Gaming on Linux has never looked better. Compatibility continues to improve with each passing year, and as such, I’ve been running out of reasons not to take the plunge. Just last month, I did exactly that.
I went with a distro I was familiar with and customized it to my liking, installed all the applications I needed for work, and also did my best to avoid touching Windows for gaming purposes the entire time I was dual-booting. Unfortunately, despite the hype, the next 30 days proved that Linux isn’t ready to replace Windows for me as a gamer, and I’m just as disappointed as anyone.
The good
I loved daily-driving Ubuntu
In terms of actually using Ubuntu day-to-day, it was great. From the moment I finished installing and booted it up for the first time, there was relatively minimal configuration needed to get up and running with work. I still needed Windows on the side, but Ubuntu was always the default for everything unless I needed Windows-specific screenshots for work or something.
On the gaming side, I was actually shocked at just how many games in my library supported Linux, either natively or through Proton. Now, getting things up and running on the gaming side of things was a different story, and took a bit more configuration, but once I did get booted into games, they ran just as well, or even better in some instances. The vast majority of games did run without a hitch, at least for the relatively limited time I had with my library. The select few that didn’t, though, really threw a spanner in my experience.
The bad
It’s just too unpredictable
As someone who is only getting busier, I really value things that just work. I love tinkering, don’t get me wrong, but when I want to wind down and fire up a game with some buddies, the last thing I want to be doing is tinkering with drivers and config files. The initial configuration wasn’t terribly complicated. I have a Radeon RX 9070 XT, which has great native driver support on Ubuntu, so no worries there, but when I began to experience crashing in a few select games, I began to get really frustrated.
Games like War Thunder and Arma: Reforger would crash seemingly at random, with error codes that didn’t really point me in a good direction. I tried using Mesa drivers, since that seems to be the general recommendation from Valve and the greater Linux gaming community, but that didn’t solve my issues. Some games had no issues at all, and ran for hours with no problems, but I still didn’t like gaming in fear that my game could crash at a moment’s notice. This inconsistency in what would and would not work, is a big reason why I kept switching back over to my Windows install for all gaming, not just those that required a third-party anti-cheat client.
Incompatibility isn’t a dealbreaker
Maybe I’ll try another distro
I’m not totally opposed to trying to daily-drive Linux as a gamer again, and I’d even overlook some of the glaring incompatibility with current and upcoming releases. Battlefield 6’s anti-cheat is almost guaranteed not to run on Linux, and it’s one of my most anticipated launches of the year. Escape From Tarkov is set to release their 1.0 update in Q4 of this year, and even though its Battleye implementation doesn’t support Linux, that doesn’t phase me. I’m perfectly content with buying a completely separate drive to run a Windows install just for those games, to avoid any potential same-drive dual-boot nonsense.
I don’t mind making some concessions here and there, but instability is one of the toughest things to deal with. I can hear the comments section already, saying how I should’ve tried a distro more fit for gaming, or that I probably configured something incorrectly. That could all absolutely be the case, but I just don’t have the patience to fight with my OS to get things to work that currently work fine on Windows. The next time I inevitably get sucked into the temptation of driving Linux, I’m thinking of giving Mint or even Fedora Workstation a spin next, but honestly, at this point it’s whichever one gives me the least issues.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that I don’t like about Windows, and Microsoft seems to be doing everything they can to continue to drive away power users. I really want to switch over to Linux completely, with no dual-booting funny business, but I just don’t have the time to scour obscure forum posts about my issues when I’d rather be winding down.
Gaming on Linux is here, but just not for me