Posted by throwaway270925 7 hours ago
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.
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.
Really interested to see where Valve goes with the new hardware. I love my Steam Deck, so I have faith they'll do a good job.
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?
It really feels like evertying is ligned up for the year of Linux in the Living room and yeah, it's really good to see.
Windows 11 has been fine for me, I don't interact with it much other than seeing it for a bit when launching games.
I honestly wouldn't mind giving Linux a go, the only downside is I made the mistake of buying an nvidia graphics card, I'm not sure how much of a pain it is these days but last time I tried it was a bit of a nightmare - the general wisdom at the time was to go with an AMD card.
Though I will say I have encountered issues in the past with a Linux gaming computer which experienced issues with the Nvidia drivers anytime I decided to update the distro (I was using Kubuntu at the time).
I've only had to fully reinstall once every ~2 years or so, and it's usually due to some problem with my DE/system not booting that I can't be fucked to troubleshoot. That's mostly my fault for running GNOME on a rolling distro. I just back up my home dir to the storage drive and I'm back up and running in less than an hour. Other than that, it just continues to work and I can be reasonably assured that if I don't touch it, it'll be fine.