I ran Manjaro Linux as my daily driver a few years ago but slowly phased it out for Windows for some reason, and I’m finally back using Linux (currently Linux Mint). I gotta say, I don’t know why I ever switched back to Windows. There’s just so much freedom Linux gives you right off the bat that Windows is just plain stubborn about. The final straw for me was a couple weeks ago when Microsoft added a Copilot (Bing AI) Shortcut to my Windows 11 taskbar. They’d already added ads to my start menu and preinstalled a bunch of garbage that should be opt-in, not opt-out, so I was just fed up with it at that point. Plus, Linux is so much more customizable. Been running Mint for about a week and a half now, and honestly, I don’t think I’ll be using Windows much anymore.
I’ve nibbled at trying to use Linux on my home computer for years and years, but games didn’t have a good track-record in Wine so I never went over.
I recently heard differently, and tried PopOS, and I’ve mostly been able to get all the games I wanted to play to play, mostly using Steam’s own emulation using Proton, and a few using Lutris.
The only two that gave me trouble were Starfield–it had a bug with Nvidia cards and I had to wait for a Linux driver to be updated with a driver fix. (And honestly after playing Starfield, it wouldn’t have mattered if it never played.) And Crusader Kings III…but only if I had it playing natively on Linux, as it’s supposed to be able to. It kept constantly crashing if I clicked on a character portrait. When I switched to playing it on Proton (so emulating Windows) it’s been rock solid.
I’ve played No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Rimworld, Control, Alan Wake II, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Valheim all successfully. (And Starfield and Crusader Kings III after some troubleshooting.) Those are modern enough that I don’t feel any more disadvantaged gaming on Linux than I did on Windows (accounting for my last-gen hardware and such.)
I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux just fine as well, and Forza Horizon 4 (though the Xbox account setup was a rigmarole). Only thing I had to do was use
bluetoothctlto set up my Xbox Series X/S controller, as it uses Bluetooth to connect and it doesn’t work with KDE’s Bluetooth setting GUI.https://www.protondb.com/ is worth a look. It shows the state of games using Proton and people list their tweaks to make games work. You can filter it to only show Nvidia GPU’s on PopOS as an example too. To find tweaks more applicable to your system.