this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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Linux Gaming

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Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.

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[–] 101720@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

I too, am super brave for switching to Linux from Windows 11.

Joking aside, I love it. My relatively new laptop runs so much smoother on it. W11 always was doing something in the background and making my fan blast even when I wasn't using it. That's all gone and it's a much happier device.

My printer works, my wacom intous tablet works, all my steam games so far work (I haven't played every single one, but the ones I have played are fine).

Honestly, there was some things I had to troubleshoot at the beginning. I just asked AI and it gave me the terminal commands that I needed to get it done.

10/10 would recommend... if you're brave.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The biggest problem with Linux has always been windows software imo.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Most of it works fine if the devs aren't actively making it impossible to work under Wine, either as a conscious effort (which is more often than you would think) or as a side-effect of other shady practices like constant communication with servers for DRM that is poorly or aggressively implemented.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

idk, simple stuff like old versions of microsoft word, or mspaint don't work under wine.

[–] windpunch@feddit.org 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Define old. Office 2007 works.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 3 hours ago

huh. didn't in my experience.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

mspaint...? Is. Is this a troll?

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

because i like mspaint?
I've been using it for the last ~5 years for (really shitty) pixel art and i can't find anything similar enough for linux. it never worked under wine for me.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

No, it's because MS Paint is such a basic application, that it not working under Wine sounds like fantasy. I can believe that about Windows 10/11 Paint. But Win32 versions??

[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 hours ago

well, that feature has been the reason i've always had to keep a windows laptop around.

[–] DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] neuromorph@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

how does steam operate on Linux? anything I need to do to port over stuff?

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] plaguesandbacon@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

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.

[–] titanicx@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

So, so brave......

[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 23 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

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!

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

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).

[–] pastaq@lemmy.world 15 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

This person's writing style is, frankly, well, pretty obnoxious.

[–] myrrh@ttrpg.network 8 points 8 hours ago

...yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man...

[–] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 8 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

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.

[–] Darkness343@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

At least it's not AI

[–] Darkness343@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] FatVegan@leminal.space 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] Darkness343@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

I'll go ahead and share my experience with Mint so far. Gaming worked mostly fine which is pleasing.

I couldn't get many basic features working correctly for my dual monitor set up. Even after putting in the time to research.

I couldn't get multiple proprietary programs to work for my job.

The customization in settings is extremely limited.

I have to mess around with complex terminal commands I do not fully understand every time I need to do something more than use my browser.

I will try another distro this year, but it is definitely not a foolproof experience.

A lot of things Windows does easily, I took for granted.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Can you give some examples of basic features that weren't working with your dual monitor setup?

KDE might also help with this btw, as while I didn't have any glaring issues with dual monitors in cinnamon (on Fedora), it improved overall when I switched to KDE. Used to have to change the audio output to my TV whenever I enabled it, now it happens automatically (plus the option to disable my HDMI audio if I preferred the "keep the same audio when switching to a different video output" behavior).

Only issue was that it didn't work correctly the very first time, followed by it suddenly working the next time when I was intending to troubleshoot it.

Imo, KDE handles dual monitors better than windows even, especially if your secondary monitor is a TV you enable and disable depending on what you're doing. Two clicks to toggle it, it handles different scaling seemlessly across the monitors (iirc, windows would "pop" to the scaling setting of whatever monitor they were mostly showing on as you moved them). Mouse cursor visibility improves when shaking the mouse, so it's easy to find it on a giant screen.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Imo, KDE handles dual monitors better than windows even, especially if your secondary monitor is a TV you enable and disable depending on what you’re doing.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh I need an alias to unfuck KDE whenever I unplug/plug back in the cable for my 2nd monitor

 alias kdereset='kquitapp6 plasmashell && kstart plasmashell'
[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Proprietary software not working isn't a bug, though. It's by (their) design. The people selling it choose not to make it work.

[–] eronth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

Regardless, that is a friction they experienced when switching, regardless of who was at fault.

[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago

The customization in settings is extremely limited.

Give KDE Plasma a try. Sometimes they're criticised for having too many settings.

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[–] uienia@lemmy.world 18 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Made the switch during Christmas to Cachyos. I am extremely glad I did, and so relieved to finally be free of Microsofts clammy grasp.

I already stopped playing online competitive games long ago, so the anti-cheat thing isn't really a problem for me. All the games I want to play works fine, even better in fact than they did on Windows.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago

The competitive game anti-cheat issue is kinda overblown nowadays. A lot of popular competitive FPS games run perfectly fine, anti-cheat and all, on Linux with wine/proton. And the ones that don't either have incredibly invasive anti-cheat that you wouldn't want running on your computer anyways, or have server-side "protections" that properly boot Linux players out of the game for some arbitrary reason.

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