Linux is good now • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux is good now

#941

Post by tombert » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:41 AM UTC

theshackleford wrote: post #547

tombert wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proton has gotten so good now that I don't even bother checking compatibility before buying games. Granted, I don't play online games, so that might change things, but for years I used to have to make a concession that "yeah Windows is better for games...", but in the last couple years that simply has not been true. Games seem to run better on Linux than Windows, and I don't have to deal with a bunch of Microsoft adv…

> At this point, the only valid excuses to stay on Windows, in my opinion I didn’t see a performance increase moving to Linux for the vast majority of titles tested. Certainly not enough to outweigh the fact that I want EVERY game to work out of the box, and to never have to think if it will or won’t. And not all of my games did, and a not insignificant number needed serious tweaking to get working right. I troublesh…

If you want every game to work then you would be better off with a game console. I've had plenty of bullshit fighting with DLL files and registry keys to get games working on Windows in the past. Maybe it's gotten better since Windows 7, which is the last time I seriously did any Windows gaming, but I doubt it.

For some reason amongst other people, these bits of debugging just "don't count". I don't know why.

Re: Linux is good now

#942

Post by tombert » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #537

snvzz wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA on Linux is a pain, either path. Whereas, AMD just works and is thus standard recommendation.

Everyone says this but it is not my experience at all. Every time I try AMD cards I run into weird problems. The Nvidia drivers are a pain to install and tend to break randomly on kernel updates, but once built properly they always just work for me...

I used an Nvidia card for about a year, and I did get it working for the most part, but there was definitely some glitchiness I don't encounter with AMD.

For example, I use the Gamescope/Tenfoot interface on my system, and the actual menu for that is extremely glitchy on Nvidia drivers. On AMD it's absolutely perfect (I suspect because Valve develops this interface around an AMD card).

Re: Linux is good now

#943

Post by theshackleford » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:06 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #941

theshackleford wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, the only valid excuses to stay on Windows, in my opinion I didn’t see a performance increase moving to Linux for the vast majority of titles tested. Certainly not enough to outweigh the fact that I want EVERY game to work out of the box, and to never have to think if it will or won’t. And not all of my games did, and a not insignificant number needed serious tweaking to get working right. I troublesh…

If you want every game to work then you would be better off with a game console. I've had plenty of bullshit fighting with DLL files and registry keys to get games working on Windows in the past. Maybe it's gotten better since Windows 7, which is the last time I seriously did any Windows gaming, but I doubt it. For some reason amongst other people, these bits of debugging just "don't count". I don't know why.

> If you want every game to work then you would be better off with a game console.

I have a console. They can not offer performance I can tolerate. I require 120+ fps for most titles in order to not get motion sickness from modern displays.

> I've had plenty of bullshit fighting with DLL files and registry keys to get games working on Windows in the past.

I've had no such fighting. Shit, the last time I touched a registry to "fix" anything in windows was probably XP.

> I don't know why.

Probably because not everyone has the same experience. None of the major operating systems is free of issue, but in the same vein, neither have caused me particularly more headaches than another.

Re: Linux is good now

#944

Post by kbutler » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

sznio wrote: post #584

eru wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there some hardware dongles to translate from DP to HDMI?

DP is something like a free superset of HDMI, so you can use a fully passive DP-HDMI cable. Obviously the feature set will be limited, but it will work. DP however can't transfer audio, which doesn't matter for a desktop but matters a lot for a TV.

You may be thinking DVI, which is a subset of HDMI, and lacks audio, and can have a passive DVI->HDMI connection.

Re: Linux is good now

#945

Post by Sparkyte » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #242

I switched all the machines at https://lanparty.house over to Linux a couple months ago. So far, we've experienced noticeably fewer problems on Linux compared to Windows. Stability and performance are better. I can't think of one game we tried that didn't work. And wow is it nice not to have all the ads and crapware in our faces anymore. (I'm aware that Battlefield series and League of Legends won't work due to draco…

keep it up!

prrsonally using bazzite desktop for my stuff.

Re: Linux is good now

#946

Post by Sparkyte » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 7:37 AM UTC

gloomyday wrote: post #678

ahartmetz wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It keeps surprising me how many people don't care about some of the most popular games today. I mean I don't care about Battlefield or League of Legends neither, but in earlier decades of PC gaming, almost everyone had some of the most popular games. Doom, Half-Life (1 + 2) and such. The games market today seems more similar to music in its fragmentation.

There are simply too many games, and many genres are underserved by AAA studios.

AAA run to the formula that works as a safe bet, when they want risk they just borrow an existing concept and sell it harder.

Re: Linux is good now

#947

Post by Gareth321 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 8:17 AM UTC

I’m really glad Linux has improved so much but it’s still just not ready for prime time. A major issue is the lack of an enforced installation method. Competing distributions and installation methods means supporting Linux isn’t “supporting Linux.” It’s supporting 24 different distros and install methods. This is confusing for people who just want to download a file and double click it. I feel quite strongly that Linux won’t enter the mainstream consumer space until people can reliable double click files to install.

Further, because of Linux’s security model, kernel level anti-cheats are basically impossible. For those of us who hate cheating, I don’t play online games anymore without kernel level anti-cheats. They’re not perfect, but they’re much better than anything available on Linux.

Further, I use a Fanatec racing wheel. Most peripherals just aren’t supported on Linux. It’s chicken and egg, and hardware manufacturers aren’t going to bother until we teach critical mass. This is decades away still.

Re: Linux is good now

#948

Post by Gareth321 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 8:25 AM UTC

hasperdi wrote: post #753

Aurornis wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my Windows 11 installation has zero ads I did a clean Windows 11 install a few months ago. I expected to be bombarded with ads and all of the other things I kept reading about in comments here, but it’s been fine. I do find it interesting that so many of the comments about how bad Windows 11 is are coming from comments that also admit they aren’t using Windows 11. Not everything in Windows 11 is my favorite des…

I never used Windows 11, but with 10 they had craps like Candy crush etc that comes back after large updates. They don't have annoying bundleware with Windows 11?

I think people might be equivocating over the word “ad.” Some people consider ads to be interstitial modals which steal focus and have nothing to do with current context. I am much more sensitive and consider any notification to buy or use a service to be an ad. Maybe not pre-installed games but I would prefer they not be there. Microsoft is about as bad as Apple is at suggesting we use their cloud services. I also consider these ads. Still, if I’m honest, they’re infrequent and hardly insurmountable. If one is sensitive to this, the Pro version of Windows makes it easy to disable almost all of this stuff.

Re: Linux is good now

#949

Post by Gareth321 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 8:32 AM UTC

coppsilgold wrote: post #241

fooker wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last remaining roadblock is kernel level anti-cheat frameworks. Pretty horrible technology, and unfortunately a good majority of the gaming industry by revenue relies on it.

Competent cheat makers don't have much difficulty in defeating in-kernel anticheats on Windows. With the amount of insight and control available on Linux anticheat makers stand little chance. The best Valve could do is offer a special locked down kernel with perhaps some anticheat capabilities and lock down the hardware with attestation. If they offer the sources and do verified builds it might even be accepted by so…

> Competent cheat makers don't have much difficulty in defeating in-kernel anticheats on Windows. With the amount of insight and control available on Linux anticheat makers stand little chance.

The issue isn’t binary, but a spectrum. Studios clearly believe that there is less cheating when using kernel level anti-cheats. They have the data so they would know. This is an existential threat to their profit so we can trust they use the most effective tool. Anecdotally, I and many others also experience less cheating in games using kernel level anti-cheat. I’m not saying no cheating. I’m saying less cheating. That’s very important for me and many others.

Valve has stated they are working on kernel level anti-cheat “tools”, but they haven’t yet revealed a method. The entire concept is antithetical to the Linux security model so it requires significant refactoring. That’s a huge investment in not just capex and opex because the fork becomes much more difficult to maintain over time. I think they’ll do their best to work in user space, but I don’t think they’ll succeed and will have to bite the bullet. SteamOS will become more and more its own fork, including consumer-friendly features which Linux fans typically don’t care about.

Re: Linux is good now

#950

Post by Gareth321 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 8:40 AM UTC

Cort3z wrote: post #572

shadowdev1 wrote: post #287

(cue arrogance) People on HackerNews complaining about Linux Desktop is pretty disappointing. You guys are supposed to be the real enthusiasts... you can make it work. (cue superiority complex) I've been using Linux Desktop for over 10 years. It's great for literally everything. Gaming admittedly is like 8/10 for compatibility, but I just use a VM with PCIe passthrough to pass in a gpu and to load up a game for windo…

I have been working professionally on Linux for many years. But about once a year I have to reinstall the os because it craps out for various reasons. The same story goes for most of my team, but for some reason they seem ok with this. My issue with Linux is this: I don’t feel like a consumer, but a janitor. I don’t want this. Yes you can do whatever you want, but I don’t want to do those things. I want to write code…

I 100% agree. This is why Windows and later macOS and iOS became so popular. It really just worked. Basic things like being able to double click a file to install it. Linux is technically capable of this, but so few devs actually support it. The last time I installed Ubuntu I couldn’t change the mouse acceleration without using the CLI to install some extra tools. Just bonkers. And the “solution” was “oh just uninstall your entire OS and try this other distro which is way better!”