PC Gamers Abandoning Windows 11 for Linux with Higher FPS & Fewer Interruptions
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This was the same era when I tried to switch, due to the shittiness of Vista. I wanna say it was Mandrake Linux was what I was trying to use, but I couldn’t get it running correctly on my hardware.
Came back some time later and discovered Mepis Linux. After that, I never went back.
I started with Ubuntu, switched to Mint and finally settled on Arch.
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I made the move to Linux about a month ago, and it’s been super smooth (and yes I have an NVIDIA 3080). I went with CachyOS though. The ONLY thing keeping me dual-booting windows though is Cubase (DAW), which is unfortunate but whatever. I don’t really play any games that use EAC / kernel-level anti-cheat so it doesn’t affect me, but is a bummer.
Cubase works great for example in Hatari
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I’ve attempted to install Cubase using Bottles with no luck. I think the difficulty revolves around audio drivers and such.
Yeah, Linux audio is great when it does work, but a real pain when it doesn’t. Looks like there is some work being done to bridge the DAW gap like https://github.com/microfortnight/yabridge-bottles-wineloader, but I image getting it working will be a bit of a rabbit hole.
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The worse part of vista wasn’t even that it looked awful or ran awful. Personal perfence not with standing.
It was just 3 years too early and hardware fucking sucked. Drivers went standardized and everything was too weak.
Going back to vista years after the fact show it was actually really solid.
Probably the last time Microsoft was ever ahead of the curve in terms of design. Vista then 7 were great design wise, then it was only down hill since.
Hardware was definitely the issue. What got me to first install Linux was my wireless card just randomly stopped working. People were recommending that I do a full reinstall of Vista to get internet working again. I installed Ubuntu instead and never looked back.
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i switched over to Bazzite about a week ago, and it has been super frustrating. though it’s not in where you think. the game my group is playing (Arc Raiders) worked without a hitch.
- but my speaker system, and microphone forced me to learn a whole lot about USB hand shakes,
- ghost usb profiles,
- usb cable choice,
- what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
- nano eccentricities (including how to save and quit, just labeling ctrl-o as save and not overwrite would stop so much bs),
- sink states,
- device name resolution,
- pipewire,
- pipe plumber,
- pipe wire holding devices hostage,
- usb power flapping because i plugged my speakers and my mic to close to each other causing the os to just give up on the both of them.
- the timing of when the os asks for usb identifiers, verses when the usb devices are given power
- out dated guides relying on depreciated methods and acceptable code used in modifiers to os procedure.
my experience and days of trouble shooting the “easy” replacement os for gaming has frightened my friend group far away from linux.
Exact opposite experience here, coming from using Linux as toy desktops for the past few years. My main PC is EndeavourOS, and my gaming laptop is Bazzite. Bazzite has been a really good hands off “just works” distro that I don’t have to think about.
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Switched when the OG Steam Machines came out. It wasn’t great then. It wasn’t really good until Proton Steam integration. Became great after the fast iteration with the Steam Deck
I know the hot thing is Bazzite but if you want to use it as a desktop as well, please at least use Fedora Kinoite or Silverblue. Personally I use the latest Kubuntu release so now I’m on Kubuntu 25.10, will upgrade to 26.04 when prompted, do the same with 26.10. Update cycle not so different than the larger windows updates each year. Just that every now and then a new Windows software ports to Linux, it’ll almost always be a deb installer is reason enough to me to prefer Debian based distributions than Fedora or Arch especially for new users. Don’t need to get people to install distrobox and boxbuddy. Kubuntu should just be enabling flatpaks and flathub by default rather than it being a option in the software center settings
Linux is at a point where we really shouldn’t be using distro specific installers.
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Yeah, Linux audio is great when it does work, but a real pain when it doesn’t. Looks like there is some work being done to bridge the DAW gap like https://github.com/microfortnight/yabridge-bottles-wineloader, but I image getting it working will be a bit of a rabbit hole.
Sweet. Well hopefully in the future I’ll be able to get Cubase running and ditch windows entirely.
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Another data point to add. I’ve started using Bazzite and introduced it to my brother. The only hitch I’ve noticed is not being able to play stuff like the new Battlefield.
It is by far the easiest operating system to install, keep updated, and run basic apps and play games on. Flatpaks are great. Brew is good for CLI tools. AppImages are another alternative to Flatpaks that work well. Steam comes pre-installed, and most games run well.
There are no ads, no AI, no dark patterns. It’s just a simple operating system that keeps itself updated.
Where it starts to get complicated is if you want to do anything off the beaten path. In fact, Bazzite is much more complicated than something like Fedora or Debian if you need to do anything like this. Because you need to worry about either layering with
rpm-ostree, or creating your own base image with a Containerfile (FROM bazzite). But my examples of these are installing GhosTTY (non AppImage), Paretto Security, and 1Password SSH Daemon/op. Most people will never need to do these.I’m a software engineer, and I’ve found that for the most part, Bazzite is good enough to run on my gaming pc and work pcs.
I’m sorry you had such a bad first experience with it.
i think i learned that there was a lot wrong with my set up that windows just shoved under the rug. and maybe windows is right to do so, figuring i was willing to dig in deep this time, but my friends… not so much, and i don’t think i have the capability to help them if they run into issues like i did.
the reason ‘I’ learned to dislike flat packs is that it puts the software in its own little isolation bubble from what i understand. and i get where people are coming from. but they REALLY don’t like connecting to hardware, or sharing nice with other apps.
keep in mind i am a fairly adroit user of windows, diving in head first, so a lot of this is learning the hard way (nano anyone?) and i learned a lot. but yea bumpy.
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Interesting. I’ve been using Linux for nearly 6 years now, and I can definitely relate to pipewire and audio related issues (I’m a musician so I’ve suffered much in that area), but I can’t say I’ve struggled so much with devices. I wonder if those are Bazzite specific issues or if our setups are just different.
i’m my case i am using apparently old hardware, i ran into the following issues with my set up:
- my usb cable for the mic was crap. and because the signal was flaky, Bazzite put the port on low priority mode where it only checks in when asked
- the usb cable was insufficient to push the data, i swear it came with the mic. still thing this was a dubious conclusion, but a new cable was 5$
- Bazzite would ask my USB speaker and mic within milliseconds of receiving power what their designation was, and the controllers in the devices responded so slowly that Bazzite gave them new names and put them in passive mode. i had to bake in the command to treat that like legacy equipment (ouch) to sit and listen for a reply however long it takes.
- the speakers are flipped in meat space, due to outlets and the length of available cable, i can not change this, so i had to flip it in software, i was recommended easyeffects, but pipewire hated its guts, and i was better off learning to bake it in via the terminal after i was able to find the devices actual name once i got them out of passive jail above.
- i had to bin the flat pack versions of discord and my web browser Vivaldi. don’t want to get into a browser war i have had enough trying to siphon through redacted reddit posts about that
won’t lie i had to use AI to RTFM though chat GPT bricked my stuff more then i should have let it. gemini was better at this
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what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
Huh, most people actually like Flatpak, and for good reasons too.
i could not get them to play nice with the hardware, pipewire, or each other. and they don’t like being messed with
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nano is the Fishcer Price’s My First Text Editor and you’re expected to quickly graduate to something that sucks way more
i can only imagine the horrors of what button combination i need to save and close and get my terminal back on the next one…
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Exact opposite experience here, coming from using Linux as toy desktops for the past few years. My main PC is EndeavourOS, and my gaming laptop is Bazzite. Bazzite has been a really good hands off “just works” distro that I don’t have to think about.
i think the real issue is my computer has been silently suffering for all these years as windows just didn’t tell me my hardware is borked and old. and just has a shot gun full of code that fixes whatever it can stick to. and Bazzite either does not have that, or i fell into an exception in use due to hatred and old hardware.
but getting into the weeds was very difficult, and my desk is not as flat as it once was
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i can only imagine the horrors of what button combination i need to save and close and get my terminal back on the next one…
This is actually an ancient UNIX trope.
q :q :q! ^Z # kill -9 $! -
This is actually an ancient UNIX trope.
q :q :q! ^Z # kill -9 $!from what i gather that means you reach for the 9mm when you don’t know how to say please?
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Another data point to add. I’ve started using Bazzite and introduced it to my brother. The only hitch I’ve noticed is not being able to play stuff like the new Battlefield.
It is by far the easiest operating system to install, keep updated, and run basic apps and play games on. Flatpaks are great. Brew is good for CLI tools. AppImages are another alternative to Flatpaks that work well. Steam comes pre-installed, and most games run well.
There are no ads, no AI, no dark patterns. It’s just a simple operating system that keeps itself updated.
Where it starts to get complicated is if you want to do anything off the beaten path. In fact, Bazzite is much more complicated than something like Fedora or Debian if you need to do anything like this. Because you need to worry about either layering with
rpm-ostree, or creating your own base image with a Containerfile (FROM bazzite). But my examples of these are installing GhosTTY (non AppImage), Paretto Security, and 1Password SSH Daemon/op. Most people will never need to do these.I’m a software engineer, and I’ve found that for the most part, Bazzite is good enough to run on my gaming pc and work pcs.
I’m sorry you had such a bad first experience with it.
“Where it starts to get complicated is if you want to do anything off the beaten path. In fact, Bazzite is much more complicated than something like Fedora or Debian if you need to do anything like this. Because you need to worry about either layering with rpm-ostree, or creating your own base image with a Containerfile (FROM bazzite).”
I’ve had a similar complaint about bazzite. Some obscure things are just harder to install because of it being immutable. But I also haven’t managed to accidentally break it, like I have with other OS’s. Also, sometimes my problem has simply been looking up instructions for fedora and assuming they’d apply to bazzite instead of just looking up the bazzite instructions (which actually existed and were fairly distinct and didn’t involve rpm-ostree stuff).
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i’ve just installed cachy, yesterday. been working fine so far. I can even double click to install .exe files, but… it didn’t handle installing battle.net that well, so… i had to do it manually, but that worked fine.
So far no issues. Fast, and easy. even more customizable out of the box, than windows.
if you haven’t tried it, i highly recommend you give it a go. it’s free.
I’ve been using CachyOS for a few months now and it’s mostly been great, and so so much better than Windows.
I should probably just try to run .exe installers more. That might solve some of the challenges I’ve had with the transition, particularly since getting devices working correctly in my Windows virtual machine while still keeping full functionality in Linux has been challenging (webcam, sound, microphone, mouse4/5 and dpi buttons).
Docker has solved my biggest other challenges, for apps that have a Docker image anyway. They just work.
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i think i learned that there was a lot wrong with my set up that windows just shoved under the rug. and maybe windows is right to do so, figuring i was willing to dig in deep this time, but my friends… not so much, and i don’t think i have the capability to help them if they run into issues like i did.
the reason ‘I’ learned to dislike flat packs is that it puts the software in its own little isolation bubble from what i understand. and i get where people are coming from. but they REALLY don’t like connecting to hardware, or sharing nice with other apps.
keep in mind i am a fairly adroit user of windows, diving in head first, so a lot of this is learning the hard way (nano anyone?) and i learned a lot. but yea bumpy.
i think i learned that there was a lot wrong with my set up that windows just shoved under the rug. and maybe windows is right to do so, figuring i was willing to dig in deep this time, but my friends… not so much, and i don’t think i have the capability to help them if they run into issues like i did.
When I was trying to use discord, my friends were confused why I was having issues getting my mic to work and were sorta teasing me for using linux. When they found out what I was trying to do (something I couldn’t figure out how to do in Windows despite looking into it multiple times over the last decade or so), they were more just confused why I’d even be doing what I was and they would have never even considered trying to do that. But I finally have my audio pathing set up the way I’ve always wanted to and I love qpwgraph.
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Why the hell is Gates on that image?? The guy stepped down as a CEO 26 years ago, and left the board of directors six years ago.
The enshittification is all Nadela’s baby.
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i switched over to Bazzite about a week ago, and it has been super frustrating. though it’s not in where you think. the game my group is playing (Arc Raiders) worked without a hitch.
- but my speaker system, and microphone forced me to learn a whole lot about USB hand shakes,
- ghost usb profiles,
- usb cable choice,
- what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
- nano eccentricities (including how to save and quit, just labeling ctrl-o as save and not overwrite would stop so much bs),
- sink states,
- device name resolution,
- pipewire,
- pipe plumber,
- pipe wire holding devices hostage,
- usb power flapping because i plugged my speakers and my mic to close to each other causing the os to just give up on the both of them.
- the timing of when the os asks for usb identifiers, verses when the usb devices are given power
- out dated guides relying on depreciated methods and acceptable code used in modifiers to os procedure.
my experience and days of trouble shooting the “easy” replacement os for gaming has frightened my friend group far away from linux.
Literally every time im gonna go play a game with friends my computer decides to bw stupid, and it puts them all off linux even more lol.
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what a flatpac is and why people hate it,
Huh, most people actually like Flatpak, and for good reasons too.
If you know what flatseal is and how to set permissions, it gets a lot better.
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