Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it

Re:Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC,... by tstrimple on Friday January 02, 2026 @10:23PM (#46472501)

Linux truly is far better now than it was even a year ago for gaming stuff. The Linux fanboys stating that everything works flawlessly and better than on Windows aren't doing anyone any favors. Steam Compatibility is a useless flag and ProtonDB is full of "Platinum" games that are barely functional. Despite the additional complexity what got Linux to work well for my son is NixOS. He had attempted to run with multiple "Windows replacement" Linux distros and managed to keep getting them broken to one degree or another. The "Nix" way of managing packages really clicked with him for some reason and being able to reboot to a previous derivation if something goes wrong keeps him with a running system.

Generally I'd avoid Linux on laptops altogether. Even hardware explicitly designed for Linux support has tons of other tradeoffs and most manufacturers don't even try. I'd say Linux on the desktop is night and day from Linux on laptops.

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Re:Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC,... by ruszki on Saturday January 03, 2026 @11:39AM (#46478634)

I heard about it for a while now. I look into NixOS, thanks!

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Re:Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC,... by wltr on Saturday January 03, 2026 @12:58PM (#46479539)

I used Arch Linux on my MacBook Pro 13” (2011) and it was almost perfect (one iGPU), some weird sleep issues, plus battery calibration issues: battery often went down to 7% within like 30 minutes, and then it takes a couple of hours to 0%. But if you happened to close it, it will either power off or hibernate (won’t recall). Then a couple of keys would stop working, and I’d just rsync my entire system to a newer (2014) retina MacBook Pro 13” (instead of fixing the keyboard, there’s no point in that). Perhaps, these laptops are very popular for Linux enthusiasts — I think 15” from 2015 is the best Linux laptop you can get for the money — but this laptop is just perfect! Everything works flawlessly, sleep, hibernation, screen, keyboard backlight… ah, I forgot about the web camera, doesn’t, but I never used it really, it’s crap anyway. The battery life is amazing, I’m getting like 8 hours of real work for the new battery, or even longer for very light work. So, I’d say it depends on the hardware quite a lot. Maybe I’m just very experienced now, but I won’t say I am.

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