I was so reluctant to transition to Linux for gaming. I’ve been using Linux since 2007, so I’m not new to the OS.
I took the plunge a handful of months ago, and it is an amazing experience. The games I like to play actually saw performance gains when switching over.
I still dual boot a Win 10 partition for outliers, but so far the only game to get installed there has been BF6, due to the requirements of their anti-cheat.
Lmfao it’s a piece of shit, basically I have all three of my drives hanging out of the 5.25 bay on the front of my machine. That way I can easily unplug my 2 Linux drives when I enable secure boot. Otherwise my Linux won’t boot, which fucking sucks to fix. So basically it’s a pain in the ass and BF6 just isn’t good enough for me to spend that effort.
Some distros like Mint support ‘secure boot’ out of the box, so dual booting works fine without any extra work. But I haven’t used Nvidia drivers yet, so idk about that.
It’s funny. I also was very hesitant to make the jump from Windows, but finally did in 2025. I was dual booting for a while until I realized I hadn’t been into the Windows one in months because it was a pain in the ass for various reasons. So I just got rid of it.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I won’t be able to play certain games. Their loss; there’s plenty of other games to buy with my money.
I was dual booting for a while until I realized I hadn’t been into the Windows one in months because it was a pain in the ass for various reasons. So I just got rid of it.
A very old familiar story over the past couple decades or so.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I won’t be able to play certain games. Their loss
Yup.
It shall continue being good to see other people get this, taking their power back, ceasing being their games dealer’s bitch.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I won’t be able to play certain games. Their loss; there’s plenty of other games to buy with my money.
Same.
I have a backlog of games years long, the fact that I can’t put Battlefield or Valorant on that list doesn’t diminish my ability to play amazing games 24/7 if I wanted.
Expedtion 33, Blue Prince, Hollow Knight, Silksong, Hades 2, ARC Raiders, Helldivers 2, Path of Exile 2, Deep Rock Galactic, etcetcetc.
I have over 200 games in my Steam library and every single one works on Linux. I’ll worry about the 5 kernel anti-cheat games once I get to the end of my list…
Same experience here. I’ve used Linux for decades. Always on my servers. Occasionally on a desktop here or there. Tried to daily-drive it on a single computer or laptop many times. Got close a couple times, but ultimately always fell back to Windows when the going got tough, when hardware support wasn’t available or the errors and misconfigurations became too convoluted or I simply fell back into the habit of regularly using programs that simply didn’t work or weren’t available in any form on Linux.
When I came back to it a year or two ago? That experience totally changed. The tables have flipped completely. Linux is now the compatible, straightforward, quickly-fixed, and often even user-friendly option while Windows has turned into a frustrating shitshow of blocking and opting-out of misfeatures and reconfiguring shit that breaks all the time with Microsoft’s ideological “updates”.
Switching to Linux on my grandma’s computer was a breath of fresh air for both of us. Then I switched one of my laptops. I remained impressed. It took some self-convincing, but eventually I got brave enough to switch my main gaming PC/desktop workstation… and with a little bit of work, it was soon perfectly lovely (I’m typing this on it right now). I’ve been running PikaOS, a gaming-focused Debian variant for over a year now and it’s been an utterly fantastic experience. I have zero complaints. Are there still some rough edges? Yes, absolutely, but I don’t mind. I use them to file the callouses off my bash-scripting fingers while I figure out a way to smooth them down.
I’m pretty savvy and experienced with Linux, and I realize it’s probably not ready for everyone yet, but it’s ready for more people than you’d think. For grandma, who only uses web browser and word processor and email, Linux is a straight upgrade in user experience, stability, functionality, everything. For Gamers, everything you need is almost all out there already, thanks to Steam and Wine and Proton and the gaming-focused distros and all the ecosystem that’s built up around that. Ironically it’s the technically competent Windows “Power Users” who might still struggle the most, they won’t have the survival skills they need to operate at the level they expect in a Linux ecosystem yet.
It would also be good enough for a Power User to work at grandma’s level with zero effort, or a Gamer level if they were willing to just blindly follow copy-and-pasted instructions, but that justifiably won’t be enough for them. To work at a Power User level in Linux, you need to learn some different skills. Maybe you can get those on the server side and through stubborn trial and error, like I did, or maybe Linux will eventually get good enough that it’s intuitive to do everything even Windows Power Users want to do eventually. But I don’t think it’s quite there yet for that group. It takes some effort, for sure.
The games I like to play actually saw performance gains when switching over.
Yes. That’s part what got me to let go of my dual-booting habit.
When booted to Windows, I would get tempted to play something (that I had installed on both sides) lazily without rebooting back to Linux, and it would suck.
For me, it’s Final Fantasy XI - it’s a million years old and it actually does run fine on Linux, but some of the third party QOL tools I use to make it less painful to play don’t work (or at least I can’t figure out how to get them to work) through Lutris.
I was so reluctant to transition to Linux for gaming. I’ve been using Linux since 2007, so I’m not new to the OS.
I took the plunge a handful of months ago, and it is an amazing experience. The games I like to play actually saw performance gains when switching over.
I still dual boot a Win 10 partition for outliers, but so far the only game to get installed there has been BF6, due to the requirements of their anti-cheat.
I also have a spare windows drive for BF6, but it’s so unbelievably mid that in practice I don’t really even play it
I can’t disagree. But a couple of friends and I like to play a few casual bot rounds on Friday nights.
How easy was it to do the signed boot?
Lmfao it’s a piece of shit, basically I have all three of my drives hanging out of the 5.25 bay on the front of my machine. That way I can easily unplug my 2 Linux drives when I enable secure boot. Otherwise my Linux won’t boot, which fucking sucks to fix. So basically it’s a pain in the ass and BF6 just isn’t good enough for me to spend that effort.
Some distros like Mint support ‘secure boot’ out of the box, so dual booting works fine without any extra work. But I haven’t used Nvidia drivers yet, so idk about that.
It’s funny. I also was very hesitant to make the jump from Windows, but finally did in 2025. I was dual booting for a while until I realized I hadn’t been into the Windows one in months because it was a pain in the ass for various reasons. So I just got rid of it.
I’ve made peace with the fact that I won’t be able to play certain games. Their loss; there’s plenty of other games to buy with my money.
A very old familiar story over the past couple decades or so.
Yup.
It shall continue being good to see other people get this, taking their power back, ceasing being their games dealer’s bitch.
Same.
I have a backlog of games years long, the fact that I can’t put Battlefield or Valorant on that list doesn’t diminish my ability to play amazing games 24/7 if I wanted.
Expedtion 33, Blue Prince, Hollow Knight, Silksong, Hades 2, ARC Raiders, Helldivers 2, Path of Exile 2, Deep Rock Galactic, etcetcetc.
I have over 200 games in my Steam library and every single one works on Linux. I’ll worry about the 5 kernel anti-cheat games once I get to the end of my list…
Same experience here. I’ve used Linux for decades. Always on my servers. Occasionally on a desktop here or there. Tried to daily-drive it on a single computer or laptop many times. Got close a couple times, but ultimately always fell back to Windows when the going got tough, when hardware support wasn’t available or the errors and misconfigurations became too convoluted or I simply fell back into the habit of regularly using programs that simply didn’t work or weren’t available in any form on Linux.
When I came back to it a year or two ago? That experience totally changed. The tables have flipped completely. Linux is now the compatible, straightforward, quickly-fixed, and often even user-friendly option while Windows has turned into a frustrating shitshow of blocking and opting-out of misfeatures and reconfiguring shit that breaks all the time with Microsoft’s ideological “updates”.
Switching to Linux on my grandma’s computer was a breath of fresh air for both of us. Then I switched one of my laptops. I remained impressed. It took some self-convincing, but eventually I got brave enough to switch my main gaming PC/desktop workstation… and with a little bit of work, it was soon perfectly lovely (I’m typing this on it right now). I’ve been running PikaOS, a gaming-focused Debian variant for over a year now and it’s been an utterly fantastic experience. I have zero complaints. Are there still some rough edges? Yes, absolutely, but I don’t mind. I use them to file the callouses off my bash-scripting fingers while I figure out a way to smooth them down.
I’m pretty savvy and experienced with Linux, and I realize it’s probably not ready for everyone yet, but it’s ready for more people than you’d think. For grandma, who only uses web browser and word processor and email, Linux is a straight upgrade in user experience, stability, functionality, everything. For Gamers, everything you need is almost all out there already, thanks to Steam and Wine and Proton and the gaming-focused distros and all the ecosystem that’s built up around that. Ironically it’s the technically competent Windows “Power Users” who might still struggle the most, they won’t have the survival skills they need to operate at the level they expect in a Linux ecosystem yet.
It would also be good enough for a Power User to work at grandma’s level with zero effort, or a Gamer level if they were willing to just blindly follow copy-and-pasted instructions, but that justifiably won’t be enough for them. To work at a Power User level in Linux, you need to learn some different skills. Maybe you can get those on the server side and through stubborn trial and error, like I did, or maybe Linux will eventually get good enough that it’s intuitive to do everything even Windows Power Users want to do eventually. But I don’t think it’s quite there yet for that group. It takes some effort, for sure.
Yes. That’s part what got me to let go of my dual-booting habit.
When booted to Windows, I would get tempted to play something (that I had installed on both sides) lazily without rebooting back to Linux, and it would suck.
For me, it’s Final Fantasy XI - it’s a million years old and it actually does run fine on Linux, but some of the third party QOL tools I use to make it less painful to play don’t work (or at least I can’t figure out how to get them to work) through Lutris.