This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
If you absolutely must use windows
Download the Pro ISO from windows.
Use MicroWin to create an iso without tpm requirements and with offline installation
Use MAS and use only the Enterprise edition. You might need to upgrade to Professional first.
Then use WindowsDebloater to tailor it to your liking.
I finally switched to Linux for my daily driver and gaming PC. It was easy.
So honestly, which percentage of your game collection runs on Linux? Because I've looked into doing this just a few months ago, and unless the industry had some kind of mass exodus, less than 10% of my games run on Linux, and that's a generous estimate.
Not defending Windows or anything, this is just my experience.
At this point it's pretty much only the competitive games with kernel level anti-cheat that don't work on Linux because of their kernel level anti-cheat.
But then again, if 90% of the games you play are competitive games that require kernel level anti-cheat, you should probably consider expanding your gaming experience lol
I know you're getting a ton of replies already, but I switched to Arch Linux two months back or so and I just want to say nearly every game I've tried works great out of the box, a handful of games required me to go to my steam settings a flip a switch or copy and paste something from protondb, and no games have failed to work.
Gaming on Linux is so good that you end up flipping one switch in steam and get nearly perfect performance (with most games running identically or better than they did on Windows for me). It's been such a surprise, I just played the Arc Raiders technical Alpha and I thought for sure Linux would fail me then. And it did. For the first day, then on the second day they patched proton and the game and I played all week and weekend with zero issues. It was fantastic!
I would highly encourage any gamer who's thinking about switching to Linux but worried their games won't work to not worry as much. Check protondb for your favorites, but you can safely assume most game work out of the box.
Thanks, I appreciate your insights! I wonder how many people like me are simply looking at publisher notes and under the impression Linux isn't sorted. I'm genuinely impressed by the overwhelming feedback that it's simply good, and I'm excited to try it.
Ya, happy to spread the word! I was hesitant for a long while for the same reason but then Steam Deck happened and I looked into it more and BAM here we are. It's one of the more hopeful changes in this tech landscape - the growth of open source and/or free software that's often equivalent to the paid software.
idk where you looked, protondb.com is a good database for this stuff, from your later reply insurgency sandstorm and hund showdown are both "gold" rated, they should be okay
but the thing is ... you could just try for yourself, for free
Honestly I have a ridiculous pile o' games like a lot of us do, and I've yet to find something (that's not VR) that I cannot play .
For reference I'm running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with a 30 series Nvidia card. Wayland, two monitors, main is 144hz ultrawide 3440 x 1440, another is 1080p 60hz.
First off there's a few programs out there to get you "Glorious Eggroll" versions of Proton which add even more stuff Valve can't distribute in their versions.
This beautiful software right here looks about right: https://davidotek.github.io/protonup-qt/
Steam works fantastically. Heck, Proton works better than native Linux builds sometimes! Deck playability is an even bigger mark of quality.
Even EA's silly launcher works. I got Titanfall 2 and that Sims 2 Ultimate they gave away ages ago working like butter.
I also love actually owning my games, so I use Heroic Launcher for GoG titles.
Oh! I even have CD games or old .EXEs windows would refuse to even install anymore! Don't worry, Linux has got this. I use Bottles to have separate environments for those games to install to and run. Majority of the time it works great but this is where things can get iffy. But hey, Windows wouldn't run them at all!
Wanna know what made me switch? Vermintide 2 kept giving me BSODs in Windows 10 with some super vague error code that made me think "Oh crap, please don't tell me my GPU is dying."
Nope! Linux ran it with zero probs once I fixed some small quirk to make their dumb little launcher work.
Cherry on top? All my RGB stuff works with Open RGB or my recently retired Corsair keyboard works with "CKB Next".
The community has made incredible strides. My Win10 partition only exists because it has Windows Mixed Reality, which they're abandoning. But not to fear, the Monado project is making HUGE improvements.
Give it a shot. I think you'll be surprised. :)
Would "Steam Deck compatibility" be a good proxy, at least for Steam games?
Im not upgrading my OS, and im not building or buying a new computer.
Im just going to ride it out until it explodes. the tech market is so messed up right now that I'll end up paying more than what I did for my Machine in 2019, and it will be comparatvely, nowhere near as much as a performance jump as when I made the last switch from my 2012 build.
MS is for a rude awakening when general populace will not update their hardware with record inflation.
Those people will do what they always do, just keep using it without security updates.
Be clear about it - you'll still get Windows Defender updates, but not patches to the OS or MS applications/Utilities.
What's MS's plan after this? Everyone I know that uses Windows/M365 hate it more with every passing day and is looking to leave.
I really don't want to be in tech support in 2029 when they kill off old outlook. There will be blood on that day.
Linux comes in a million flavors but most people should start with Mint. That sounds like a pun, but it's also true.
Mint is a nice, safe, up-to-date, simple, Windows-like choice that won't unnecessarily complicate the transition to an entirely different operating system. It has good hardware support and good defaults. Most things will feel very familiar and be very accessible. It is popular enough to find plenty of help on the internet and answers to almost every question you could have. It mostly just works and when it doesn't it's usually not a deal-breaker.
It's not my favourite distro, but you aren't ready for my favourite distro. Honestly I'm barely ready for my favourite distro. It's not elitism, it's just practicality. You'll learn as you go, and you'll eventually want to try other distros, but start with Mint, and keep a Mint system around for when you break everything else. Which you will if you start playing with other distros.
That is your opinion
Ask 100 Linux users and you will get 100 different distro recommendations for newbies.
It is one of the main reasons Linux wont be going mainstream. Not until the Linux community get their shit together and finally agree on one "good" distro.
