I’ve been gaming on Windows for as long as I can remember, with Windows XP being the first proper OS I got to try out. It’s only (relatively) recently that I made the switch to Linux, and even choosing to give up dual-booting along the way.
Honestly, it’s not been a smooth journey, and I’ve had my fair share of troubles. That being said, there is no way I’m going back to Windows for gaming for the foreseeable future. Linux just does what I need it to, and the games that I care about just work.
Daily driving Arch Linux for the past two years
Goodbye Windows 11, I won’t miss you
Like most of you, I started my gaming journey with Windows — in particular, Windows XP. This was on a Compaq home PC, which had an Intel Pentium D processor, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, and motherboard-embedded graphics from ATi.
Back in the day, Linux was something archaic and, without the presence of tools like Proton, meant I had no real desire to switch over. The tables would eventually turn, over time.
It all began with Windows 10. Microsoft started delivering miss after miss with the forced telemetry and nagware, and I was forced to move to Linux, in a bid to have my relatively underpowered laptop working to some degree again. I fully expected things to go awry, but lo and behold, most things just worked, including gaming,
And it’s only been uphill ever since. Proton and Wine have been lifesavers, even if there have been some consequences. I also briefly experimented with dual-booting, which I came to really despise.
For some inexplicable reason, Windows would overwrite the Linux bootloader after an update, which meant booting back into Linux required some tedious troubleshooting. This never-ending cycle and Microsoft’s bizarre decision to ruin Windows 11 with each update ultimately forced me to switch over to Linux full-time.
And it’s been 2 whole years since I’ve made the switch, and I couldn’t be any happier about it.
Gaming on Linux has never been this accessible before
More and more games continue to explicitly support Linux
Gaming on Linux is better than it’s ever been before. In some ways, it’s an objectively superior experience to Windows 11, offering none of the interruptions and (surprisingly enough) better compatibility for older legacy titles.
Yes, Linux can play that ancient port of GTA without major hiccups, while the same game might fail to launch on Windows 11. It’s a rather fascinating shift, and one that had very different origins.
Gaming on Linux had always been a bit of work, and Wine wasn’t anywhere as mature as it is now. Valve’s big push to Linux gaming with the incredibly popular Steam Deck also helped gain traction for the transition to eventually begin.
In a way, Proton did open the floodgates. Instead of having to create a native Linux port, developers could instead choose to focus on the Windows version of the game, which ran using the Proton translation layer with no other hacks involved.
Simply put, gaming on Linux was now a plug-and-play affair, and it was far easier to just patch out Proton-specific bugs instead of dedicating resources to a separate Linux port (and maintaining it!).
There have been barriers though. While kernel-level anti-cheat continues to be an issue on Linux, there are a lot of games with anti-cheat that work just fine. The number of supported titles keeps growing, as do the updates to the Mesa and GPU driver stacks.
That being said, Steam isn’t the only place you can game. Launchers like Bottles can be used to start any game you’d like, from Steam or otherwise, and alternative stores like GoG and Ubisoft Connect also work just fine these days.
I really don’t care about games that don’t run on Linux
There are some hidden gems to find if you avoid the obvious route
Unfortunately, some games just don’t work on Linux. These mostly include games that employ kernel-level anti-cheat, which includes the latest and greatest live service titles.
Heavy hitters like Call of Duty and Battlefield 6 just refuse to work on Linux, with the developers choosing to intentionally block the game from running. Even some free-to-play titles like Fortnite are known to not work, although there may be workarounds.
Still, for every game that doesn’t work, there are a dozen more that do. Marvel Rivals and a majority of the anime-styled gacha games just work out of the box these days, and offer you what I think is far better value and content.
And there’s the virtually endless number of single-player titles. With Proton Hotfix, these just work, and if they don’t, quick patches from Valve help out tons. There are some real gems to find here, with the indie category being a particular highlight these days.
A surge not even Microsoft could see coming
With the surge of Steam Machine competitors thanks to operating systems like SteamOS, gaming on Linux is more accessible than it has ever been. It’s now a real competitor to desktop Windows, and Microsoft might finally be starting to take notice.
And they have had no one to blame but themselves for this whole mess. It’s pretty obvious that Microsoft’s laid-back approach and shifting of priorities has fostered this problem, to the point of forcing a significant number of people to switch to the Penguin full-time.
As for me, I have no real desire to switch back to Windows. Linux does everything I need it to, games beautifully and lacks bloatware (in the traditional sense). All while giving me virtually unlimited control over the most intricate of system settings.