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kstenerud ◴[27 Mar 23 06:10 UTC] No.35323424[source]▶

I finally made the switch to Ubuntu Mate on Friday and WOW, color me impressed!

The only reason I stuck with Windows on my desktop machine for so long was gaming, and the last time I tried switching over was 10 years ago. Spoiler: it was a shitshow.

This time, things are MUCH better! The Mate desktop environment is simple, stable, clean, does the job and gets out of your way (kinda reminds me of Windows 2000). Steam's Proton makes running games a breeze. All of my favorites just work. I could even run battle.net as a non-steam game, USING Steam's Proton!

And the kicker? Blizzard's recently opened beta of Diablo 4 just worked. As in, I clicked install, clicked play, and it just worked. Perfectly. As if I were still running under Windows. I've never before seen such sorcery.

So bye bye Windows, except when I'm running one as a VM.

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1. dreen ◴[27 Mar 23 07:58 UTC] No.35324069[source]▶

>>35323424 #

I'd like to believe that, but can't shake the feeling there is a chance of performance impact or a need for special magic dance to make something work.

The teenager me would have no problem, he had a (fairly) working Enlightenment config and tried an array of distros, and it was fun to tinker. But he had way, way more time, and didn't spend his own money on the gaming hardware.

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2. kstenerud ◴[27 Mar 23 08:04 UTC] No.35324105[source]▶

>>35324069 (TP) #

There are warts, like it got confused into thinking that my second SSD was a removable device until I forced it in the fstab. But the level of annoyance nowadays is pretty much on par with Windows warts and annoyances (especially Windows printer drivers OMG).

But I've been using Linux desktops for years on my laptops and virtual desktops, so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect before changing my PC over.

But for games I'm completely intolerant of annoyances, which is why I took so long with this step.

3. geraldwhen ◴[27 Mar 23 08:07 UTC] No.35324126[source]▶

>>35324069 (TP) #

It definitely has a performance impact, and sometimes there are crash/other glitches in proton not present on windows.

I also have much, much less time than I did as a teenager, so I can only stomach console gaming at this point. Games need to Just Work.

4. elaus ◴[27 Mar 23 08:10 UTC] No.35324143[source]▶

>>35324069 (TP) #

For me personally performance with Linux gaming is much less of a problem than it was with teenage me's Windows gaming. Back in the day I didn't have much money, but today I can just buy a slightly beefier GPU to compensate any possible performance loss from compatibility layers.

With my 7 year old GTX 1080 and Ubuntu/Steam Proton I can still play most games at very high settings (except raytracing stuff).

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5. dreen ◴[27 Mar 23 08:28 UTC] No.35324259[source]▶

>>35324143 #

Then we have different priorities, if I spend a lot of money on a gaming machine beefy GPU I want 100% of its performance at all times and no risk of problems cutting into my limited gaming time. If there is a problem on Windows you can be sure the game devs will give it a priority over a problem on Linux.

Been a Linux user for over 20 years, still use it for work, and yes Proton does look great, but I don't see using it for gaming anytime soon.

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6. cycomanic ◴[27 Mar 23 09:17 UTC] No.35324553{3}[source]▶

>>35324259 #

Funny thing is that there are lots of reports for games of linux outperforming Windows. So considering that you might want to checking first, you might need to run Linux to really get 100% out of your GPU.

7. thomastjeffery ◴[27 Mar 23 18:45 UTC] No.35330622{3}[source]▶

>>35324259 #

I would sincerely recommend you give it another shot. If proton works well for the game, performance is most likely to be very close to windows, if not even exceed it.

The best part is that it's trivially easy. Most games with decent proton support will install just like a native game. No frills. No mess.

When the Linux experience is smooth, it's smooth. None of the fake Fullscreen BS. No memory paging quirks or other background processes causing stuttering. No automatically putting your game process in sleep mode. Freesync works. You get to keep your favorite window manager/desktop environment. If you are lucky, you can totally ditch windows today.

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