Hi all, I bought a gaming PC with the intention of installing Linux to play recent games. I chose AMD for the GPU because I know the drivers are more optimized on Linux.
After receiving and assembling my machine, I installed Fedora without any problem. I found a lot of software on Github to replace the proprietary software for my AIO and headphones. Everything worked the first time except… Steam! Unable to launch it, black window which restarted in a loop.
After searching on the internet, I found that it was enough to modify PrefersNonDefaultGPU on steam to solve my problem (but I understand that ordinary people do not want to bother with this kind of hack and prefer the windows experience that works out of the box).
Then I installed Cyberpunk and… well the game runs at 120fps in ultra, what more can I say… Oh yes, the keyboard preset is in Qwerty even though I have an azerty keyboard (sorry Baguette) and in the first hour of play, I was able to notice a bug in a rather disturbing shadow/light and in the drops of water on a windshield which appeared and disappeared in a strange way.
So with my €1500 machine I got a little upset… and I wanted to install Windows out of curiosity.
Installation is…complicated! No driver for my network card, a ton of software that I don’t need, in short, Windows…
I installed steam, launched Cyberpunk and… my keyboard is recognized, 120 fps too (I am offered raytracing which does not interest me and makes me lose fps but it is available) and in the first hour of play NONE bug.
So here I am, I hate Windows, but it runs my games better than Linux and I’m really lost. I’ve just discovered Nobara, I would have loved to try it but I’m tired of starting the first 3 hours of cyberpunk again and I’m convinced that I’ll have some graphical bugs with it.
(also another problem, there are too many Linux distributions, too much choice kills choice)
TDLD: I bought an expensive computer to play under Linux, but a few bugs made me reluctantly install Windows.
You already answered your own question/experience – do some “duckduckgoing” (even if it means falling back to the basics once again, “How to run a windows game on linux”) and then come back here. Because yes, GNU/Linux is 100% viable for gaming and can even run games better than on Winblows – if you know how to setup things properly.
A word of advice however, Linux tend to be a bit “sensitive” regarding some system elements/packages – you’ve got to provide all possible info to everything – theres no “ready out of the box” in these lands.
I prefer “quacking”. ;)
Some games, others run worse. It’s usually within 10% either way, which isn’t something I’d personally pick an OS over. You can probably tune things to eek out an extra percent or two, but imo that’s not worth it unless you’re really into that kind of thing.
That’s just not true. Most of the time, Linux works great out of the box, but there are some common areas where that’s not the case:
And that’s pretty much it. If you buy quality hardware, your OOTB experience is probably going to be great! If you buy an AMD GPU, it’ll be even better since you don’t even need to install graphics drivers! I had zero issues on my desktop switching between distros (everything just works), and my only issue with my laptop was using very recent hardware, which was fixed with kernel updates (there was a known bug with sound over HDMI on my AMD laptop).
Imo, Linux is much more likely to “just work” than Windows, assuming you’re installing the OS yourself. Every time I’ve installed Windows, I’ve had to track down a bunch of drivers, downloading Wi-Fi drivers on my Linux computer and installing them with a USB stick. That sucks.
I like that, I’ll have to remember to use it sometime!