I primarily use my pc for gaming, and want to avoid upgrading to Windows 11. Beginning the journey of looking into alternatives.

I am ignorant, trying to be less so. I have a hard time understanding what exactly makes a game not work just because of OS.

  • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Most “normal” programs use some “abstraction” libraries, so the programmer doesn’t need to know which platform it is running on. This “platform” is important because it is the layer that actually talks to things like your SSD, RAM, GPU, etc.

    Videogames, tho, are very very specific programs that really benefit from very optimized code, so some of these “abstraction” libraries simply will be worked on for a specific operative system.

    Thankfully, the people from the WINE project and lots of work from Valve themselves have made it possible to “trick” these libraries into thinking they are talking to Windows. It’s not perfect, tho, so some stuff is still not working, but you’d be surprised how much we’ve got already. Check out the ProtonDB project.

  • Günther Unlustig 🍄@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    7 months ago

    Ususally, like 99% of the time, it’s absolutely the fault of the game developers and by choice.

    Pretty much any game can run on Linux nowadays. Some do even run better than on Windows, but most equally good or a tiny bit worse.

    The main problem is (very invasive kernel level) anti cheat.

    And sometimes, games work fine on Linux, and then the devs actively lock out Linux users for some ludicrous reasons.

    You can visit protondb.com for a very nice overview of which games work and how well they do.

    • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      7 months ago

      That’s putting a lot of blame on devopers.

      Not all games have a ton of contributors on ProtonDB and that’s not the developers fault.

  • Teppichbrand@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    This is a little offtopic and a Lemmy cliché, but:
    Go and try Linux Mint! I was a Windows fanboy for more than a decade, now I’m all team Linux. It doesn’t run all games (I’m not a huge gamer, so no expert) but most stuff i want to play is no problem at all. I edit videos with Davinci, produce music with Bitwig plus there so much great free open source software. Working in Windows nowadays makes me nervous. It’s so predatory and dishonest. Try to get off while you can, it won’t get any better. And it’s so much fun to explore a new OS with an opened mind and some curiosity.

    • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Mint is a great general entry point to Linux.
      I’d say Pop!OS or Garuda Gaming edition for traditional style, and Bazzite for “Atomic”(harder to accidentally Bork), are better ootb(out of the box) gaming distros. I.e. less downloading and tweaking to get games running, more things installed from first boot.