i don't really have a reason to, as windows mostly just works
well don't switch then. nobody will benefit from convincing you to use linux.
the main thing that got me into linux was the philosophy not the technicality. the philosophy of FOSS was and still is EXTREMELY amusing to me and very in line with my beliefs. so even when sometimes a FOSS system like linux is not working as good as the other proprietary alternatives (like windows), I still prefer and love the FOSS option and will put in time to make it work. I honestly think if you are not a follower of the philosophy, you won't benefit as much from the ecosystem.
I game a lot and while I know Linux gaming is getting near effortless, work as well uses a lot of Microsoft stuff (365) and CAD. I can't therefore won't daily drive linux. I have it on dualboot for my own exploration and pleasure. Do what works.
what i meant is there's nothing wrong with windows in terms of it working, but I'm not a huge fan of my os being controlled by a massive corporation, and i love the concept of foss
also I've seen good performance gains on other computer that I've installed Linux on, but i don't use those enough to say that I've experienced linux
Sounds like you're seriously considering the switch. I recommend to just continue to use the second machine, try to get everything you need to run or find suitable replacements.
That's what I did over about 1.5 years and eventually I felt there's nothing missing anymore and I dared to switch my daily driver. Haven't looked back since and it's an awesome feeling not to have to worry about Microsoft's newest atrocities in their next Windows version.
I don't know how others feel about it here, but I've recently returned to Linux as well and picked Pop!_OS for my gaming PC. The main draw was that you can download a spin with the Nvidia drivers preinstalled, so you can get up and running without any faff. It's also just really nice to use in general.
The caveat to all that is that the Nvidia drivers in the distro's repo are currently a little out of date, although a more up to date release is apparently due "soon" and should be completely tested for compatibility.
Echo has been playing around with NVK+DXVK a bit and has succeeded in getting some games playing. It's still early days and requires some hacks. However, there are a few titles working and I was able to demo Hollow Knight and F1 2017 at the Collabora meet-up in May.
Linux has had this nifty feature since Kernel 2.6 known as GPUDirect, which is essentially the equivalent of DirectStorage on Linux.
The marketing hype around DirectStorage suggests that it's a fresh Windows feature, but in reality, it's just a substantial fix aimed at tackling the sluggish IO performance on Windows due to the design flaws.
I dual-booted for about three years, went back to Windows-only for a while because of hardware compatibility issues, dual-booted for another two and am now Linux-only. It just works better. I like the FOSS philosophy and the lack of built-in spyware and bloat, but here's two practical reasons why I prefer Linux:
More bang for your buck. Linux systems can be made to be just as bloated and sluggish as Windows, but as a general rule they're lighter and more responsive and you get more out of your hardware. Up until recently I was rocking hardware from 2013 and playing games whose "minimal" hardware requirements were more than what I had, sometimes by a lot, just because Linux uses fewer resources, leaving more available for your applications to use. This effect is negligible when talking about GPUs but pretty significant for the rest.
Package management. The Microsoft App Store is a joke. Yes, there are some great third-party solutions like Chocolatey, but by and large if you want a Windows app or driver you need to get it from the developer, install it manually and updating everything is a mess. Some apps auto-update, others notify you that updates are available and then update themselves, others notify you but you have to download and install the update yourself, and yet others you have to keep track of entirely on your own. There is no library management to speak of, and don't get me started on Windows Update. With Linux package managers, all the software you want is available in one place and the entire system can be updated with a single command. It dramatically cuts down on the time you waste keeping everything at the newest version, makes rolling back to previous versions easier and is just simpler and more organized. Less time doing busywork, more time doing what you want to do.
Windows has many advantages that can't be denied. I'm not one of those Windows-hating Linux fanboys. Marketing isn't the only reason why it has such a dominant market share. But currently, I believe that for many use cases, including my own, Linux is the superior solution.
NuGet is restricted to .Net software packages IIRC, while other options like Chocolatey and Ninite can be used to install and maintain a larger variety of software (while Ninite's selection is pretty small too, it does cover the essentials).
Chocolatey is as close to Linux package management as you can get in Windows and I used it a lot when I was dual-booting. In fact, it's part of the reason why I decided to do the full switch: I realized that I was "Linuxifying" my Windows install more and more and Chocolatey was a huge part of that.
I currently use Arch Linux on my laptop and EndeavourOS on my desktop. They're essentially the same, but Endeavour is a lot easier to install. But I would only recommend them for users who already know their way around a Linux system, as they require some technical knowledge to manage.
For a beginner, I think that the three best options are Pop!_OS, Linux Mint and Feren OS. They all share an Ubuntu base, which means the same package manager and software repos, but add a lot of value with their customizations. I suggest downloading their Live ISOs, trying them out via USB and going with whichever one you think looks the best. Feren's KDE and Mint's Cinnamon desktops look and handle very similar to Windows while Pop! uses GNOME, which is a bit different but also very functional. KDE is lighter on resources, looks very good and is what I use on both my machines.
upon further consideration, gnome doesn't seem like what i would like, and I've tried it before, never really liking it. will be going with mint cinnamon
That's a great choice. You can always change your mind later anyway, but Cinnamon is familiar, functional and while not very customizable, has a very clean look by default.
Yes, linux can work with NTFS drives with no issues. Just make sure to disable fast boot on windows (and check after every windows updates, those bastards will change your settings sooner or later) to make sure it shuts down properly and doesn’t leave the drive in a dirty state.
Then just point steam to the same folder as on windows and it will pick all your games up. If you start one, steam will create a proton prefix to make it run on linux.
If they don’t have cloud sync, yes. But most games have that nowadays, so it should be fine. Just make sure not to delete proton prefixes (which are what you call wines C drive) if they contain saves. I lost my borderlands 2 progress that way.
capitain jack sparrows editions usually don't have could save lol. ill make sure to save a copy of the files on an external drive just to be safe. to :)
Is that in theory or tried and true? I never seriously attempted it because I was afraid one of the two sides (of, Windows) would just go crazy and fuck everything up.
I’ve seen people recommend it all over the internet and I use it myself. I even start games that are installed on the windows C drive from linux without any problems.
I went ahead and tried it myself, I used to have linux friendly games installed on Pop_OS! and windows stuff installed on Windows.
This was not as smooth as suggested:
on Linux if Steam is the Flatpak version (like mine was) it can’t see anything outside itself (and I guess the standard library) so for a while I was stuck unable and cofused about importing my NTFS drive windows library.
my personal recommendation at this point is to install flatseal, it’s a tool that helps in managing granting new permissions to flatpaks, and grant it the capability to read, write and create (/whateverpathyouneed:create).
granting access to the folder containing steam library folder DID NOT WORD for God knows what reason, Steam saw it as “not under it’s control” and would not see the games inside but just, I guess, random stuff totally not steam games. I had to grant it access to the whole drive (we are talking flatseal here) and then in Steam I could successfully select the library folder and have it see the games.
All good right? Wrong. It all looks fine but none of the game launch with minor (native) exception. For example, Dota 2 (we are talking the windows installation) through proton doesn’t launch (it used to when installed from Linux) but it launch native (running very poorly I may add). The few games I had installed on the linux partition launch without issues through Proton. NONE of the “Windows” games is willing to abide to the laws of logic and just blueballs me by letting steam go through the N steps of downloading setting un proton layers and stuff, only to quietly go back to a the green “Play” button.
???
profit
So I’m sure there is something I am missing, I would exclude some permission lacking from the flatpak because of course I went and reinstalled Steam as a .deb and I had the exact same effect.
I think I will try to install a game on the windows library from linux and see it that is willing to cooperate more, we’ll see.
Have you disabled fast boot in windows? If you don’t do that, it doesn’t shut down properly and leaves the drive in a dirty state, which causes issues on linux. I had the exact same problem when I had that enabled. If you boot windows after mounting a dirty drive in linux, it’ll run chkdsk. That took 15 hours for my 4TB drive, so do it overnight.
Flatpak steam is also generally a bad idea imo. Steam is the kind of application that just doesn’t fit well into the idea of containers. But if you know how to use flatseal, just do that instead of reinstalling steam.
I was 90% sure I had that disabled for the longest time, but if your issue was consistent with my behaviour I’ll double check.
I read the opposite opinion on Steam, as in, so many dependencies that it’s better it stays within its own clean flatpak instead of risking getting some wrong dependencies in the wild.
Either way, I’ll let you guys know tomorrow!
Edit: after some browsing I’m considering also working on the naming of my windows folder, specially since the path to the library includes a space. I’ll make sure also my mount is proper and that it doesn’t revert to read-only for some reason.
All I said stand true, mainly the flatpak needing to be properly set up, my problem apparently was that I didn’t pay enough attention to how I mounted the NTFS disk. To be fair there’s specific disclaimers about it on most pages I looked at, but my heart was elsewhere.
Particularly my fstab had its own standard parameters coming from Gnome Disk, while it had to use the followings:
More specifically, I changed ntfs to auto because using ntfs the disk just… vanished :|
Now games run properly from both linux and Windows. Savefiles are, mostly, not properly sinced nor shared, mostly because Steam Cloud Saves is a bit of a mess. The issue would be easy enough to solve with some occasional copy paste or setting up Syncthing for every single game.
The best thing you can do is run the games or runners from the terminal as much as you can so that you can see the logs. It can get complicated with environment variables and imported libraries and binaries and what not, so you do have to be careful that you're using all of those correctly.
Generally though, as long as you can run the runner itself (Steam, Lutris, etc) from the terminal, you should be able to see all of the logs the game itself generates as well.
Are you by chance using a laptop with 2 graphics cards? That's a fairly common issue because in that situation you sometimes have to indicate with environment variables that certain programs should use the dedicated GPU rather than the integrated GPU which is generally a lot weaker.
Oh hey, that’s pretty cool. I like that it’s being done as a Steam Workshop download instead of a forced remaster update for people who like the SD aesthetic.
Unless a link aggregator holds extraordinarily interesting discussion, which Slashdot does not in this case, it would be better to directly link the original article.
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