[jorvi]

I’ll dissent.

After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I’d go full-in on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues, Mirror’s Edge doesn’t work with wireless Xbox controllers. You lose out on a lot of GPU suite features that Windows has. Gnome doesn’t support VRR. Etc etc.

There’s so many small issues it’s held me back from deleting my Windows partition. Maybe in a year or two?

That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.

[COGlory]

FYI Valve is primarily deploying KDE, which does support VRR. They can't really control what dumb decisions the GNOME folks make.

For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?

[jorvi]

Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL. I’ve even looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope instance, but if you don’t run Gamescope as your main window manager, you lose most of its benefits.

> For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?

Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver properly supports the Xbox wireless adapter, but it doesn’t play nice with Mirror’s Edge. Xpad and XpadNeo do work, but those require USB or Bluetooth.

And me having to tweak a million things tells why gaming on Linux still sucks, aside from Deck’s blessed config. I don’t want to deal with a thousand papercuts, I want to boot my system and play. Windows is still closer to that experience than Linux.

[OJFord]

> Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels

But if it's the difference between gaming working or not for you, wouldn't you rather use it? Surely you barely interact with it anyway while gaming, only to get into Steam?

If this is a machine you use for something else too, you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and your normal user that uses Gnome?

[eropple]

> Surely you barely interact with it anyway while gaming, only to get into Steam?

I'm a Linux desktop user and I drop into a game once in a while while I'm waiting for another meeting or waiting for a build to finish or whatever. My work desktop doesn't use VRR (the just-for-games PC uses Windows), otherwise I'd be in the same boat as 'jorvi because it quite matters to me that games on my desktop integrate into everything else at a passable level. For me, GNOME does a better job of integrating my different activities than KDE (which wasn't always the case! I was a KDE3 user for a long time!), so I use GNOME. And it remains an unsolved pain in the ass that the Linux desktop experience isn't coherent enough to mean that we should only be thinking about desktop environments if we want to.

Coherent, holistic switching between tasks is a thing that people are allowed to want and attempting to convince people that they don't is a bad look.

> If this is a machine you use for something else too, you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and your normal user that uses Gnome?

This is a really sad observation on the state of the Linux desktop. Still.

[bee_rider]

>> If this is a machine you use for something else too, you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and your normal user that uses Gnome?

> This is a really sad observation on the state of the Linux desktop. Still.

It seems like a somewhat odd observation, is it really necessary to have another user to do this? I can easily switch between Gnome, i3, and Sway on my system, I mean that’s going between X and Wayland, no issues… maybe KDE and Gnome have some specific incompatibility though? Odd.

Anyway, at least there’s a workaround. If Gnome is a hard requirement, how is Windows even a candidate?

[eropple]

> maybe KDE and Gnome have some specific incompatibility though

It's a layer down from the DE itself, it's the window manager beneath it. GNOME ships Mutter and KDE ships KWin. GNOME is pretty tightly tied to Mutter; KDE is less tied to KWin, but KWin also tends to support shinier features than Mutter does anyway so I don't know why you wouldn't use it anyway.

> It seems like a somewhat odd observation, is it really necessary to have another user to do this?

Strictly no, but having to have another login session, period, is bonkers to me. It's reasonable to respond to that suggestion with incredulity.

> If Gnome is a hard requirement, how is Windows even a candidate?

For me, it's not. At the moment it's inertia, because Windows has legit become the best Linux dev environment I know of with WSL2. I originally switched back to a Linux desktop because I was working on some hardware stuff that benefited from being on a Linux platform, but I'm certainly not tied to it past that.

[OJFord]

> It seems like a somewhat odd observation, is it really necessary to have another user to do this? I can easily switch between Gnome, i3, and Sway on my system

Ok, sure, it was just the first solution that came to mind. On mine logging in launches straight into sway. I think only in the first session (to allow recovery in case of some related issue) so I suppose I could switch tty and then manually launch whatever DE.

But to me I think the odd observation is that it doesn't need to be a different user if we're talking about still having to log in again anyway.

Unless you mean some kind of session saving, swaymsg exit, and then launch the other one? But then you have to maintain whatever session saving (probably different in each) solution and what have you really gained.

[zeta0134]

Honestly it's the reverse for me, but I guess that's down to personal preference. "Gnome" apps keep updating with the "new" GTK style, which means the title bar becomes a conglomeration of a bunch of weird controls, the familiar dropdown menus vanish, everything gets moved into a tiny little hamburger menu and, often, the layout breaks in subtle ways.

The calculator app just recently did this, and now I have to type and enter one line of numbers before the text control realizes it's too small and resizes itself. That first line of numbers is nearly invisible. Happens again every time it's opened.

I'm not sure who decided that desktop apps need to look and feel like touchscreen-first mobile apps, but I don't particularly like it. KDE still feels like a desktop environment, so it's my strong preference. I'll put up with a very slightly less polished experience if it means stuff stops rearranging itself just for the sake of change every couple of weeks.

(Aside from KDE, Cinnamon is pretty solid and less feature packed, maybe give it a whirl?)

[jwells89]

Hamburger menus are among my greatest gripes with GNOME. In apps with any functionality at all they end up being poorly organized junk drawers filled with odds and ends, and because they have to be somewhat short to be effective, functions that don’t fit in them either get buried or cut.

What makes this all worse is that GNOME has acres of space reserved at the top of the screen with its statusbar, most of which is empty and doing absolutely nothing. It could house a macOS-style global menubar (as Unity did for fullscreened windows) with room to spare… Though global menubars aren’t everybody’s cup of tea I think many would agree they’re better than the alternative of oversimplified hamburger menus, and they would help achieve the clean look GNOME is going for without so dramatically impeding functionality.

[CamperBob2]

The calculator app just recently did this, and now I have to type and enter one line of numbers before the text control realizes it's too small and resizes itself. That first line of numbers is nearly invisible. Happens again every time it's opened.

OT, but I recently started using a Python REPL as a calculator, leaving it open full time in a window. It's pretty great. Haven't touched an actual calculator, or a calculator app, in weeks.

[prmoustache]

>Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL.

You know that linux distros are multiusers/multiseats systems right? You can perfectly use Gnome as default desktop and live switch to a dedicated gaming user with kde plasma desktop that is only used to launch games.

Kde plasma shoudln't be buggy if only used as a game launcher and disable baloo file indexing if you want to limit kde memory usage to minimum.

[Zekio]

you could try Xow it supports the wireless dongles for xbox controllers if that is what you are trying to use

[Phelinofist]

Isn't Xone the new version of Xow and Xow is no longer maintained?

[barbariangrunge]

Just chiming in to say gnome is wonderful to use and I miss it every time I have to use something else

[Audiophilip]

May I ask what "SoL" stands for? (Not a native English speaker.)

[bigstrat2003]

I've always heard it as "short on luck".

[30]

Shit out of Luck

[ho_schi]

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154

You can install it upon Arch from AUR.

Putting that aside:

Windows users always find a reason not to switch to Linux because some missing feature. In two years? There will be another new feature or game on Windows. I remember people insisting on using Windows because it support their „3D-Shutter glasses“ or their card from Nvidia. Either you want use Linux or not :)

Why are many features initially only available on Windows?

First. That is wrong. Important features like cgroups, namespace and containers/Flatpak where novelly developed upon Linux.

Second? MBAs only look at past numbers. So Windows often get traditional Windows stuff first. You make guess it, innovative companies care about what will be possible in future. Valve for example.

The MBA style thinking is also in many consumers. Still buying Nvidia? Because they were faster in the paper sheet? I prefer the cards which works well with Linux, so AMD or Intel. Frames actually generated are more worth than problems with proprietary drivers.

PS: Linux has maybe won the war against drives. Seems like Nvidia open most stuff slowly and feature land in the nouveau-module or mesa. A decade to late. I’m already in Team AMD ;)

[luma]

You're using the phrase "MBA thinking" to mean "making decisions based on your personal use case and identifying solutions which match".

I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. I don't run Linux to run games because Windows is a better supported platform for running games. I'm not "looking at past numbers", I'm looking at the situation in front of me as it exists, setting aside my personal feeling on what might have been and instead focusing on what actually exists, today, for the problem I am looking to solve today.

[ho_schi]

„Today“…MBA-Thinking.

I don’t want a huge problem tomorrow.

[luma]

So you trade that for even larger problems today? You do you but I just want to play some games.

[hhh]

I don’t want to tweak stuff for a week to get a comparable experience playing games to a fresh W11 install.

[developerDan]

Why don’t people like Linux? Because it takes 8 bloody commands to do something as simple as add a new drive whereas Windows you can just open disk utility and format. I bounced off Linux a few weeks ago over this. It’s for people who want to tinker more than actually use the system.

[bisby]

That's untrue though. Linux has a disk utility (I use gparted personally). And you can surely do it on the command line in a single command.

On Linux you could automate that task. How would you propose automating "open disk utility and click a few buttons" on Windows?

This is less of a "Linux can't" issue and more of a "I quickly know how to do it on Windows after years of experience and I don't know how to do it on Linux." Linux not being identical to Windows isn't a flaw. No one blames you for not wanting to relearn, but pretending like Linux is bad because your Windows muscle memory doesn't apply is nonsense.

[developerDan]

When I Googled how to complete this task I came across multiple results all of which suggesting to use a string of CLI commands. GParted was suggested in some of the results but it wasn’t installed by default on the distro I was recommended (Lubuntu) so I had to punch in even more commands to get it installed. Then after creating the partition it was still unusable until I mounted the drive (which wasn’t clear until after Googling why I can’t use it). Mounting required yet more commands. I did a cursory glance at the GUI buttons on GParted and didn’t see a simple mounting option. If you can’t mount in GParted then my claim still stands that it’s much more effort, and obscure, than Windows which automatically “mounts” the drive so to speak, when you create the partition.

[ziml77]

There's still other things that are absurd to do under Linux. Like turning off write caching for removable drives. Unless something has changed in the past couple years, you need to either manually edit fstab per-drive or setup udev rules.

(Not write caching for removable drives should just be the default. Windows hasn't used write caching on removable drives for 20 years. It also presents a toggle in the drive properties if you really do want it on though.)

[accelbred]

On Gnome, you open the disk manager. You click format.

In fact a lot of things are easier. On windows, you need a third party tool to install an iso onto a disk. On Gnome, you open disk manager, right click disk, click restore from image.

[freedomben]

You bounced quickly then without trying very hard. Gnome comes with a GUI disk utility tool pre-installed that is easy enough for a Windows user ;-)

[developerDan]

I was recommended a distro that doesn’t use Gnome (Lubuntu). The system I was working with is very old and some light research made it seem like Gnome is pretty resource heavy.

[COGlory]

I've literally never used commands to do anything with a disk. I open KDE Partition Manager and do everything in a really nice GUI. `

[ho_schi]

I want tweak stuff to make it fit better for me. I don’t want tweak stuff to get it initial usable.

Likewise the rationale why people buy the Steamdeck. Other than Windows it just works. And it is tweakable.

[LegitShady]

to be fair a fresh W11 install still doesn't have a usable taskbar or start menu - you have to install explorer patcher to get those back.

[brnt]

Looking back, that may have been my switching point: when setting up my distro of choice took less time then windows after a fresh install. Life without package managers, even now that there is chocolatey, is just unnecessary pain. And as a DE, windows had no edge over something like KDE.

[ho_schi]

An operating-system without a package-manager is not maintable.

It hard to install, update or remove software. The validation of the system isn’t possible. Aside from the missing security.

On Windows changing a setting has become a horrible task for me. Where is it? Why does the search doesn’t find it? Should I try to find the Win32-Dialog from Win2k or is this setting in WinUI3 the same? Why I have to sit in front of an installer wizard an „click through it“?

On Steam I can do a file check of a game and it verifies its integrity? My wish. All package-managers on Linux should provide that :)

[hhh]

both are perfectly usable

[FirmwareBurner]

>Windows users always find a reason not to switch to Linux because some missing feature.

Because the OS is a tool, not a religious/political statement.

Therefore I'll use it if it works the way I need it and it solves my problem, or not use it if it doesn't work the way I want it and ends up creating more problems for me than it solves. Simple.

[Arnavion]

>First. That is wrong. Important features like cgroups, namespace and containers/Flatpak where novelly developed upon Linux.

I get your overall point, but the first "process containers" code that later became cgroups was merged to the kernel in 2007. Windows came out with the Job Objects API in Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) in 2000.

[jxf]

IMO, the Job Objects API was not really suitable to use in production settings; it had many weird edge cases, so although it looked similar to cgroups it often broke in strange and unpredictable ways.

[cma]

> were you using Steam Input?

Steam Input is rapidly becoming the Google Play Services of the desktop linux world. On Steam Deck for a long time you couldn't even use the touchpads without the Steam client running.

[bravetraveler]

Did you try out 'gamescope'? This is something you find on the Deck but not 'for free' with Steam on other Linux.

I find it helps with pacing. It also supports VRR with a commandline argument, '--adaptive-sync'.

VRR may need support in the environment to work, I'm not sure. Sway/wlroots does it fine. Presumably KDE does/can too since that's what the Deck uses in 'desktop' mode (otherwise, gamescope).

edit: I see in another post - you have! Agreed on KDE being scattershot. I hope the Gnome people clear things up for you. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest i3/Sway, even though I'm happy with them

[colordrops]

Could you provide details on how you got gamescope working with sway? What is the full command line you used? I believe I ran into problems with it conflicting with XWayland or something like that.

[bravetraveler]

Sure thing! Here's an example command line (from Steam):

    env DXVK_ASYNC=1 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11 gamemoderun taskset --cpu-list 0-7,16-23 gamescope -W 3840 -H 2160 -r 160 -o 160 --borderless --fullscreen --rt --steam  -- %command%

Gamescope has become odd with the introduction of '--expose-wayland'.

I think the 'SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11' part may be key; I didn't need this before, but now I often do. Not every game requires it. It's weird.

It helps if something crashes because "wayland isn't available". Adding '|& tee /tmp/game.log' is useful for debugging.

Pinning (taskset)/gamemode stuff left for context. This example gives a game the cache-rich threads on a 7950X3D.

Beyond '--adaptive-sync'... I believe VRR calls for the feature to be enabled on the output in Sway.

See 'man 5 sway-output', looking for 'adaptive_sync' for more info on that

edit: One last note. I'm on Fedora - the libraries here are so new that Flatpak-based Steam tends to work best.

[colordrops]

Thanks, definitely appreciate this. I tried the line plus many variations without luck. Perhaps my video card is just too old (GTX 1050)

[bravetraveler]

Happy to share - sorry to hear it didn't help.

Nvidia and Wayland are long-troubled friends. The age of the device may or may not contribute...

If you make the command line end with '%command% |& tee /tmp/game.log', you should get some info in '/tmp/game.log'. That may offer some insight

[colordrops]

Great tip, thank you, will try that.

[beebeepka]

Cannot relate much. My 5800x3D and 6800XT deliver an outstanding Linux gaming experience. I don't play EA games, though. I do play some fast paced shooters that don't need VRR since you can manually cap fps to your liking. Also, it was my understanding that gnome has support for adaptive sync.

May i ask what driver features are you missing? I only want some decent fan control instead of relying on random scripts off github. AMD has to release some sort of GUI panel for sure.

[cassianoleal]

> I only want some decent fan control instead of relying on random scripts off github. AMD has to release some sort of GUI panel for sure.

Have you tried CoreCtrl [0]?

> My 5800x3D and 6800XT deliver an outstanding Linux gaming experience.

I have a 7900XTX and performance under Linux has been at least on par with Windows, sometimes better (though not by much).

> May i ask what driver features are you missing?

I'm not GP but I'd love to see frame gen and stuff like anti-lag and upscaling integrated into amdgpu with some sort of official way of setting it (though looking at Adrenaline it might actually be best if it's left up to the community to create the GUIs).

[0] https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl

[tigeroil]

Similar specs but run Windows here, part of the reason being that I noticed that the ray tracing performance is just awful on Linux compared to Windows. I found I get slightly better framerates in most games in Linux, but anything that uses raytracing goes from "just about usable with FSR" on Windows to "totally unplayable" on Linux.

I'm told it's better in Mesa 23.3 though, haven't tested.

[ParetoOptimal]

> After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I’d go full-in on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues

Apex Legends run flawlessly for me, but only on KDE/X11 with Nvidia reflex enabled[0].

If you are on Radeon though, I bet the problem is your window manager. I have the frame pacing issues on:

- hyprland/wayland (even with no_direct_scanout = true; and floating game windows) - KDE/wayland

I also had a weird issue using gamescope as my DM where apex got resized into a tiny frame in the top left that was like 200 pixels or so wide.

> That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.

Likely due to running into these graphics driver -> WM and similar compatibility issues and fixing them. The other performance improvements from kernel changes probably don't hurt either.

0: Requires unreleased proton-ge build: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/pull/104...

[bee_rider]

I’m not sure why people are trying to convince you; Linux is free so there really isn’t any benefit to us Linux users or to the Linux developers if you switch…

Valve should be the only one that is worried about your opinion here. I think they develop SteamOS as a backup plan, though, in case Microsoft ever starts to take their own App Store seriously.

[freedomben]

That is surely part of the consideration, but certainly not all. Some engineers at Valve (especially the head honcho Gabe Newell) are legit Linux people (Debian IIRC). They believe in it, and I love them for it

[Adverblessly]

I don't dispute your claims, but I remember very clearly that back then it seemed obvious that SteamOS was a response to the Microsoft Store and a fear that Microsoft would mandate that all software on Windows come from the Microsoft Store.

While that was obviously speculation, at least the dates match up (October 26, 2012 for Microsft Store launch and December 13, 2013 from SteamOS launch according to Wikipedia)

[freedomben]

Agree based on my memory. I think the Microsoft store threat is what finally tipped the scale. It took it from "we kind of support linux because we like it" to "we support linux because it's important business insurance for us in case Microsoft goes Apple (or Xbox or whatever example you want) and monopolizes app distribution on Windows.

[bee_rider]

And it left them well-positioned for the steam deck, I wonder if they were thinking about that when they started steamOS, or if it is just an example of the natural advantage that openness gives you.

Anyway, agree—I wasn’t trying to belittle Valve’s motivations, just wanted to include a thought about why they seem to be happy serving both platforms.

[tigeroil]

did you try playing mirrors edge through steam? I ask because steam input really does work wonders