Ok so a little background first. I’m an older millennial. I started using Linux when I was in college back in 2001. It was Mandrake Linux back then. I had an Asus V6800 DDR Deluxe graphics card with 3D shutter glasses and video-in for video capture.
The kernel module for my graphics card was limited and the shutter glasses didn’t work in Linux. For the video capture, I actually had to download an open source kernel module from some enthusiast. Then I had to literally recompile the kernel with the NVidia and video capture kernel modules to support my graphics card. And when I finally got this to work, I could finally play 3D OpenGL games in Linux. Except there weren’t that many.
If you wanted to run a Windows application, there was Wine, but it took a lot of technical knowhow and a lot of troubleshooting just to get something as simple as freakin’ NOTEPAD to run. Let alone a whole god damn game!
Over time Linux improved quite a bit and received more support from NVidia, but it was still a bit complicated until Ubuntu provided some repos with pre-built modules you could install. Wine was still a pain in the butt and it was mostly used to run MS Office anyways.
When I heard Steam was working on a Linux-based console and that they were working with a pimped up version of Wine, I was a bit skeptical. I was certain there wouldn’t be any support for advanced graphics stuff like ray tracing and DLSS.
On my home PC I have a dual-boot setup with Win 10 and Ubuntu. I’ve been spending most of my time in Win 10 for gaming and entertainment and just the simplicity of it.
Since a couple of years I’ve been hearing more and more about Windows 11 and how everything was going to be tied to your Microsoft account and how much they were going to collect information on your usage and how your privacy was simply gone in that new OS. Also the user interface looked horrible. I love the Win 10 UI. It’s flat, square, the start button is easy to click, the start menu has huge tiles that can be organized in groups making it really simple and quick. I mean, the ergonomics of the UI in Win 10 is the best I’ve ever had. Win 11 is a fucking downgrade. And this week I had to upgrade my work laptop to Win 11 and it’s fucking horrible! Microsoft really screwed up the ergonomics.
Knowing that one day it will be inevitable and that I’ll have to upgrade from my beloved Win10, I decided to give gaming in Linux a go since the gaming part is basically the only thing keeping me from switching entirely to Linux. So booted in Ubuntu, installed the Steam Linux client and started reading on how to take advantage of Proton to run Windows games in compatibility mode.
I went ahead and set it up and installed Ghostrunner. I immediately ran into some problems, but I was expecting this. However, they were simple error messages and within 5 mins of Googling I found out I only had to add some command line parameters to set some environment variables. The game launched! And holy shit! It ran flawlessly! There were no issues with the graphics! I could enable all the NVidia RTX options! Everything worked practically out of the box! I was blown away.
We went from a time where you had to rebuild your fucking kernel to get your graphics card to work and fucking around with Wine to get to a point where you nearly throw your PC out the window until you can get a little app to run to simply running apt install nvidia-driver-xxx and clicking on a button to make a Windows game run in Linux.
You guys. This changes everything.
I think my dream is coming true. I think I might finally go 100% Linux on my PC. I never thought I’d see the day!
Holy shit!
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The Steam Deck itself is also a great Gateway Linux platform. I’m advanced computer literate but havent really worked up the motivation to fuck around with Linux before since like you said, it was generally understood that Microsoft was the way to go for gaming. Microsoft has been pissing me off more and more since 8 though and now that I have a steam deck I know my next tower is going to be linux as well. The deck is great for turn on and game with its gaming mode, and then when I want to do something a little more advanced I just boot desktop mode on and tinker with linux, quickly getting more familiarity with its quirks and differences
I know this is a gaming sub, but I’ll just add that I had a similar experience with music production. Used to he a fiddly disappointimg nightmare, now it’s smooth and usable as a daily driver
What tools do you use in Linux?
I use Ubuntu Studio. First thing to do is configure it with the included Studio Controls app, which is easy.
I used Reaper on Windows so it was easy for me to just use the Linux version. I’ve also messed around with Renoise which works well on Linux. People rave about Bitwig and it’s more similar to Ableton I think, but like Ableton it’s expensive. IMO you want want one of these rather than the built in FOSS DAWs, although to be fair I haven’t tried those recently.
All these come with some built in FX to different degrees. Ubuntu Studio also includes a bunch. The free Airwindows plugins are also well worth getting.
I have a couple of U-He synths which are top notch and run native on Linux. They have some FX too which I haven’t tried.
If you want to use VSTs you’ve bought it’s doable with Yabridge apparently, I haven’t tried it.
That’s pretty awesome. I always forget about Ubuntu studio. It’s a pretty cool distro for creating media content.
Thank you for sharing the tools you use. I will look them up.
+1 to everything you said. Another funny thing I noticed: I looked at my steam catalog on a family member’s Macbook. Many of the games aren’t available on Mac, plus they dropped 32 bit executable support.
I never thought that only ~15 years later (from when I first tried Linux) we would start booting into linux from a mainstream OS for gaming. How the times have changed.
We went from a time where you had to rebuild your fucking kernel to get your graphics card to work and fucking around with Wine to get to a point where you nearly throw your PC out the window until you can get a little app to run to simply running apt install nvidia-driver-xxx and clicking on a button to make a Windows game run in Linux.
I have fond memories of getting World of Warcraft working on Linux back in ~2008 only to realize it had an OpenGL mode that ran better than the DirectX mode I was trying - and failing - to get working.
You aren’t wrong about kernel and driver shenanigans.
Wow, you nearly described the same experiences I had just recently - when I installed steam and a few games for the first time on Linux. And I was also like “Oh, what? It actually works!!”
I immediately shrunk my windows on dual boot and will likely uninstall it completely in near future. No need for bloated windows anymore
I’m a Linux virgin and I’m working to install my first distro ever this week. Ngl, it’s daunting. I’m not tech illiterate but damn it’s so hard to know where to even start
EDIT: got lots of replies while I was trying to save my WSL2 files from before I upgraded windows (unsuccessfully) but I’ve been eyeing nobara and will give it a try tomorrow or friday, thx for all the replies
EDIT2: hoping to learn how to dual-boot with separate drives before actually installing
Installing Ubuntu is so easy a raccoon could accidentally accomplish it while bumping into a keyboard in a trash bin
Recently switched myself. I keep giggling like a coked-up chipmunk every time I download something on Steam and it just fucking works. No to minor fucking about.
Right??? Like how cool is that? Not even Mac’s have games like Linux does now!
as a Microsoft fanboy and lover of bing pointz i say enjoy our classics!!
I switched to Linux in 2008, and basically stopped gaming on PC entirely. I had Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo consoles to fill the gaming urge for me. Then in 2018, when Proton came out, I finally started gaming on PC again. So, I feel you!
Same here, I also have a Deck so if something’s still flaky on linux I have my deck attached to my TV and can play most anything there. Also enjoy desktop mode on steam via the TV as well.
