Several months ago I posted about building a new PC for gaming and got some suggestions for Linux in there. Well I got some specs and ideas, saved up some more money, and pulled the trigger in January to buy. After building, I loaded with Windows 10 thinking I’d start with something I knew and was off to the races. I had a few bumps early on with driver management, but after sorting those out I was gaming on Steam for a while with no issues. Every so often I’d get crashes in game (to be fair, I was playing Fallout NV which is notorious for this), freezes, and automatic restarts. Well, about two weeks ago my computer updated to Windows 11 which was annoying, but since that what my work laptop runs I wasn’t too bothered. The next day when I pulled up a game, my sound wasn’t working. I was troubleshooting with my headphones, game settings, a different pair of Bluetooth earbuds, but nothing changed. I played around and realized sound was just broken across all of Windows, and apparently this is a common issue? Couldn’t watch videos, couldn’t even do a test tone in settings. So, I thought fuck it, this sucks and removes a big part of games for me so I loaded a USB with Linux Mint and partitioned a drive for it. I’m currently looking at Mint installing on my PC and waiting to get back into a mess-free experience.
My condolences for the Windows issues. I hope you have a great time with Mint, that was my first daily-driver Linux distro. These days I seem to have fewer issues running games than my friends running Windows, and I hope it’s the same for you.
I’ll be honest, they’ve shot themselves in the foot. I’m a normal user, so as long as my things that I’ve setup just work there’s no reason for me to change. As soon as they screwed it up I’m ready to jump to the next thing to make sure it just works. I forgot to mention that I did not try reinstalling Windows 10 because the auto rollback feature said it was no longer available for me (I think it expires after a week or so, and I was troubleshooting after work for longer than that time to try to get it functional again.) so multiple chances for Microsoft to keep me in their services but just couldn’t make it easy.
I recently swapped to Mint and have been enjoying it. I still have Windows as my daily driver and I have a handful of things that I still need windows for, but I have a media center and a gaming PC set up both on mint. There was an odd quirk with Steam where it didn’t launch after some update, and it was a bit asinine to be honest. But after a few hours of research online I found the issue and modified a file so it loaded properly. Stuff like that sucks, but it gives me experience navigating the OS and understanding how it works.
To your point though, it overall just works. My wife uses it no problem and is getting use to where things are. I maintain the system though, ensuring updates are applied and searching for solutions when needed (for instance, we use caffeine to stop the monitor from going to sleep when playing games with a controller)
Absolutely, they take their market cap for granted and have been making the user experience worse for years. I’m a pretty technical person so I switched to Linux for fun and software developer clout, but I’m so glad that the Linux desktop experience is getting good enough for everybody. I’ve had mostly an “it just works” experience on the major distros like Mint and Fedora, and honestly even the issues I’ve run into were simple enough to solve with some internet searches.
Good call! Got a new laptop with windows 11 and half the gui are ads and BS… I’ve not had a pc for quite a few years relying on my smartphone or my kids MacBooks when needed - my work PC has no ads or news etc but this shit I got pre installed on my MSI laptop was unbearable… installed Linux mint and could not be happier… If you plan to game a lot, be prepared to do some minor troubleshooting - Steam proton works pretty good for most games. Check protonDB for user experiences about which version for which games… Get Lutris for non-steam games (has worked better for me than adding to steam)… As I recently did the same jump, send a dm if you need and I will try to help… Linux mint forums is also a great place, the beginner section is goat :)
Yeah when it updated to Windows 11 I also started noticing the news/ads on boot and in the start menu which were obnoxious. Another benefit to switch I suppose. And thank you! If I run into issues I’m sure I’ll be taking you up on that offer.
That sound issue on windows (along with the brightness not working on laptops) has been on windows for as long as I’ve known windows 10. Sometimes a reboot fixes it, and others it’d never be fixed no matter what you did until you reinstalled. Welcome to Linux. It won’t be perfect, but it’s going to be fun
Windows 10 was actually fine for me, it was the jump to 11 that broke it. Audio jack headphones, then Bluetooth, and still nothing.
I also just jumped onto Linux gaming on Mint. Mine is a slightly underpowered laptop, but so far it can run everything in my Steam library (which is a bit dated at this point) with no problem at all.
I built my desktop specifically to be pretty robust and future proof it for a few years: RYZEN 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070TI super, B650 Gaming Motherboard, and 64GB DDR5 RAM. It wasn’t having any issues playing games on windows until windows just started messing with the system unfortunately.
24H2 is a curse
What is that?
The newest update that fucked a lot of games up for a bit.
The only thing keeping me from using Linux on my gaming PC at this point is that I’m still using repacks, some of which need an “updater” file to progress to the most up to date copy of the game. I tried with Bazzite, but it was just a bit too difficult. I think once Baldur’s Gate3 is “final,” I’ll make the full switch. I’m already rocking Fedora on my personal laptop which has been seamless.
You can install repacks pretty seamlessly in Bottles.
https://flathub.org/apps/com.usebottles.bottles
Create a gaming prefix, move all installers into the prefix and hit “Run executable” one by one for each installer.
Although if you can afford it, Baldur’s Gate 3 devs deserve the money. Great game and available DRM free on GOG and Steam.
