I’m in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.
Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.
Windows 11 -> Linux just for gaming and I am satisfied!
However, I also do not play things with big graphics requirements, kernel-level anticheat, and I do not have any fancy GPUs like Nvidia that make things incompatible. I transitioned on a laptop. So YMMV.
Gaming on Linux has never been better. Out of the top 100 (mostly Windows platform) games, only 7 are entirely unplayable according to https://www.protondb.com/
80/100 are Gold or Platinum rated which means very playable. I often get better performance in Linux than Windows, even with the default open source drivers. I am using an AMD GPU which gives an advantage as they have better open source support, but for NVIDIA all the Linux distros I’ve used have had a documented path to install their binary drivers for better performance. My only bugbear is the game developers that actively hate Linux and that try to disable their game from working via anti cheat.
It’s true that it sometimes takes a bit more tinkering, especially if you’re using some esoteric controller or other funky hardware, but in the days of LLMs that can coach you through issues it’s more accessible than it’s ever been.
My Steam profile is apparently 30% platinum, 21% gold, 10% varying levels of broken, 39% unrated.
But Genshin Impact, one of my main games, doesn’t even appear on ProtonDB, and as far as I heard you need a custom Linux launcher for it, that results in occasional banwaves, which I will not risk :/ (Edit: if ProtonDB only lists Steam games, that would explain why Genshin is missing.)
Nvidia GPUs are not good in Linux at the moment. And yeah all what you said. But i had tried Linux for gaming like something 5-8 years ago, and the situation is so much better now.
When I say they’re ‘not good,’ I mean they run slower. AMD and Intel GPUs perform nearly as well as they do on Windows, but Nvidia GPUs can suffer up to a 20% performance loss on Linux, depending on the game.
My experience with Linux gaming has varied pretty wildly. My old r9 290x could hardly run anything on linux. And if it did, it would run horribly compared to on windows.
Recently I upgraded to an rx 7600, and nearly everything works out of the box or with minor tweaks. And it performs similarly to windows, even better on occasion.
Nvidia user, i saw a 10-15% performance difference (maybe more in some games), some anti-cheat do not work, so i can not install these games. I used both Mint and Nobara with latest drivers running and proton-GE.
Might be game dependent but nowadays games like withcher 3 run better on linux then windows for me.
Anti-cheat is admittedly a pain though. Chivalry 2 used to work and now no longer does.
Though those anti cheats tend to be very invasive so i prefer if everyone moved to a system thats is user personal security first so the market would align with that.
If you ever wanna try again you should stick to a gaming distribution like nobara. A lot of performance can also get lost just because esync / fsync aren’t configured correctly in the distribution. This should be fixed in the near future too , once https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge/_requests/7226 is merged and people use modern kernels aka > 6.14.
I’m in Windows 11. I have regret it, but after so many tweaks of the system, removing telemetries, changing menus, and other Windows shit, i had not the energy to move back to Windows 10.
Only OS change i am willing to make is to move to Linux, but gaming is not there yet, and am now trying to move from big proprietary companies to FOSS, so time is needed.
Windows 11 -> Linux just for gaming and I am satisfied!
However, I also do not play things with big graphics requirements, kernel-level anticheat, and I do not have any fancy GPUs like Nvidia that make things incompatible. I transitioned on a laptop. So YMMV.
Gaming on Linux has never been better. Out of the top 100 (mostly Windows platform) games, only 7 are entirely unplayable according to https://www.protondb.com/
80/100 are Gold or Platinum rated which means very playable. I often get better performance in Linux than Windows, even with the default open source drivers. I am using an AMD GPU which gives an advantage as they have better open source support, but for NVIDIA all the Linux distros I’ve used have had a documented path to install their binary drivers for better performance. My only bugbear is the game developers that actively hate Linux and that try to disable their game from working via anti cheat.
It’s true that it sometimes takes a bit more tinkering, especially if you’re using some esoteric controller or other funky hardware, but in the days of LLMs that can coach you through issues it’s more accessible than it’s ever been.
My Steam profile is apparently 30% platinum, 21% gold, 10% varying levels of broken, 39% unrated.
But Genshin Impact, one of my main games, doesn’t even appear on ProtonDB, and as far as I heard you need a custom Linux launcher for it, that results in occasional banwaves, which I will not risk :/ (Edit: if ProtonDB only lists Steam games, that would explain why Genshin is missing.)
Nvidia GPUs are not good in Linux at the moment. And yeah all what you said. But i had tried Linux for gaming like something 5-8 years ago, and the situation is so much better now.
They’ve been perfectly fine for years. And now they’ve never been better for desktop DEs.
When I say they’re ‘not good,’ I mean they run slower. AMD and Intel GPUs perform nearly as well as they do on Windows, but Nvidia GPUs can suffer up to a 20% performance loss on Linux, depending on the game.
My experience with Linux gaming has varied pretty wildly. My old r9 290x could hardly run anything on linux. And if it did, it would run horribly compared to on windows.
Recently I upgraded to an rx 7600, and nearly everything works out of the box or with minor tweaks. And it performs similarly to windows, even better on occasion.
Yeah NVIDIA GPUs, like mine, suck at Linux.
@nuko147 @The_Picard_Maneuver
May i ask why gaming on linux isn’t for you ?
I assume he is playing an FPS game with anti-cheat, everything else just works.
Or League of legends. Cant play on Linux with riot anticheat
Nvidia user, i saw a 10-15% performance difference (maybe more in some games), some anti-cheat do not work, so i can not install these games. I used both Mint and Nobara with latest drivers running and proton-GE.
Might be game dependent but nowadays games like withcher 3 run better on linux then windows for me.
Anti-cheat is admittedly a pain though. Chivalry 2 used to work and now no longer does.
Though those anti cheats tend to be very invasive so i prefer if everyone moved to a system thats is user personal security first so the market would align with that.
@nuko147
Thanks alot for the information. I understand the pain points and cross my fingers that nvidia finds fast the issues of their drivers being slower in vkd3d https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/directx12-performance-is-terrible-on-linux/303207/58
If you ever wanna try again you should stick to a gaming distribution like nobara. A lot of performance can also get lost just because esync / fsync aren’t configured correctly in the distribution. This should be fixed in the near future too , once https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge/_requests/7226 is merged and people use modern kernels aka > 6.14.
Thanks again for the informations.