[mrinterweb]

I few months ago, I backed up my windows gaming machine and overwrote the partition with CachyOS. Haven't looked back. Gaming performance and compatibility has exceeded my expectations. Just a much better experience overall. I feel sorry anytime I see someone using Windows.

[folkrav]

I feel sorry every time I'm stuck going back to Windows. And admittedly, the situation is not even comparable to how it was ~25 years ago when I first started playing around with Linux, most things I want to do with a computer just work on Linux nowadays. There are still such things that just are not there yet - but for most of them, it's not necessarily Linux's fault.

If we limit the conversation to gaming specifically, one area where I don't see Linux taking over any time soon is competitive/esports oriented titles and their invasive ~rootkits~ anti-cheats. Another place I kind of have to live with Windows is simulation (in my case Elite: Dangerous and iRacing/Le Mans Ultimate) - the overlays and other third-party utilities either don't exist on Linux, or I couldn't get them to work and kind of abandoned the idea.

Audio production is also kind of a no-go. The DAWs and hardware support are absolutely getting there - Bitwig studio is apparently very good for something Ableton-like, and my DAW of choice, Reaper, has native Linux support. But the plugins and virtual instruments for the most part just don't exist. Some work through a Wine bridge, if you're lucky.

However, if you're not too deep in a niche with very specific pieces of software, or don't care about esports offerings, there isn't much tying one to Windows nowadays.

[JasonSage]

I think the situation with anti-cheat on Linux is changing. Studios are putting resources into anti-cheat that will work on Linux. If I'm being a bit cynical, I could say this is "just" because of Steam Deck and Steam Machine, but I think the number of potential players switching to Linux right now outside of the Steam ecosystem is starting to be worth considering.

[therein]

The only way they could even consider making it work would involve blessing certain kernel builds, and their integrity would need to be verified. If I am able to swap out the kernel, anti-cheat cannot be effective.

[Bender]

Ubisoft added Easy Anti-Cheat support for Linux and Valve's Proton compatibility layer. I play Division 2 and it runs just fine. More of them are being added by the AAA studios. Missing is Vanguard / Riot Anti-Cheat, no idea when that will get added. Thus far games have not tried to dork with my kernel.

[therein]

EAC has supported Linux for a while now as far as I remember. The problem is, it is up to the game developers to enable support in their config for that or not, and most of them are choosing not to especially for games where any weakness would be abused like Rust. Someone had posted a proof of concept where they ported the Linux EAC to Windows, which allowed them to bypass checks that would be performed on a Windows machine.

[officeplant]

>Audio production is also kind of a no-go

I always see this as a yes and no. Yes if you didn't start giving up on mainstream DRM encumbered audio production 10-15 years ago you aren't going to be ready to switch. Those people have sunk too much into their work flows and collections of licensed plugins.

No if like me you gave up on those tools and found new ones, because I didn't like the direction things were going with usb license keys, always online drm, and offline license management installs that feel almost as rootkit/malware coded as modern anticheat systems.

It helps that I gave up on ableton back in 2008 and swapped to Reason & Logic, before ultimately giving up on those as well. Now I just use Renoise & VCV Rack while trying to work up the will to dabble with Puredata and Supercollider.

Bitwig sounds nice but its too expensive and locks me back into the same cycles of update purchases Ableton & Reason once did.

Do I miss my Korg VSTs & Reason Racks? Yeah, I just can't be bothered enough to go back.

In the end for me its just a hobby so I've been willing to throw away my setup and workflow entirely more than once since starting with digital music in 2004.

[folkrav]

I just haven't found anything on the amp sim side that remotely approaches what NeuralDSP gives me. Similar to drums, haven't found any libraries that sound remotely as good as something like GGD. I've replaced most of my "simple" effects plugins with free stuff, sure, but VSTi/libraries have been more of a miss than a hit for me. I started around the same time you did. Back then it barely was thinkable to even consider Linux as a main OS for music production. Whatever works for what you do with it, and I can definitely see some workflows work with what it offers today, just not mine.

[officeplant]

Yeah for drums I still rely heavily on my sample library I've built up from other hobby music friends, sound library cd/dvd purchases, and freesound.org digging. But it works for IDM/Industrial stuff I do.

[gausswho]

A balanced take. You name several exceptions that don't work seamlessly on Linux. Recognizing that, I'll note:

- Bitwig 5.x (haven't tried the latest 6.x) is working really nicely for me now across several NixOS machines (I'm using BitwigBox so that yabridge smoothes out VST integration). - Le Mans Ultimate is working for me now. It would hang on loading a track until a month or two ago (GE Proton recommended).

[folkrav]

For sim, its mostly the modding and third-party utilities that I can't be bothered to make work hehe. Maybe I just didn't spend enough time searching for alternatives, or maybe they just didn't exist, but I couldn't be bothered to spend the time to make them work last time I tried.

[snapplebobapple]

Printing is still a disaster on linux, but in linuxs defense, its also a disaster (n windows just a but less of one

[folkrav]

Interesting, I've always had the opposite impression - CUPS has always made it quite easier for me to use whatever printer I had at hand instead of having to hunt down drivers off the manufacturer's website, only to find out they stopped supporting it back in the Vista days.

[bigmattystyles]

Same, games aside, it’s just so snappy. I knew windows was slow at a lot of things but I hadn’t quite realized how slow things as banal as locking/unlocking had become. The first week with cachyos was mind blowing on just that front.

[pndy]

It's over a year for me with CachyOS now after endless issues with Manjaro after bigger updates, and after Mint getting hiccups-freezes randomly during operation.

And it's also a return to KDE for me, after many years with Xfce and Gnome. The whole environment feels more stable and mature - tho, I miss title bar window shading that's not present under Wayland.

[xutopia]

Wait... what's gaming like? Can you describe it for someone who only ever could play Unreal Tournament back in the day on Linux?

What games are available? Do you use emulators or stuff like Wine?

[anon7000]

Many single player games work out of the box in Steam, because they’ve invested a huge amount of effort into Proton (their compatibility layer).

Here are some games that have worked pretty well out of the box:

- Factorio

- Arc: Raiders

- Overwatch

- Age of Empires 2 DE

- Abiotic Factor

- Subnautica 2

- Windblown

- Dune Awakening

- Cybperpunk 2077

- Star Citizen (with the community installer to help set it up)

See here for a database: https://www.protondb.com/

The main asterisk is that if you use newer GPUs, you’ll need to use a newer kernel / drivers to get solid support (which is why Arch (& CachyOS) is a popular gaming distro). And certain technologies may not be supported for a while, or take some time to set up (ray tracing, DLSS, frame gen type stuff etc.)

Performance is comparable to windows, and sometimes better because windows is a bloated piece of shit. Lol.

A lot of stuff you can try and it works ok, but the main things that are permanently unsupported are kernel-level anti-cheat (like Valorant) or online games with anticheat that will detect something weird in the setup and ban you. But some competitive games work fine (like overwatch)

[unethical_ban]

In short, it is the default assumption that a game will play on Linux these days, vs. assuming it won't.

Steam/Valve has built Proton, which I believe is a fork of Wine, and put significant resources into it. Steam distributes it on its own but CachyOS distributes even more patched/optimized versions of it in their repositories.

The games I know do NOT work on Linux are usually online multiplayer competitive games which have kernel-level anti-cheat. Notable for me is Fortnite - though I hear that now, there are even options for enabling strong anti-cheat in Linux but Epic chooses not to support it.

I'm not informed on other niche game types like simulators or games requiring special equipment, but chances are if it's not competitive, or it's single player, you can get it running with good performance on Linux with modern hardware.

[Cordiali]

Most of the games I play are resource management or base/city building games. I haven't bothered checking if a game works in the last few years, I just fork over my money at this point.

I think the closest to a AAA game was Anno 1800 and Mount&Blade Bannerlord, both worked fine. All the current popular city builders work fine (eg. Timberborn, Foundation, Manor Lords). A lot of the games I play are early access too, or the pre-release stream.

The one game that didn't work was Bongo Cat, which is free anyway. The devs are working on an X11 version though, and it's practically a whimsical keylogger, so it might not appeal to fans of Linux anyway!

[flaunf221]

It works most of the time.

If "works most of the time" is acceptable for you, it's good enough.

If you actually want to be able to play whatever you want to play - instead of what runs - you have to either stay on Windows, or have it as second system.

[dminik]

Wine has evolved a lot, but there's an entire community dedicated to improving games specifically building Proton, essentially a Wine fork focused on games, including big contributions from Valve.

This has made many old and modern games playable without issues. On Steam or Heroic Launcher, running a game has mostly become as simple clicking install and later play.

That being said, it's not all peachy. There's not really been much progress on native Linux gaming outside of Flatpak/Steam Linux runtime. Many native games run worse or with issues.

And Proton/Wine isn't perfect. Many games need tweaks or may not work without glitches. And games with anticheat don't work more often than they do, on purpose.

Still, depending on what games you play and hardware you own it has become entirely possible to ditch Windows and not suffer for it.

[pdappollonio]

Everyday user of CachyOS (after trying a few other distros, this one seems to be so far the best for my use case scenario).

I play a few games (used to stream videogames although not for a living but wasn't a small streamer with 1 or 2 viewers). The one that I've been playing the most is The First Descendant (I'm a Destiny 2 fan and now that there's no more Destiny, I'm trying to find my next game).

I game about 3-4 hours every evening unless I have something to do. My last 300 hours or so have been all in CachyOS. It's super stable and I'm a nitpicky guy (for example, I run Windows still for those kernel level anti cheat games, with Secure Mode on, and although even CachyOS doesn't support it out of the box, `sbctl` is the best solution to enable it and quite easy to do so!)

Performance is comparable, it's basically some Wine bottles or, thanks to the SteamDeck, a Proton environment with GPU passthrough. For The First Descendant, which doesn't work OOTB with Steam's Proton, I installed ProtonGE (not super hard to install, there's a flatpak of a few apps that can do it automatically for you) and that works great. I need to tell it to enable the Linux anti cheat and since TFD uses Easy Anti-cheat, it's an env var away (which you can configure from the Steam settings for that game).

Performance-wise I actually get better framerate. Presumably because nowadays windows comes with so much nonsense running in the background that I bet you the fact they're not running in the Wine bottle is perfect.

Happy to answer any other questions!

[tuvix]

I don’t play multiplayer stuff like Fortnite or Call of Duty, so I might not be your typical user. I use Steam for everything, as well.

But I fully switched to Fedora a while ago because every game I played was either just as performant or ran better on Linux. It’s plug and play, too. I just downloaded Steam and that was it.

I know there are other commenters saying the same thing, but I’m just super excited because of what this means for Linux market share on consumer machines

[mrinterweb]

PC gaming on linux these days is joy these days. The main games you're likely to struggle with are games that require some windows kernel level anti-cheat software running, so some online multi-player will not be playable for that reason. Proton, wine, and the ecosystem have evolved a lot in the last couple years to the point that I'm surprised when a game can not run on linux. Occasionally, you need to look at https://www.protondb.com/ to see if there is some startup option that needs to be added to get the game to run. If you're into single player games, Linux is generally a really solid choice.

[kridsdale1]

In the last few years, Valve has made incredible progress with their equivalent set of API wrappers to what Wine does. Apparently (not experienced first hand) it’s like 97% of the way there, now.

[sshagent]

if you have a steam account, and you open it on Linux most of your games will be present to be played. Most of them will just work. Those that don't you can look up details on protondb.com.

as mentioned above if you play any competitive games that come with anti-cheat features, then you won't be able to join in the fun. So if you don't care about those games, you'll be fine.

[frantathefranta]

> if you play any competitive games that come with anti-cheat features, then you won't be able to join in the fun.

I'd say it's a majority of games that won't work if they require anti-cheat, but some will.

[FridgeSeal]

Forza Horizon 6 was a bit of a shit-fight to get it working. GPU crashes, audio just failing, and 20-questions with what combination of runtime and configs would get it to play ball, and it would break after some patches, but it really stabilised now and most issues I’ve had have disappeared.

[Bender]

Game companies are adding their anti-cheat into Proton. Ubisoft for sure. Others will follow.