FYI: That's more Windows games than run in Windows!

WTF? Why? Because a lot of older games don't run in newer versions of Windows than when they were made! They still run great in Linux though 👍

One of the most frequently suggested beginner distros is Linux mint. It's great, it's stable, it's what I use and while it's not exactly cutting edge, or necessary the prettiest distro, it's great for beginners and will feel pretty familiar coming from windows.

Pop_os! And bazzite are more "gaming focused" if that's more your style, but I've never had an issue gaming with Linux mint.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter terribly much. Pick one, install it to a new drive and try it out. If you don't like it, pick another one.

Just made the switch, surprised how smooth the transition went so far.

Linux Mint here. I have had only 1 issue with a game on Linux and honestly, it was an easier fix then getting some games working on Windows which I have experienced plenty of as well. Linux really is just as easy as "Install from Steam, play".

Drivers are easy now today too, just like Windows. Honestly, if you gamed on Windows, you have all you need to game on Linux.

I'm installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it's easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.

Edit: bro, firstly, what the fuck and where did all this performance come from?!?! I vastly underestimated how many resources windows was hogging. I downloaded Steam (easy-peasy) and then Project Zomboid just as a test. This game runs like butter now. I was having major problems with it before. To the point I basically stopped playing. I know its just one example but I haven't had my machine run this well in several years, I feel. Also, got Spotify running. Super easy. I need to figure out how to get my VPN set up (ProtonVPN) but so far, I'm kind of in shock. I can't wait to actually dig in and see what I can do with this new setup.

Tried switching to Mint yesterday, it's a struggle as the guide kinda failed to mention some detail that i have to google a bit, and the result is it fail to boot(not a bootable drive error). Might try again tonight or this weekend. Honestly i can't see mass adoption if it's this PITA to get it working(not plug and play like windows), unless it's provided by the manufacturer.

Edit: so one of a few struggle i have is the guide failed to mention i need to create an efi partition, i have to google that for the recommended size.

Another is the "primary" and "logical" partition. I have no idea which to chose so i put everything on primary, not sure if this cause the issue.

Then another one is what should i mount my "rest of the partition" with, i googled it and all the answer given is "you should probably read on what is all this about to get a sense what you should do" when i just want some simple answer to what should i do with that, like in Windows, C is for the OS, and you put everything on D or something like that. It's akin to asking me to read the whole physics chapter when i just wanna know what speed a horse could run.

Then the final nail in the coffin for the session is "not a bootable drive". Then i just plug in my windows ssd and go on with my day.

But what percentage of games that use anticheat?

Had no major issues with Steam games so far on Linux mint, but I like owning my games, so I buy as much as I can from GOG, and Lutris and Heroic both have not given me exactly easy experiences :L

While this is awesome we still need to have the same performance on Windows. Yes, some games run better through proton for some reason, but that's the minority. Hopefully, proton will not be needed for new games in the future and we get native builds like CS2.

The only ones that wouldn't work are probably the ones with kernel level anti cheat. Maybe if I would be much younger, I might have had different opinion, but, as of today, I believe that all these games that wont run on Linux due to anti-cheat are cancer anyway.

i wonder how these numbers change if you weight by active players. like sure, Shooty Guns 2 (2008) running on linux is a good thing, but if it has a grand total of 5 people in the world playing it, it won't really do much for linux adoption as long as games like league of legends, apex legends and fortnite still don't work

(for the record i don't play any of those games and i've been happily daily-driving linux with no windows intervention for the last 4 year)

I made the switch almost a year ago when they started announcing all the spyware coming to win11. The distro you choose matters a LOT. After several that were buggy and frustrating I landed on Garuda dragonized. Setup was easy with their assistant finding the drivers I needed and I have yet to have any system breaking updates. Better track record than windows TBH. Performance is great, and steam integrates so well with proton that my experience is honestly just as good as windows native. I should probably go make a donation to the Garuda project, now that I'm thinking about it.