I run to Ubuntu or Linux Mint on everything except my gaming PC. Every year or two I try out Linux for gaming and usually go back to windows. With steam deck out it seems like Linux gaming is the best it’s ever been. With that said I’m still a bit frustrated with freezing (halo mcc) and Bluetooth being super flakey on my 8bitdo controller. I guess I’m rambling, but curious if dual booting is the way to go? Have most of you axed windows all together?
Yes. I think Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 were my last “anchors” to Windows (7, at the time). I barely ever booted into it… I wanted to be NOT IN WINDOWS more than I wanted to play big fat luxury games.
But I did keep it around until there just wasn’t anything left that I wanted to run but couldn’t. The first Humble Indie Bundles with games like FEZ and Limbo had been out by that point as well as a few bigger titles like The Witcher 2. Wine was much more painful than it is now.
I’ve generally made sure not to buy too “crazy” hardware (like Bluetooth controllers… yes, I’m old and a neophobe and I don’t know what else).
I ended up figuring out the Bluetooth issue! I think I just need to give it a solid go for a month or so and see how often I go back to Windows. Maybe like you I’ll eventually stop using it all together. My main game, Deep Rock Galactic, runs great in proton. Rock and stone everyone.
I stopped dual booting long ago. If a game doesn’t work on Linux, I find it much easier and more fun to simply do something else. At this point, the threat of losing my browser tabs would be enough inconvenience to dissuade me, and I generally have quite a bit more active state than that on my computer that would be lost with a reboot.
Before I gave up on Windows gaming I did use a dedicated machine with a KVM switch for a while. But even that simply stopped seeing enough use to justify it.
I think it’s the best of both world
I usually play almost everything on my Linux distro , but I keep my small windows partition for games that sometimes I play and cannot on Linux (aggressive kernel anti cheat etc)
Regarding your bluetooth issues on your 8bitdo, I had an issue with my 8bitdo pro 2 where on linux there was a higher input delay vs Windows. I then updated the controller firmware and that fixed it. Works great on linux now.
Maybe try updating the controller’s firmware, if you haven’t yet anyway.
Regarding dual booting, I do dual boot, sometimes I like using windows, others i like using linux. It’s nice to have the flexibility. Ideally i would like to switch to linux one day, but there are still a few small issues, at least on KDE wayland.
I don’t think I have input lag, but I am on a newerish firmware. As far as the fix I needed to enter a pin of 0000 for pairing. Not sure why it needed that and windows doesn’t.
Realistically, if you game a lot, you’ll probably end up using Windows most of the time if you dual boot.
I have a dual boot setup and the reality is that time in a day is already quite limited, and rebooting every time you want to game is bothersome. It’s up to you. If you partition things right, there won’t be a single problem. I would still advise using a completely different drive than the one which has Windows to avoid problems.
Using a completely separate disk for the Windows installation is good advice. Even if it’s shared with a data partition, as long as the boot partitions are on physicially different hardware, it does make things easier.
I was just thinking that I wish there were ways of isolating hardware away from an OS using the UEFI system.
I think you’re talking mostly to a community of Linux users, so it’s not going to be a great sample. Personally I dual-booted for quite a while, and eventually realized I had unintentionally not used Windows in months, so I backed up my files and removed it.
If you’re having issues with Linux, I would definitely dual-boot spend some time trying to figure the issues out instead of just going to Linux 100% and putting up with them.
I completely abandoned Windows on my gaming PC. These days if a game doesn’t work on Linux I just don’t play it. There’s plenty of other stuff to choose from.
I used to dual boot, but I found that the less games I had installed to windows, the less often if want to switch to ti - the problem with dual booting is the time it takes to reboot.
Sure it gives you the best compatibility and such, but it takes just enough time to frustrate waiting, but not enough time for you to go make a coffee or cup of tea while waiting - it’s right in that annoying zone, which is not what you want when you just want to pick up a game and have it work, and if you miss the boot prompt, it will boot back into Linux, and you’ll have to do it all over again.
If I were to go back to dual booting (I won’t, Linux is just so much more satisfying to use) I’d have one side for gaming and the other for work stuff. I wouldn’t install games on one side, and I wouldnt install work apps on the other.
As a result, I found that I’d rather just play something else instead of waiting for the pc reboot. So i uninstalled windows and never looked back.
If I were you, I’d still try dual booting, especially if you need certain software that just doesn’t have a good Linux equivalent - But I’d try to use Linux for everything possible - sort of as a method to wean yourself of the windows side, make windows less and less necessary to boot into.
Also, just some advice: when setting it up make sure windows is installed first, then install Linux, windows hates bootloaders other than its own, and therefore tends to break the Linux bootloader - for the same reason, keep a Linux live image around so you can fix it if windows update decides to update the bootloader and in turn, nuke the Linux bootloader.
I don’t game on windows just linux, but I have a windows VM on hand for the occasional bit of windows software I need. But these days that’s becoming a rare occurance. I still love my old Nikon photo editing software which lives on the VM, I just dont edit so many photos these days.
I dual boot Windows and Arch but most of my time spent is on Arch. It’s probably been a month since I last touched Windows.
I have a relatively big SSD so I don’t mind keeping my Windows partition around for the rare occasions I need it.
Whether one can live without a Windows partition really seems to depend on what games you play. In about four years, I’ve only needed to switch to Windows to play three games, but I don’t play any competitive multiplayer games so I don’t tend to encounter any Linux-incompatible anticheat software.
I have axed Windows since they started to get really aggressive with their bullshit on Win11 and so far I don’t regret it at all. Admittedly I’m not that much of a multiplayer guy anymore, single play is working fine however. I’m on Garuda Linux and it’s super handy, because it comes with a lot of stuff already set up for you while still offering the benefits of Arch. Luckily, because this isn’t Windows, you can just remove what you don’t need. Depending on your choice of image, there isn’t too much to worry about tho.
I really want to try some older Windows games at some point. From what I’ve heard (and seen on Windows) they run better on emulators or Wine than Windows these days.
After five years of dual booting, I ditched windows for good in 2022 and it’s proven to have been an excellent decision. Managing two systems is way more of a hassle than the occasional (and increasingly rare) hiccup in running a game on Linux.
I have a GPU passthrough setup just for VR and HDR. But I don’t really use Windows otherwise.
