8 ms·

When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the trackin

When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles) When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use. Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu. My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)

malbs 6mo ago
On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there. On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux. after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out
- darkteflon 6mo ago
  Sadly, the original Assetto Corsa is also borked on Linux (AC Evo and AC Rally, on the other hand, run great).
  - ga_to 6mo ago
    In my (admittedly limited) experience, it does run, even with quite comparable performance, but getting a wheel to interact with the game has been a bit challenging. But this could be resolved with a custom driver for my specific hardware. Using the community standard mod manager seems to resolve the UI jank by completely bypassing it.
    - malbs 6mo ago
      yeah, I've heard this too.. and I'd rather my rig just works rather than try and stuff around making it work under linux + I know iracing is cooked anyway, and I've spent enough money on the rig to just want it to work, and not get stuffed over by some anti-cheat, maybe soon picture of my rig https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg
    - rounce 6mo ago
      What is your specific wheel hardware? It should simply be a case of binding the wheel axis in Content Manager’s controller options. Hop on either matrix or discord listed at https://simracingonlinux.com https://simracingonlinux.com and one of us will be happy to help you work through the issue.
  - rounce 6mo ago
    AC works fine just requires a little extra setup, either use this script[0] or use the latest GE-Proton (with a fresh prefix), I recently updated protonfixes to fix a CM/CSP issue. The latter is better as newer Proton has some definite performance improvements. 0: https://github.com/sihawido/assettocorsa-linux-setup https://github.com/sihawido/assettocorsa-linux-setup
    - darkteflon 6mo ago
      That’s excellent, thanks for the heads up! By chance, RPS covered the Mulholland Drive mod recently and I’m keen to try it on Bazzite. I would definitely prefer to go the GE-Proton route. To clarify, what do you mean by “fresh”? Just the most recent release or something more specific?
      - LtdJorge 6mo ago
        Fresh should mean creating a new prefix. For example, Proton-GE enabled wow64 in Wine by default, but it requires recreating the prefix to use it. Should be easy enough with Protontricks or even Winetricks.
        rounce 6mo ago
        Yes very much this. It is possible to modify an existing prefix but there are quite a few things to do, it's easier to back up savegames and game config files and then create it anew.
        darkteflon 6mo ago
        Thank you very much to both of you. Got it running flawlessly with CM on Steam Deck OLED at 90fps using GE-Proton10.34 and LSFG-VK for frame-gen. This one goes straight to the top (alongside DR2.0 and AC Rally) as favourite gaming on the go.
        rounce 6mo ago
        Nice, glad to hear it.
- rounce 6mo ago
  Simucube uses the hid-pidff driver which is built into the kernel. For setting up the base using the SC2 software there is a guide available[0]. I’m not an SC owner myself but there are a few people on the SimRacingOnLinux[1] discord who seem to have everything working nicely. 0: https://granitedevices.com/wiki/Using_Simucube_wheel_base_in_Linux https://granitedevices.com/wiki/Using_Simucube_wheel_base_in... 1: https://simracingonlinux.com https://simracingonlinux.com
- rshackleford1 6mo ago
  You can install programs under Steam that are not distributed through Steam. You can install battlenet under Steam and use all the proton magic to make it work. Starcraft 2 and diablo 2 both work very well (those are the only two I've tried). At least for SC2, anti-cheat did not cause any issues if it's even there at all.
- cogman10 6mo ago
  Seriously the only thing stopping me from putting linux on my wife's laptop is the fact that she uses a cricut, which has software that doesn't work well on linux. Also, I really dislike cricut as a company. Such a scammy business model.
DiabloD3 6mo ago
I will warn you, Ubuntu is basically dead now. Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base, but the unvetted packages compiled and uploaded by random people on Snap. Please switch to Linux, but find a distro that actually wants you as a user.
- sonzohan 6mo ago
  Is your name a reference to the Blizzard game? If so, I worked on that :) You're not wrong, but tbh I'd move upstream to Debian. I use Termux on my phone (Z Fold) with Debian and XFCE, and have been extremely pleased with the performance. Combined with a folding keyboard and some AirNeo's, it's become a fantastic micro-development system that fits in a hand bag. Not that I don't like Arch, it has a very few (subtle!) things that Ubuntu has solved recently, like eGPU hotplugging
  - DiabloD3 6mo ago
    Nope, my nick predates Blizzard Entertainment, Co. I chose it as my nick on IRC in early 1991, and have used it everywhere ever since.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
  > Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base When was that? I don't disagree that it appears to be the case (especially with replacing coreutils/sudo/etc and the... varied approach to .deb vs snaps) but I'm not aware of them saying it explicitly in those terms?
- vkazanov 6mo ago
  As somebody who has been around linux almost for as long as it exists, i must say that is a very strong statement. In real life: systemd IS useful, Wayland is becoming (has become?) the default, ubuntu is the most popular desktop distro family.
  - imp0cat 6mo ago
    He's not wrong though, the amount of Snap stuff you have to remove in a fresh install is starting to get a bit annoying (I usually remove at least the Snap versions of Firefox and Thunderbird and replace them with binaries from Mozilla - they will still self-update).
traderj0e 6mo ago
They already crossed your line with 11, and you're still using it despite Win10 or Ubuntu also being an option. Are you really going to switch when 12 comes out, or is something holding you back?
komali2 6mo ago
If you have any unusual set-up going on personally I'd recommend a rolling release distro like manjaro (arch) or fedora, so you get latest drivers and whatnot fast. Modern releases of these distros come bundled with the same desktop environment options as Ubuntu and good, easy to use package install and update GUIs. IMO it's more noob friendly than Ubuntu because your stuff is more likely to work without weird workarounds.
Zardoz84 6mo ago
I strongly suggest any other distro that is Ubuntu. Canonical is a Microsoft wannabe
- deltoidmaximus 6mo ago
  Fighting off snaps would be reason enough to abandon them but Canonical has control of the snap store in a way that is antithesis to open source as they're trying to run a walled garden play. This is the exact type of crap that lit a fire under my ass to get off Windows in the first place.
cryptoegorophy 6mo ago
I’ve heard there are issues with anticheat. Have you had any issues?
- bigyabai 6mo ago
  It's hit-or-miss, with recent live service and esport titles being the iffiest. The older multiplayer titles, casual shooters and natively ported games are more consistently supported and form a sizable library of working online games.
- mcv 6mo ago
  Anti-cheat systems that rely on rootkit-style undermining of your OS will indeed not work on Linux.
- toofy 6mo ago
  i thought it would bother me, but honestly, tehre are just too many good games that dont require eac. i would imagine eac on linux will have to be addressed once steam machines drop, but for now i look at it like, if a game requires eac, at this point the game studio is just too lazy or cheap [0] to be linux compatible so we just play something else. far too many great games. [0] its even more silly considering eac doesnt seem to stop cheaters at all. every single popular game that requires eac is still absolutely overflowing with more than obvious cheaters.
  - Gander5739 6mo ago
    Easy anti cheat works on linux, if the game developers permit it.
    - ThatPlayer 6mo ago
      It's not the same as EasyAntiCheat and doesn't support the same features. It's like saying Excel works on iPad, but you can't even use VBA on that. Or a game example: I have Minecraft (Bedrock) on my phone so therefore I should be able to do the same things as Minecraft (Java) on Windows. The problem is they're the same names for different software with similar, but not the same, functionality.
mancerayder 6mo ago
That matches my experience almost exactly. I was hanging onto Windows almost entirely due to cutting edge graphics and my Nvidia card on my desktop that I'd built. Windows 10 was already pretty bad, but it felt fast and stable. I think they started putting content in the start menu, and I think I did regedit stuff I can no longer remember to get rid of it. Windows 11 they made us upgrade with a gun to the back of our heads, they made it feel sluggish, they hid settings in such a way that you're expected to use Search to find the setting (although Apple has that issue too), and somehow the Search wants to include the whole Internet instead of what's local. But the AI agentic force-feeding was the last straw. What am I, at work? And then HN insisted Linux gaming was ready and they were right! Someone wrote to me in a comment, "join us, brother" and I'm glad I did, it's brought joy back to using my machine and playing around again.
- jms703 6mo ago
  I had the same experience! Not looking back at all.
noisy_boy 6mo ago
I have had an excellent experience with KDE on Fedora. Has been stable despite being on the forefront of updates, familiar UI approach for Windows refugees while still offering plenty of customisation options for those who seek it.

malbs 6mo ago

On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there. On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux. after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out

darkteflon 6mo ago
Sadly, the original Assetto Corsa is also borked on Linux (AC Evo and AC Rally, on the other hand, run great).
- ga_to 6mo ago
  In my (admittedly limited) experience, it does run, even with quite comparable performance, but getting a wheel to interact with the game has been a bit challenging. But this could be resolved with a custom driver for my specific hardware. Using the community standard mod manager seems to resolve the UI jank by completely bypassing it.
  - malbs 6mo ago
    yeah, I've heard this too.. and I'd rather my rig just works rather than try and stuff around making it work under linux + I know iracing is cooked anyway, and I've spent enough money on the rig to just want it to work, and not get stuffed over by some anti-cheat, maybe soon picture of my rig https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg https://www.arcturus.com.au/rig.jpg
  - rounce 6mo ago
    What is your specific wheel hardware? It should simply be a case of binding the wheel axis in Content Manager’s controller options. Hop on either matrix or discord listed at https://simracingonlinux.com https://simracingonlinux.com and one of us will be happy to help you work through the issue.
- rounce 6mo ago
  AC works fine just requires a little extra setup, either use this script[0] or use the latest GE-Proton (with a fresh prefix), I recently updated protonfixes to fix a CM/CSP issue. The latter is better as newer Proton has some definite performance improvements. 0: https://github.com/sihawido/assettocorsa-linux-setup https://github.com/sihawido/assettocorsa-linux-setup
  - darkteflon 6mo ago
    That’s excellent, thanks for the heads up! By chance, RPS covered the Mulholland Drive mod recently and I’m keen to try it on Bazzite. I would definitely prefer to go the GE-Proton route. To clarify, what do you mean by “fresh”? Just the most recent release or something more specific?
    - LtdJorge 6mo ago
      Fresh should mean creating a new prefix. For example, Proton-GE enabled wow64 in Wine by default, but it requires recreating the prefix to use it. Should be easy enough with Protontricks or even Winetricks.
      - rounce 6mo ago
        Yes very much this. It is possible to modify an existing prefix but there are quite a few things to do, it's easier to back up savegames and game config files and then create it anew.
        darkteflon 6mo ago
        Thank you very much to both of you. Got it running flawlessly with CM on Steam Deck OLED at 90fps using GE-Proton10.34 and LSFG-VK for frame-gen. This one goes straight to the top (alongside DR2.0 and AC Rally) as favourite gaming on the go.
        rounce 6mo ago
        Nice, glad to hear it.
rounce 6mo ago
Simucube uses the hid-pidff driver which is built into the kernel. For setting up the base using the SC2 software there is a guide available[0]. I’m not an SC owner myself but there are a few people on the SimRacingOnLinux[1] discord who seem to have everything working nicely. 0: https://granitedevices.com/wiki/Using_Simucube_wheel_base_in_Linux https://granitedevices.com/wiki/Using_Simucube_wheel_base_in... 1: https://simracingonlinux.com https://simracingonlinux.com
rshackleford1 6mo ago
You can install programs under Steam that are not distributed through Steam. You can install battlenet under Steam and use all the proton magic to make it work. Starcraft 2 and diablo 2 both work very well (those are the only two I've tried). At least for SC2, anti-cheat did not cause any issues if it's even there at all.
cogman10 6mo ago
Seriously the only thing stopping me from putting linux on my wife's laptop is the fact that she uses a cricut, which has software that doesn't work well on linux. Also, I really dislike cricut as a company. Such a scammy business model.

DiabloD3 6mo ago

I will warn you, Ubuntu is basically dead now. Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base, but the unvetted packages compiled and uploaded by random people on Snap. Please switch to Linux, but find a distro that actually wants you as a user.

sonzohan 6mo ago
Is your name a reference to the Blizzard game? If so, I worked on that :) You're not wrong, but tbh I'd move upstream to Debian. I use Termux on my phone (Z Fold) with Debian and XFCE, and have been extremely pleased with the performance. Combined with a folding keyboard and some AirNeo's, it's become a fantastic micro-development system that fits in a hand bag. Not that I don't like Arch, it has a very few (subtle!) things that Ubuntu has solved recently, like eGPU hotplugging
- DiabloD3 6mo ago
  Nope, my nick predates Blizzard Entertainment, Co. I chose it as my nick on IRC in early 1991, and have used it everywhere ever since.
yjftsjthsd-h 6mo ago
> Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base When was that? I don't disagree that it appears to be the case (especially with replacing coreutils/sudo/etc and the... varied approach to .deb vs snaps) but I'm not aware of them saying it explicitly in those terms?
vkazanov 6mo ago
As somebody who has been around linux almost for as long as it exists, i must say that is a very strong statement. In real life: systemd IS useful, Wayland is becoming (has become?) the default, ubuntu is the most popular desktop distro family.
- imp0cat 6mo ago
  He's not wrong though, the amount of Snap stuff you have to remove in a fresh install is starting to get a bit annoying (I usually remove at least the Snap versions of Firefox and Thunderbird and replace them with binaries from Mozilla - they will still self-update).

traderj0e 6mo ago

They already crossed your line with 11, and you're still using it despite Win10 or Ubuntu also being an option. Are you really going to switch when 12 comes out, or is something holding you back?

komali2 6mo ago

If you have any unusual set-up going on personally I'd recommend a rolling release distro like manjaro (arch) or fedora, so you get latest drivers and whatnot fast. Modern releases of these distros come bundled with the same desktop environment options as Ubuntu and good, easy to use package install and update GUIs. IMO it's more noob friendly than Ubuntu because your stuff is more likely to work without weird workarounds.

Zardoz84 6mo ago

I strongly suggest any other distro that is Ubuntu. Canonical is a Microsoft wannabe

deltoidmaximus 6mo ago
Fighting off snaps would be reason enough to abandon them but Canonical has control of the snap store in a way that is antithesis to open source as they're trying to run a walled garden play. This is the exact type of crap that lit a fire under my ass to get off Windows in the first place.

cryptoegorophy 6mo ago

I’ve heard there are issues with anticheat. Have you had any issues?

bigyabai 6mo ago
It's hit-or-miss, with recent live service and esport titles being the iffiest. The older multiplayer titles, casual shooters and natively ported games are more consistently supported and form a sizable library of working online games.
mcv 6mo ago
Anti-cheat systems that rely on rootkit-style undermining of your OS will indeed not work on Linux.
toofy 6mo ago
i thought it would bother me, but honestly, tehre are just too many good games that dont require eac. i would imagine eac on linux will have to be addressed once steam machines drop, but for now i look at it like, if a game requires eac, at this point the game studio is just too lazy or cheap [0] to be linux compatible so we just play something else. far too many great games. [0] its even more silly considering eac doesnt seem to stop cheaters at all. every single popular game that requires eac is still absolutely overflowing with more than obvious cheaters.
- Gander5739 6mo ago
  Easy anti cheat works on linux, if the game developers permit it.
  - ThatPlayer 6mo ago
    It's not the same as EasyAntiCheat and doesn't support the same features. It's like saying Excel works on iPad, but you can't even use VBA on that. Or a game example: I have Minecraft (Bedrock) on my phone so therefore I should be able to do the same things as Minecraft (Java) on Windows. The problem is they're the same names for different software with similar, but not the same, functionality.

mancerayder 6mo ago

That matches my experience almost exactly. I was hanging onto Windows almost entirely due to cutting edge graphics and my Nvidia card on my desktop that I'd built. Windows 10 was already pretty bad, but it felt fast and stable. I think they started putting content in the start menu, and I think I did regedit stuff I can no longer remember to get rid of it. Windows 11 they made us upgrade with a gun to the back of our heads, they made it feel sluggish, they hid settings in such a way that you're expected to use Search to find the setting (although Apple has that issue too), and somehow the Search wants to include the whole Internet instead of what's local. But the AI agentic force-feeding was the last straw. What am I, at work? And then HN insisted Linux gaming was ready and they were right! Someone wrote to me in a comment, "join us, brother" and I'm glad I did, it's brought joy back to using my machine and playing around again.

jms703 6mo ago
I had the same experience! Not looking back at all.

noisy_boy 6mo ago

I have had an excellent experience with KDE on Fedora. Has been stable despite being on the forefront of updates, familiar UI approach for Windows refugees while still offering plenty of customisation options for those who seek it.