Gentle reminder to everyone that support for #windows10 ends in about 90 weeks. Many computers can’t upgrade to Win 11 so here are your options:
- Continue on Win 10 but with higher security risks.
- Buy new and expensive hardware that supports Win11.
- Try a beginner friendly #Linux distro like #linuxmint. It only takes about two months to acclimate.
I’ve been wanting to ditch Windows for a while now. I’ve tried dual booting so that I only boot to Windows if I need to play some game that only works on it.
But usually the thing I do the most on my PC is: play videogames. And majority of the games I enjoy are using 3rd party anti-cheats such as EAC and so on. And to my understanding, there are no really a good ways to get those games work on linux at this moment.
Sure, if I played mostly Linux supported games or single player games (I guess big chunk of those work thanks to Steam and Proton) there would be no such a big issue but I am not willing to quit some of these games just so I can make the switch to Linux.
But what I have decided on is that W10 will be my last Windows on my home PC.
I am curious, if anyone has been in similar situation and have come up with a good solution? Maybe two PCs + KVM switch?
Surely if I search the internet I can find many solutions but I am interested to see what this community has to say about this.
I have used Linux as my main for 20 years, but I have a dedicated windows computer for games (hooked to my TV in the living room). A lot of my steam games work in Linux nowadays, but the windows computer just works without fuss. I use it ONLY for games and turn it off when I’m not playing anything.
Ironically some older games (older win95/98/XP era games) work better in Linux under wine or emulation…
I have also used a windows vm with gpu pass-through to play games on my Linux machine, though I’m sure a lot of your anti cheat would probably not allow that. I don’t bother with that anymore since so many games work in Linux with proton.
For non-gaming use I feel that 99% of dual boot scenarios should probably just be virtual machines instead. I have a windows VM I fire up for proprietary software or work related stuff when necessary.
I switched to Linux three years ago. I was dual booting until I realised I was barely launching windows anymore. So I just removed it. But just to be sure it wouldn’t be an issue if I ever needed windows again, I installed it on an external ssd with rufus, and it’s actually more handy than your usual dual booting. I had the same issue with some games not yet properly working on Linux (like Vermintide) but in the end it was solved and I ended up never using windows for anything…the last two times I’ve had to use it was to unlock the Iphone of a friend and to make a pesky printer work…and it was half a year ago.
I actually used to run a Linux laptop + Win laptop setup with a kvm switch a couple years back. It worked just fine, but I found myself barely even using my Windows machine for anything but gaming. Eventually I found out my games ran perfectly on Linux, and ended up switching to linux on the second laptop as well, as navigating the windows desktop had become painfully clunky, lol
tl;dr: a kvm setup is great but be careful what you wish for. Once you start running Linux there is no going back…
@niske @ajayiyer
I have an old potato laptop with two SSDs, i dual boot between Win10 and OpenSuse.
I have tried using Linux only but it’s not ideal for games, there is notable difference in FPS drop with directx games running on Linux (especially on old PCs like mine).
So I use win10 for gaming and Linux for everything else (surfing web, movies, manage documents, small rpi projects).
It’s a good compromise for me.
I’d say gaming on Linux can be great but it heavily depends on your hardware and what you play (also it’s getting better over time so with all that we’re on a constant «your mileage may vary» situation) .
On old/potato machines though, yeah it has more chances to be less ideal than windows in most situations. (I am only talking from experiences with various computers, to be clear. I am sure it can be less or more optimistic for others.)