With the advances in gaming on Linux in recent years, it is so tempting to switch full time. I would absolutely love to, but I am a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber and it is where I play a lot of my games on PC. I know you can use the cloud version, but I cannot stomach streaming games in their current state, so it is a no go. A large portion of my Steam library is compatible, but anytime I have done an install I end up giving in and going back to Windows for games.
I’ve been Linux fulltime for years, settled on Pop!_OS for it’s excellent NVIDIA graphics integration. As far as game compatibility goes, check your games on ProtonDB. Even if they don’t have a Linux native version, the Proton Compatibility Layer may let you play your “windows only” games on Linux without streaming.
This doesn’t apply to gamepass. The gamepass app uses UWP, which isn’t supported in any way on Linux.
Gaming on Linux has grown leaps and bounds and it’s only getting better. Game Pass Ultimate though, I’m guessing you’re gonna have a rough time. That’s built for Window’s ecosystem. So more than likely that’s going to be a very sore point. The streaming Game Pass can and does work on Linux, but if you’re against that then Linux might not be for you.
Steam has gotten to the point on Linux where it’s basically just install and run, as long as you have compatibility for all games turned on. Very very very few games haven’t worked for me or even require little tinkering anymore. That being say I pretty much really only play Indie games.
This is why I just dual-boot. Keep Windows on a short leash and basically just have it for the rare instances where there’s something I really want to play and somehow can’t on Linux.
So one thing that might be worth looking into is virtual machines.
Currently on my desktop I run a variant of Arch (Endeavor I think) where I primarily do my gaming , but for any highly incompatible games, or Game Pass games, I have a virtual machine running Windows that uses pass-through to pass my graphics card through to the virtual machine for games I can’t play on Linux. I also use CPU pinning to ‘pin’ 10 of my 12 CPU cores to the virtual machine to reduce potential overhead.
Works really well, might be an option for you, although it’s not super easy to setup. I’ve tried passthrough on PopOS as well before, but it wasn’t as performant, and Arch Wiki provides a ridiculous amount of super useful guides for doing just about anything, including setting this up.
Edit: Otherwise in terms of daily driver, I love Fedora, and likely won’t move away anytime soon on my laptop.
Are you using single GPU passthrough? I run windows for games and linux for everything else with dedicated GPUs for each. Now I’d like to be able to do some gaming on linux as well because proton has come so far, but my linux GPU is definitely not up for the task. It barely handles hardware acceleration at 1080p without dropping frames on the nvidia proprietary driver and on nouvea it isn’t even worth it to try anything higher than 720p.
So yes. I had a similar setup to you, passed through my Nvidia card to Windows and kept my onboard Intel card for Linux, but much like you I wanted to game with both Linux and Windows, so now my onboard Intel card is disabled and instead I have some qemu scripts that detach the Nvidia card from Linux and to the VM, and vice versa once the VM is shut down. Was a pain to get setup, but actually works really well.
I’m glad to hear that. Last time I looked into it was when I was first building a PC specifically for KVM virtualization and it wasn’t working the greatest then (especially returning the card to host on VM shutdown). Now that it’s working better I may make a backup then try to see if I can get single GPU passthrough working. I’m excited by far linux gaming has come and wanna give it a try myself on better hardware.
This is way I do it. One thing to note is having a decently good motherboard with support for many IOMMU groups will make the proces of passing through the GPU and other devices much smoother. I lucked out and found out about this method while I was planning to upgrade my PC build.
I started down the road from Windows to Linux for my main rig a couple of months back after trying out a few distros on a new mini PC for HTPC/media server. Currently running KDE Neon on the TV, and I’d really like to get away from my Win11/Kubuntu dual-boot tower situation, since Proton is handling everything I throw at it short of Cities: Skylines.
The real sticking point is that I need to be able to use InDesign on rare occasions. I’ve used VirtualBox in the past for old DOS games and mused that a VM would be nice for the edge cases where I need Windows but haven’t gotten any further than that since it felt like the ROI wasn’t there.
What’s involved in setting that up in modern times? Obviously, I’m coming at this from Debian rather than Arch, but pointers on where to start looking would be appreciated.
VirtualBox in the past for old DOS games
Why though? DOSBox is a far superior experience if you wanted to play DOS games. Better performance, better compatibility, better config options (like being able to adjust the CPU speed on the fly), plus controller support and custom config and launcher support so you can just one-click launch your favorite DOS game.
Sorry I was unclear. That’s just the extent of my VM experience … it’s not relevant to my current needs, as I’ve not played DOS games since Win2K.
Ah, well you’re missing out. DOS games are still pretty fun and awesome. Having a blast paying Dangerous Dave right now, and will play Prince of Persia once I clock this.
I’ve still got quite the collection of classic DOS games that I may throw on the TV computer alongside classic console stuff … played a lot of A-Train back in the day. Getting the tower sorted is just a far higher priority.
Thank you. I have some experience with using virtual machines, but only for running old DOS/Windows 95-era software lol
Understandable, but virtual machines can be highly versatile! When I boot up my VM it’s as though I’m literally just running Windows as normal, and when I shut down the VM I’m back to Linux. I much prefer it to dual booting, though dual booting is 100% easier.
If you ever decide to look into it, here’s the Arch guide I was referencing: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
Thank you! I will poke around and explore this.
I abandoned Windows early last year and I haven’t encountered any game that I couldn’t get to work in Linux, and with steam it’s pretty much plug and play, so as long as you don’t play anything on This list you should be good imo
Anticheat is really the last great hurdle, if you play those games anyway
Well that and stuff like Photoshop, but there are alternatives
I’ve heard cutscenes can be problematic on some games. Something about the SteamDeck not supporting h264 I think 🤔. Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun is an example.
On cases like that switching to GE proton would be the way to go, easy to do you just need to click around in a program called ProtonUP-QT (easily found in the distros package manager) to install it, and then change it in the games properties
A good place to look to get help on getting games to work would be Protondb
To add context Valve can’t Legally add support for h264 in proton, but GE-proton is a community project not maintained by valve
They can’t legally add it at all due to licensing restrictions, or they have chosen not to pay for a license?
Honestly I don’t know the details there, something about copyrighted code preventing a commercial solution? That’s as far as I understand it anyway
I actually used Pop as my daily driver for a while. It is probably what I would go back to Linux full time.
I’m also an avid gamer and have to say, Linux has come a long way. There’s so many options that help with running Windows native games that work out of the box. I’ve made the switch a while ago and even though I still have dual boot, I hardly ever boot Windows anymore. And I’m playing a wide range of games not only on Steam but also on the EA App, Epic Games, GOG etc. I see no performance issues (the games I previously played on Windows run just like there) and most games work without any tinkering. I cannot speak about Game Pass though.
Only thing keeping me from Linux full time is music production. Just not their yet unfortunately. Until I can run ableton and plug-ins natively it’s a no go. That being said gaming is great thanks to Valve at this point.
A long, long time ago I ran Linux full-time on my desktop. Then I got into graphic design very seriously (early '00s) and went full Mac. I was full Mac for years and years, until a handful of years ago when I started to get more into photography and I wanted a fast Photoshop computer that didn’t cost $5,000, so I went PC.
The photography world is similar to music and video production; there just aren’t Linux alternatives that are mature enough. Lightroom is still the best catalog system. CaptureOne might be a better RAW processor, but that’s OK, neither have Linux ports anyway!
I am on my Steam Deck all the time, and it’s amazing to me how well games run on its Linux-based OS, but on the desktop I need one of the two commercial operating systems, there’s just no getting around it.
I’m 100% in your situation, and its funny how the Steam Deck has made me start neglecting my gaming pc lol. It’s just so much better in bed or on a couch.
What distro speaks to you the most?
You can always dual boot and use Linux for whatever you like it for. Sadly Windows is still the go to thing for gaming, since it’s the target platform for 99.99% of software and especially games.
Proton/Valve has made a lot of headway here. Mostly I’m seeing mmos/Destiny 2 being the only big holdouts anymore, but the niches I am in have tended to have good Linux support for quite some time.
I have an Adobe creative suite login through my work , plus gaming - but if I ever left the company I may switch too especially if windows adds ads to the start menu - or charges for upgrades
I have the first ever aluminium MacBook from 2008 running linux (new SSD , new battery , added ram )
I tried to install Linux on an old Chromebook that I have, but the device is so slow that it isn’t worth spending a lot of time on lol
With more ram and an SSD I found it was better - and I used a linux-mint made for maxbooks and with the NVIDIA driver installed it is currently good (not amazing , but I think being a 15 year old laptop , it’s better than maybe a 5 year old windows or mac computer with latest os on it (Linux can run like windows xp - super light and fast
I just did, not for the gaming capabilities as I’m not a big gamer myself but because WSL malfunctions pissed me off. Moving to Pop!_OS after considering Nobara.
I’m in the same case, I really tried using Linux as my primary OS but I always go back to Windows for some games.
Honestly I don’t think that local Gamepass will come to Linux ever.
For other games it will work mostly, except some multiplayer games that use anti cheat, some games will work with anti cheat but it’s on a per game basis, so it depends which multiplayer game you want to play.
As someone who’s been throwing the idea around putting Mint or another distro on my main desktop, is it a good idea for a main gaming computer? I use my laptop for DJing and stuff, but my desktop is primarily for games and videos.
Would that work out with Steam’s linux compatibility or is there a better distro that could work?
Its probably a mixed bag and dependant on what games you play (and your GPU).
I just dual boot. I use Ubuntu (currently 22.04) for most things like work etc. Using it now. And when I want to play games I use Windows.
That said, i Do have a mac as well, for recording music. I have considered moving to something like Renoise on Linux. Definitely wont be on windows.
All told, im not a evangleist for an OS. I just stick to what works for the task at hand.
Proton CAN play a lot of games. I believe its how the steam deck works too. So its probably more feasible than ever to run a gaming rig on linux. But ive been down that road before, and its been a fools errand for me.
Gaming works well for most Steam games, but if you go out of Steam it can be less nice. I’ve been linux-only for around two years now, and there’s been only a handful of games that I wanted to play that wouldn’t run on linux (but there’s only a handful of online games I play so ymmv)
After owning a steam deck I put mint on my pc and windows still in there I open once in a blue moon.
I haven’t had any issues gaming wise on Mint. Everything works. The OS is snappy and not in your face. I have a Mac for work which I use most of the day. I wouldn’t be able to run Linux as my daily driver. But it’s a great gaming pc option.
I’ve been maining Linux on my gaming rig for about a decade. It’s way better now with modern Proton/Steam. Most games run great. Some have weird issues that will take some extra work or need a special version of Proton. A few are completely incompatible, like Destiny 2 (requires some gnarly security software that Bungie isn’t willing to support on Linux).
You can check the ProtonDB site for the games you want to play to get an idea of what to expect. I notice about a 5% performance drop in Linux compared to Windows for most games, but that may have to do with the extra stuff I have running in the background on Linux for work/dev.
I love Linux and advocate its use, but if Windows is meeting your needs don’t feel like you have to change. If you do try it, it’s a good idea to start with a dual boot and jump back to Windows if a game you want to play doesn’t work in Linux. Or if you hit an issue you just don’t want to deal with right then. Computers can sense when it’s been a long day and you only have 20 minutes to play.
I tried Pop!OS and I liked it a lot, but I wasn’t big on the built-in store for downloading apps as it felt a bit clunky to me. Still, it’s a solid option. Kubuntu was a pretty decent one too that I tried.
For me I found myself going back to Windows because of hardware incompatibility. I know that of course you either need to be really good at building compatibility yourself or scouring the Internet for a solution someone else already found, but unfortunately it was one of those cases where searching ended up with those results where it was from several years ago and they just said “I figured it out” without added context.