What do you mean gaming in Linux isn’t working? You’re scaring me…

This is going to be a hard post to write but I think it’s an honest take at gaming on Linux. If you didn’t know, I grew up on playing games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D back on MS-DOS and Windows 95. That evolved into Unreal Tournament 99 and Quake 3 Arena in the late 90s on Windows XP, which evolved further into Doom 3 on a custom built PC in 2004, and so on. I’ve been gaming on the PC for decades and it has always been my favorite platform for many reasons.

Windows has not always been the best thing in the world to deal with, but it has given me a stable career and a decent platform for gaming. I’ve never really had the problems that most people would have, such as daily BSODs, driver issues, poor performance, etc. In fact, I can’t remember ever losing data or having major catastrophes with it . . . unless I caused it. I’ve had more of an issue with Microsoft’s ethics than anything. The telemetry, lack of privacy, and over-advertising has been an issue since the days of Windows 7.

Whoa, why are we talking about Windows? I thought you dumped Windows for good and were gaming on Linux?

For the last two and a half years, I have been testing gaming in Linux now that Proton is a big player and the Steam Deck is making some major progress in the gamer space. There have been ups and downs, but I had something happen this last week that just made me a little upset, followed by an epiphany.

There was a new update for a game that I haven’t played in a while, so I thought I would install the Epic Games Launcher, install the game and try it out. No, not every game I own is in Steam unfortunately. I went through all the steps in Lutris, everything looked great, but when I launched the game, it would hang and I had to force the app to stop. This caused Gnome to panic and cause some issues as well. I immediately went to ProtonDB and looked for any extra steps I needed to take, spent some time reading, but I couldn’t find anything similar to what I was experiencing.

And then it hit me: Why am I doing this? Why do I need to take extra steps just to play a game? Shouldn’t I just be able to install any game I want and just play it? Why is this a pain?

I typically don’t mind tinkering with Linux and other things, but some times you just want things to work.

And then I thought over the weekend about some of the other issues that I’ve just dealt with in the last 2.5 years:

  • XBOX Controller Drivers
    • It’s frustrating when you have an awesome controller and wireless adaptor that work just fine in Windows, but then find that drivers in Linux (xone suite) can randomly stop working when you reboot or upgrade your kernel. This issue didn’t have a rhyme or reason, but any small change prompted a 50/50 chance that I would have to tinker with it for a good half hour or just simply reinstall it.
  • Game Compatibility
    • For the most part, this wasn’t an issue . . . until it was. Games in Steam ran great, games outside of Steam were 50/50 in working at all. Other games seemed to have a step down in visual quality or performance, which I never understood. Some graphical settings weren’t even available compared to the Windows counterpart. Some games just don’t work at all.
  • High Refresh Rates
    • Having my OS remember my preference for 144hz was a little frustrating. Sometimes it remembered, sometimes it didn’t and I would have to force it back quite often.
  • “Cracked” Games
    • I do not condone piracy (anymore), unless a company is so stubborn that they push my hand to do so; I want to be a legit customer and pay for my games. Downloading a pirated copy of a game is sometimes the only way to get a truly offline version of a game. If you have downloaded a “cracked” or pirated game before, you know that most scene groups have a custom installer. Most of the time, these custom installers do not work AT ALL with Wine/Lutris/PlayOnLinux/etc, therefore you can’t even install the game. Then what’s the point?
  • Different Distros
    • This is debatable, but trying to find a good, solid “gaming” distro was near impossible for me. I kept coming back to Manjaro as it looked and worked the best for my hardware.

It just always seemed that I would uncover new issues depending on what game I threw at Linux or what distro I tried. This gets tiring and I’m honestly tired of fighting a losing battle.

Are you seriously giving up and going back to Windows?

Yeah, I guess I am. It just makes sense. If you have a large collection of games, across multiple stores/launchers, wireless controllers from Microsoft, and you want the ultimate compatibility with no extra steps, then Windows is still the best platform today.

Well, what about telemetry and ads? How can you stand that?

Luckily, there are tools out there that can disable telemetry, ads and other unwanted pieces of Windows 10 so that you don’t have to worry about it.

After thinking about this over the weekend, my gaming PC is only used for gaming, ripping Blu-Rays and encoding MKVs to MP4s for my Jellyfin server. No web surfing, no Office apps, no work stuff, nothing. So if that’s the case, then who cares if Windows is on it? It’s the best tool for the job!

I’m using Windows 10 instead of 11; I kept some keys from my last job (they aren’t using them) so I call it recycling. Windows 10 has an End of Life scheduled for the fall of 2025, so I think I’m good on avoiding Windows 11 for a little while. The only catch I can see with this is if some game “requires” Windows 11, to which I would look into Tiny11. I don’t think my hardware is compliant with Windows 11 anyways, so whatever.

So what are you really saying?

Summing it up, I’m saying that I’m ditching Linux in favor of Windows for my gaming PC. I’m still using Ubuntu Server for my home server needs and MacOS for everything else. Windows is just the best tool for the job when it comes to PC gaming and there are ways to stop the bad things, leaving only the good things. I’m ok with that.

I don’t regret my time in Linux, discovering new distros, or trying them out; it was time well spent to learn something new. Linux is becoming something really important and special in the PC gaming field and one day, it will be my OS of choice. But not today.

A Side Note About GamePass

I took some time last week and caught up on the XBOX Showcase that was presented earlier this month. To my surprise, I’ve found 5 games coming out this year that I’m honestly excited for: Techtonica, Lies of P, Starfield, Cities Skylines 2, and Forza Motorsports. And they are ALL on GamePass! My thought is that instead of buying each game, I can just subscribe to GamePass for $10/month and enjoy them all at a fraction of the cost. GamePass is another reason to go back to Windows as well since it’s a great deal. And if my current gaming library of 15 years shows anything, it’s rare that I go back and play them all or even most of them. I’m sure some of you can relate.