I tried Bazzite for the first time last weekend. I was shook at how far Linux gaming has come. Some of the games I play actually saw performance increases.
I don’t see any reason to return to Windows for gaming, except maybe a sandboxed VM for the very rare game that requires kernel-level anti cheat.
Would a sandboxed VM work for league of legends? Its the one game I occasionally play with friends that I haven’t been able to since moving to Linux. Not that I miss it much, just don’t want to be left out 🥺
I’ve got Mint as my main OS for everything except Windows, which I use solely for gaming. Would you say it’s worth just replacing windows with Bazzite? I pirate some games and only a portion of my games are on Steam, so I always thought it might not be the best idea to leave windows behind altogether. Also I’m basically a novice with command lines and such (hence why I’m using Mint)
Like, if you’re using an Nvidia graphics card you’d want to use mint’s built in driver manger GUI (don’t need to even use the command line) to make sure you have the best driver. If you have AMD graphics (ether iGPU or dedicated GPU) you don’t even have to do that. The main thing that Bazzite does is have the right Nvidia graphics drivers out of the box.
The main difference between the two is the package manager, the thing that downloads programs and makes sure they have all the dependencies they need to run. Bazzite is fedora derived so it uses DNF instead of the Debian derived APT for package management. Frankly the differences between the two are not really material.
Ether way, Lutris will get windows versions of games running as well as steam does, and any game can be added to Lutris regardless of how you got it, if not from one of the major store fronts you just have point Lutris to the files.
I use mint for gaming and it works just fine. Granted my computer isn’t particularly new, and I have an AMD GPU (nvidia is more finicky and some distros support it better than others out of the box)
I believe the final frontier for Linux gaming - apart from some niche cases - is multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat. They are literally impossible to play on Linux, so if you’re into one of those then don’t bother.
The other edge case is modding. A lot of mods work just fine on Linux, but some just don’t and some - like those relying on Mod Managers and the like - might require more fiddling and specific tinkering. If you do a lot of modding it’s probably easier to stick to Windows as you know everything just works.
Not to mention general support from software companies. I recently endeavoured to try Bazzite only to find out I can’t install my VPN’s client on it because there’s not a flatpak version. Given a handful of other programs I specifically like and would need to find workarounds or alternatives to, I won’t be jumping over anytime soon.
I can’t make any recommendations yet, I’m still very early in my own evaluation. I can say with Bazzite, most functionality seems available by UI. They also include tooling to manage manually installed games, as well as other platforms such as GOG, etc.
I tried Bazzite for the first time last weekend. I was shook at how far Linux gaming has come. Some of the games I play actually saw performance increases.
I don’t see any reason to return to Windows for gaming, except maybe a sandboxed VM for the very rare game that requires kernel-level anti cheat.
Would a sandboxed VM work for league of legends? Its the one game I occasionally play with friends that I haven’t been able to since moving to Linux. Not that I miss it much, just don’t want to be left out 🥺
They use a kernel level anticheat don’t they? If so, no cigar I am afraid.
Welcome to the family! I can’t remember the last time I needed windows for a game!
I’ve got Mint as my main OS for everything except Windows, which I use solely for gaming. Would you say it’s worth just replacing windows with Bazzite? I pirate some games and only a portion of my games are on Steam, so I always thought it might not be the best idea to leave windows behind altogether. Also I’m basically a novice with command lines and such (hence why I’m using Mint)
I use Mint as well. Haven’t had any major problems using it for gaming.
Steam and Lutris pretty much has me covered.
You’d probably be fine using mint.
Like, if you’re using an Nvidia graphics card you’d want to use mint’s built in driver manger GUI (don’t need to even use the command line) to make sure you have the best driver. If you have AMD graphics (ether iGPU or dedicated GPU) you don’t even have to do that. The main thing that Bazzite does is have the right Nvidia graphics drivers out of the box.
The main difference between the two is the package manager, the thing that downloads programs and makes sure they have all the dependencies they need to run. Bazzite is fedora derived so it uses DNF instead of the Debian derived APT for package management. Frankly the differences between the two are not really material.
Ether way, Lutris will get windows versions of games running as well as steam does, and any game can be added to Lutris regardless of how you got it, if not from one of the major store fronts you just have point Lutris to the files.
I use mint for gaming and it works just fine. Granted my computer isn’t particularly new, and I have an AMD GPU (nvidia is more finicky and some distros support it better than others out of the box)
I believe the final frontier for Linux gaming - apart from some niche cases - is multiplayer games with kernel-level anticheat. They are literally impossible to play on Linux, so if you’re into one of those then don’t bother.
The other edge case is modding. A lot of mods work just fine on Linux, but some just don’t and some - like those relying on Mod Managers and the like - might require more fiddling and specific tinkering. If you do a lot of modding it’s probably easier to stick to Windows as you know everything just works.
Otherwise you should be good to try.
Not to mention general support from software companies. I recently endeavoured to try Bazzite only to find out I can’t install my VPN’s client on it because there’s not a flatpak version. Given a handful of other programs I specifically like and would need to find workarounds or alternatives to, I won’t be jumping over anytime soon.
I can’t make any recommendations yet, I’m still very early in my own evaluation. I can say with Bazzite, most functionality seems available by UI. They also include tooling to manage manually installed games, as well as other platforms such as GOG, etc.