Fully ditching Windows?

[Underi]

I'm going to upgrade my PC in a few weeks, so I've been thinking about removing my Windows 10 install and only installing Linux Mint on my PC. One thing that is keeping me from doing that is because gaming is close to my heart and obviously Windows supports more games. Then again, many companies are starting to support Linux and maybe (hopefully) in 5-10 years most if not all games released then support Linux and Windows. Considering that Linux is faster, more reliable, more secure and free, am I gaining more by not being able to play some games with my friends? I just checked and out of 113 steam games that I own, 54 support linux, which is about half of my games. Sadly many of my favorite games such as Overwatch, Battlefield, Skyrim and Assassin's Creed are not supported, but maybe it is worth the change? What do you guys think?

[Lurick]

I know Wine used to be a thing for Linux but I'm not sure if that's still around or what the game support looks like these days. Could be worth looking into though.

 

-Also, love the location

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

18 minutes ago, Underi said:

I'm going to upgrade my PC in a few weeks, so I've been thinking about removing my Windows 10 install and only installing Linux Mint on my PC. One thing that is keeping me from doing that is because gaming is close to my heart and obviously Windows supports more games. Then again, many companies are starting to support Linux and maybe (hopefully) in 5-10 years most if not all games released then support Linux and Windows. Considering that Linux is faster, more reliable, more secure and free, am I gaining more by not being able to play some games with my friends? I just checked and out of 113 steam games that I own, 54 support linux, which is about half of my games. Sadly many of my favorite games such as Overwatch, Battlefield, Skyrim and Assassin's Creed are not supported, but maybe it is worth the change? What do you guys think?

Why not have both? Get the best of both worlds.

[Shreyas1]

Dual boot maybe?

[Squarq]

21 minutes ago, Lurick said:

I know Wine used to be a thing for Linux but I'm not sure if that's still around or what the game support looks like these days. Could be worth looking into though.

 

-Also, love the location

Wine's still around for sure, but it definitely doesn't work as well as a complete Windows OS. Rarely, if ever, will applications work with Wine at this point because it hasn't been updated in so long.

[AresKrieger]

I just stuck with windows 7 and have the best of both worlds currently

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Underi said:

I'm going to upgrade my PC in a few weeks, so I've been thinking about removing my Windows 10 install and only installing Linux Mint on my PC. One thing that is keeping me from doing that is because gaming is close to my heart and obviously Windows supports more games. Then again, many companies are starting to support Linux and maybe (hopefully) in 5-10 years most if not all games released then support Linux and Windows. Considering that Linux is faster, more reliable, more secure and free, am I gaining more by not being able to play some games with my friends? I just checked and out of 113 steam games that I own, 54 support linux, which is about half of my games. Sadly many of my favorite games such as Overwatch, Battlefield, Skyrim and Assassin's Creed are not supported, but maybe it is worth the change? What do you guys think?

Technically speaking Steam will install in Linux mint, but only Ubuntu is officially supported by Valve, well Ubuntu and Steam OS. 

[LogicalDrm]

I would love to move to Linus permanently. But last time I had Ubuntu as almost main OS on my previous laptop, it was too much trouble for gains (speed). I will at some point make USB Linux with elementaryOS to satisfy those needs. But at this moment main isn't getting Linux.

[AlTech]

On 11/25/2017 at 6:25 PM, Lurick said:

I know Wine used to be a thing for Linux but I'm not sure if that's still around or what the game support looks like these days. Could be worth looking into though.

 

-Also, love the location

Wine is still a thing but there are still compatibility issues.

 

On 11/25/2017 at 6:45 PM, Shreyas1 said:

Dual boot maybe?

Tried that but the problem is if i dual boot then I have a tendency to mainly use one instead of the other.

 

When I'm done playing all the Windows only games in my library and more software I use comes to Linux then I may use my Linux partition a lot more.

[DrMacintosh]

I could be macOS only but the only thing that keeps me back is like 3 games  

[FuzzyNovaGoblin]

On 11/25/2017 at 1:24 PM, Underi said:

I'm going to upgrade my PC in a few weeks, so I've been thinking about removing my Windows 10 install and only installing Linux Mint on my PC. One thing that is keeping me from doing that is because gaming is close to my heart and obviously Windows supports more games. Then again, many companies are starting to support Linux and maybe (hopefully) in 5-10 years most if not all games released then support Linux and Windows. Considering that Linux is faster, more reliable, more secure and free, am I gaining more by not being able to play some games with my friends? I just checked and out of 113 steam games that I own, 54 support linux, which is about half of my games. Sadly many of my favorite games such as Overwatch, Battlefield, Skyrim and Assassin's Creed are not supported, but maybe it is worth the change? What do you guys think?

I ran into a similar issue when I switched to Linux a few months ago, where Xamarin is not supported on Linux. I dual booted Manjaro and fell in love with it but I can still switch back if I need to.

[Dat Guy]

If the first thing you're worried about is your ability to run certain Windows software, there is no sane reason not to continue using Windows. Except if you hate yourself that much.

[Filthyscum]

Follow Wendells (from Level1techs) guide for duel booting and PCI passthrough. Windows gaming in a VM is pretty cool, and relativly easy (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF)

[Guest]

On 11/26/2017 at 2:00 PM, Fooshi said:

I'd highly recommend checking out Solus if you're thinking about moving over to Linux. Probably the most complete feeling distro out there right now with excellent performance and very little bloat.

 

The only drawback is the lack of software, as it runs on its own package manager vs example Ubuntu with the widespread use of .deb installables.

 

I'd make the switch myself, but I play too many Windows only games and I can't be bothered to dual boot, so for now I use Windows on my desktop and Solus exclusively on my laptops.

Yeah this is what I've been doing, windows 10 on my gaming desktop and solus on my laptop and htpc/media server

[Nuluvius]

On 26/11/2017 at 2:40 PM, LoGiCalDrm said:

I would love to move to Linus permanently.

[Mac29]

Underi,

I'm surprised members aren't thinking out of the box. I would think you've updated your computer since Nov but consider adding a hard drive tray. I boot any number of hard drives, all w/different OS's, w/o issues. So I can switch to Mint, game on my ol' XP drive, whatever. Trays only cost around $15 and hard drives are cheap if you don't need TB size. I stick with 500GB mostly. Simple.

 

 

Mac

[Donut417]

On 1/3/2018 at 6:04 PM, Mac29 said:

Underi,

I'm surprised members aren't thinking out of the box. I would think you've updated your computer since Nov but consider adding a hard drive tray. I boot any number of hard drives, all w/different OS's, w/o issues. So I can switch to Mint, game on my ol' XP drive, whatever. Trays only cost around $15 and hard drives are cheap if you don't need TB size. I stick with 500GB mostly. Simple.

 

 

Mac

While Hard drives are cheap, SSD are not. Most "gamers" want their OS on a SSD. And having to change to another OS, to play games it too much of a hassle. Ive used those trays in community college and if its the same one, it requires a 3.5 or 5.25 bay to use, and the fact is, many PC cases have neither. 

[daehned]

I've switched to Linux about 3 years ago. Since I'm not a heavy gamer or so, it wasn't a big deal for me, but I think the follwing might be interesting for some of you.

 

So, it all started with a Windows machine (like every other person out there) that sat under my table quite a while - mostly unused 'cause I live on the countryside in Germany and had literally no usable internet connection back then. My only way to get updates and stuff was to carry my PC to the next city and ask a friend to use his internet connection... And carrying around a full-size tower PC isn't that much fun if you have to go by train.

 

Someday, someone offered me an used MacBook Air (late 2011) and i bought it mostly beacause I had to administrate ~25 Macs at work and my macOS knowledge was very limited at that time. But time changes everything and the company ditched iOS app development completely just a year after that and i got back to my loved linux servers.

Linux at work, macOS at home and here and there within my family a Windows machine got a bit anoying to me. That's why I started to switch to Linux, starting with the PC's of my grandma and my parents. After that, my girlfriend at that time also switched to Linux and I totally forgot that there's a MacBook somewhere in my house (I had so many things to do - at work and at home - that I haven't used a Computer at home for month). But someday I got it back in my hands and decided to install Linux on it as well.

 

It was... not so complicated that I thought it would be. In fact Arch Linux runs just fine and with the massive Arch User Repository (AUR), theres a software for every problem you might encounter, e.g the fan control. I thought the fan speed of my MacBook was controlled by the BIOS (or whatever it's called in the Apple universe), but it wasn't. So a few minutes on internet research and I found a neat program in the AUR which does the job.

 

Next thing was the installation of Steam. Arch Linux is not officially supported by Steam but, you gessed it, there is a package in the AUR, and it installed just fine.

At that time, my girlfriend and I rediscovered Skyrim on one of her "old" Windows Laptops and I wondered if I could make it run on my Linux-MacBook. As you probably know, there's no Linux version of Skyrim, so Wine was the way to go. 

Wine is not an emulator, it adds a compatibility layer for Windows based programs into linux which has way better performance than a virtual machine on the same host.

My first attempt to install Skyrim with Wine was not successful, so I kept searching. To the rescue came PlayOnLinux, a software which helps you to install Windows software with Wine. And this thing was great. It had profiles for Skyrim on board and downloaded and installed all necsessery dependences.

Finally, after hours of work, I was able to start Skyrim, a Windows program, on my Linux powered MacBook Air Buut.. the performance was bad. Really bad. 5-15 FPS was the most i could get out of my Laptop without cooking it. But that doesn't matter, I mean what should I expect from a machine with Integrated Graphics on a i5-2557M. And performance wasn't the matter, the question was not "could I play Skyrim?", it was "could i _run_ Skyrim?" -  and the answer is: yes.

 

 

Conclusion:

Linux is a powerful operating system. The shell, graphical desktop environments, the community and the fact that everthing is open source makes it perfect for me. I could decrease battery usage by switching from "normal, resource hungry" applications to console-based ones (I'm reading my mails with neomutt, music play's with sconsify, filemanagement with ranger, etc.), yet could I run popular Windows programs like MS Office if I want to.

And even games shouldn't be that much of a problem, if you have the right hardware.

Running two vesions of Steam (Linux-native, and Windows version over Wine) on the same machine might seem ridiculous, but hey, it works.

And Wine together with the latest graphics driver improvements is getting better and better in the case of performance and resource usage. I assume that there isn't so much performance loss that one might think, so why should you run and maintain a dedicated Windows OS?

 

If you want to switch to Linux, but your favourite Games doesn't exist for Linux, check out the PlayOnLinux Supported Software page, or if you're willing to spend some money, take a look at Codeweavers CrossOver.