I am and always was a casual gamer, I like playing puzzles, strategy and builder games, sometimes I play with friends some 7 days to die or AoE2. I am on Linux Mint for more than a year now and was surprised how easy gaming was. From time to time I had problems with weird DirectX error messages, but all in all everything just worked.
My setup:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600
- GeForce GTX 1660 Super
- 32 GB DDR4 RAM
So last week my girlfriend worked on my computer (we are not living together), she wrote some bills for customers and did some table stuff in calc. When I asked her at the end of the day how it was to work on Linux, she shrugged and said “Oh I didn’t notice” lol (using Cinnamon as DE btw).
Today she bought Until Dawn the remake on Steam while she is here and because she really wanted to play she downloaded it to my PC. She just started to play and everything was great. I wondered again if I should say something like “you see how great you can game in Linux”, but then it came to my mind - she doesn’t care and she didn’t even question it! The Linux Desktop got so mature, that non-tech people just don’t notice!
I think the biggest “problem” with Linux adoption is that it does not come preinstalled on computers, and this kind of proves my point I guess.
Yeah that’s all, I just wanted to share this with you guys.
P.S.: There were some bugs btw. but it turned out they have nothing to do with the OS.
I have friends who says “I still run Windows because I don’t want to do any tinkering,” but don’t realize they’d do less tinkering if they switched haha. It’s not 2015 anymore.
Even in 2015 I was doing more setup on Windows than Linux… honestly even in 2005 too.
That’s interesting. I was definitely a Linux noob in 2015, so that might have been a me problem. Like I know Lutris was a thing even back then.
I was kinda thinking about it from the other direction, like I’ve never had to deal with printers on Linux like I have on Windows and don’t remember ever needing to install hours worth of Service Packs on Linux with a fresh install. That being said, I’ve been using Linux since the Caldera days (late 90s) so I might be being one of the geologists in the XKCD cartoon right now too.
“Windows doesn’t require any tinkering, just run this to make a local account, decline 100 requests to use OneDrive and Office 365, get these debloaters, uninstall all these things, and make sure you always tell Windows to not restart your computer while you’re using it every time it updates. And when it does update, you’ll need to run the debloaters again.”
And if some obscure error code shows up, the first five points in the knowledge base are powershell commands.
I mean, you don’t really have to do these stuff. I doubt the comment’s author’s friend cares about debloating and privacy.
There’s what Die4Ever said, but there’s also Windows 11 incompatibility with games that otherwise just work with Proton. Around when I got my Steam Deck, I also had a Windows PC that was, to my initial surprise, way more of a hassle for games, so I pretty quickly switched to Linux Mint, and later Fedora.
I used Ubuntu way back when on secondary PCs mostly for fun, but Linux has only outpaced Windows imo in the past five years.
Yes, in the same way that you don’t typically need to tinker with Linux
In the end they’re not so different, except Windows intentionally does anti-consumer things that make people want to tinker.
No joke my linux laptop hardest part was the initial install. Steam made gaming seemless. No ms account login, no asking for ai, no drivers. Just install and boom im playing my games. Its so nice.
Literally, my Linux Mint came with the drivers for the wifi, meanwhile Windows always needed me to put them there…
I put Windows on my laptop last year-ish, same exact one with Linux on it now. Took around 2.5x slower to start it up. Win 11 at the time. Fresh off a new image.
Linux takes less than 10 sec. And thats without any optimization and a “heavy” distro like PopOS.
Mint is a good option too :)
I prefer Mint Cinnamon because it’s the closest I have to my long time experience with Windows. It feels closer to it, more intuitive even if vastly different.
Its good to have choice. Ive seen experienced users use Mint to the reasons you stated. I know a lot of people recommend it as a “beginner” linux, but if you can install stuff without issues, then its just as advanced as the other stuff.
I like Pop because it feels as stable as Debian while keeping up with the packages like other distros.
Ive tried Gentoo and Arch for a bit there and got the custom OS itch out. But I still respect people that do that kind of work for the rest of us. Stability for all.