Is now the right time to switch to Linux?
Is now the right time to switch to Linux?
Experience: I have a bit of experience with Linux. I started around 2008, distro-hopped weekly, decided on Debian until around 2011, when I switched to Windows as I started getting interested in gaming. Tried switching back around 2015, this time using Arch Linux for about a month, but had some bad experiences with gaming and switched back to Windows. I have had a Debian and Arch VM in Virtual Box since then for testing different applications and a more coherent environment to work with servers.
Understanding: Which brings me to now, I am really interested in using Linux for gaming, I know there is Proton from Valve and that they have been really pushing Linux gaming forward with it.
Thoughts: I have been contemplating dual booting by installing Debian to an SSD and simply using the UEFI boot menu to choose instead of having to install to the EFI of Windows.
I guess, I should just do it, as it won't affect my Windows installation, and I could test different games and if all works well, move over. This would also allow me to try different distributions, though my heart is for Debian, I even like Debian Unstable.
Note: I am sorry for the wall of text, I am just kind of anxious I guess.
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I would say yes. I wanted my desktop to run linux in 2015, but the gaming situation was the biggest hurdle. I had been running linux on my laptop since ~2013, but I was constantly trying new games and couldn't tell friends "sorry, I can't run that, we have to pick something else". These days, 99% of everything I want to play runs fine using proton on arch. There are occasional times that I need to try a different build of proton, or suffer a bit of pipeline compilation, but that's about it. I don't do a lot of modern competitive games though, so anti-cheat might be a deal breaker for you. I've been able to do some EAC games without issue though (ex. Hunt: Showdown runs fine).
@teawrecks @mouse gaming on Linux has come such a long way fr. I can count the games I play regularly that still don't run on Linux one on finger (ie there is one game I still keep windows for), whereas a few years ago it was a 50/50 if a given game ran
That said getting some of those games to run required me to do some pretty heavy tinkering. Genshin for example requires you to download a third party launcher to disable some of the anti cheat checks. So I unfortunately don't think it's time to recommend linux wholeheartedly to the everyperson who isn't very good with tech.
The hard part is, idk if the anti-cheat front on Linux will ever get better than it is. Most anti-cheat fundamentally relies on the user not having root access to everything happening in their machine so that the OS, game dev, and anti-cheat SW can communicate behind the user's back to make sure no cheats are happening. Meanwhile, Linux is fundamentally about giving the user full control over any part of the OS they want. The two ideas seem mutually exclusive.
Personally, I think if I played on a dedicated Linux gaming device (ex. Steam Deck) I would be ok with giving anti-cheat root access. At that point it's no different to me than a gaming console. That might be the only feasible solution here.