Discussion [Rant] I Love Linux Mint but . . . . . . . .

[ryu750]

I have been using Linux Mint on my work PC, and it's awesome—I love it. I installed it at home, and it runs smoothly. Using it is enjoyable, and it feels good overall with apps. The only issue is gaming.

I installed World of Warcraft on it, and it ran flawlessly for a few days. Then, it started to slow down and get some frame skips here and there. I did some research, and shutting off FTPMS fixed the issue, and the system ran great again for a few days. However, the game started frame skipping again 48 hours later. I wanted Linux Mint to be my new OS so badly that I upgraded to an X3D processor. While it did get me more FPS, the micro stuttering was still there.

The rant is that I love Linux distros and have been using them on and off for 15 years. I just wish non-supported software worked better. If it did, I would lose Windows in a heartbeat. [Rant Over].

I went back to Windows, and the game runs flawlessly at max FPS.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey there,

I just wish non-supported software worked better. If it did, I would lose Windows in a heartbeat.

Well, this is the same thing for the last 20 years. Linux is better (and maybe it is!) bla bla. But, 'it doesn't game'. It will continue to be the story for many years to come no doubt.

Similarly I've tried out a few distros. Some of which work really well and look amazing. But, I'm a gamer first and formost. So it's Windows or nothing for me.

It is a pity though that most games aren't written explicitly for Lnux. Then the games would run better.

 

[BrickStation]

I've had similar thoughts and problems when it comes to gaming on Linux.

I started out using Linux Mint for gaming. My first issue was getting Nvidia drivers for my GPU, so I switched to Endeavour OS since they would automatically be installed.

All of the games I usually play on Steam will likely work with Proton. For example, Fallout: New Vegas runs like it does on Windows when played on Linux through Steam. I haven't tested it on new hardware, but I didn't notice anything game-breaking like frame stutter.

Most of my related misery and woe stems from attempting to use Vortex or MO2 to modify my games. I follow tutorials and do trial and error, I haven't had much success yet. Although, I haven't asked for help either. My issue is that Vortex won't automatically detect my games, and I can't manually find my Steam library in the file directory that Vortex uses. MO2 has also stopped working for some reason and freezes when I use it.

All this trouble simply because Vortex is a Windows-only program without any form of official support on Linux, as far as I know. My experience has been rather perplexing, especially since I'm not very experienced in gaming on Linux. I have used Ubuntu for years as a desktop but never to fully replace my Windows system.

 

[Viking2121]

Yeah, I tried a few distros for about a year with a threadripper 1950x and 5700xt system, and gaming was always a weird situation with it, some worked great and even better than on windows, some ran, but was not good where it had zero issues on windows.

And other driver issues, I like Linux as well but it just isn't for me yet, I'm not sitting there fighting in the terminal try to figure things out and get something partially working when I could just install windows and be done with it.

Have you tried PopOS by chance? That Distro seemed to have the best chance with games for me.

Maybe once day MS will get so bad I'll force myself on Linux again, maybe by that time, its not so much of a fight on some things.

 

[Eximo]

I have been putting off switching my Windows HTPC to Linux for a while. These days I really just need a browser, file storage/networking, and a video player.

At the moment I have an Intel A380 in there. My understanding is I need at least Kernel 6 to get native Arc support. Which is leaning me towards the more bleeding edge distros like Arch.

Though it looks like Steam OS is on 6.x now, so might be worth another look for my gaming box too.

I should add I have a silly idea of getting the big Battlemage card and water cooling it for no reason.

 

[35below0]

I went back to Windows, and the game runs flawlessly at max FPS.

Can you not dual boot?

 

[Grobe]

Maybe once day MS will get so bad I'll force myself on Linux again, maybe by that time, its not so much of a fight on some things.

Microsoft is not so stupid that they let it's software go bad like suddenly overnight. It is a gradual process that takes years, even decades so that the users isn't spooked too much too soon 😅

 

[ryu750]

Can you not dual boot?

yes i could, but my goal is to abandon Windows.

 

[USAFRet]

yes i could, but my goal is to abandon Windows.

Just like for most people, its not there yet...
(maybe ever)

 

[35below0]

yes i could, but my goal is to abandon Windows.

You could have the best of both worlds.

Long time ago i dual booted Win XP and Debian, and 90% of the time i was using Debian. 90% of the games though, i played in XP.
Over time, i had some reliability problems with Debian, and big problems with updates. When i moved to a new computer i stuck Win 7 on it and never felt the need to dual boot. ...ok that's not entirely true, i did encounter many annoyances and issues with Windows but none were deal-breakers. Overall Win 7 was probably the best one.

Using Mint, but gaming in Windows seems like a fair choice.

 

[stonecarver]

I love it. I installed it at home, and it runs smoothly. Using it is enjoyable, and it feels good overall with apps. The only issue is gaming.

Between your thread and my son wanting to for a while switch to POP OS on his computer I have now jumped back in with a spare computer of my own. It's now installed and letting it do updates.

So I asked my son what if any issues with games have you had. He said Doom 3 BFG edition worked the first time but now has issues. Everything else he has tried has worked.

So what the heck maybe I will learn something on the side messing around with the POP OS and gaming as I messed with it a while back and was impressed.

I have tried Ubuntu on and off all the way back to maybe 2008 heck there was also a Lindows version on Linux but gaming was not very good back than but POP OS seems to deliver.

 

[Viking2121]

You could have the best of both worlds.

Long time ago i dual booted Win XP and Debian, and 90% of the time i was using Debian. 90% of the games though, i played in XP.
Over time, i had some reliability problems with Debian, and big problems with updates. When i moved to a new computer i stuck Win 7 on it and never felt the need to dual boot. ...ok that's not entirely true, i did encounter many annoyances and issues with Windows but none were deal-breakers. Overall Win 7 was probably the best one.

Using Mint, but gaming in Windows seems like a fair choice.

I think the best of both worlds would be to build a system capable of passthrough and run a virtual machine. I plan on doing just this here soon or well playing with the idea with one of them cheap chinese dual x99 boards.

I kind of don't like to have to reboot just to switch to an OS then reboot again to go back, I would love to have the ability to immediately switch back and forth, I guess 2 physical systems could do this with a simple KVM but idk.

 

[35below0]

I kind of don't like to have to reboot just to switch to an OS then reboot again to go back

You're 100% right. It's a pita to be "on the wrong side". But these days boot times are quite fast, so there's that at least.

 

[USAFRet]

A few years ago, one of my kids (mid 20's) and friend was staying with us for the summer.

I gave them one of my laptops to use. Ubuntu.

They didn't realize that it wasn't "Windows".


She had been trained for years by having FireFox as the default browser on our home systems.
But, their use case was only web browsing and webmail.

Fast forward a couple of years, eldest grandson.
I gave him the same laptop.
After about 2 days, much bitching about it. Basically, Games <-> Linux.

 

[stonecarver]

Linux Mint on my work PC, and it's awesome—I love it. I installed it at home, and it runs smoothly. Using it is enjoyable, and it feels good overall with apps. The only issue is gaming.

I just have to say thanks again as WOW it is so much better than years of the past.

Like I said I'm using POP OS and darn it runs like butter gaming.

I just slapped on a spare Mechanical hard drive so booting slower but I was just re getting my feet wet to test it all out and I'm stoked.

Steam seems to take care of what Linux needs at the get go installing each game.

Tested in the last few days.

Doom BFG perfect, my copy is from Steam and sons is GOG

Serious Sam 4 I had to change to Vulcan and choose the bottom choice in Sam's audio.

Game runs awesome. The only kind of glitch is some trees trunks look like there on a drug trip.

Serious Sam Mayhem same as above with Vulcan and sound but game is perfect.

Still to try Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Crysis runs perfect.

Bright Memory Infinite runs perfect.

F.E.A.R 1 and F.E.A.R 3 run perfect.

I did cheat as I do this to all my PC's is I put my same desktop pic my son custom made for me and I think it keeps me centered to not get wrapped up that it's a whole new OS just seems like learning new stuff.

If Linux is at this point a very good alternative to have in your back pocket. My biggest joy is not having to sit all day at the terminal to get things running.

 

[35below0]

Steam seems to take care of what Linux needs at the get go installing each game.

+1 Steam

Does that for Windows and it's amazingly useful. It's great it does it for Linux games.

 

[stonecarver]

+1 Steam

Does that for Windows and it's amazingly useful. It's great it does it for Linux games.

In the past YOU had to do all the footwork to get a Windows game to work on a non Windows Linux OS.

Sometimes you had to spend the weekend from the terminal to finding the right wine and using proton and other tricks to get any game working back in 2008.

My son helped me to pick the correct flatpack to install and than I installed Steam.

Linux's POP OS really for the first time for me feels relevant as a perfect back up OS if for whatever reason Windows 10/11 could not be used for gaming.

 

[ryu750]

Yeah, I tried a few distros for about a year with a threadripper 1950x and 5700xt system, and gaming was always a weird situation with it, some worked great and even better than on windows, some ran, but was not good where it had zero issues on windows.

And other driver issues, I like Linux as well but it just isn't for me yet, I'm not sitting there fighting in the terminal try to figure things out and get something partially working when I could just install windows and be done with it.

Have you tried PopOS by chance? That Distro seemed to have the best chance with games for me.

Maybe once day MS will get so bad I'll force myself on Linux again, maybe by that time, its not so much of a fight on some things.

Took your advice and installed Pop!_OS. Gotta play with the theme a little; I'm not a big fan. BUT all my games are working at full monitor FPS and with no more stutter. Hopefully this sticks. Really excited about this. Pop!_OS is the way to go gaming linux peeps!

 

[madaraosenpai]

Proton/WINE on Linux always seems to be finicky for some people. I rarely have issues with it but I have to admit they do exist and sometimes niche issues just crop up and follow around one unlucky person. Case in point, a friend of mine switched from Cachy to EndeavourOS and THE FINALS completely borked, and would not work again even after switching back. Same setup as all of us were using and it played fine for us.

It's gotten a lot better since I jumped ship to Linux 4 years ago. We used to have to disable like 10 different settings just for games that didn't have anticheat issues, and if they did, forget about it. It was really really bad on NVIDIA especially. Now these days, a lot of it is either "copy this launch option", or it just works.

Some games have niche requirements but it's not the rocket science fest it used to be for games like Titanfall 2 where certain stuff was just unusable, you had to have a custom kernel, and you had to enable a bunch of experimental stuff and mess with WINE's DLLs.

I still enable gamemode and Liquorix out of good habit because it does iron out some issues. I've also found out some older games really hate ESYNC and FSYNC, the old Call of Duty series in particular, so it's always nice to do your research.

Most of my problems these days are with poor X11 implementations. A lot of DEs these days sync to the X11 virtual refresh rate which is the lowest common denominator of all your monitors, if you have two displays with one at 144hz and another at 60 this makes everything feel sluggish. I had to switch to KDE 3.5 to make this go away, and that brought along other problems. Also GTK has been, well, GTK. Breaking a lot this year because GNOME devs love to do that. So I think really the #1 issue with Linux for end users is less of a gaming thing and more about polishing the overall UX. Hot take but I do not believe push to Wayland is helping. Multi monitors on Linux is messy overall no matter what and as someone who does a lot of coding, 3D and streaming work on my PC that's a huge blow at first until you patch it all up.

 

[whatdoitypehere9937982739]

Native Linux compatibility is a paradox because devs don't want to spend time focusing on Linux because there is a very small user base, there is a smaller user base because devs wont focus on Linux.

 

[madaraosenpai]

Native Linux compatibility is a paradox because devs don't want to spend time focusing on Linux because there is a very small user base, there is a smaller user base because devs wont focus on Linux.

Yes, and Proton is supposed to fix that issue by making the leap of faith more enticing, but it also has the side effect of making developers lazy and not want to release or support Linux versions if Valve and Codeweavers will just do it for them. Unfortunate.