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Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux (www.tweaktown.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 8 points 1 year ago (16 children)

What’s the best Linux distro to play games? Im currently on Ubuntu 22.04 and won’t leave it as my main but I have a AMD TR 1950 with a GTX 1080 TI will to play some final fantasy.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I left Debian for Arch recently and let me tell you, you immediately feel the difference with running the latest drivers for your machine. The bleeding edge drivers have upped my frames per second significantly in videos games compared to sticking with stable releases on Debian (and Ubuntu).

    With the built-in archinstall script making Arch so easy to get going, I’d only reach for anything else if I really needed the stability.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I highly recommend Nobara.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I use arch, but they're all equivalent. A distro is more like a preconfigured linux

    Just pick one of the popular ones and tinker

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Arch is the one thing that should be absolutely not recommended to beginners. Even implying that it is a suitable beginner distro in any way like you have done in this comment is only likely to drive away users when they inevitably get confused.

    Existing Windows users mostly are not interested in even knowing of the existence of the Arch Wiki. They will just give up and conclude Linux is shit.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Like the others have said, all major distros are fine. Ubuntu is or used to be Valve's "favourite distro" and the package that you can get from Valve's website is for Ubuntu. That being said, software on Linux should be installed using the package manager (the Software Centre) and not downloaded from the Web.

    You may wish to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS later. This is fairly easy (you can use the Software Updater application) but the newer versions have better drivers and newer GNOME versions which may bring better performance.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    All major distros are fine, but there are some niche that specialise in making it easy for people to play games. I use Garuda Linux for that reason. It has it's own app that helps handling OS maintenance, you can install things like Heroic Launcher, Steam, and Proton with a couple of clicks, you have a nice app that checks for updates, etc., etc.

    It's still Linux, which means random shit breaks for no reason, but for gaming and not having to worry about keeping the OS alive it's great.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Linux in no way means that "random shit breaks for no reason", if anything that's Windows. Some distributions may be easier to break if you don't know what you are doing but that is not an OS problem.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Linux in no way means that “random shit breaks for no reason” (...) Some distributions may be easier to break if you don’t know what you are doing but that is not an OS problem.

    Things that randomly broke for no reason:

    • BT-connected mouse suddenly refused to connect.
    • App Menu ("File", "View", etc.) randomly disappeared from all apps and wouldn't re-appear.
    • AppImage application suddenly started throwing a "binary found, misconfigured" error.
    • Sleep would kill the OS. Only a hard reboot fixed the issue (this was on two brand new distros on my PC).
    • Every couple of times Sleep would kill the WiFi on my laptop after the OS was woken up.

    Things that broke after I installed a dGPU:

    • Heroic Launcher "lost" Proton and couldn't launch any games.
    • Steam would open a black window with no content visible.
    • Every three or four reboots after installing the dGPU, the FPS while on the desktop would be around 10, the OS effectively unusable.

    Things that broke after a system update:

    • Application Launcher turned fully transparent making it almost impossible to read the names.

    This was all in a span of around 3 months.

    If it was "if anything that's Windows", then I would be doing nothing but fixing user issues with my ~300 Windows devices. That's not the case.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Funny, that's not the experience of the majority of people in this thread. Several flavors of Linux that have been listed are rock solid and require little to no user action to work and launch games. You can list all of the problems you want, that's just 1 person's experience. It could be because of the distribution you chose, because of your skills, anything. But it's not statically relevant.

    Also, please, Windows is known, has been known, and probably will be known for having shit break randomly. Don't you think there would be a tiny bit more Windows dominance on the servers side if the opposite were true?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    that’s not the experience of the majority of people in this thread

    I'm willing to bet the majority of people in this thread already forgot about the "linuxism" they had to deal with when they were starting, and are experienced enough to handle any new ones as they come along.

    Don’t you think there would be a tiny bit more Windows dominance on the servers side if the opposite were true?

    Linux dominates the server realm for a completely different reason - Linux-based servers supported hot-updates much sooner than Windows Server did, and in systems where uptime was critical, people chose Linux. That also meant that the vast majority of "server admins" had Linux experience which also contributed.

    This is slowly changing now - if you look at market stats, you can see that Windows Server is (painfully slowly, granted) regaining some momentum.

    EDIT: also, fun fact - I used to work at a company that had around 300 MacBooks and 2500 Windows devices. Back then I was working as a Service Desk agent. The distribution of incidents for Windows and MacOS we were getting was VERY close to 50-50... So, it seems to me that "Windows is known, has been known, and probably will be known for having shit break randomly" mostly among people who don't use Windows.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah, "linuxism", that must be it... That or it's possible that the OS and distributions have evolved while you were not looking.

    Linux dominates on servers because of that yes. Also because of its licensing costs, being open source, stable, secure (please don't try to tell me Windows is more secure, please please please), better performance and lesser response time. Because a Debian stable will never break with simple security updates. I am also quite curious about getting a source for that claim that Windows Server is coming back.

    Finally, do tell me where I mentioned MacOS. Unless you think that MacOS and Linux are the same? That wouldn't surprise me considering your apparent knowledge (or lack of) about Linux. FYI MacOS is based on a BSD kernel.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The big benefit of linux servers for most businesses is that they tend to be configure-once systems, where you set it up, verify it works then no further maintenance is needed beyond applying updates in line with your update schedule and downtime windows. Sure there will every once in a while be something that changes but far less than you see with Windows Server where some registry values stopped working with a recent windows update without warning so now you have to track down new registry values to recreate the behavior. That and tracking down why Windows decided to ignore all of your settings and reboot this time (and how to stop it again)

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, “linuxism”, that must be it… That or it’s possible that the OS and distributions have evolved while you were not looking.

    As in: between today and six months ago, when I moved my personal PC to Linux and encountered various weird shit that just doesn't happen on Windows?

    secure (please don’t try to tell me Windows is more secure, please please please)

    Wait, are you one of those weird people who believe that there are no viruses on Linux and no security tools are needed?

    Windows servers are under constant attack... Just like Linux devices are at all times.

    I am also quite curious about getting a source for that claim that Windows Server is coming back.

    I didn't say "it's coming back". WS is still losing market share, but the losses slowed down pretty significantly in recent years. Sorry, I can't find the source again because Google is shite. Feel free to disregard this point.

    Finally, do tell me where I mentioned MacOS. Unless you think that MacOS and Linux are the same? That wouldn’t surprise me considering your apparent knowledge (or lack of) about Linux. FYI MacOS is based on a BSD kernel.

    Fuck off with this tone, mate.

    I mentioned MacOS as an example that Windows is not as buggy as you seem to believe. I guess that went over your head and I should denigrate you now?

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