this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025
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Linux Gaming
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Gaming is only a fraction of what we need to get people to move away from Windows.
Shitty japanese government and some private apps only work on windows (some to a limited degree on smartphones and Mac). Sure, I could (at least theoretically) run a windows vm for that as someone helpfully mentioned before, but that kinda defeats the purpose (and isn't really great for less technical folks).
I imagine some other gov/biz apps also have the same issue.
Yes, it's only a fraction, but most of the rest is going to SaaS through web browsers or mobile apps, because companies get to control and force subscriptions that way, but has a side effect of targeting a browser as a platform rather than an OS. Gaming in browser is more in the pain point of browsers, so it's a use case that demands OS.
Besides office software and better ~~NVIDIA driver~~ hardware support in general, what else do you think is necessary?
I can't speak for everyone, but many hardware peripherals software for configuration and control don't work.
For gamers that could be companion software for RGB and mwcro customization on keyboards, controllers and other peripherals too.
For myself, it would be music production software (VSTs and otherwise.) I know about different compatability layer softwares out there, but it's a band-aid.
I made the switch to Arch and these 2 things have been my struggle.
For my music hardware I have run a windoes VM with virt-manager/qemu with USB passthrough. That sort of works, but it's an extra thing to fuss with.
I even went down the rabbithole of trying to use usbip to get wine to recognize my hardware, with no success of wine seeing the bound port.
Its not flawless but I'm getting there.
I will not go back to windows. Even if it means changing my habits and use cases.
Yeah, that's the one thing I lost when switching to Bazzite. I'm on an Acer Predator and I'm stuck with auto fan controls (which work fine) and I can't customize RGB. There's options to replace the Predator Sense program to get that working on Linux but I just don't care enough to mess with it.
For RGB try OpenRGB!
I also tried setting up a VFIO machine for lack of good VR support (oculus🙄) and I cannot see a normal user doing that (Tbf it's Meta's fault, not Linux. But I think it still ties into my argument)
And I heard basically everything except ardour and LMMS are broken or buggy on Linux (I'm no composer so I could be wrong)
God, I wish I could permanently use Linux (NixOS❤️) but it's just not ready yet.
And don't even get me started on NVIDIA 🥲
I haven't tried VR in Linux, I did sell my oculus, and haven't gotten a replacement.
I use Reaper, and it'd fantastic. It's more so the plugins that are an issue since VSTs aren't supported too well on Linux. There are peripherals that don't play well as well, but that's vendor specific. My Line 6 gear for example.
I am full time on Arch. Ditched Windows 6+ months ago, and i won't turn back. It has come with issues, but I've treated like a learning experience.
I am using an EVGA 3090 FTW on Arch, and if I had known when building my PC that Nvidia has issues, I would have gone the AMD route. But, I have gotten my 3090 usable, quite well actually with some tweaking.
I had issues using Wayland at first, but driver updates have helped.
I have wanted to check out NixOS, but I haven't yet.
Valve Index, SteamVR, install, setup, play, no tinkering.
Now... if one does want to buy hardware from Meta (... which sadly I understand, it's so damn cheap) and Meta refuses to support Linux, well, it's kind of a decision on the buyer. Still, if one still want to tinker, because they have the hardware now, plenty of good solutions listed on https://lvra.gitlab.io/ e.g. ALVR (very convenient nowadays) or WiVRn and more.
I refuse to buy any meta product, let alone use their platforms. If I get back into VR it'll likely be Valve products
Thank you for the resource!
Many can't buy indexes as you said. I love the idea of them, but they're just too damn expensive. On amazon (we have no official shipping in my country) they cost 10,000 RIYALS. That's about ~3-4000 USD. No thanks, i'd do fine without VR then. and the mq 3 is about 3,000 riyals, or less than 1,000 dollars.
ALVR is pretty okish. Last time i tried it it was very buggy. But that was a long time ago, i don't know how it is now. Last time i checked i couldn't use wivrn, but i'll try it now, thanks
The ability to stream media from legit paid sources. (Netflix, Comcast, max, disneyplus, prime, I don't know where the list is currently, but anything that bitches about user agent.)
TPM.
The ability to play multiplayer games that rely on anti-cheat ( seriously, make Linux a hit with the fortnite crowd and the upcoming generation will think of windows as boomerware )
The ability to use an HDMI cable at full speed. (It's the leading A/V cable standard and the only one some people understand. )
Then there's the stuff I'm unsure of the current status of but that I know was a problem once upon a time: Online banking, online doctor stuff, encrypted emails from mainstream providers, you know, anything that could qualify as "every day stuff" that works out of the box on windows and yet sometimes requires complicated (for grandma) setup on Linux.
Agreed, that's critical. That said, I periodically subscribe to all of those, and all of the ones I've tried in the last year on Firefox on Debian, have worked perfectly. If there's any left that still don't, I haven't tried/encountered them.
I thought all you needed was browser DRM to run those? Idk, I don't use streaming services 🏴☠️
And Isn't TPM supported on Linux? It's been in the kernel since 3.20, no?
As for anti cheat, it's a bitch to deal with, I agree. Same with HDMI,I think DP is superior but people should have freedom to make their one choices.
And the rest? Idk. I use a web browser for all online things, from mail, to banking; so it doesn't matter whether I'm on Linux or not.
You raise some great points though. The average user isn't going to use workarounds or alternatives, so we should focus on actually solving the problem instead of saying use this instead.
Office software is covered by LibreOffice.
Just general software and hardware support. And ease of use. So basically everything.
Sadly, LibreOffice isn't up to the task.
However, more and more this stuff is done in browser anyway.
What does libreoffice not do? And what about onlyoffice?
Basically when I open up an MSOffice file, if there's anything vaguely complicated it will not look like the way the office user intended.
Being done in the browser means it's being done in the cloud which I'm personally not okay with. LibreOffice works well enough for my use.
Yeah, but the O365 crowd is pretty much 99% tied to the cloud anyway they slice it (MS really wants you to work exclusively in OneDrive).
LibreOffice may be able to handle it's own documents fine, but interoperate with an MS Office user and it frequently is unable to be consistent.
Ease of use (and general software too) seems to slowly getting better, but the real bottleneck, i think is hardware support.
No matter how much software there is, or how easy it is to use Linux, there's no point if your GPU is extremely buggy and broken on Linux. which seems to be a huge problem for many NVIDIA users, including me :/
The main hiccup for hardware support is GPU support, and as a side effect of the bigger business being in messing with LLMs and that use case preferring Linux, GPUs are getting more Linux attention.
For example, nVidia drivers went years and years with a status quo of "screw open source, compile our driver and deal with the limitations". Only after they got big in the datacenter did they finally start working towards being fully open in the kernel space (though firmware and user space still closed source, but that's a bit more managable)
Fuck nvidia, each big update that's supposed to "fix everything " explicit sync cough cough always brings me a boatload of new issues. I'm going for amd/Intel next time.
Yeah I mean especially for professionals, most hardware requires special software for it to function properly and they don't bother making it available for Linux.
That's entirely use case specific. CUDA is actually used more on Linux than on Windows (I don't have data, but even Azure by Microsoft runs on Linux...) so for e.g. NVIDIA hardware for professionals the support is better there.
It's not. But I wasn't referring to GPUs anyway, I was referring to peripherals. Audio equipment, drawing pads, cameras, etc.
But it's apparently the easiest, since Valve is already working on it. You just need to shift a significant portion of technical users to Linux and the other use-cases will follow.
Is gaming even much of a problem anymore on Linux now? All my problems come from NVIDIA or oculus BS, but not from proton or wine. Sounds like there isn't much to perfect anymore :^)
Absolutely:
That said, most games work fine on Linux, but the ones that don't are pretty popular.
Most anticheat isn't a technical issue though, it's just companies blocking Linux.
I never said it was. I said it's a problem that limits Linux adoption.
Oh, i forgot about anticheat, i dont play MP sorry. I also can't tell when a bug is from NVIDIA or Proton, seems i conflated the two too much.
No worries. I also don't play MP, so the vast majority of games just work for me. However, we're talking about broad market adoption, not you or me.
I'd say, having to install ProtonGE to make a game work is still quite a hassle.