Maybe for a small sub-set of games, but for the vast majority you're running them on Win32 and DX compatibility layers that each have overhead. Sometimes a lot.
First of all, I play games daily on my M1 Mac and have gamed on linux and older Intel Macs since around 2007. I'm very familiar with the compatibility layers that go into running Windows games on non-Windows systems. Wine, ESync, MSync, WineD3D, MoltenVK, DXVK, VKD3D, GPTK, Rosetta 2, winetricks, CrossOver, CXPatcher, Whisky, Proton, Parallels Desktop; these are all things I have used to let me play ~8/10 of the games I want to play. That is, ~20% of the games I want to play simply don't work at all outside of Windows mostly due to either anti-cheat, or using DX APIs that aren't implemented in the compatibility layers. Most of them perform noticeably worse than Windows, and that's after googling for an hour and applying the random performance hacks/tweaks.
Windows games are designed and built, from the hardware APIs to the shaders, to run on Windows. It is only with a very curious definition of "far superior" that getting a tiny percentage of games to run a few FPS better is a true statement.
Playing Windows games on linux is not "far superior" than running them on Windows.
From Steam you browse to a game then click install, and it just works.
The guy you were replying to meant it was far superior in terms of experience, not being forced to view shitty ads and deal with other Windows 11 obnoxious garbage.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/221180/Eufloria_HD/
Running the Windows build via Proton works fine. That being said, this particular game has a Linux build anyway, so it's kind of a moot point (for now). ;)
Add "treating its users with respect" to the mix and Linux seems to be the better choice. It sure is good enough for me.
I play all my games on my PC, they work flawlessly save for 2 exceptions. Diablo 4 Beta took some tinkering, but I got it going after 20mins. Fortnite won't run because their anticheat isn't compatible, because Epic don't want it to be.
Proton/Linux can exceed Windows 11 performance, and is otherwise very close. The difference on my system is negligible.
https://www.computerbase.de/2023-12/welche-linux-distributio...
It really doesn't matter. You're talking theoretical benchmarks, when in reality the only thing that matters to someone playing is 60fps@4k. For a compatible game, any Linux machine is equally capable of acheiving that through Proton with a sufficient GPU. Particularly for Nvidia, where the linux drivers are equally as good or better than Windows at this point.
I'm curious if you've actually, you know, tried linux with proton/wine at all in the last three years. Things have really changed since the Deck. You might wanna try updating your opinion to reflect reality; performance is less an issue than one-off compat issues by far in most circumstances in my experience, IE I'm more likely to have to make config changes to deal with a crash than I am to have a huge disparity in FPS/load times/stuttering/frame dropping between linux and windows.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-scores-dead-last-in...
"Not even close" is inaccurate.
I would enjoy it if all games had first party linux support and I could switch to it permanently, but at the moment gaming on windows has several pros and negligible cons compared to gaming on linux. Not sure how you're coming to the conclusion that linux is far superior for gaming.
I'm glad 15 minutes has been your experience. For me, who does not use Windows at all for other purposes, it has taken considerably longer than 15 minutes to figure out where all the settings are to disable and uninstall annoyances. As somebody who stopped using Windows in the XP era, none of the settings are where I remember them being more than a decade ago when I last seriously used that OS for anything.
Since I'd only use Windows for gaming, there's also a non-trivial amount of time spent rebooting into Windows, and the slight annoyance of having to either keep a remote desktop tool open or a laptop nearby if I wanted to do something else on the computer other than launch a game.
And since my gaming computer is custom built, there's also a non-trivial expense of purchasing a Windows license.
The one compromise I have considered is keeping a dedicated Windows gaming PC in a closet and using Steam Link so I can actually play the games on my preferred device, whether it's at my desk or on the TV. It doesn't solve everything I mentioned above but at least it gets closer to the set-it-and-forget-it approach you've taken.
That said, I'm generally more comfortable adapting to whatever random version of a window manager and desktop a Linux distribution ships with than putting up with the "everything is AI now!" "now with more ads!" "find things only via search!" type things that show up in the Windows UX.
Use something like Shutup10 and Chris Titus' utility.
And I don't have to worry about Windows updates reverting the "15 min changes", or deciding that I need credits to use notepad.
What does this mean?
They're not charging for notepad today, but you never know.
Beyond that it’s a matter of principle. Why would I use an OS where the company wants to farm me for ad revenue. I am not livestock. If I pay for it, that’s an even bigger slap in the face.
I have a Pop!OS box and it was a little work to set up. I was mostly pleased with the result, though. Steam experimental Proton had a wide range of my games library compared to regular Proton. I did run into major bugs running some of those games, but it was good for scratching a nostalgia itch.
https://docs.atlasos.net/faq-and-troubleshooting/removed-fea...
"Performance: By Removing unnecessary components, disabling power-saving features, and optimizing services."
"Privacy: By eliminating Microsoft's notorious tracking, pre-installed apps, and bloatware, you can feel confident when using Atlas."
Github link https://github.com/atlas-os/atlas
I use this on my gaming PC. Works well for me.
Also the fact that they're ads. That's a problem, too. Basically the whole thing is one big downside for everyone who isn't in adtech or trying to sell you shit you otherwise wouldn't buy.
You can't pick an enthusiast distro and then complain when you have to be... well, an _enthusiast_.
The earlier series (4xx through to 525) were pretty solid though, and the latest series (545) is pretty solid too.
Any idea if you might have been unlucky and installed the 535 series drivers last time around?
Region dependent. Thanks to GDPR, you don't see any of this if you pick an EU region or "World" when installing Windows.
> It used to be that Windows was reasonably solid with good performance for dev and gaming. Now Linux is far superior in both aspects.
Non native games run well in Linux nowaday, but will always run better without Vulkan or any translation layer.
OneDrive your user dir(Desktop, Documents) to the cloud, Outlook feeding your mails to the cloud.
All this will be used against people to sell more targeted ads and other BS.
It used to be that Windows was reasonably solid with good performance for dev and gaming. Now Linux is far superior in both aspects.