[simoncion]

Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite.

I used to boot into Windows regularly to play video games. I haven't booted into Windows in ages. Proton is really good, and the major web browsers work the same on -at minimum- Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux... especially for older games. It helps that the folks writing them aren't working for "AI"-crazy companies that have probably massively slashed the resources they're giving the driver programmers for their consumer-grade cards. (After all, why spend any money on software for video games when you can spend that money on software for "AI" stuff and get a much larger ROI?)

[Rohansi]

The problem is most people "who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser" are not a good fit for Linux. They don't install their OS themselves so cannot install a Linux distro. They don't do their own regular maintenance so forced updates are necessary. They expect software like Office to be available - not alternatives that work a bit differently and have buttons in unfamiliar places. Computer literacy is going down so this is only getting worse. Hardware that ships with SteamOS is the best chance to get PC gamers onto Linux. It's already being used by nearly 1% of Steam users and Steam has a lot of users.

> Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux

That's why Valve went with AMD for the Steam Deck and Machine. But it's also another blocker because 72% of Steam users have an Nvidia GPU.

[thewebguyd]

> Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite.

This is true until you consider what that exact casual market looks like. Mainstream casual PC gamers are overwhelmingly concentrated in live service multiplayer AAA games with kernel level anticheat. Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, etc.

So it's kind of a hard spot where yes, 95% of casual windows gamers would in theory be much better off on Linux but the Catch-22 is the games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux.

It's not like Windows is an OS they love, it's just a mandatory anti-cheat wall, but its a wall Linux can't breach yet.

[vablings]

So, to be clear, and to really drive this point home. Gaming on Linux is absolutely viable and practical it's just the efforts are sunken by bad developers who refuse to enable compatibility or figure out a better solution.

"games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux."

All of the games you described have and will work on Linux perfectly fine under proton, it is the developers CHOICE for these games not to work.

[nessguy]

Last time I tried out linux (Earlier this year) I had to give up on it because my system would occasionally freeze to the point I needed to do a hard reset.

I thought it was a hardware issue, but it ended up being a linux amd driver issue. I haven’t had a problem since switching back to windows.

[NDizzle]

From what I can tell, gaming with an nvidia card on Linux is still rough. Is that incorrect?

[thewebguyd]

Somewhat. There's still a ~20% ish performance impact for DX12 titles on Nvidia, but on any newer/recent card it basically just brute forces it and ends up being fine unless you are an FPS chaser and have an issue with getting, say, 140 FPS instead of 168 FPS. That'll matter if you play competitive PvP games, but otherwise you probably won't notice (depending on the game)

[Sphax]

It depends on your card I think. I can say that with a 3080 Ti and now a 5090 I have no issue playing almost all the games on steam on Fedora 44, event a lot of games not explicitly compatible. I’ve been using Linux only for probably a year now and I don’t see a good reason to go back to Windows for gaming myself.