard - and don’t get me started with OSK over Firefox in kiosk mode (for example in touch screen settings). Also try to make a custom shortcut on your gnome desktop to run some application with some arguments without writing config files in random directories you have to Google and reloading some configs via a terminal.
Microsoft really went downhill fast and certainly adds a lot of crap to windows lately, but sadly in the Linux world we don’t have 1-3 well polished distros, we have hundreds of them. All good at one or two things, but suck at everything else. There a so many options the choice alone is probably the biggest reason everyday people will not switch to Linux if their device doesn’t already come with Linux. Even people thinking about switching end up with analysis paralysis because everybody tells them stuff like, try it - if you don’t like it try something else. As if they have nothing better to do than trying Linux distros all day long.
The majority of people probably can’t even get over the hump of imaging a USB drive.
I like to think of the average person as my mom. Can my mom plug in a flash drive in a computer? Yeah. Does she know what Linux is? Nope. Can she google about Linux? Yeah. Will she get confused and inundated with the hundreds of “linux” versions? Uh yeah.
And then if she does somehow download a .iso, she’d probably copy and paste the .iso onto the flash drive and have no idea what Rufus or Balena Etcher is.
And to be honest, most people don’t even need a computer nowadays. Their smart phones does everything. There is no need to have a computer anymore.
You say Linux, but I think you’re talking about Gnome specifically. I’d recommend trying KDE and seeing how it handles your problems. You can install multiple DEs and see what works best for you.
I get what you are saying and maybe I’ll find some time to do that, but I hope you also see the irony in an answer like that, because the typical user couldn’t care less about Gnome vs KDE.
God forbid you should have options.
I was about to comment the same - shitting itself when trying to do something nonstandard is a Gnome thing, not a Linux thing :^)
I also fully understand that new users are not aware of what the different components are and “what they do” (how they influence the UX) but they very much do make or break their “Linux experience”. Personally I dislike Gnome because it exposes barely any settings, and it’s “simple” to the point where it feels almost like a toy to me - kinda like macOS feels. Some people might be looking for that, and I don’t judge them, but I think it’s important to make an informed decision on simplicity and “guardrails” vs flexibility and customization. The same goes for immutable vs “traditional”, rolling vs releases, etc.
You don’t need to care about or understand the details, but the choice that the “Linux ecosystem” offers is one of its best parts, and understanding the implications of the ones you make is very important. It also helps avoid getting frustrated in “Linux can’t do this” situations by knowing that maybe it’s just your environment - believe me, unless it’s about running some proprietary code that the vendor is uncooperative about, “Linux” can do it. It might require some lines of code to glue together some pieces, but the “computing” things that “Linux can’t do” are very close to 0.
The typical user couldn’t care less about Windows VS Linux, but it makes it difference. I don’t know that it fixes the issues, but it might. It’s also an option you have because you’re on Linux, not Windows. You get a choice, and can figure out what works for you. It isn’t ironic, because that why you choose Linux. If you don’t want a choice and just want the garbage MS puts out, you don’t need to make any more choices. If you want options then you need to actually make choices too (though most aren’t permanent, like DEs, and you can swap between them).
Gnome works completely fine. It’s probably the most bug-free DE I’ve ever used. And yes I use fractional scaling.
This is exactly the type of shit I’ve been trying to explain to the Linux fanboys for years and all of them dismiss outright.
Until simple shit like this is easy for the average person, Linux will never replace Windows as a default OS option for regular users. 99% of people are scared of config files and the terminal, and they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
A LOT of work has been done to minimize it, but there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI. That’s not an issue for most of us here… But it is for most people. Fediverse users are a small minority.
Can you give a concrete example?
This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.
I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.
I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.
I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.
It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.
WoW was one of the first things that was working on Linux with wine. It takes 2 seconds to setup bnet with something like Lutris and only requires the user to follow basic on screen prompts. No terminal, no configuration files.
In fact, I just googled “setup wow on Linux” and the first 10 results were tutorials for installing Lutris and just letting it do it for you. Hell even my mom figured out how to do this on PopOS and she’s not that technical.
Yup. Hi. I’m one of those people. Everytime I’ve tried to use Linux in the past has come with a massive headache and constant googling to figure out the bare minimums. Windows? Literally holds your hand and just works. Any issues I’ve had with windows I can solve in a single google. I’ve got to delve into obscure forums and try to piece shit together on my own for Linux and I am not about to make my home PC a fuckin homework problem just to use.
Config files and terminals? Huh? Why would you need any of that
You would have to run OpenSUSE tumbleweed to get the GUI equivalent of windows configuration.
Yast has a GUI app for everything from Samba setup to Bootloader config.
The trouble is: initially there is a learning curve to SUSE that is different than something like Mint
What do you use the terminal and config files for? I mainly use bazzite now but after a fresh install the most I do is login to steam and change some settings in Firefox. I copy paste my directory settings for imports on darktable to point to my nas but thats probably the most advanced thing I do
Excuses for staying on windows, primarily.
Dafuck. I will have to google it in Windows too. And no, I doubt Win experience is going to be any better, unless there is a “download some .exe from random site and run it to install GUI program” shortcut, which itself is a questionable thing to do (ok-ok, Microslop taught too many people that it should be OK)
Buut
Been thinking/saying this all along. Terminal and different way of doing things is not an obstacle, just walk into nearest computer store and see what OS they come with. Then ask a question whether some, say, doctor is going to even ask if <whatever OS is pre-installed> is the best choice for them. Lots of people have lots of more important things to do :)
To make a shortcut on your desktop on windows. Right click element -> shortcut on desktop. To change arguments: right click shortcut -> Properties. Done. No try to explain how gnome does it in a comment 🤣
Spoiler 1: I don’t use gnome
Spoiler 2: https://askubuntu.com/questions/525482/how-can-i-assign-a-keyboard-shortcut-for-the-script-that-i-have-created
Clown
That linked thread is about keyboard shortcuts btw, not at all what this conversation is about. Which would be creating a link (called shortcut on windows) on the desktop that executes a program with some custom parameters.
And which got removed from GNOME. Plus one point for not using it
Linux-bad-because-my-windows-ways-do-not-work is still laughable
In a well-optimized case, Linux will consume fewer resources and is more effective at task prioritization, so it will be better. If Windows outperforms Linux, it is due to the game optimizing around Windows. Granted, across the entire suite of games, the two tend to cancel each other out rather equally.
Yeah. Generally Indie games run better while AAA do not.
Then again there is the whole overhead with wine and game companies benchmark windows exclusively while optimizing currently.
WINE has very little overhead because WINE Is Not and Emulator. It’s just a translation layer. The performance difference in games will typically come from it being faster if run with Vulkan or not.
I experience no worse fps than I would on windows. I have star citizen running better on linux then I did on the same windows machine. To each their own I guess.
I just reinstalled COD WWII recently and it really does run like shit. Framerate problems that need restarts, poor performance, the sound cuts off if it’s through HDMI for some reason.
Did they ever fix the RCE exploit in WW2?
What’s that?
Remote Code Execution
Ah! I had no clue. So no, I don’t know if it’s fixed.
In my experience, windows made gaming almost impossible. Stuttering and crashes and sometimes even ARTIFACTS were a constant. But Linux just works OOTB
Hot and miss for sure. I have had games run better than on windows, and also worse. But there are too many other pros to running Linux to make me happy I’m not running windows.
Most things seem to run fine for me on linux, but sadly Elden Ring runs a good 10 fps slower than it ran on windows for me.
Title implies a big move, pretty far from the steady growth their sources say and that they explain throughout the article. But I guess a more honest title like “Linux among gamers sees new record after continuous steady growth” isn’t as click-worthy.
PC Gamers keep Abandoning Windows 11 for Linux with Higher FPS & Fewer Interruptions
Tossed SteamOS onto my Legion Go last week, and the performance is sooooo much better. I was beginning to wonder why they used such a sharp resolution screen on it because Windows wouldn’t run games very well at the max resolution.
I saw in a recent Youtube video that between web services and AI, Windows licencing is only about 10% of Microslop’s business.
IDK if that number is true, but it sure would explain how much they’ve put into user experience. Does anyone use Windows because they like it?
i like windows 7
That’s correct. Here’s some data on Microsoft’s revenue:
It does but it’s really short-sighted from MS’s part. Sure, Windows might be only 10% of its business, but the other 90% heavily rely on it. Or rather on Windows being a monopoly on desktop OSes; without that people Windows servers, Office and MS “cloud services” (basically: we shit on your computer so much you need to use ours) wouldn’t see the light of the day.
Imagine having to babysit Windows servers
Azure has support for Linux servers. They’ve even made an effort to port Dotnet to Linux. A majority of their cloud infrastructure is Linux it seems.
That 40% isn’t for Windows Server, is it?
I had to dig through their annual report to find it:
So it includes Windows Server, but it’s way more than just that.
I did back in the XP days. Long, loooong ago…
XP was alright, but I’m mostly just nostalgic for the aesthetic of 95/98/2000
Vista was the reason I switched to Linux
The worse part of vista wasn’t even that it looked awful or ran awful. Personal perfence not with standing.
It was just 3 years too early and hardware fucking sucked. Drivers went standardized and everything was too weak.
Going back to vista years after the fact show it was actually really solid.
Probably the last time Microsoft was ever ahead of the curve in terms of design. Vista then 7 were great design wise, then it was only down hill since.
Boy, have I got some KDE themes for you!
https://store.kde.org/c/2331481
This was the same era when I tried to switch, due to the shittiness of Vista. I wanna say it was Mandrake Linux was what I was trying to use, but I couldn’t get it running correctly on my hardware.
Came back some time later and discovered Mepis Linux. After that, I never went back.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Desktop revenue has been a pretty small slice for their revenue long before AI was a thing. Their main drivers were server products and O365, and now AI and Azure are also pushing a lot of revenue.
Direct revenue through Windows sales might be low, but I suspect Windows is still important to drive people to buy One Cloud, office 365 etc subscriptions. So when people move away to Linux, the other services should become less profitable with some time delay
Most likely. The majority of MS products and services are interconnected in some way.
I don’t think the number is indicative of quality. The office suite is their bread and butter (alongside Azure) and Teams is a steaming pile of shit.
none of the other popular desktop operating systems cost money at all. I don’t know why Microsoft is doing half of the things that it does
What does Bill Gates have to do with Windows nowadays?
Mascot
Dude is retired and giving his money away.