Posted by throwaway270925 11/19/2025
What a mess this thing is. Though, I am definitely not moving to W11, so Linux will be in my future one way or another.
There is the school of thought that Wine is merely the Linux gaming ABI, and I largely agree. Native Linux binaries "feels" better but doesn't bring much from a practical standpoint.
Jonathan Blow is sharpshooting and being intentionally difficult in order to sound smart (he really needs to engage in that behavior less, he's smart enough as-is). Virtually nobody bothers with Linux-native binaries for games. Compile your game for Windows, test it on Linux+Proton, find that it probably works fine, it's not hard.
Well, that was exactly his point.
I don't think an Epic games launcher is exactly obscure. Mind you, I'm completely commmitted to Linux and having the launcher is just in the "nice to have" category, but it hasn't gone well so far.
Steam is working flawlessly. Other than anti-cheat, I haven't run across anything that doesn't play exactly like its windows counterpart.
- git clone the heroic-games-launcher AUR repo,
- makepkg -sc,
- pacman -U.
And it just worked. This was something like a month ago, though so maybe my experience is more recent?
I'm really curious what would be the appropriate solution for an anti cheat that runs on Linux in a way that a) does not compromise my OS/privacy/security b) protects the game from cheaters at the same time.
It would restrict you to a series of whitelisted kernels, probably from major distributions, but it's better than the current situation.
i remember their anti cheat was utter crap tbh, not like something that Riot implemented for Valorant (a kernel-level system that runs from boot-up with deep system access)
Unfortunately it turns out that I depend on too many desktop apps that runs on the major desktop OSes but not on Linux (or on Wine, for that matter).
* KakaoTalk, the major South Korean IM app ran on Wine for a week, but the updater doesn't work and freshly reinstalling the app broke Wine for some reason. (I tried removing the whole ~/.wine prefix, but it doesn't work.) Now I'm stuck without KakaoTalk.
* Discord is only provided as a x86_64 Deb file and a .tar.gz file. I tried using it from Firefox, and it works fine but audio sharing during screen sharing doesn't work.
* Disconnecting from my Bluetooth AirPods somehow does not stop my music. I'm not sure if this is an AirPods limitation or a Linux limitation (since I've never used AirPods with Windows), but it annoyed me endlessly.
* USB-C DP mode and the fingerprint sensor doesn't work. This is an Asahi Linux limitation, but I've seen various parts of the hardware not working when using other Linux distributions on laptops as well. I feel this is a common occurrence.
Not to mention that the lack of text editing shortcuts that macOS has, which is a big deal to me (but I tried as that is a macOS-ism).
I carried my MBA for 4 days before I gave up today. I brought my MBP today with me.
I think this is by design, not limitation. On android, changing sound device stops music playback. On windows and linux, changing sound device doesn't stop sound. I tried it with wired headphones, maybe expectations for BT are different, but I think that comes from smartphones.
This really is a special case, they've had to write new drivers for everything in the Apple Silicon Macs and they haven't gotten that working yet. I have in fact been waiting on this feature for a few years now as I want to use a MBP with the lid closed and two monitors plugged in, but currently only the HDMI works and not most USB-C functionality. This is not at all the norm in x86_64 land where more normal hardware is used. I'm still using a ThinkPad T440p and thinking about getting a T14 gen 5 due to the MBP I got a few years ago not being satisfying/fun to use, comparatively.
As for Discord and AirPods and such, the more proprietary stuff you need, the worse time you'll have. Though I just saw something in the news that might help with the AirPods. Check out LibrePods.
I would suggest trying something other then Asahi linux! I know that their support with Mac systems is near unbeatable. But it does still tend to have some hiccups. Especially with M3+ systems.
I know that "try a different distro" is a often (user biased) and imo bad answer. But in the case of Asahi as awesome as their work is they are climbing a different mountain compared to the rest of linux development.
I've dual-booted Arch and Windows for about 16 years. I always kept Windows around for gaming, and the occasional "doesn't support Linux" workflow.
For a few years where I didn't game I found myself almost exclusively in Linux. But then I spent the last 5-6 years stuck between the two as my PC use for daily tasks dwindled, I stopped working on side projects, and I started gaming a bit more.
I hated trying to split my time between them. Most of what I used a PC for was the browser, so I could just stay in Windows most of the time. I wanted to use Linux, but rebooting to use a web browser just didn't make sense. As a result I would accidentally go 2-3 months without ever booting Arch. As a result, I had a couple of major updates that didn't go smoothly.
I wanted to use Linux, though. I like having a customized WM, I like having so many useful tools at my disposal, etc. I just like using Linux, in spite of the occasional technical complexity.
In the last couple months I rebuilt my PC and a major requirement was that I get set up to game in Linux as much as possible. I even bought an AMD card to ensure smooth driver support.
I'm so incredibly thankful that Steam has made gaming not just possible, but relatively simple. Installation was simple. My single-player games seem well supported so far. And most importantly, Steam has made it obvious they're committed to this line of support, so this isn't some hero effort that will bit rot in a couple years.
I still have to reboot to play competitive games, due to their anti-cheat requirements, but that's less of a problem, I'll take what I can get.
Not once in initial setup or first week of use did it use dark patterns to try to trick or force me into something I don’t want to do.
In any case, it's really great to see Linux overcoming its final major hurdle for a lot of technical people to dump Windows: Gaming compatibility.
Bazzite, being an atomic distro, is kind of hard to compare to. For basic use-cases like running just software available in Flathub, it is incredibly solid and easy to use. If I were choosing a Linux distro for a non-technical family member, I would go with an atomic Fedora distro and be completely confident they could get things done without breaking anything. However, if your needs are more advanced, you're going to need to be ready to relearn a lot (e.g. using containers for development), since atomic distros are a big paradigm shift from standard ones. This isn't a bad thing, just something to be ready for.
I tried Bazzite, but I'm just not a fan of how everything is installed as a flatpak. It might be more secure and allow for easy rollbacks and stuff, but it limits what apps are allowed to do by default. The main issue that caused for me is that the 1Password Firefox extension was not able to communicate with the main 1Password process. Maybe I could have tinkered with it using Flatseal, but that feels like such a hack.
There are still glaring bugs, omissions, and regressions in Windows 11 that just are not getting attention because Microsoft is 100% focused on AI instead of improving their product.
I have a MacBook Pro now. I get by. Window management drives me absolutely insane, but this is the best laptop hardware, performance, and battery life I've ever had. Windows is now shoved into a VM that I pop open only when I explicitly need it for a few work things (primarily Excel and PowerBI Desktop).
I'd go back to Windows again the moment Microsoft starts respecting their users again, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.