Digital Foundry crew bash Windows for 18 minutes straight

Steam OS runs almost everything, and since it uses Linux, it runs everything much lighter despite the emulator running in the background. Running Linux with the Proton emulator is lighter than running native on Windows.

Here you can check the compatibility.
You forgot to mention how much Linux gaming sucks if you have an NVIDIA GPU, which is what most people are going to have.

Last time I checked, a bunch of stuff wasn't working properly, and when it did work, you lost significant performance compared to using the NVIDIA GPU on Windows.

And let's not forget that essentially any game that uses a kernel-level anti-cheat is unplayable on Linux.

One day, Linux might be the better OS for gaming, but right now, Windows still wins hands-down, except in certain circumstances. Most of those being handhelds with very specific non-NVIDIA hardware.
 
Nvidia issues are partly due to Vulkan. Both are working on changes but it's probably 6 months out. Would be interesting to see the Nvidia performance once they have all rolled out.
 
You forgot to mention how much Linux gaming sucks if you have an NVIDIA GPU, which is what most people are going to have.

Last time I checked, a bunch of stuff wasn't working properly, and when it did work, you lost significant performance compared to using the NVIDIA GPU on Windows.

And let's not forget that essentially any game that uses a kernel-level anti-cheat is unplayable on Linux.

One day, Linux might be the better OS for gaming, but right now, Windows still wins hands-down, except in certain circumstances. Most of those being handhelds with very specific non-NVIDIA hardware.


At 1440p in a 20 game average Windows runs at 171 FPS versus 149fps on Linux which is a difference of 22 FPS on an NVIDIA 4080. I think the people recommending Linux as a viable gaming platform don't realise how unplayable 149 FPS is versus 171 in the grand scheme of things. You might as well be gaming on a Nintendo 64 at that point.
 
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At 1440p in a 20 game average Windows runs at 171 FPS versus 149fps on Linux which is a difference of 22 FPS on an NVIDIA 4080. I think the people recommending Linux as a viable gaming platform don't realise how unplayable 149 FPS is versus 171 in the grand scheme of things. You might as well be gaming on a Nintendo 64 at that point.


But that is not an issue with Linux. It's an issue with nvidia drivers for Linux.
Nvidia gives very little support for Linux. Though it has been worse. There is a reason why Linus said this about nvidia.

 
But that is not an issue with Linux. It's an issue with nvidia drivers for Linux.
Nvidia gives very little support for Linux. Though it has been worse. There is a reason why Linus said this about nvidia.


Yep and AFAIK they're actively working on a fix for the performance difference because they've identified the bug causing it. So it's not going to be an issue forever. You do get better performance in Linux on AMD but people characterising NVIDIA on Linux as awful and unplayable are not being honest.
 
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Lack of gaming support in Linux stops me from switching
What lack of gaming support you speak of?

I mainly play on Linux. And on nonraytraced games I have better experience than on Windows.

I even managed to play Helldivers 2 and Arc Raiders on Linux without any problems.

Currently playing Cronos New Dawn without any issues too.

Also Steam on Linux auto downloads pre-compilated shaders from Valve servers, so for example Silent Hill f would be absolutely stutter free experience.

 
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But that is not an issue with Linux. It's an issue with nvidia drivers for Linux.
Nvidia gives very little support for Linux. Though it has been worse. There is a reason why Linus said this about nvidia.








I recently saw Matt switch from RX 9070XT to RTX 5070TI

Doesn't seem like a bad experience.
 
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But that is not an issue with Linux. It's an issue with nvidia drivers for Linux.
Nvidia gives very little support for Linux. Though it has been worse. There is a reason why Linus said this about nvidia.



It has already been discovered that the blame for the low performance in DX12 lies with Vulkan. Nvidia uses a lot of DX12 resources, and Vulkan doesn't always have an equivalent. Therefore, Kronos will rewrite some of Vulkan's code to fix this. This type of bug also affects Intel.

Nvidia offers more Linux support nowadays than AMD. Their GPUs work day-one, many new features appear in the drivers (DLSS, ray tracing, etc.), and they even have a small management software package. AMD GPUs work well on Linux thanks to Valve's efforts in creating a driver separate from AMD's. The effort is from the community.

This rant was during the Optimus era, laptops with Nvidia APUs, which were quite buggy at the time. Shortly after, Nvidia took action and Linus gave them a thumbs up. Many years later, Linus said that Nvidia was one of the companies he liked the most.


So, when AI people came in, that was wonderful, because it meant somebody at NVIDIA had got much more involved on the kernel side, and NVIDIA went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of people who are doing really good work.


 
It has already been discovered that the blame for the low performance in DX12 lies with Vulkan. Nvidia uses a lot of DX12 resources, and Vulkan doesn't always have an equivalent. Therefore, Kronos will rewrite some of Vulkan's code to fix this. This type of bug also affects Intel.

Nvidia offers more Linux support nowadays than AMD. Their GPUs work day-one, many new features appear in the drivers (DLSS, ray tracing, etc.), and they even have a small management software package. AMD GPUs work well on Linux thanks to Valve's efforts in creating a driver separate from AMD's. The effort is from the community.

This rant was during the Optimus era, laptops with Nvidia APUs, which were quite buggy at the time. Shortly after, Nvidia took action and Linus gave them a thumbs up. Many years later, Linus said that Nvidia was one of the companies he liked the most.





I'm tempted to upgrade in the future to Nvidia due to recent AMD decisions and I mostly game on Linux. Gonna dive into Nvidia side of things more when I think it will be a time to upgrade. But I like what I see generally. It's nice to have more options in the future tbh.

I should resume watching Matts channel in the meantime to see what's what.

His channel always was and will be a huge help and info gold mine about Linux gaming from what I see.

And him gaming and making content on Nvidia should help me in the future, since I know how my RX 9070XT works on Linux anyways.
 
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For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?
 
For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?
Shader pre-compilation stutters.

It autodownloads precompiled shaders from Valve servers on Steam.

For example Silent Hill f would be stutter free experience.

I've been playing Evil West on Windows and it was a stutter fest. On Linux it is flawless.

It downloaded like 2GB of shaders uncompressed it and voilà top notch experience 👌🏻.
 
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For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?
If you dont have issues with windows than stick with windows.
 
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If you dont have issues with windows than stick with windows.
Dunno, if he wants to try it why not. If I didn't try it myself, I wouldn't have known what I know now. And I know I love GNOME with Dash-to-dock and Windows gives me an ick everytime I must hop on to play some kernel level anticheat games.

Poppinfresh Poppinfresh
Be sure to dual boot though. And install it on a separate SSD disk, not partition.

I recommend CachyOS, setting secure boot on it is a breeze.



Edit: https://www.protondb.com/ is also useful to see what games can run on Linux.

I've been copying Helldivers 2 launch parameters from there and haven't have had any issues tbh.

Poppinfresh Poppinfresh you can PM me if you have any issues. Although I'm on RX 9070XT I think I can still help setting up CachyOS and whatever Kernel to use and how to install NVK drivers we can always see what's Mattscreative has been using for his RTX 5070TI and we can go from there. I think he uses BORE kernel but Cachy has a pretty useful Kernel Manager and we can install bunch of Kernels and see what's what generally.

I'm using newest RC kernel 6.18 and I haven't have issues yet.

I'm on rEFInd boot manager btw and I recommend it big time for dual booting.


And you can switch kernels on the fly.

I also have custom launch parameter in there to unlock gpu overclocking and I use LACT to achive same settings I basically have on Windows drivers.
 
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Poppinfresh Poppinfresh I also like how I can basically change everything in Linux from icons to mouse cursor, to basically force dark mode in any app whatsoever, or theme. I can have coherent menus, if something is dark themed I right click and the menu list is dark themed also. Lmao.

Even exe files I run under Wine/Proton can run with dark outlines, something which absolutely pisses me off on Windows. As my PC monitor can get as bright as a sun in both HDR and SDR. And sometimes late at night similar apps in Windows burn my eyes out, and not on Linux. There's some peace in that also that you can tweak what you basically want and it's not that hard to do so also, so it's not like you have to sit at it for hours lmao like some would want you to believe.

Be sure to install TimeShift and use it, it will save you a lot of headaches.

Another distro I would recommend after CachyOS is Nobara. I think you can basically just let it autoinstall everything for you. And it can do so also with Nvidia drivers. Could be a nice first experience with Linux as you won't have to touch terminal at all. It also uses CachyOS kernels so it will be nice and secure distro with top-notch kernel improvements. Also GloriousEggRoll is really helpful if you have any issues they will try to help you in any way they can.

FYI OptiScaler just works on Linux so you can use DLSS all you want.
 
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For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?
Gaming wise, you're likely not going to notice much of a difference beyond what has already been mentioned.

The one thing I've heard is that distros like Bazzite are much easier than Windows to manage the operating system when using an HTPC or computer plugged into TV. Bazzite has a dedicated install ISO that will load directly into Steam Gaming mode on boot.

But if you're happy with Windows and the telemetry/bloat doesn't bother you it's probably easier to just stick with what you've got. There's going to be a bit of a learning curve switching to a new operating system as not everything functions exactly like Windows.
 
For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?

Biggest reason is privacy and control basically, same reason users are pissed off at Win10 support ending.

Linux barely collects any data from you and it's free from regulations bullshitery, it also doesn't have any bloatware. Also, no need to have a MS account.

Other than that, Linux is considerably safer than Windows.

I'm considering switching to Linux only to get extra privacy, but Windows still offers unmatched system compatibility for the stuff I use.

Poppinfresh Poppinfresh I also like how I can basically change everything in Linux from icons to mouse cursor, to basically force dark mode in any app whatsoever, or theme. I can have coherent menus, if something is dark themed I right click and the menu list is dark themed also. Lmao.

Even exe files I run under Wine/Proton can run with dark outlines, something which absolutely pisses me off on Windows. As my PC monitor can get as bright as a sun in both HDR and SDR. And sometimes late at night similar apps in Windows burn my eyes out, and not on Linux. There's some peace in that also that you can tweak what you basically want and it's not that hard to do so also, so it's not like you have to sit at it for hours lmao like some would want you to believe.

Be sure to install TimeShift and use it, it will save you a lot of headaches.

Another distro I would recommend after CachyOS is Nobara. I think you can basically just let it autoinstall everything for you. And it can do so also with Nvidia drivers. Could be a nice first experience with Linux as you won't have to touch terminal at all. It also uses CachyOS kernels so it will be nice and secure distro with top-notch kernel improvements. Also GloriousEggRoll is really helpful if you have any issues they will try to help you in any way they can.

FYI OptiScaler just works on Linux so you can use DLSS all you want.

Do you have any fast tutorial for Linux installation? It's probably been 10 years since I've installed it.

How private is Nobara?
 
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For all the Linux gamers out there, help me out.

I have a 5090, 9800X3D, 64 GB RAM
I use Windows 11 and don't have any major issues with it.

I mainly game on a PC hooked up to my LG OLED. The PC boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode.

Why should I switch to Linux? What would switching to Linux improve for me ?

With Nvidia probably not much but over all.

- no windows breaking updates
- no popups that force you out of the controller experience
- better hdr out of the box
- faster shader caching
- automatic password free log in without issues or tinkering.
- can go years without needing to reboot.
- ad free
- no bloat ware you don't want.
 
All Microsoft needs to do is have a dedicated "gaming" mode that you reboot in to. They never will though because it would just prove that yes you can run Windows without all the crap they keep laying over that ancient Windows NT kernal.

Count me in on the Windows hate brigade, shit I've hated for so long I might be a founding member. 😂
 
I hope more complain and complain and complain. Maybe it'll get Microsoft a kick in the ass that they need.

The amount of times my brother complains about an update breaking something or issues he has had since going to PC is astounding. Know who fixes them? Me...

I had a TON of issues myself over the years too. Every few months something is broken on my PC and I don't use it other than for gaming and the occasional Windows only app.

(Might've said this on here before not sure atm). Most recently for me was the display settings not loading at all. Couldn't change any display settings. You know what caused it? WINDOWS FREAKING UPDATE. Their OWN update broke their OWN settings menu. I reverted back to an old update for a while where it didn't have the issue, but it auto updated again and it was broken again of course.

I had to do a ton of trouble shooting to get it fixed. Had to delete Windows files in the (hidden by default mind you) Appdata folder. Yeah. Thanks a lot Microsoft.

Meanwhile my Mac has had 0 issues and I've used it for years and way more for things that you would actually think would break it with updates. My Steam Deck (other than a few bugs/crashes occasionally that they've fixed, nothing major) has been great.

My Samsung Android phone has 0 issues with its OS too. Weird right?

So who's the issue here? No one can guess I bet!
 
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Do you have any fast tutorial for Linux installation? It's probably been 10 years since I've installed it.

How private is Nobara?
Nobara is very private, it's based on Fedora which is based on of Redhat. The only thing is it can't use Redhat repositories.

But there are a lot of RPM files which basically are deb files for Fedora, dnf package manager works rather well. There are also copr's and whatever you won't find there it should be on Flatpak.

Definitely more private than Ubuntu.

On Nobara you basically don't have to do anything. It autodownloads everything for you and I even like the stock icons.

It's basically holds your hand so much I don't think you need any tutorials.

Draugoth Draugoth Poppinfresh Poppinfresh
Only a fresh pendrive and drop Ventoy in there. This is a really useful tool to make an multiple iso bootable pendrive.

You just install it, drop a bunch of files in there. And test stuff yourself, it won't work with secure boot enabled mind you.

I have one such pendrive and I keep CachyOS, Nobara, Stock Fedora, PikaOS and Windows 11 iso's in there. Really useful for testing distros.

And someone mentioned Bazzite but I don't use that distro but you could drop an iso of that distro also and test it along side of all those.
 
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I use Windows 11 and last year had to wait six months for Microsoft to fix a bug that caused Star Wars: Outlaws to constantly crash to the desktop without any kind of logged error or error message.
The problem was on Ubisoft's side and was solved with game patches, not Windows updates.

On linux you click "update" whenever you want:

- than you see exactly what is being updated
- than you can choose what you want to update
- than you see how its being updated
Where should I click on Arch? 🤔

it was stuck on a bad windows update and wouldn't update correctly
And it couldn't be uninstalled? I don't remember how it works on Windows 10, but on Windows 11, updates can be uninstalled from the settings.

It autodownloads precompiled shaders from Valve servers on Steam.
They're working on it https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/introducing-advanced-shader-delivery/ Steam on Windows has this option too, idk if it's working or not, though.
 
So who's the issue here? No one can guess I bet!
Fixed hardware my man.

Your apple walled garden is unable to update to a newer version of MacOs / iOS unless you shell out for new hardware. These are recent devices from 2018 as well

The same with your Samsung phones. You'll only get the latest Samsung oneui skin and android updates for their latest and greatest.

You can install windows 11 (if you bypass the tpm requirement ) and Linux on PCs going back decades if you really wanted to
 
Where should I click on Arch? 🤔
Terminal.

sudo pacman -Syu hit enter, type in your password and then it shows you what there it is to update. And if you want to update all of it just hit y (yes).

It also updates all of your apps too, not just OS.

CachyOS is based on Arch, so I daily drive it basically.
 
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Fixed hardware my man.

Your apple walled garden is unable to update to a newer version of MacOs / iOS unless you shell out for new hardware. These are recent devices from 2018 as well

The same with your Samsung phones. You'll only get the latest Samsung oneui skin and android updates for their latest and greatest.

You can install windows 11 (if you bypass the tpm requirement ) and Linux on PCs going back decades if you really wanted to
A valid point. I thought the Surface series was going to actually fix that, but they still have the same exact issues. But I suppose it's still the same Windows and not a custom version for the Surface.

Linux shows "open" can be more stable than Windows though. Something needs to be done imo.
 
Biggest reason is privacy and control basically, same reason users are pissed off at Win10 support ending.

Linux barely collects any data from you and it's free from regulations bullshitery, it also doesn't have any bloatware. Also, no need to have a MS account.

Other than that, Linux is considerably safer than Windows.

I'm considering switching to Linux only to get extra privacy, but Windows still offers unmatched system compatibility for the stuff I use.
Most of these issues that you have with windows have workarounds. You can remove the vast majority of that stuff and it would still probably be an easier time than having to look up work-arounds for Linux issues and app/diver compatibility.

As for it being safer? I guess I guess? But I also don't remember the last time I had a virus on my Windows machine.
 
I know, but you can't select what to update, just "accept all".
You can. But it will be all manual work.

Choose n.

Then basically just pacman -S only packages you want to update from the list that pacman -Syu made.

You can use shift+ctrl+c to copy and shift+crtl+v to paste and just spam up arrow in terminal for it to before faster.
 
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Yea it's not. There's a lot of little shit that will get on your nerves. I think some PC gamers are so used to it that they don't really consider the little things that come up here and there a big deal and don't think about it when promoting it to console users. I could write a whole list of all the shit that eventually drove me back to consoles.
Please do. I'd like to know what I'm missing, as Im smooth sailing on windows 11.
 
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