HN Reader

I recently had my Framework Desktop delivered. I didn't plan on using it for gaming, but I figured I should at least try. My experience thus far:

    * I installed Fedora 43 and it (totally unsurprisingly) worked great.
    * I installed Steam from Fedora's software app, and that worked great as well.
    * I installed Cyberpunk 2077 from Steam, and it just... worked.

Big thanks to Valve for making this as smooth as it was. I was able to go from no operating system to Cyberpunk running with zero terminals open or configs tweaked.

I later got a hankering to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. This time, the game would not work and Steam wasn't really forthcoming with showing logs. I figured out how to see the logs, and then did what you do these days - I showed the logs to an AI. The problem, slightly ironically, with MD is that it has a Linux build and Steam was trying to run that thing by default. The Linux build (totally unsurprisingly) had all kinds of version issues with libraries. The resolution there was just to tell Steam to run the Windows build instead and that worked great.

>So if anything goes wrong in my install, it’ll be a lot of forum-hopping and Discord searching to figure it all out

This is not inaccurate, however every time I've had to interface with either Microsoft or Adobe issues, both the professional and community support have been abysmal. Both community forums seem to incentivize engagement to the point where every response is 3+ hyperlinks deep to someone else's vaguely related post.

Maybe the linux forums self select for independent problem solvers..

This week we closed the doors on our Linux gaming podcast, which has run continuously for the past 13 years. No fuss, no drama. With the announcement of Steam Machine II (we also covered the original launch), it just seemed like the right time. Proton has evolved to the point where most things work out of the box. Few people are bothering with native support, and it’s become difficult to find new things to cover.

It really feels like everything is lined up for the year of Linux in the living room, and it’s great to see.

I was still using Windows 8.1 at the start of 2024 and was trying to slowly shift away to Linux at the time, but circumstances beyond my control ended up throwing me into the deep end a lot quicker than I expected.

I'm really enjoying Linux. It's one of those things that makes me somewhat passionate about computing for the first time in a long time.

This is bad. New user going onto an arch distro with a ton of tweaks is worst case scenario for a smooth experience.

I'm sure cachyOS will work a treat out of the box, but i'm also sure that one day things will stop working and cascade into a distro hop or reinstall leaving a sour taste in the users mouth.

You do not need a "gaming" distro, all distros use the same software and you will be fine on ubuntu, fedora etc.

Like many others, I recently dove head-first into trying Linux as Windows 10 is no longer officially supported, and I really don't like a lot of design changes in Windows 11.

So I went and installed Fedora, and for the most part, everything's working great.

I use my machine for both work and gaming, and there are really two deal breakers right now on the work side:

1. Most of my work is web-based, and it's really surprising that this is an issue, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get Chrome to use autoscroll on mouse middle click. In Firefox it's just there as an option, and worked great. The LLMs suggested adding a flag to the launch options (which was an additional layer of complexity because of flatpacks) but that doesn't actually work if you're using Wayland.

2. Google Drive. No native app. Was able to mount my drive with RClone, which works, but at the core of my workflow on Windows is using the Everything app (on hotkey) to quickly search my Drive files immediately as I type. I can't seem to get KRunner to index my Drive files. I add the folder path to the indexer, but it's not surfacing any results in there.

Gaming works great though.

I use bazzite linux for gaming full time and can't say enough good things about it. You don't need to do anything at all to maintain it. Every Windows game I've ever tried just works perfectly out of the box. Sometimes I will see a warning telling me that a certain game is not certified for a good experience by Steam, and it all just works perfect anyway.

When I was running Windows on the same machine I was constantly trying to diagnose why things stopped working, and downloading drivers.

Perhaps my experience with Windows was worse than average, I don't know. But from my perspective there is zero reason not to run Linux full time for gaming.

In the 2000's I used to fear that not having windows at home would lead me to a lack of troubleshooting prowess when it comes to problems with windows at work.

Now I'm just glad I only have to suffer windows at work.

I heard Jonathan Blow say that the problem of Linux, or native gaming on Linux, is the gazillion of libraries of unimaginable number of versions. I find it funny that investing a ton of time(by now decades) and money into making a API layer for Windows API made more sense than to clean up or somehow standardise Linux itself.

What a mess this thing is. Though, I am definitely not moving to W11, so Linux will be in my future one way or another.

> So really, why wouldn’t I blow that up and start over?

I really wish more people would mention the option of dual booting. Use another separate SSD to install your linux OS and that way you always have the option of going back to your Windows install. You can even reserve some programs for Windows and do everything else with linux.

There's really no need to approach it with a "screw it" attitude. You'll probably get yourself in too deep with that approach.

I recently tried to run Apex Legends on my Manjaro (i played this a lot few years ago on my Windows dualboot), but it is impossible to play it on Linux, as EA/Respawn is preventing the game from running on Linux due to Anti cheat systems having troubles with protecting the game.

I'm really curious what would be the appropriate solution for an anti cheat that runs on Linux in a way that a) does not compromise my OS/privacy/security b) protects the game from cheaters at the same time.

I had to briefly go back to Windows and I just couldn't understand how anyone serious can run an OS that just decides to reboot itself in the middle of the night.

I knew for a fact that a Linux desktop was a viable option when you have a separate macOS/Windows laptop (which is my main computer). Recently (frustrated with macOS updates), I decided to be Linux-only for a week[0], replacing my MBP with an MBA that runs Asahi Linux.

Unfortunately it turns out that I depend on too many desktop apps that runs on the major desktop OSes but not on Linux (or on Wine, for that matter).

* KakaoTalk, the major South Korean IM app ran on Wine for a week, but the updater doesn't work and freshly reinstalling the app broke Wine for some reason. (I tried removing the whole ~/.wine prefix, but it doesn't work.) Now I'm stuck without KakaoTalk.

* Discord is only provided as a x86_64 Deb file and a .tar.gz file. I tried using it from Firefox, and it works fine but audio sharing during screen sharing doesn't work.

* Disconnecting from my Bluetooth AirPods somehow does not stop my music. I'm not sure if this is an AirPods limitation or a Linux limitation (since I've never used AirPods with Windows), but it annoyed me endlessly.

* USB-C DP mode and the fingerprint sensor doesn't work. This is an Asahi Linux limitation, but I've seen various parts of the hardware not working when using other Linux distributions on laptops as well. I feel this is a common occurrence.

Not to mention that the lack of text editing shortcuts that macOS has, which is a big deal to me (but I tried as that is a macOS-ism).

I carried my MBA for 4 days before I gave up today. I brought my MBP today with me.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940274

I just tried installing Heroic Games on Arch, and the install process has left me less than impressed. It will be one vague error with a bunch of forums saying, "try this" and no "this is what that error means". I try to install that one and it has its own error, with the same forum experience. I'm not trying to install something which will allow me to install vulkan which will allow me to install heroic games...maybe.

I don't think an Epic games launcher is exactly obscure. Mind you, I'm completely commmitted to Linux and having the launcher is just in the "nice to have" category, but it hasn't gone well so far.

I just rebuilt my PC and setup Steam on Linux. It was fairly smooth.

I've dual-booted Arch and Windows for about 16 years. I always kept Windows around for gaming, and the occasional "doesn't support Linux" workflow.

For a few years where I didn't game I found myself almost exclusively in Linux. But then I spent the last 5-6 years stuck between the two as my PC use for daily tasks dwindled, I stopped working on side projects, and I started gaming a bit more.

I hated trying to split my time between them. Most of what I used a PC for was the browser, so I could just stay in Windows most of the time. I wanted to use Linux, but rebooting to use a web browser just didn't make sense. As a result I would accidentally go 2-3 months without ever booting Arch. As a result, I had a couple of major updates that didn't go smoothly.

I wanted to use Linux, though. I like having a customized WM, I like having so many useful tools at my disposal, etc. I just like using Linux, in spite of the occasional technical complexity.

In the last couple months I rebuilt my PC and a major requirement was that I get set up to game in Linux as much as possible. I even bought an AMD card to ensure smooth driver support.

I'm so incredibly thankful that Steam has made gaming not just possible, but relatively simple. Installation was simple. My single-player games seem well supported so far. And most importantly, Steam has made it obvious they're committed to this line of support, so this isn't some hero effort that will bit rot in a couple years.

I still have to reboot to play competitive games, due to their anti-cheat requirements, but that's less of a problem, I'll take what I can get.

I really like windows 11, works great. I have it way more customized to my liking than most "normal" users would, but there's really no negative impact on me. I also have a Mac and use Linux (bounced between arch, ubuntu, and now just use PopOS). Overall I generally prefer windows, it generally runs everything. Things like windows powertoys make the user experience pretty nice, doing similar on linux requires a lot more work. Wezterm standardizes the terminal across all platforms. But the OS really doesn't matter too much, it only accounts for maybe <10% of my experience. But everything just seems a bit easier on windows but I could live just fine in any of the OS's if I had to.

If you are looking solely for a Linux gaming distro, Bazzite is it. I switched from Windows earlier this year and I haven't looked back. Everything works out of the box.

https://bazzite.gg/

I've been linux gaming for decades so I'm not a good metric here. But I recently installed Bazzite on my gaming PC, and with Steam Big Picture mode, and Steam Controller mode, it's just like a Steam Machine now. Except it has more VRAM, larger, more modular.

I just felt like I wasn't using the PC for anything but gaming so why run Fedora with FDE and everything, just go full gaming mode on it, keep it simple, and the experience has been great so far.

Sadly pipewire still has issues properly delivering audio on my system with all core load of ~50%. It makes media consumption on a linux pc simply impossible for me, even a 13 year old thinkpad running windows is better in that regard.

Best thing we did two years ago was to set up Bazzite on a mini-PC. It’s been flawless.

Gaming on Linux, with games complied on Windows, using Windows APIs, targeting Windows users.

This will be like the netbook wave, or OS/2 Windows compatibility layer, a celebration until Microsoft decides the show has had its time.

Valve really should push for native Steam OS builds.

I switched over last year, no problems. Everything runs fine, and often better than on my wife's Windows machine. We're going to switch her over soon, because Windows 11 is such a shitshow.

Really interested to see where Valve goes with the new hardware. I love my Steam Deck, so I have faith they'll do a good job.

Install Ubuntu.

Enable the proprietary drivers if you have Nvidia graphics during the install.

Install system updates when the pop up appears on first boot.

Install Steam from the Ubuntu App Center.

Open Steam, install a game and play it. Most of them will work without issue unless it has invasive kernel anti-cheat.

The install-to-game time on Linux is actually substantially lower than it is on Windows now.

About two months ago, I switched from Windows to Chrome OS, and I haven't missed Windows at all. The only thing that needed some adjustment was my audio setup. I have virtual channels for the system, music, chat, and games. These are then mapped to my Rodecaster Pro II. With Pipewire, this setup was not too difficult and works reliably. Gaming works perfectly fine. The only application I miss is ShareX for taking screenshots. I still use my old Windows PC for gaming with anti-cheat software via Moonlight and Sunshine, and it works perfectly.

This week we shut the doors on our Linux gaming podcast that has been running continuously for the past 13 years. No fuss, no drama, but with the announcement of Steam Machine II (we also covered the origianl launch) it just seemed time. Proton has evolved to the point most things work out of the box. Nobody is bothering with native and it's gotten difficuls to find things to cover.

It really feels like evertying is ligned up for the year of Linux in the Living room and yeah, it's really good to see.

I've been gaming on Linux exclusively for the last few years. Problems with games are few and far between these days.

I've only had to fully reinstall once every ~2 years or so, and it's usually due to some problem with my DE/system not booting that I can't be fucked to troubleshoot. That's mostly my fault for running GNOME on a rolling distro. I just back up my home dir to the storage drive and I'm back up and running in less than an hour. Other than that, it just continues to work and I can be reasonably assured that if I don't touch it, it'll be fine.

My gaming PC sits next to the TV in my living room and I use it like a console, I have one of those cheap blutooth wireless keyboards with trackpad for the really basic iteractions and then I just use a game controller for playing games.

Windows 11 has been fine for me, I don't interact with it much other than seeing it for a bit when launching games.

I honestly wouldn't mind giving Linux a go, the only downside is I made the mistake of buying an nvidia graphics card, I'm not sure how much of a pain it is these days but last time I tried it was a bit of a nightmare - the general wisdom at the time was to go with an AMD card.

Changed from Windows 10 to an Ubuntu with beefy specs. When I saw firsthand the improvement of the user experience, I felt the year of the Linux desktop is nigh.

>I’m going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro optimized for gaming on modern hardware, with support for cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs and an allegedly easy setup.

oh no

My current stack: LG Gram, Manjaro, Steam.

I'm mostly playing MtG: Arena and it works like a charm.

I could even install Steam via the package manager.

Installing a working Nvidia driver was a nightmare for me. And this was on a very recent version of Ubuntu.

I don't know if I would use the word approachable

Any technical minds care to explain how the "agentic Windows" actually functions?

Based on the marketing it seems to run a sandboxed copilot instance that can impersonate the user to take actions, with their permission?

Something like "hey copilot install Putty"? and it does it?

I can relate to the reluctance to adopt AI features into the OS -- but I would also like to understand how they work and any utility they might provide.

Steam Survey October:

Windows 94.84% -0.56%

Windows 11 64 bit 63.57% +0.53%

Windows 10 64 bit 31.14% -1.04%

OSX 2.11% +0.20%

Linux 3.05% +0.37%

In other words, for Steam users who waited to switch to Windows 11, half left Windows and most people who left went to Linux.

I have been using Bazzite[1] since I discovered it here. It works great for games.

[1] https://bazzite.gg/

Google made gaming on Linux both approachable and profitable with their work on the Android platform.

I don't want to believe it until it happens.

NVIDIA and AMD can decide to undermine it if Linux doesn't yield enough profits for them.

Even if only one of them undermines linux, linux gaming might have trouble progressing and game developers might just ignore Linux gaming.

Microsoft could also undermine it if they really wanted.

Shout-out to ProtonDB for the fix when things don't work out of the box

I couldn't afford new computers in the past, would get some POS but putting Linux on it and a tiling manager gave me more bang for my buck

Started with Linux Mint then Debian/Ubuntu, tried some others too but ultimately just stuck with Ubuntu

Gaming on Linux always sucked because of many factors:

1. Linux decades ago was not "new user friendly"

2. Wine and PLayOnLinux was all we had with endless problem, and heavy dependency on Windows files like DirectX and libraries

3. Windows dominated the gaming market

4. 3D GPU driver was non-existent

The single reason why gaming on Linux now is better than Windows, has one name: Valve

SteamDeck/SteamOS changed everything, the whole Wine process is managed by the OS and no longer by the user. You may need to change the Proton version, that is all. That also pushed GPU drivers to be better supported on Linux.

Valve single handled what gaming on Linux has become. I run Mint Cinnamon Linux, and even tho it is not "SteamOS", I can play Steam games just fine.

Microsoft terrible takes and AI, is also pushing gamers over to Linux, better FPS on Linux than Windows. The only restriction is kernel anti-cheat software that only runs on Windows, but many games do not use that and the ones that do use it like COD(dead game), BF, etc, isn't everybody cup of tea.

If it wasn't for Valve, Linux gaming would still be as dead as it has always been.

To make it more perfect, users that use their computer for browsing, writing docs (LibreOffice), etc, can be done on Linux for free.

You as a computer user in 2025, you have little to no excuse to try Linux, but try something good like Mint Cinnamon Linux that is extremely new user friendly, good for browsing, good for development work, solid for gaming, video editing is chef kiss, etc, etc. Avoid Ubuntu (they are going proprietary).

It should be NixOS of course.

I have been waiting for this time to come. Microsoft clearly doesn't care about Windows very much, and Linux has never been more ready to break out in market share. Quite exciting to see!

Dunno, just upgraded Fedora to Fedora 43 and all of the games I had set up (wine) stopped working. Will try gaming on Linux again next decade.

Once they get music production onto Linux, it's fucking game over for Microsoft, at least for me.

A good deal of VSTs run in Wine already, Ableton works, Bitwig works...

My buddy gave me a computer because it wouldn’t run 11. I put Zorin Linux on it. I’m quite pleased.

Not once in initial setup or first week of use did it use dark patterns to try to trick or force me into something I don’t want to do.

My final Windows partition ever, exists solely for Roblox now. I was forced to "upgrade" my $200 Windows 10 Pro to 11 when Minecraft would no longer update. After installing 11, I find now Minecraft won't run unless you sign into the Microsoft Store app, not even the Java Edition. In Linux I can at least run Java Edition of MC, and all the other games I care about work perfectly, heck, sometimes better, through Steam. I love Valve.

Never before has a successful software company worked so hard to reject the wants of their user base. Ai continues to be a solution seeking a problem.

Anyone have experience with CachyOS or Bazzite here? I'm using Fedora KDE standard, never toyed with Arch distros, and don't know much about Bazzite/Kinoite. Regular Fedora seems pretty usable to me.

In any case, it's really great to see Linux overcoming its final major hurdle for a lot of technical people to dump Windows: Gaming compatibility.

I have been a GNU/Linux user since 2006. While I still had a Windows PC (likely dual-boot on one machine) for games and my full-time job, Linux provided ALL I needed 90% of the time.

I tried various Linux flavours. Starting with Ubuntu. From memory, I tried Mint, Fedora, Slackware, Manjaro, etc. I cannot remember when I last tried a Distro. It likely ended by 2010. Since I have just stuck with Debain.. for both client and server installs.

I said goodbye to Windows a few weeks ago.. fully. While Windows has served my purpose in certain ways, I have always been critical of Microsoft and their practices. I would agree that Windows 11 is a solid OS.. its the "features" added on top that slows it down.

This time, I have the latest version of Debian. No dual-boots.. nothing else! Despite being aware of Steam's Linux support for some time, now.. I actually gave it a shot and suprised how easy it was. I then tried Heoric (Epic) Launcher and just as easy!

It probably helped that my laptop is an AMD. I normally hear effort and difficulty with nVidia but I did not have much trouble 10 odd years ago. Not sure what its like to properly work today.

So far I have tried 4 games. 2 modern games, and two 90's games. All of the worked! Whiles the 90's games had their issues at times.. this mostly refers to using a gamepad.

The 2 new games (sure this is not a good experiment for all games) have worked flawlessly!

Honestly.. in my opinion.. installing Debian appears exactly the same as it was back in 2010.. maybe more. I rarely had issues. It's just this time I am able to play Steam and Epic games and installing dotnet is easy on Linux.

Let's not forget the work Steam are doing. We have a new Steam Machine. While being marketed as a new games console it's still a PC... and new users will try it out. For the younger generation, it might increase the Linux skills and spread wider adoption.

The only thing Linux has against it is time. Time is something humans lack... we lack patience! I knew that one day Linux would get better games support. It was possible even back in 2008. I managed to get GTA3:ViceCity working through Wine.

Mark my words. Linux will gain marketshare. The only part I am concerned about is infiltration of corporations jumping all in. It's not the kernel I am concerned about as it's protected by the GPL.. it's the larger corporations selling their products which the average user adopts and eventually becomes "required" software in most distributions.

The best way to understand this is, in an alternate universe, Microsoft drops Windows and encourages everyone to use Linux. How do you think they would get involved. Just think about that.

Welcome to the world of computing freedom.

That sounds less than impressive.

Over here we've been saying for years that gaming on Linux is a far better experience, with better framerates and better stability.

Just you're kind of SOL if you want to play anything that isn't based on some flavour of Quake or Unreal engine.

Well, that's different now. See? Told you. Faster, smoother, less crashy.

Oh, you want Microsoft Office? Yeah well you're probably using Office 365 these days anyway. Everything's in a browser. No, it looks just the same. Edge? It's less crashy in Linux, weirdly.

AutoCAD? Nah. Still SOL.

There is exactly one game keeping me from running Linux as my main OS… and that’s iRacing.

Sadly, they won’t (not can’t…) ship the flag in EOS (née EAC) that enables anti-cheat support on Linux. It would work, but they just don’t have the resources to support a whole other family of OSes.

So, between that and the abject murder of WMR for my Reverb G2, I’m stuck on Win10 for the foreseeable.

Open source sickos: Yes... hahaha... YES!

Honestly, I'm just surprised it took this long, and this much end-user abuse, to get things to where even casual enthusiasts are realizing that Microsoft (any proprietary vendor really) is NOT their friend, and looking long and hard at giving Linux a go. But I'm glad y'all are here.

Gaming on Linux is approachable because decades were spent working around the obstacles created by Microsoft and the work that Microsoft did to steer people away from open standards.

Funny timing. I just said screw it the other day and wiped an old laptop to install Linux. I'm using budgie at the moment, but it's been pretty smooth sailing.

I suspect the combination of modern Linux + + Steam + LLM to troubleshoot and learn may see more conversions like myself

Please don't install some weird trendy distro. I'm starting to think that Microsoft is sponsoring them just to make sure that people come running back to Windows, complaining, saying "not ready for prime time." Just install Debian. Stable. Or Mint or even Ubuntu. Move over to something bizarre when you know why you want it.

Call of duty 6 and now 7 will never work. They’re checking for TPMs and yelling about secure boot. Insanity.

I wish my parents would switch. Look at my comment history if you want more details, but TL;DR the auto update to windows 11 bricked my mom’s laptop and I had to do some weirdness with Linux to save her files and then wipe the computer.

Since I am a software person I have become the person that my parents call for IT help, and increasingly I have grown pretty frustrated with Windows. I have been trying to convince them to move to Zorin or Mint or something or to buy a Mac, and they will not yield.

In a bit of fairness to them, the biggest issue is MS Office; they did recently try LibreOffice and the MS Office online, and they had shortcomings with both. Since I have been wholly unsuccessful at getting any modern Office to work on Linux (without virtualization), so now I don’t have a case for them to move.

Which is annoying, because I really hate having to deal with it.

I moved to Linux after Win10 stopped receiving updates. It's WAY better than I expected it would be. Highly recommend people making a cut over. (I used Bazzite, but there's other options out there.)

>I don't want to talk to my computer

I recently vibe coded a voice typing software (using Parakeet — your best bet is probably Handy though).

It works in my terminal. (I just changed my paste shortcut to Ctrl+V

I can now literally speak software into existence!

I made a thin wrapper around my llm() function I can pipe text into from Bash.

This allows me to make many other thin LLM wrappers, such as one that summarizes then contents of entire directories.

I have a thing called Jarvis inspired by a Twitter post, where I ask it to do anything in bash, and it just does that.

I wouldn't exactly say it's useful (I am unemployed) but I am kind of having my mind blown a little bit.

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet.