I am in doubt about running Linux on my gaming system. As I need it to be as close to 100% compatible as possible for running games. Because I still have a lot of games on Steam that I haven't finished. So I don't want to lose the ability to play some of them.
One option if you still want to use both, is a Linux laptop. You could use that as your daily driver and then use Moonlight/Sunshine to stream from your gaming rig to laptop. Use a loopback HDMI plug on the rig and you largely have what amounts to a gaming server on your network.
Average added latency on my setup is 4ms so this works very well. I stream games at 120FPS at 1080p. Then when I'm done playing, I close the window. No dual booting annoyance and fully functional Windows 10.
I've been trying Linux since before Ubuntu existed. I switched this year to Crystal Linux (arch based), to make it short: I'm not going back to Windows ever again.
It all just works. There's minimal tweaking.
@warmaster Interesting. I've been using Manjaro as my primary for a while and I like it a lot but I've had some unpleasant interactions asking for help on the forums so I keep an eye out for other options.
Crystal has a Discord server and a bridged Matrix room, support is instantaneous and people are awesome. I'm super happy with it. I also tried Manjaro, I don't like their GUIs, and their work ethics.
To provide a different perspective to everyone else, I would say that it's not the right time if you want everything to "just work".
I tried out Ubuntu 22.04 just a couple of months ago, and only one game of the several I tried "just worked". Everything else either didn't work at all, or required hours of searching and troubleshooting and problem solving, with mixed success. And I'm not a technophobe, I'm a software developer with experience in system support.
People keep saying there's lots of guides out there for most things, and that's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean the guide will work for you. I tried multiple "guides" to get my games working and most of them didn't help. Either they were too old, or there was a step that I couldn't complete, or I completed the guide and there was an error that isn't mentioned in the guide. Or any number of other problems.
Regardless of what people say, it may not be as simple as "switch to Proton and install Lutris". In the end I just got frustrated with having to work so hard to get my own computer to do the things I wanted it to do, and so I reverted back to Windows and had all my software working as expected within a couple of hours.
@Anomandaris @mouse My experience has largely been that games Just Work if you stick with Steam, but that running games from other sources is a lot more hit-or-miss. Lutris and Heroic are great but can be really fiddly.
Dual booting is a great way to start. I did it for years. Linux gaming eventually got good enough that I don't need to dual boot anymore, but YMMV; your use case may be different.
(I still keep a Windows machine around for TurboTax and Comic Collector Pro, but not for games.)
@Anomandaris @mouse Interesting. For me it just was "enable proton for all titles", "enable proton for the game", "launch" and "play". That's it. But I don't know what you had tried to play🎮🫤
Thank you for the experience that you had. That's why I will use my spare drive to test it, this will allow me to experiment with it and see how it performs.
To answer the title of this post... Yes, yes it is.
Imo the only thing better about windows is its support for gaming. But Linux has been getting better and better about that.
I'd bet that Linux will be almost completely caught up when support ends for Windows 10 in two years. That's probably when I will make the switch for my gaming PC.
I would ask myself "What are the games I play and how important is it to be able to play the latest AAA games when they come out?"
Proton is doing a wonderful job with compatibility, but it will likely always be behind by a bit.
If gaming is your primary focus and you play a lot of new games when they first come out, dual booting might be the best option.
On the other hand, if you are more patient and don't have to play things on release day or just like going through the catalogue of older good games, you can probably get away with a full switch.
Personally, I'm in a more privileged scenario. I have a laptop with Linux and a desktop with Windows for gaming. I do most of my gaming on the steam deck, PS5, or switch but any first person or games that benefit from good reaction time with a mouse get played on my desktop. Some of my games just won't work on proton because they are too intensive to run through emulation or just in too early a state to consider trying.
With all of that, if I could only have one machine it would likely be running Windows in some capacity.
I recommend you evaluate that question for yourself and go look at ProtonDB to figure out what state you'll be in.
Thank you for this, really helpful advice, ProtonDB looks really useful. I tend to be a bit more patient with games and buy later when on sale. I might just wipe Windows and reinstall it with the bare necessities for only the games that I need it for.
Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
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