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Given I’m actively avoiding modern multiplayer games for more reasons than just the fact that they pretty much all have rootkit DRM (I know kernel-level anticheats have a different target than traditional DRM, but they’re functionally DRM so they count as DRM to me), and one of the few games I have left which were unplayably broken on Proton work now (Civ3, still has audio issues that to my knowledge can’t be corrected for non-destructively, but the black-map issue is now fixed, at least on my end using proton-cachyos), I have no plans on running Windows again any time soon, not even in a VM.
Bottles.
There’s a flatpak called Bottles that does a pretty decent job of setting up a containerized Windows /WINE environment, if you have some program or game you can’t get to work quite right by chucking it into Lutris or Steam.
But I can’t be bothered to play windows games
I mostly use it for dev tools that only barely technically support linux, or just don’t at all.
That and uh… lets call them homebrew game decompression executables.
… yeah… yep.
I hate PCGamer’s website. Everytime I get partway through an article, a pop-up shows asking me to sign up to their newsletter. Now the pop-up alone would turn me off of their website, but what happens is the pop-up scrolls the article all the way back to the top of the page. So I completely lose my reading position.
PCGamer isn’t the only site to do this, but I think it’s one of the more popular ones that do.
The other thing that sites do now that earns an instant DNS block on my pihole, is capturing the back action that prevents leaving the site to show a pop-up that says “wait, before you go, check out these other articles” or something along those lines. HELL… NO!
Yeah, DHTML popups aren’t much different from the old popups that used to plague the internet. The only real difference is that I haven’t seen them used maliciously like the old popups were to be super annoying, but even “good faith” uses were all “hey, stop what you’re doing and do this for me” without any shame that went along with a real person doing that in a store.
I look forward to the day someone gets an AI to block this shit (on the assumption that it’s more complicated than blocking the old style popups without interfering with legitimate DHTML and needs context awareness).
My theory is that all this is the fault of the cookie law. Before that, the design philosophy was that you could not break the flow of a visitor by pop-ups etc., because they would go somewhere else before even looking at your content.
When all the big websites suddenly implemented increasingly annoying cooking consent dialogs, the flow was already broken everywhere. And so now the floodgates had opened for all kinds “subscribe to our newsletter”, “get a welcome 10% rebate” etc., because users no longer has the expectation of an unbroken flow.
And, my god was that law stupid. What we needed was carefully balanced non-negotiable limits on what websites were allowed to do in terms of tracking users; what we got was every website implementing a site-dependent UI for functionality already present in every web browser (“turn off cookies”). The rules got different when GDPR arrived later, both for the better and for the worse. But the flow-breaking pop-ups we will probably never get rid of now that the public has learned to live with them.
End of rant.
how does steam operate on Linux? anything I need to do to port over stuff?
Proton has been a game changer, I’ve been using opensuse tw for about a year and a half now and the number of issues I’ve run into running steam games I can count on one hand.
I’ve mostly stuck to SteamOS myself, since trying to install Wine manually (on Ubuntu) to run a couple of Windows apps went alarmingly badly. Command after command, and I could still only get it to start as root.
There’s definitely still room for a distro that loads, scans your drive for a Windows partition and Windows apps, and just lets you run them with minimal fuss.
Check out Bottles. It has been great for getting stuff to work outside of steam - tons of options for different versions of wine and does most of the work for you. Although, you can just add any windows program you want to use Proton as a “non-steam game” in steam, and let steam sort it out with Proton. The downside there is that Steam will always be trying to tell people that you are “currently playing” whatever it is… So I used that for WoW (technically Blizzard launcher), but didn’t want to use that for just programs.
Mostly it just works. The Steam Deck runs Linux and they’ve put a lot of effort into making as many games as possible work on it. At the same time, AI has made video cards work very well on Linux too.
If you want the latest mmo shooter it might not work but so far every game I’ve played has worked with no hassle.
AI didn’t do shit
The Steam Deck is Linux.
Part of the huge movement towards Linux is that Valve have been pushing HARD to make Devs make sure their games work on Linux
If by “port over stuff” you mean play your games, then you generally are going to do the same thing you would on Windows - go to steam, click the game, and click install. 98% of my library that I have tried playing since switching to Linux worked just that easily. A couple of games that I bought in early access or as soon as they released, I went into the properties for the game (in steam) and changed the compatibility setting to use “Proton Experimental” instead of whatever the default version was and then they worked fine. Disclaimer I do not play games that require kernal anti-cheat and have not for several years on principle. Many of those do not work in Linux as an active decision to block by the developers.
Now, if by “port over stuff” you are meaning you want to move your save games and the like, they might be a little trickier as the file paths will be different on Linux than Windows (because you don’t have the same OS file structure). You can usually find where they need to go relatively easily, and if you have been using cloud saves in Steam those should come over just fine without doing anything.
If people don’t need any specific software and can adapt to the Linux alternatives, like LibreOffice… people will see some distros are now easier than Windows to use… and… you don’t have bad surprises on updates
Libreoffice is frankly really cumbersome to use. I’ve found that OnlyOffice is significantly more user-friendly, and that’s been my go-to recommendation for office replacements
Couldn’t get Europa Universalis III to work on Steam, though.
I could not figure out how to play Europa Universalis III.
o7
(tears streaming down my face, Born in the USA on soundtrack)
I’m brave enough to say it
This person’s writing style is, frankly, well, pretty obnoxious.
At least it’s not AI
…yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man…
I read your comment and started reading the article. I started feeling a little self-conscious over my liberal use of Oxford commas, as his sentence structure wasn’t that much different from mine. But then I got to my tenth fucking “, well,” and “, frankly,” and realized what you were upset about. This is, well, quite frankly, highly respectable journalism.
Hurr durr something something drivers, something something recompile the kernel, something something only if your time is worthless.
Made the switch to Ubuntu in 2019. The only time I use windows is at work, sadly, but in my main computer, that malware hasn’t been installed for years
I started using linux a few months ago after a longer break. It’s so smooth and i hardly ever use windows. There are some niche things that don’t support linux, and some need a bunch of workarounds. I don’t even think linux needs to improve more, but i do hope comparability is going up
I started to enjoy my Ubuntu install after I gave up on the idea of using my computer for tinkering or work.
I just use it for the browser and steam nowadays. Also I did my thesis fully in Ubuntu with libreoffice but that’s the last professional stuff I did with it, aside from some programming.
Nowadays it just works xd
I am on Linux and never looking back to Windows (except if I have to use Microsoft Teams for interviews).
I have to use Teams for work and it works fine in a (Chrome-based) browser. I have a Chromium install that I only use for work stuff.
I had several issues using teams on browsers before so I felt compelled to use Windows for the app. But I admit that I never tried using it on Chromium so I will try next time.
If you can handle the browser version, works fine on Linux with Firefox.
Doesn’t Teams work in browsers, though (as a guest at least)?
I tried. I really tried. I think i sent through 3 different distros. But my gpu doesn’t like any of them also playnite isn’t on linux yet
It happens. Particularly shitty proprietary hardware has held me back from upgrading in the past, as well. It is what it is.
I hope we see more mainstream support for Linux by hardware vendors in the next few years.
It’s really mostly a labeling problem. Even vendors who have great processes to publish drivers can’t seem to be bothered to slap a Linux Mint sticker on the box.
Which GPU
Nvidia obviously
Nvidia
Try CachyOS or Bazzite and do not stray from defaults. If it suggests you use the legacy Nvidia driver, you say “yes sir” and do as it says.
A huge fraction of linux trouble comes from picking a distro with bad defaults, or messing with good defaults.
playnite
It seems they are planning to move: https://github.com/JosefNemec/Playnite/issues/59#issuecomment-3542246599
I’m planning to move to Linux in 2026 after P11 is done, and since Playnite is my personal blocker for the move, I will try to make some Linux version in 2026. Definitely not fully featured version on parity with Windows version of P11, and probably desktop mode only, but something daily drivable with Linux specific features (Wine/Proton integration for example).
If that goes well, I’ll start looking into P11 Avalonia porting proper say I mentioned in previous update.
It’s more interesting to ask which 3 distros was tried 😁
I switched my gaming pc to Linux and all the games I tried so far worked good.
Switching the household’s PCs to avoid the Windows 11 BS here. All my stuff is good so far, but the kids have a few games that don’t work - Minecraft Bedrock, Fortnite, and Roblox.
If your kids really need Roblox to work, they could try Sober. I personally don’t play Roblox, so I’ve never tried it, but I’ve heard good things about it.
time to switch them to java edition, bedrock sucks anyway
Use PrismLauncher for Minecraft! :)
Isn’t that just for Java Edition though? Bedrock has a different launcher, with more modes and mtx to “enjoy”
honestly it’s a good excuse to switch them to java edition, bedrock kinda sucks
Have you seen the Schlep controversy? Personally, I would be glad if my family PC suddenly couldn’t run Roblox and “sorry kiddo it just doesn’t work anymore”
Probably for the best, lol. At the very least, Roblox isn’t particularly good for kids.
Also, modded Minecraft through Prism beats bedrock any day of the week. I’m hoping when my kids are of age, they’ll be down for an expert pack. My daughter sure as hell will be, she’s as weird as I am. I’m sure more normal kids have packs they’d enjoy, though.
That makes Linux even more attractive!
Mine are playing Minecraft and Roblox under Linux without problems. I don’t remember what I did for Minecraft, but for Roblox you need something called ‘Sober’.
Minecraft runs natively. One version is Java, so thats easy enough. I think the C++ version has an installer.
IMO, the hardest part of moving over is relearning a bunch of things you’ve taken for granted. However, Windows has been changing and breaking things at such a rapid pace, that not even my friends who still use it can keep track.
