After dithering with dual boot for years I jumped ship to Linux only (LMDE) with their incessant reminders about moving to W11 from W10 popped up. Missing a few apps but fuk’ em.
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Small brain move: install Windows as a guest on a Linux host. Rip out so much of it’s guts it can’t show any ads and barely works at all. Declare victory over the desecrated husk of Microsoft Windows.
small brain move: install windows on a seperate disk to linux and then let your BIOS decide what it wants to boot, instead of relying on a unified boot loader
That’s what I do. Linux is primary, and I keep Windows around just in case. Haven’t booted Windows in over a year.
VM is even better. It prevents Windows updates from fucking up your real OS.
Nah, I just install minimal Win10 distro with updates disabled to single drive, and then disable the internet. Easy peasy.
I’ve used Linux professionally and personally for about 12 years. Yesterday was the first time I tried Wine after nuking Windows on my gaming computer. Pretty impressed with it so far, even if it will need a bit of tuning.
Fuck Microsoft.
You can use Steam’s proton even on non Steam games. It might work better than wine.
Thanks for the tip!
Also to add, it’s not just for games but any application. Games are just the primary focus.
Yup, that’s something I never realized until now.
further, heroic games launcher isn’t just for epic and gog games, you can install any exe. i use it for the ea games launcher because the lutris script was broken at the time. and in the wine manager in hgl settings you can choose either wine-ge latest or proton-ge latest (or whatever number version) as your default layer, which you can also change per game/app if you have trouble.
edit: and also you can set it to add to steam so you can still just use steam as your main launcher, for example on steam deck or using a media center rig in big picture mode.
Thanks!
I’ve switched a few months ago mostly for gaming, and here are few tips and issues I ran into, in case you run into them too.
Not sure what distro you are using, but I’ve run mostly into issues when trying to get NVIDIA and Proton working on Fedora. Just getting the drivers to work took a few tries, and I never managed to get stuff like cutscenes to work properly.
However, I then switched to Nobara (I suppose PopOS may also work), and the experience was wastly better, with everything working out of the box (I did switch to KDE Plasma on X11, since Wayland kept freezing on me).
I’m not sure what of the many changes Nobara does helped solve my issues, but I guess it may be related to it including Proton GE by default, which I recommend getting, and a slightly streamlined installation of NVIDIA drivers.
I also recommend checking out Lutris, instead of using Wine directly. However, I never really managed to get it working, aside from WoW, so your mileage may wary. But I have most of my games on Steam, where everything is working out of the box, so it wasn’t that much of na issue. I only sometimes have to switch Proton version (by right clicking the game - properties - Force a specific version of compatibility tool).
I’m running MX Linux. Thanks for the info, I’ll check this stuff out!
Your issue with Fedora might have been missing the codec for the compression algo the video was using (smth like h.264 or h.265)
Managing Wine directly is pretty tideous job. Use Heroic for Epic/GOG games, Bottles for everything else. Lutris is also worth trying
Hi, it’s me, but to be fair, not for this particular reason.
they’ve been doing this since 10 and “featured apps”
8 had advisement tiles when they did the whole metro ui
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This means we need to keep being the best community we can be. Welcoming, helpful, and distro agnostic. I might occasionally Stan for the distros I love, or talk a little smack about ones that left a bad taste in my mouth, but when we’re helping new users, we need to meet them where they’re at, and give them the little boost they need to stick with it.
I just installed gnome on my laptop because they kept spamming the copilot shit.
I use my os to get started on what im doing, not fuck around with all the repeating notifications that can’t be disabled.
What distro is gnome?
Assuming they used the top link, Fedora?
both, i installed gnome os and kde neon to get a preview of latest.
im on my way to fedora 40.
I hope they’re experiencing less instability than I am then, F39 is the first release in years that’s given me any problem, and it’s doing that a lot.
no major issues so far on fedora 40 beta.
gnome 46 is looking very nice and gnome 47 even more better on gnome os. fedora gave me secure boot.
i gave kde neon a spin and loved it too. i’m hunting for the best touchscreen support.
Gnome is a desktop environment, which you can install into virtually any distro. It’s the default for Fedora, which is a good enough place to try Linux for the first time.
i dont recommend it as a daily driver, im just testing out the latest between kde plasma and gnome desktop environments to see who handles touchscreens better.
im one of those people that like poking the monitor.
in-fact, I’m already omw to fedora 40.
Could be the actual GNOME distro or they just forgot to type the name of the distro, which they’re using the GNOME version of. Sometimes that happens to me too, where I just leave out a word.
both, i installed gnome os and kde neon to get a preview of latest.
im on my way to fedora 40.
Nice, I’m using Fedora too. Switched to it from EndeavourOS (arch-based) a while ago.
Microsoft GitHub injects Copilot ads in their source views. It’s another Microsoft service worth abandoning.
Copilot being back on the taskbar after removalafter taking my show desktop button (also removed) was it for me as well. Already enjoying it. Some quirks, but I think I’m going to spend way less time configuring than I am trying to unfuck windows once a week.
They are in linux forums spruiking chatgpt/copilot as well. Mods deleted my comment the last time I told them to get lost. The rampant commercialism is so frustrating. The FOSS community has done so much to empower users/developers and give everyone the tools to learn, grow and customise their systems with amazing documentation and access to source code. And it is going to be Disneyfied within a generation with the fruits of our labor locked up behind billionaire controlled subscription services in flagrant disregard of our copyright and licences. Our kids won’t know how to tie their shoelaces without paying Nadella, Altman and their shareholders for instructions.
Welcome to Shoes as a ServiceTM!
with amazing documentation
Hah!
You realize this is for a small group of beta testers right?
Unless they are all Microsoft shills, then they will prolly tell them it is a bad idea.
Unless they are the kind of user that leaves everything on default, which is hard to believe if they are in the beta program
I’ve tried Linux gaming for a good bit but it doesn’t seem like it’s quite there yet. For the games that worked it was amazing! The only other thing that was annoying was the constant downloading for the shader caches basically every day with steam (yes I know they can be disabled). I was using Bazzite for those wondering.
It depends on what „quite there yet“ means for you.
Performance wise linux gaming can be on par or better than windows. Statistically it should always be better by now because the resource hog that is called windows slows older systems down.
The shader caches are bad, ngl. I have enabled downloading/precaching them in the background so its no big deal as long as you have steam open.
So, for those used to windows and being picky enough to not accept any inconvenience for the tons of upsides: linux isnt for you yet.
For those who are able to accept the tinyest inconveniences for a limited time: linux is a lot better than windows.
What are the tons of upsides? Does my computer get 20% better performance in games? Do games never crash on Linux? I’m curious what these “tons of upsides” are. I game just fine on windows so I’m not sure what another OS can do to improve my gaming experience past what it already is.
@Woozythebear @haui_lemmy If you are happy with your windows gaming box and already on windows 11 or with modern hardware which is not going to get their performance crippled with win11 and you are not annoyed by the telemetry and the commercials inside your desktop nor by the fact that Microsoft is really pushing for using their online accounts in your local machine, then you don’t need to switch anywhere.
I dont know your computer. As I said, statistically its going to be better since the vast majority of computers are not racehorses and will benefit from less bloat. There are a ton of things you can do on linux that you either cant do at all or with significantly more effort on windows. You’re also not at the mercy of microsoft and whatever freeware runs on windows to make it fit your taste better because in linux you write or download a config to change things, no special programs needed.
Games usually dont crash more often on linux than on windows these days, linux also keeps you from installing anti cheat rootkits as well (by being incompatible with it) which might be a downer if you’re really into an enshittified game.
I can go on about this all day but in case your question was rhetoric and you just want to veil your undying love for windows, thats up to you.
As always in life: If your concern is being right, you will always find arguments for it. If you want to learn stuff, there is plenty of opportunity.
This is some cringe shit right here… you need to touch grass homie.
So it was rhetorical. Good to know. Blocked.
How is this not upvoted higher!.
Excellent summary, no BS, just facts.
Performance wise it was better for almost every game I played! I’m more used to Linux because that’s what I use at work, but I don’t have the greatest Internet connection, so that’s why the shader caches suck.
Thats very understandable. I hope it will get better at some point. I can’t even remember what the exact reason is. Probably because the engines run on directx and linux uses vulcan or something?
Statistically it should always be better by now because the resource hog that is called windows slows older systems down.
That’s not how any of this works.
Plenty of games benchmark higher under Wine than on Windows
Plenty more benchmark worse. What’s your point exactly?
Ikr? Now bother someone else.
How long ago was this?
A few months ago.
The more people switch, more impetus there will be to improve things faster & faster.
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted @Unreliable and hopefully more resources to do it
Yup, it’s the Snowball Effect.
I have the total opposite experience. Ubuntu, Endeavour, SteamOS. Gaming on Linux has been great in the last 2 years especially. Shader caches are a very small price to pay for having a system that doesn’t crash due to Windows driver BS and being able to reinstall and keep my home directory intact.
For me only thing stopping me from Linux is no good vr support.
I just bought my first linux laptop last month - prompted proximally by Apple’s decision to start putting unblockable ads on the start page of their books app.
I don’t like ads.
This is like one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen on this platform. Like yeah dude, the legions of users who sat through Windows 10 ads, Windows 8 ads, Windows Vista, EOL support for every OS, and forced packaged apps everywhere have finally had it with Windows 11 sir. The tidal wave of users embracing the glory of Linux is nigh.
They might go in direction of BSDs.
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Well for one PlayStation OS uses FreeBSD and BSDs might be better suitable for Anti cheat DRM stuff game companies want.
Also many Gamers on GhostBSD , NetBSD (mostly retrogames), OpenBSD
And stumble upon barely useble OSes? BSDs now are as niche as Linux distros were a decade ago
BSD based operating systems work fine for a lot of things. A huge majority of people only use their computers to browse the web, write documents and read their e-mail.
Something like GhostBSD would work perfectly well for this, though afaik GhostBSD is just FreeBSD with a different default configuration.
Though you are not going to be able to do much that involves proprietary software, like playing video games. Unless you use Wine or a proprietary BSD based operating system like that of Sony’s or Nintendo’s game consoles, or Mac OS.
I’m actually thinking about installing OpenBSD on my laptop, though I would not recommend doing this to anyone who just wants to stop using Windows.It’s more like how Linux was 25+ years ago. BSDs are great for servers and firewalls, but they aren’t really ready for desktop use yet.
The year of the BSD desktop is coming
Maybe this is a roundabout way of saying Mac which are based on BSD.
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There’s an easy way to get rid of the ads throug the router settings, but I for one have no intention of sharing that secret with the Crapindows users. :D
I switched to NixOS full-time after dual-booting Void for some time, and I couldn’t be happier to get away from Microsoft’s bullshit.
My only gripe is that I do a lot of audio production, and virtually none of the big names in the audio plugin space make Linux builds, despite the most common framework (JUCE) having Linux support out of the box.
Yabridge & WINE do a decent job of filling the gap, but using iLok protected plugins can be a bitch and a half, and unfortunately iLok is everywhere… Oh how I long for audio developers to start taking Linux seriously.
