I’m admittedly in a bit of a bubble, but right now my PC gamer friends are a pretty even split between windows and Linux. Know anyone with a steam deck? They’re gaming on Linux.
No, it’s not quite as user-friendly as windows, and it takes a couple extra steps to get things running, especially if you’re playing non-steam games, but that’s one-time setup stuff then you’re golden. Most games are able to run fine on Linux these days, by some measures more PC games may actually work on Linux than in Windows because sometimes new versions of Windows have broken compatibility issues with older games.
There’s edge-cases to be sure, like some stuff with kernel-level anticheat have issues, but the state of that constantly improving, even the game devs are improving Linux support from their end in a lot of cases.
Anecdotally, I’ve had some cases where games are even running better for me on Linux than they did on Windows. Part of that is that most of the main components of my computer are pushing 15 years old, but I think that alone is a pretty big endorsement for Linux gaming that in some cases it can keep your rig relevant for longer.
I’m admittedly in a bit of a bubble, but right now my PC gamer friends are a pretty even split between windows and Linux. Know anyone with a steam deck? They’re gaming on Linux.
No, it’s not quite as user-friendly as windows, and it takes a couple extra steps to get things running, especially if you’re playing non-steam games, but that’s one-time setup stuff then you’re golden. Most games are able to run fine on Linux these days, by some measures more PC games may actually work on Linux than in Windows because sometimes new versions of Windows have broken compatibility issues with older games.
There’s edge-cases to be sure, like some stuff with kernel-level anticheat have issues, but the state of that constantly improving, even the game devs are improving Linux support from their end in a lot of cases.
Anecdotally, I’ve had some cases where games are even running better for me on Linux than they did on Windows. Part of that is that most of the main components of my computer are pushing 15 years old, but I think that alone is a pretty big endorsement for Linux gaming that in some cases it can keep your rig relevant for longer.