It looks like "The year of Linux desktop" is finally coming

If your video card is AMD, gaming on Linux is simpler than that. The driver is open source, and seems much more robust than Nvidia's Linux driver. If you just look at the number of positive "flawless" reports of games working on protondb, you'll see many AMD cards and many of the issues reported there are on Nvidia hardware.

its insane how fast and how well linux gaming has come. if valve can somehow figure out the anti-cheat situation for linux, and fixing some issues regarding x11 or wayland nonesense then windows could be in a bit of a pickle

I really really want to make the switch to Linux, but so many of the games I play daily just won’t work on it. It sucks! I’m hoping we see a big shift in the industry soon, because I’m anxious as ever to leave behind Windows spyware. Super pleased with Valve for making such a big push towards that with the Steam Deck.

I bought my first Steam Deck with the launch of the OLED version (wanted to see what Valve could achieve with the first version before spending the money). I tried switching to Linux about 5 years ago, but the problems with gaming is the reason I (reluctantly)switched back to windows. About a year ago I passed my 3080 to my wife and bought myself a 7900xtx. I think it's time to give linux another chance!

For me, once valve gets motion smoothing and automatic audio switching implemented in SteamVR for Nvidia cards, there's basically no reason left to stay on windows for me.

i love reluctant anarchist's videos. they are so well produced and edited!

criminally underrated channel

I think another next big obstacle in linux gaming will be modding, just as an example modded mass effect le is a massive improvement in terms of graphics, content, and quality of life / bug fixes but getting those kinds of modifications working is definitely a hassle if its even possible (i know for mass effect i was never able to get them working on linux, reshade and reshade dependent stuff being the most difficult to work through imo)

Someday, someone will make a great video about Linux, open source, and anarchism. And I hope it will be this channel.

Imagine if Valve turns out to be one of the biggest reasons linux becomes common, a huge company bringing a free open source OS into popularity 😂

I really want Linux gaming to replace Windows, but unfortunately I won’t be switching until it is a true install>boot>play experience. The limited time I have for games I don’t want to be troubleshooting or fixing things. There’s always that one game that doesn’t work and you can’t play with friends.

"I don't mind spending half an hour tinkering my system" - haha I might have spent a lot longer configuring tiling window managers. Definitely worth the time to really make your system personal and streamlined though

Thanks for your takes man! I'm optimistic about the growth that videogames on Linux has made, especially after the rise of the Steam Deck

The only reason I have still windows installed as dual boot is the lack of headtracking support for all my flight sims

As a Linux PC gamer for over 20 years (no seriously, this is a Wintendo free household for over a decade) I still find it mind boggling where we're today. And dead gods I love that Wild West attitude because I do walk the extra mile. I'm mostly into simulations nowadays and started building a cockpit to play various Space Pew Pew games and there is nothing stopping me from gaming _the way I want_ - the way it was always meant to be - because I can adapt, adjust or hack into anything. Oh and all the things I learned on the way… 🤓

I moved to Linux Mint about 6 months ago, and the only issues I have with gaming typical come from games with Easy Anti Cheat. I've been uploading videos about my adventures if they ever have questions on if something works or not.

I tried PopOS again for a while and the games actually ran better than on Windows (for some reason), but I ended going back to Windows because there were too many bugs with Steam. The client often crashed when opening the overlay, and some games did not work well with dual monitors. I'm really sad about it because I love PopOS and it's my favorite OS by far otherwise, but I can't accept crashing multiple times every session on a gaming computer, especially not while in ranked games :/

With Windows 11 around the corner and this promising state of Linux I am really considering a switch

I appreciate you uploading the video at a higher bitrate! not too many people do, and it makes such a huge difference on a 4k monitor.

I personally wasn't a fan of Valve as a kid. I was very suspicious of them as most companies in their position leverage their power against the gamers. But over time it's come to be one of the last services that I feel actually sticks to its word and delivers. I always had hope for the Steam Deck, even when its future seemed iffy. Its now IMO one of the best options for so many different people, not even just gamers. It might not be the most powerful but it's highly refined, like a Lexus. I don't even own a Steam Deck, but I've seen the improvement its made to Linux gaming and I know people that have them and love them. Kudos to Valve

Until Linux becomes much, much more beginner friendly to enter I don't really see it catching on and becoming popular enough anytime soon. That's the main issue with it since forever

All Games need to work for Linux to be a good option for Gamers.

Fun fact: testing 2 Pc's one with Linux and the other with Windows with the same Cpu and GPU, we'll games run 15/20% better in Linux!

We're gonna see a massive boom in Linux userbase in not just gaming but OVERALL pretty soon, because of the evolution of AI. Optimizations and ease of use are about to skyrocket. Sick of Giant companies having a hold over markets, everything will change soon ✌🏽

I've recently tried out a few games on Linux. 5 to be exact. 1 didn't want to launch at all, 1 had no music, 1 was a stuttery mess, 1 was "playable" and 1 worked like a charm. I'm back on Windows now.

I've bought the Steamdeck to play all those older games I've never touched in my pile of shame. I also wanted to see the state of Linux gaming first hand. I was surprised by how many games actually worked and finally took the plunge a couple months ago by switching my PC to Linux. I'm now 100% windows free and luckily all games I wanted to play so far worked for me. I hate live serve games anyway so those anti-cheat issues luckily didn't affect me so far. I had to put some time in to get my system to a point where I'm happy with it, but generally it works really well despite an Nvidia GPU. I don't plan to return to Windows anymore.

No VR on linux = no migration for me

It would be awesome to see the state of native gaming in GNU/Linux. Maybe you have a video about it already?

The finals got Linux support

I agree so much with the last part of the video. Linux is becoming very important nowdays. From Windows 10 and 11, I feel like they want you to not have control over the computer anymore, like if you don't own your computer, but you are just allowed to use it as long as Microsoft agree (this come in many ways, like mandatory updates when system "guess" it should be, stupid impossible configurations like the shitty new context menu that try to force what you will see, start menu that always search the internet instead of showing the installed application because you don't spelled the name 100% correct, etc).

Great video! I'm a arch user because valve. My goal was left windows definitely and valve made that possible.

Who’s here because of copilot recall nightmare ?

It's really important to have options. I'm happy that gaming on Linux is becoming more approachable. I might try it myself one of these days.

"Liberate PC games from Windows" is such a badass line to say 🔥🔥

I'am still trying to run my battlefield 1 on linux , my KDE crashes when I try to close steam app , still a long way to go for linux gaming to be practical for the masses

I had an issue with my pc months ago and couldn't get windows to work. I decided today to install ubuntu and i'm glad to hear I won't be missing out on much.

I've been wanting to switch to Linux for years and tried many times, but Windows keeps pulling me back. Today, Linux is in a much better state then it was just a few years ago, but I find that the biggest barrier is that there are so many different distros, pulling in all directions that confuse users and isn't a strong incentive for developers to target when the standard keeps changing all the time. Valve with SteamOS could do what others can't, especially if SteamOS gets popular, they could create a platform that developers from apps to games know what to target and in the case of gaming through Proton, that offers one massive advantage over native on Linux, long term support that the game will work many years from now, I've seen it many times when the Linux build of a app or game isn't as good as the Windows build or that if it's closed source, there's no guarantee that the software will continue to work years from now, with Proton, that solves that problem by the Proton layer keeping the compatibility, in other words, Linux can change under the hood all it wants, as long as Proton changes with it, the software that runs through Proton should stay compatible, that is the game changer with what Valve achieved with the Steam Deck and SteamOS. All the foundations are in place with Linux, but too many distros pulling in all directions with their own standards, package formats and so on, puts users off, SteamOS could change that where games and apps could run just as easy as they do on Windows and if developers can build one build of their software or game that runs on Windows and Linux, there's more of a chance they will support both, one build is far easier to maintain and optimise and as Proton is doing the compatibility layer, what's being changed under the hood on Linux has less of an impact on it. To put it another way, if Valve release SteamOS for any device to use and support it well, including polishing the Linux desktop side of things, I would dump Windows and use that and I suspect many others would.

Gaming on Linux has been mostly smooth sailing for me, but I did run into a minor issue with the drivers for my AMD card. I have a 7900xtx and it wasn't supported in a fresh install of Mint. It was easy to solve, I ended up upgrading my kernel from 5.15 to 6.5 and it simply worked.

This is my first impression playing DOTA 2 linux with AMD vulkan native, its so fking smooth! Less stutter, no frame drops and less crash!. The downside is my usb cam borked, cant use my wallpaper engine at linux mint and no HDR support.

As a NixOS user I feel called out...

the only barrier left for me is VR support for more headsets. I'm proficient in linux (i use arch btw), and all/most games i want would work there, but I can't fully move there without a more broad VR support. dual booting is incovenient, and something like vm/vfio on a desktop is dumb in general.

FPS games like PUBG and Warzone won't be coming to Linux in the near or distant future, imo. Both come bundled with intrusive levels of anti-cheat software that will not play nice with Linux. The other hurdle you don't mention is gaming peripheral support. I had no means to install a very important firmware update to a Steelseries mouse. I still need Windows around just to configure mice and keyboards, everything from key bindings to debounce times.

I switched to Linux last year and have never been happier with my desktop experience.

Sehr gutes Video. Bin mit dem C64 und anschließend mit einem 386 SX25 groß geworden. Dos 5.0 und recht schnell, 6.22 und Windooof 3.1. War eigentlich immer zufrieden.... aber nachdem 8.1 raus kam, war ich unzufrieden und ich habe Linux ausprobiert, natürlich nur im Dual Boot oder auf virtueller Ebene. Nachdem Windoof 10 raus kam, habe ich mehr und mehr mit Linux experimentiert und ca. 70 Distros ausprobiert. Windows 11 habe ich ca. ein Jahr benutzt und bin mittlerweile Windooof frei. Im Moment benutze ich PopOS zu zocken und Manjaro im Dual Boot zum Arbeiten. Für den Notfall habe ich noch eine externe SSD mit Windows 11, aber hauptsächlich nutze ich nur noch Linux. Mittlerweile nutze ich neben PopOS und Manjaro, auch noch eine dritte SSD mit Batocera, damit ich meine Retro Games unbeschwert zocken kann...

baldurs got some trouble on linux actually.... but then got fixed. in fact for some users they needed to make some tweaks so the game could be playable :D

I am able to play the finals just fine on linux... I had a few crashes but not too many, it works just fine and is absolutely playable on linux, though i needed experimental proton, normal one wouldnt work

The Finals actually works on Linux! Works good on the Steam Deck.

As a rule of thumb if its not multiplayer it will run on linux

The Finals it's now supported officially on Linux!

What was the modern classic at 2:35? And what is the skateboard game at 6:26?

tried switching to linux pre proton, didnt happen, ran into issues after issues - recently installed hyprland on minimal arch, installed steam, protonGE via the protonupqt tool, lutris and wine via pacman and thats it, pirated loads of games and installed them via lutris, then added the installed .exe to steam library and running flawlessly with proton ge, some titles like overwatch i feel run even better than on my windows ... i play in top500 on overwatch pc i used to be quite the sweat and if there was any issues i wouldnt bother but its literally better?! highly prefer using linux for work and personal / general use, that being said i still log into windows to play league ... but linux gaming has made huge gains in such a short amount of time

Until every game I want to play and Affinity V1 will work natively on Linux without any hassles or compatibility issues, I will never switch to Linux for anything but coding.

If they fixed the multiplayer issue id be done with windows. I mainly use my mac, but have a pc for gaming. Id love to tinker around with some mac like linux OSs

I think we can thank the steamdeck and valves proton for the rise in linux games. Because devs will try and make it steamdeck compatible and if its steamdeck compatible its linux compatible

I really want to thanks everyone involved with Valve's proton, gamescope and their mothers for this.

"without a hassle" is a bit of stretch but agreed, it's been going great

You're the most positive Linux youtuber I've seen. Glad to get another upload from you.

That truly great news, that many games start to work on Linux! Thanks for the video!

Apparently, the developers of the The Finals have enabled play on Linux

That state of gaming isn't bad at all. I've played quite a few games through steam that were for windows only on my debian machine. That said, gaming on a laptop sucks if you have switchable graphics...

Great video! May I ask what model of laptop you use for gaming and which Linux distro you recommend for gaming friendliness, thx!

"Linux is the Wild West" 😂 Perfect description for Linux. Been using nothing but Linux for the past 2 decades at home and for gaming 🤘🤘

Linux is kind of where Windows gaming was at the very tail end of the 2000s. At the time, PC gaming had just emerged from its dark ages. Valve was beginning to streamline things and publisher support was improving, but there were still issues with things like DRM, and stuff still required the occasional tweaking. Good news is that once the ball got rolling, things picked up speed very quickly, and by the time the 8th console gen launched, PC gaming had entered its second golden age. Steam Deck is doing for Linux what Steam did for Windows back then.

linux needs proper HDR support and then I could go all-in.

Thought. "screw it" last night and dual booted Linux with windows after swearing against it 10 years ago .. WOW Linux has come such a long way for gaming and workstation use , I'm tempted to just run Linux on my next PC and use a Windows Vm when needed

5:50 whats the name of that game??

The AMD open source driver got one problem, if you wanna do 120hz@4k with HDMI 2.1 you are out of luck. HDMIforum will not let them use the driver.

I spent an entire weekend troubleshooting wayland. Installed Cinnamon, all of my issues disappeared.

Gaming is awesome on Linux through Steam. I learned about Proton recently and I think this is the smartest thing Valve has ever done. Most users migrating over from Windows are going to be Linux newbies and they won't want to spend hours fiddling with Wine settings for each of their favorite games. Steam is positioned to grab up about 95% of casual gamers coming over from Windows.

so what do you prefer OS for gaming in linux?

I am here to sing the praises of garuda linux for people that want to go from windows to linux. jumped 200ish distros and windows environments....garuda was the only one that actualy just worked. With all the anoying config stuff already done. 10/10 recomendation.

It seems like the meme of the year of the linux desktop is on the way. Its a slow march and we don't know when we'll get there, but we will. So we should be patient and march on.

I recently tried linux mint for the first time as i am interested in switching to linux and was told that mint is generally the easiest to understand out of the box. I searched the game i play most on protondb and was told it had a gold rating, i download it and play on experimental, and it was a choppy mess. i AM on a gtx 1660 but its apparently completely compatible with mint. being able to LAUNCH a game does NOT mean its a playable or enjoyable gaming experience, and ill be sticking to windows for now. that said, as linux gaming continues to grow, ill be looking to try it again, but for now i wouldnt say linux is a good gaming experience for your average gamers looking to swap to linux if you expect to be able to play “supported” games with “good compatibility” with decent performance.

at this point I gave up on Publishers/Developers releasing a native Linux game. What I look forward now is a Chromebook (keyboard & mouse) friendly Android game.

Can you please do a video on how to play games on Linux? What do we need to install ...etc? Especially if you have a simple desktop environment (mine is bspwm and polybar). Also running on nvidia.

I own both a steam deck and windows 10 desktop. The only thing stopping me from fully switching to linux is the anticheat issues. But if microsoft forces the switch to 11 i'll be making the jump and do without the games with anticheat. I wonder if emulating windows on linux is a viable work around?

As much as I'd love Steamdeck sales to equal incentive for game dev's to think of Linux compatibility it doesn't. On the one hand the fact that Linux is significantly less painful to game on than it used to be and Steamdeck popularity are great, but on the other major AAA studios barely seem to be able to put out fully functional games on release now a days, never mind also making sure it's going to work for potentially 2 out of every hundred users and Anticheat only makes it worse. That said I recently moved my main workstation over to Pop OS after finally being done with MS (or more specifically windows 11) and was pleasantly surprised to find only 1 game I play on a regular basis wasn't playable on Linux. I still have to run Windows for some other apps anyway so it's not that big a deal to me to run that one game on a second PC that runs windows but I know a few people who would move except for VR support or games that don't work because of anti cheat. All in all definitely a much better experience than the last time I tried but Linux still has a long way to go before the 'average' user/gamer would probably care and market share is what is needed to get software dev's to care more about Linux.

Amazing quality of video.

So I am now on OpenSuse for 1 day. I have a steamdeck too and Linux to me is the 'you need to be able to code' OS for no sane reason. Firstly, VRR will break Linux on nVidia without a second monitor to turn it off or the video feed goes blank. Gamescope, Mangohud needed to be installed. DS3 (Dualshock 3) needs for some reason a pin typed in whereas on SteamDeck it just works. Other controllers will work like DS5. Depending on the distro, typing passwords is everywhere. Audio crackles due to nVidia or the distros issues with the PC specs. Discord crashes when showing a window to people due X11 vs wayland issues. Wayland flickers windows of unsupported programs. Gamescope does not work on nVidia. Audio is not as good as on Windows due to drivers. Game modding, legacy tools for homebrew, capture cards and more are missing or do not run. I am going to use the first SteamDeck whenever I get the OLED as a different DIstro test device. My main PC with 2 drives, will go back to windows 10, Sh t up W10 will be installed. Linux is all config files. Windows is just works with GUIs. DOS is easier due to GUI in Terminals with ascii stuff. I am addicted to original consoles being routed through my capture card Elgato 4kHDR. Should have gone with a professional card but depending on my choice like USB C 40gbit then I need to upgrade my USB chipset / PCIE expansion card. or similar to be open source / no drivers. For notebooks and privacy / payments / similar stuff - linux is great. NO ONE IS EXPLAINING THE DIFFERENT SETUPS on Distros like how far the security goes with pw and auto drive mounting and SD cards and so on. For gaming Win10 is best. W11 crashes my PC for some odd reason. Maybe the previous bios version from release time. AM4 motherboard. Someday, if MS chooses to get even worse, the only way is too use custom windows 10 versions, debloated and from the high seas. The plug and play nature of windows with no awkward dependencies and shared backends which just cant simply work well and have no GUI just make things unbearable to some extend except when the computer is made for Linux, driver-wise. Windows is more like >>think inside the boxoutside the box

04:01 No Destiny 2 No UbiSlop No CoD crap No shovelware online garbage So what's the bad news?

Nvidia is the only villain in this story sadly

I pretty much only play older games, so for me there aren't that many games that won't run. Although, I don't have discrete graphics and I bet those that don't would work on a Steam Deck.

Bro just casually dunks on every other art form

Linux is the future of gaming!

We need a more free and resilient desktop experience for everybody, and that's why I really want the Linux desktop to be even better. I have nothing against Windows particularly, but the world being reliant on this single propertary desktop OS made by one corporation is kinda bad. Governments, small and big companies, schools, universities, hospitals, etc; everywhere you go, there's always Windows. Microsoft is not inherently evil, but it's still a corporation, and like any corporation, it can do lot's of bad stuff if it is profitable, and they know they can get away with it

Just because a game works on Proton doesn't mean that the developers did any work with the Deck in mind The fact that a developers game works on Deck isn't necessarily an indication that they are interested in the Linux market. I'll take it with a grain of salt

Once this reaches above 90% a few years in a row is when Linux is perfectly ready for use for pretty much everyone. I hate win 10 and win 11. The moment support is dropped for win10 im going ubuntu or mint. Maybe even SteamOS

cant wait for steamos widely available for gaming, or maybe in the future console would use steam os

Fun fact: All the best games are ALREADY playable on Linux.

Literally the exact video I was looking for, with all the relevant, up-to-date information.

I installed ubuntu on a spare gaming pc I had laying around doing nothing thinking ubuntu was the best for steam linux gaming but even with proton enabled it's a hit or miss whether games work or not 😭

Thank you, Steam Deck.

I love using linux and gaming on linux has come a long way! I still use windows because i like everything computery. Game creators are still the road block to linux gaming.

I've moved to Linux, had enough of Windows. +1 to the Linux community!

I like linux on mobile devices, but kde and gnome use too much ram. Now I use xfce, openbox and hyprland for media and steam bigUI mode.

I need full Linux support. Going over to Linux to use steam is fuqin retarded. Why would I want to jump out of one prison to land in another one. Steam Linux is NOT the answer. So I might as well stay over at Microsoft priso for the time being.

I play Lethal Company on linux cause it just runs better than on Windows. I get stutters and hitches on Windows

Interesting video ty

Why are you excluding Epic Games titles? They can be played on Linux with Legendary. You seem biased.