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Year of Linux on the Desktop (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

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[–] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I don't think that comparison tracks. If you're a heavy gamer and the platform doesn't allow you to play a lot of your favorite games, I wouldn't recommend it as a platform. Xbox doesn't get everything but it does get about 95% of all the titles you are looking for that aren't platform exclusive to Sony or Nintendo. A decade ago linux could only play a much smaller fraction of the games you could play on windows. What your percentage of viable vs non-viable is, is up to you but I'd wager for many heavy gamers that percentage was much too low then.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It definitely wasn’t as good of a situation as it is now, but 10 years ago was actually pretty good for Linux gaming too. At that point Valve was already starting to support Linux and there were a bunch of native Linux releases for games at that time, including lots of indie titles in Humble Bundles and even a good chunk of AAA titles were getting Linux releases (e.g., Bioshock Infinite). If you had specific windows games you wanted to play you could very well have been out of luck, but there was actually a really solid number of native Linux ports at the time. I was personally pretty happy with it and just completely blew away my windows partition at that point. Of course you didn’t have access to the full catalog so to speak, but honestly you probably had access to more titles than on many consoles at the time, which arguably made it a viable gaming platform at the time (I made do with it!) Naturally, like any platform, you may or may not be okay with the selection of games available so it really depends on the person, but I was a pretty happy camper.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    but 10 years ago was actually pretty good for Linux gaming too.

    Feels to me like that's going too far back, to make that statement. I would say the last three/four years, personally.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    It depends what you’re comparing against, but I had plenty of games on Linux when steam released their Linux client. 10 years ago was the start of a huuuge shift. It died down a little bit after a few years (I think a lot of developers stopped caring when steam machines petered out and developers started to decide the Linux releases weren’t worth it), but then after a little while Proton started kicking off and the rest is history. Obviously you didn’t have nearly the selection of windows, but there was still selection.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    Outside of competitive shooters, which is my favorite genre to play on PC, a lot of stuff runs well through Proton. And that's an issue of the anti-cheat systems.

    Linux gaming isn't for everyone, I play what I can on PC and have a PS5 for other experiences. There are plenty of games I wish I could play, but I'm not interested enough to dual boot windows. I would do vfio passthrough for a VM, if they weren't getting better at detecting that.

    Ultimately I have enough games I can play to stay busy.

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  • [+] -10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I played a lot of WoW back then, it ran fine. Speaking personally. I guess if you want to gatekeep gamer hard enough you could call Linux nonviable back then but I always thought it was dumb. A ball and a deck of cards are viable gaming platforms. :p

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And that's fine, you had your game that ran well. We're not gate keeping here, we're just talking about the reality that most people want to play a wide variety of games and that simply wasn't something you were able to do then. We're also not saying that's the case today, things have changed and we should celebrate that.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    There was a good selection back then too is what I'm saying. Minecraft. Literally every web based game. It was a fine gaming platform, there was more than enough to keep you busy, if you weren't picky.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well we're glad it's better either way even if it was good enough before

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Agreed! Way better. I just hate how 'viable' is such a moving target. You can always find SOMETHING to dismiss it with. Linux is 'unviable' because of some random game that doesn't work or because of some new feature in the latest whizbang. If that is viable we'll never be there.

    Viable is when it meets one's needs sufficiently, not when it can do some impossible list of tasks perfectly. Viable isn't perfect, and I hate it when people pretend it is.

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  • [–] -5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I guess 'viable' means different things? Is this an American usage where something isn't viable unless it can do literally all the things?

    Xbox isn't a viable platform because you can't play world of Warcraft!

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