I was a long time Windows user, starting with XP. I only tried Linux a few years ago, and while I loved it, at the time I had to dual boot for a couple specific Windows only things (VR and flight/racing sim hardware).
A couple months ago though, I got sick of it. I figured if I really wanted to do those things, I could boot up a VM, or just force myself to be patient and wait for a proper Linux solution. So, I wiped all my drives and installed Arch. Around this time, I also got an AMD RX 7600XT, so that was a nice performance boost, plus it waranted a switch to Wayland.
Let me tell you, I have been so pleasantly surprised by basically everything I’ve tried. Cyberpunk 2077 through Heroic Launcher, for example, with 15 odd mods. Runs at a solid 80fps at 1440p on high settings, the only graphical issue I noticed was flickering volumetric clouds. This game ate my old card (the venerable GTX 1080) alive even on Windows.
Just last night, I found my joystick, an old VKB Gladiator + Kosmosima grip, plugged it in and it worked perfectly.
What has really, really impressed me though is VR. I have a Quest 2 that I used to use via Steam link to play my PC wirelessly. Obviously that isn’t an option on Linux (yet) but that’s where ALVR comes in. Sideload the client on the quest, run the streamer on the desktop, start SteamVR, and bam, it works. The first game I tried was Elite Dangerous, one of my all time favourite games and easily my favourite VR epxerience. Now, I won’t go ahead and claim it’s perfect, hence the 99% in the title. After fiddling with the settings and making sure I had hardware encoding/decoding set up right, I had very good clarity, up to 120hz refresh rate, but occasional blockiness and artifacting, especially in heavier graphical scenes, like during docking. However, out in open space, it felt just like the ED I know and love.
At this point, I’m just going to look at fiddling with some settings and hopefully smoothing out the stream, but the fact that I can play my favourite games, with my favourite hardware, with great performance and in VR, and the amount of setup is really comparable to what it is on Windows is just kind of wrinkling my brain. Plus, only a couple months ago, this wasn’t the case. Support for things that were once doomed to be dual boot material for the foreseeable future is coming along rapidly. This is a great time to be a Linux gamer.
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Many hardware manufacturers unfortunately require windows for firmware updates. Fwupd isn’t nearly used enough unfortunately
Most (all?) motherboard vendors have a separate download you can put on a USB to load directly. Other hardware may have something similar.
Indeed, motherboards are usually ok. I’ve had to switch to windows for SSDs a few times, as well as a monitor and various peripherals
dont buy them? Or are you their bitch?
@bigmclargehuge it’s pretty impressive how far along Linux has come. I also feel things mostly just working these days. I am facing some issue with a fingerprint reader on my laptop not being supported, but there are definitely fully compatible fp readers out there, even from the same manufacturer. And there’s general stability, at least as good as on windows and I do say that while tinkering quite a bit.
And for many things AI related, like running models locally, this is almost a Linux first experience. Just the recently was I impressed how easy it was to get local llms to run using ollama, even on my laptop with an Nvidia GPU. Impressive.
I tried LM Studio since AMD advertised it for their GPUs. Once ROCm was installed my GPU was detected and I could use LLMs on that rather than on the CPU. I struggled to get it to work on Windows even when LM Studio was trying to do everything to get it to work.
Interesting that ALVR works on Wayland. Because regular SteamVR seems to be borked on Wayland ever since the SteamVR 2.0 update :(
I’ve actually never tried on X11. I will admit, using VR seems to cause some issues with the rest of my desktop (Plasma ocassionally needs to be reloaded). However in the grand scheme, I can get past that for now considering it doesn’t cause any gameplay issues.
Valve did say that they’d be improving SteamVR on Linux quite a while ago, it’s just going to take awhile because it not their main priority atm.
Just FYI, bazzite is amazing. It’s made for gaming, and it. Just. Works.
Been trying to get my Vive working on ubuntu on a lenovo gaming laptop, saved this to try out next
I finally have Windows banished to a VM, only to be awoken for the 3 times a year I need a desktop version of PowerPoint.
I’m with you. 99% of the way there.
Have you considered any of the PowerPoint alternatives?
If AMD wasn’t already cheering to Valve, they have to be at this point
I have nothing to add except that ED with VR and hotas controllers is one of the best VR spaceflight experiences out there. Dogfighting with that setup is unparalleled. Being able to watch your target as you flip over them to their tail just gets my jimmies jumpin’.
My jam was always turning off flight assist and just tossing a small ship through an asteroid belt. Haven’t played much since Odyssey but I recently got the itch again
Hey OP, could you give a brief rundown on what settings you’re using for ALVR? I was gifted a Quest 2 and would love to get it running on Linux. I got the ALVR app sideloaded on the Quest, but the performance seems to be atrocious. I also haven’t been able to get the audio routed to the headset properly, not sure if that’s something you got working either - if so I’d love to know the secret sauce for that one too!
I left most things default. When I first set it up I played with all the settings and made everything worse lol.
I can tell you that I set the resolution to the highest setting, the refresh rate to 120hz and the bitrate to the quality settings. Everything else, I left default. I found that this resulted in the best clarity while not really making the artifacting/lag any worse. I’m still playing with it though.
If you have the option in SteamVR’s game specific settings to enable “Legacy motion smoothing”, apparently that improves things noticably. For some reason motion smoothing is completely unavailable to me though so I can’t personally attest.
I’ve heard audio was an issue, but in my case (Arch plus KDE6), it was as simple as picking my audio output in the system tray dropdown. I could stream it to my headset or send it out of my headphones I have plugged in.
Edit: I’m gonna link this becaust I found it while looking into why motion smoothing was unavailable. Apparently disabling async reprojection via a config file can give a noticable performance boost. I’ve yet to try it but I’ll add another edit when I’m back at my rig long enough to test it out.
Interesting, I’ll give it another go and try out your recommendations - thank you!!
No worries, good luck with it
Adding a little update. Recently reinstalled my system as things were getting cluttered. For some reason, I was unable to install ALVR (or the git version) from the AUR. When building the AUR package manually, I’d get to 99% and the terminal would just close, yay resulted in the same error.
However, the portable .tar release of the latest version works perfectly. Performance is even better, I’ve had fewer bugs/connectivity issues, and once I followed the official Settings Tutorial and this article on how to disable SteamVR Async Reprojection things have been working 99% as well as they were on Windows. I have noticed occasional quality degradation, but it was never detrimental to the experience overall. And, it’s worth noting that ALVR can function over USB with a link cable, so that should eliminate any issues caused by wireless streaming.
Just thought I’d report my experience and hopefully give some folks a push to try it out. This is a huge step for the overall Linux experience IMO, as it’s very quickly opening up an entire aspect of gaming/computing in general really that, until a few months ago, was effectively not viable outside of Windows.
Thank you for the update! I just gave it another go and don’t seem to have any audio, and it still seems quite jittery - I’ll have to play around with it some more and see what I can get working on it :)
Yeah im not sure about audio. I’m using pipewire and it seems to work fine OOTB with both the built in Quest 2 speakers, and my sound card audio
I was a long time Windows user, starting with XP.
Kind of the same here, except it ended with XP, I never switched to Vista. I started using Windows already with Windows 3.0 in 1991. I’ve been using Linux since 2005, because Ubuntu lifted the Linux experience enough to become my main OS.
Back then games were a huge problem, I’m glad to hear it works so well for you. 👍 😀
I’m glad too. Not gonna lie I still love XP, I feel like it was the peak of Windows in may ways.
Same, but I did use 7 for a bit. I started with Linux in 2006, and I was 80%+ Linux until about 2013, when I switched full-time to Linux (when Steam came to Linux). I remember buying Factorio and Minecraft in Beta because they supported Linux, and I also remember when Humble Bundle was good (lots of great indies with native Linux support).
I’m always excited to see people finding Linux useful these days. There’s no way I’m going back to Windows at this point because it’s just so annoying to get anything done imo.
Yes I too dual booted early on with XP, exactly because gaming was shit on Linux. Then I gamed on Wine for a long while, but Steam really is a godsend for Linux. ;)
I admit I also tried Windows 7, because the desktop went to crap for a while on Linux, when Gnome 2 was deprecated. But there are several good ones now IMO.
Yup. I used Windows because I needed certain Windows programs for work/school. For example, I was required to use Visual Studio, so I developed on Linux than ran in VS to meet t the requirements. Same with other MS-specific tooling, none of which I’ve needed since.
i only switched over quite recently (a few years ago)
i swear there has been significant improvements in wifi, bluetooth, gpu support, gaming over the last 10 years that made me think it was now good enough
also there was areas where linux was outdoing windows for quite some time; system wide audio equalizer, customization generally, home services and self hosting, development tools
Linux audio is really under appreciated. I’m one of the nutjobs that still uses a PCI sound card and I’ve never had to install a third party driver. I can manually adjust the output and EQ for every port, disable or enable them on the fly, etc. The only thing I’m missing is hardware EAX support for older games but I’ve kind of accepted that’s just a dragon I’ll always be chasing.
What EQ do you use? I’ve been using Easy Effects for a while, but have been plagued by crackling and stereo sound only playing on one ear lately.
Give alsaequal a try. I actually haven’t fiddled with it a whole lot so I can’t vouch too much but it seems worth a shot.
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so true and it’s not just equalizers, it’s compressors and all the other tools for solving audio problems
Noice. Still to chicken too go full into the deep end of the pool. lemmy posts have been slowing talking me into it more and more!
All it’s missing from me are anti-cheat games and Adobe products.
Anti-cheat: shame, but I don’t play them anyways.
Adobe products: I guess it sucks for corporate zombies, but again not giving money to adobe makes me proud.
Who said anything about giving money to Adobe? Yarg.
As a graphic designer, you don’t really have much of a choice, unless you’re independent.
As a graphic designer, you don’t really have much of a choice
I’m sorry for your suffering.
Many games with anti-cheat work, a comprehensive list can be found here: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
Anyway, I wouldn’t install a rootkit “anti-cheat” on a Windows machine under any circumstances, but that’s just me.
I’m so sorry you rely on adobe products, that’s horrible
One day soon I hope. With Linux getting more market share I hope it gets more support
Windows XP and 7 got a special place on my heart, but once i get a PC, I’m moving to Linux Mint
Same. A friendly poster recommended Mint and I’m loving it! The fact that it automatically walks you through the dual boot set up was exactly what I wanted.
Honestly I’d still use XP if more programs supported it. As i said to another user here, it was Windows at its peak. It created the basic layout and feature set that modern Windows still uses, but lacks all the bloat and ads.
Can’t recommend XP knowing it’s vulnerable
Fair enough. Not really speaking to its tech specs, mainly just how nice it was to use compared to modern windows
I can understand, but still, it’s not wprth it using windows XP unless you’re using a VM for playing retro games offline
> Runs at a solid 80fps at 1440p on high settings, the only graphical issue I noticed was flickering volumetric clouds. This game ate my old card (the venerable GTX 1080) alive even on Windows.Do you use Nouveau or proprietary driver?Edit: nevermind, I misunderstood OP
They’re on AMD, so not Nouveau.
I am in a similar situation, I use quest 2 a lot to drive in assetto corsa. I have a Thrustmaster TS 300 PC, I don’t think there are any Linux drivers for that base.
Oversteer should be what you need. Just take note that you need an extra driver module for the T300RS.
Edit, if you meant the TS-PC you may be out of luck. It looks like support for the TS-PC has an open request in the T300RS driver but it isn’t implemented yet.
Ah! Thanks, I will check it out. TS-PC is indeed what I meant. Maybe this is a good reason to upgrade my sim setup to more open source friendly brand.
I’m in the same boat. I’m actually on the verge of going full open source and building my own direct drive with OpenFFBoard.
Nice! Is there a kit you’re buying or are you sourcing parts from Aliexpress or similar? If you’re interested there is a guy doing open source pedal sets and shifter which I’m thinking of building as next project. https://www.youtube.com/@LeboisRacing
I was considering sourcing my own parts as I haven’t come across a full kit that seemed to have everything I wanted.
Also thats super cool, although I’m currently pretty happy with the rest of my setup atm. May look into the shifter at some point tho
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Again I want to stres that it isn’t perfect. You’ll definitely have to play around with some settings but it is usable, at least in my case.
