I went full Linux a few months ago and haven't looked back. Steam has superb support for basically everything I could want to play -- in some cases I feel like Linux actually performs better than Windows on the same hardware. I really appreciate the huge investment Valve made into making Linux gaming work.
I'm in the process of swapping over now. Certainly some speed bumps after many years of Windows, but it's been kind of fun.
There are a few games I've hit that I can't play, but that why I'm dual booting for the near future. Linux as the daily driver and then back to windows when I have to.
Yeah a lot of games with really strong anti-piracy just don't work at all. I was shocked that Roblox was one of the few ones that just wouldn't make the jump, for example, Grapejuice notwithstanding.
I did the same, I've used Linux off and on since like 2010 but this year is the first time where everything I want to do just works. I have a windows drive available just in case but so far I haven't had to use it
I really appreciate that I can buy first-party hardware from Valve and then install and run GoG games on it without any BS barriers or workarounds.
I got some GoG games on sale yesterday. Installed Heroic Games Launcher. Logged in. Installed the games. Clicked "add to Steam library" and boom, there they are in the Steam launcher alongside my other Steam games.
This is just such a breath of fresh air in a modern world consumed by proprietary bullshit. Valve is the anti-Nintendo.
You probably can look into the arch wiki although if you don't use arch there may be some differences.
If i find the youtube video i will edit this comment and link it [here]
Alternatively here is how i did it:
•Install the bottles application (from the aur)
•install proton ge runner
•Create a new bottle
•select proton ge as runner for said bottle
•Download launcher installer (battle.net in my case)
•run application > battlenetinstaller.exe (or however it's named)
Im may not be the person asked but i can still give you 1 particularly impactful case: minecraft. Now Minecraft (java) has native linux support so this isn't valve's doing but i get a massive performance lift in minecraft. On my old pc on windows i had barely 50 fps. On Linux i had 80 that's 30 fps more with the exact same mods and settings
Windows actually can run the games faster if there's wasn't so many BS Microsoft ad services and antiviruses running in the background holding it back. I have a dual boot setup with a lite version of windows packaged by some Russian guy i don't trust and it runs things was faster than the normal MS windows.
I love that so many people rather use a sus version of windows than actual windows... on an unrelated note where would one aquire such a windows version? Asking for a friend
@Llewellyn
File system operations are often faster. This is in part due to Windows doing more; it has a more complex and more flexible permissions system.
Spawning threads and processes is also normally faster. Linux apps thinks nothing of spawning lots of processes with abandon, then have them opening and closing files all over the place. If you move it straight over to a Windows machine it will tend to run very badly as a result.
I've always wondered how good proton is when the hardware is less standardized than a console/pc hybrid. Can you really just slap in any modern x86 CPU and Nvidia Card and just go? How's driver handling? It's been years since I've used a linux desktop environment, so I'd be coming to it with navigational/file-handling skills in terminal alone.
Should work out of the box, if you want a better experience I would definitely recommend an AMD gpu. Nvidia drivers are a huge mess on Linux since Nvidia actively refuses to support Linux
What? You just have to install the proprietary drivers, they work perfectly fine. I get that if you don't want any proprietary stuff NDIVIA is not the best experience (opensource drivers are not good because of lack of support) but I'd hardly call that a huge mess.
Not the open source nvidia drivers. They don't support reclocking so there's no way to get any useable results for gaming (and if not for gaming, why use an nvidia gpu anyway? Compute isn't supported in nouveau anyway).
Not an extra thing that you have to install, an extra thing that you have to maintain, forever, instead of just letting the OS do it for you. Have you never borked your main machine with a flubbed driver update? Or found that, uh oh, you broke CUDA last time you upgraded and didn't notice until you tried to do some work?