[alphachloride]

I tried this debloater, but it debloated my ability to play video games that I like. And debloated the luxury of not having to drop to the command line to fix many of my problems. Also debloated the ability to run some very convenient day to day software.

[Zhyl]

When did you do this? Linux has gotten better over the last few years on almost all of those counts.

https://ProtonDB.com

https://areweanticheatyet.com

[TheCapeGreek]

I was a proton user for about 5 years. Highly recommend it. But it's not perfect.

Proton is great, but getting non-steam games on it is about as fiddly as the rest of Wine/Lutris/Crossover/etc. Especially with older games, alternate launchers, etc.

If you're fine with having a slightly smaller selection of games (mostly AAA suffers), then it's great. If you're into mod-heavy games, Windows still fares better IMO.

I put Win11 on my new machine to get more bang for buck with gaming, but I despise the OS in its current state. Purely from a DE UX perspective it doesn't seem very productive with its more limited shortcuts.

[Zhyl]

For mods etc it's definitely still nascent, but is exactly the sort of area which has smart problem solvers working on it. I've already seen mod helper apps for minecraft and elder scrolls popping up. There will be more.

[y42]

That's what I'm hearing since 20 years.

[Zhyl]

Since the release of Proton in 2018 and the subsequent release of the Steam Deck, the difference is night and day.

If your last experience was 20 years ago I would sincerely recommend looking into it again.

[wruza]

Difference in what exactly?

I could give it a try (not gp but periodically interested), but not sure if my GSync display will work correctly. Last time I tried desktop linux, it couldn’t decide which video driver sucks more after another update, and that was on a pretty dumb graphics card. Thinking of something deeply proprietary like GSync I don’t even know if it’s worth trying.

And I’m not a linux newbie, used it and freebsd since around 2000 on daily basis periodically. It is amazing, but just like Linus, “I still need desktop” that allows me to play my hardware. So when there is a >$100 graphics card I resort to windows + msys2 by default.

[kemotep]

I have been playing Elden Ring just fine on Linux. At launch, I was worried about it and installed Windows just to play the game. After a while I tried it on Linux and the experience is almost 100% identical in terms of performance.

Part of your issue is having to wrangle with Nvidia drivers. I am just using the default open source driver for AMD that comes built into the kernel and the experience is seamless. I know the nightmare of getting graphics on Linux working right which is why I avoid Nvidia.

[Zhyl]

With my example above (Proton) it has had a transformative effect on how many games are playable on Linux and how easy it is to play them.

Prior to 2018, there were only a handful of native ports, skewed towards indie games. Now 4,582 are classified by Valve as being 'Verified or playable', with 73% of the top 100 games on steam having an out-of-the-box-flawless experience and a further 14% that will work with some tweaks.

Steam baked this new technology into their client, so the installation process for a Windows game on Linux is identical to Windows (click 'Install' then play. There is one additional popup to inform the user that a translation layer is being used).

In addition to this, Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye have now (as of Nov 2021) announced anti-cheat support for Proton - both technologies require the developers to enable support either with tweaks (EAC) or by emailing for the supplier to enable support (battleye).

And that's only gaming. In the last 12 years (with the 20 year limit specified by OP) we have seen a transformation in web technologies which have moved from proprietary codecs and add-ons to open standards. Video, streaming and all other things that Windows users take for granted are now available on Linux. This also means that the trend in apps moving to electron also implies that by-and-large Linux is also functional (with notable exceptions e.g. Discord audio).

There's also been a large development of drivers included in the kernel, most peripherals including game controllers etc all now work out of the box. Bluetooth and Wifi - the traditional enemies of Linux users, now work flawlessly and don't come up at all in support requests anymore. AMD drivers have improved, even Nvidia have open-sourced the kernel-land components of their proprietary driver which will help the development of nouveau and other open source alternatives (plus make the Nvidia driver much easier to install and maintain in server set ups, which I think was their goal).

Vulkan was released in 2016 which has driven a whole new raft of graphics capability, providing a strong alternative to the clunky OpenGL. Wayland is making serious progress against X, with Gnome-wayland and KDE-wayland both becoming default on some distros. Valve also have a minimalist wayland compositor that is used in Game Mode on the steam deck.

And that isn't even to mention the plethora of usability improvements to Desktop environments or helper apps such as Heroic, Lutris, Protonup, Nobara which have improved the Linux desktop experience immeasurably.

So yes, in short a lot has changed. When I hear someone say 'I have heard the same for 20 years' they are either ignorant or ignoring the progress that has been made in bad faith.

[wruza]

All this progress is nice, no sarcasm. But I still get confused when my 2-3 year old experiences get written off as ignorance or bad faith, never mentioning the issues I had or how to deal with them as a user, and never explaining details I asked about.

If you know about gsync and/or fps tax on linux, I’d be glad to trust and try. Otherwise this comment looks like yet another marketing booklet that doesn’t address any of my doubts and creates no reason to find out, cause last few times I fell for, it was the waste of time.

Edit: I don’t want to downplay this tech, you or anything else. Currently I just want to play Witcher 3 with gsync and have no time for fixing the issues longer than 10 minutes under my expertise.

[saiya-jin]

> And debloated the luxury of not having to drop to the command line to fix many of my problems.

are you sure this is covered?

[Zhyl]

Yep, there's far more GUIs and desktop support for tasks than in days of yore.

There's definitely still a mindset that the command line is much easier from a documentation/support point of view which means that forum responses and tutorials will still refer to the command line a lot.

However, compared to when I started in 2011 there isn't a need to use the terminal like there was back then. The terminal is only really needed if you're doing something new or niche

[ta8903]

Something about this cookie-cutter smug response makes me nostalgic for a decade ago where you'd see posts like this on every forum every time Linux was mentioned.