Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average::Computers, hardware, software and gaming in Spanish and English
Windows has so much garbage overhead via telemetry, etc. Glad to see someone quantifying how detrimental it is.
AVs on windows also do impact disk latency a lot.
Not to also mention the outdated filesytem
We should rename NTFS to OTFS now.
They knew it’s not going to stay new forever, but they went ahead with that name anyway. I guess that’s what happens when the marketing team wins the company raffle.
For real - it would be AWESOME if you could install windows on ZFS or btrfs or whatever
You’d still be running Windows though so why bother
While I agree that Linux is generally better, there are some use cases outside of gaming that work better in (or are required to use for one reason or another) Windows.
Oh I definitely agree. But still; when I’m running Windows the filesystem is very low on my list of annoyances.
That has a hell of a lot of disclaimers around reliability, and I’m not seeing anything about it being able to actually host the operating system on the filesystem itself, or any way to roll this into the installer itself
NTFS isn’t the issue, at least in my experience, and not even Microsoft’s implementation of it (though ntfs-3g seems faster). The issue is the File Explorer: Things like reading mtimes of gigantic directories takes maybe a second under linux, nushell under windows (native, not WSL) is just a tiny bit slower, while File Explorer takes minutes to sort by mtime. Coming to think of it I should try Dolphin.
Generally speaking the problem with Windows is not so much NT but everything on top of it.
Steam Deck and Proton have done wonders for Linux compatibility efforts.
However looking at NEW releases I actually want to play, many launch barely working on windows let a lone via proton / emulation. My back catalog has great support but we need more titles launching with official support.
The worst thing has to be all of the “launchers / game stores” JUST GIVE US GAMES!
It’s also like saying that bloating an OS with spyware and useles eyecandy it makes it use hardware resources ineficiently. But of course that’s not the case with Micro$oft.
Not only in games, I switched from Windows 10 to LXQT and I can finally open more than 3 programs at the same time without the pc hanging for 10 seconds every time I switched between programs
I’ll switch to Linux when I can play any game I choose to without any stuffing around, or when/if M$ start charging BS subscription.
I mean they basically do charge you since your data is being sold as the product.
The first point is 90%v available already with proton
The fact you have to mention Proton is his point.
How is proton stuffing around? It’s click and play at this point
Wow, it’s so complicated - you have to click install, and then click play! This is bad UX! Obviously Steam should just read my mind so that I don’t have to click at all.
Good note.
AMD only and not Nvidia? That’s what I was seeing based on a quick search. Unfortunately, I don’t have an AMD GPU.
I’ve got an RTX 2060 mobile that I’ve been linux-gaming on for a few years now, it’s been great. I was getting consistent blue screen crashes with windows, even after multiple reinstalls. Ubuntu had some minor issues out of the box, like I had to find a program to control screen brightness, but PopOS has been literally flawless.
I’ve been saying for years now that gaming on linux feels faster. Most games get better framerates than they did natively on windows, but I’ve never known if that was unique to my setup. Really neat to have more data!
Man, I am really looking forward to fully ditching Windows.
why aren’t game producers releasing versions of the game compiled for debian ubuntu and other lInux distros?
Too much effort for too little market share. But since the Steam Deck is popular, it’s harder to ignore Linux.
Yeah, 1.63% is really not a lot at all (according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey: September 2023). Tbh from a pure business point of view I’m surprised any of the bigger developers bother at all.
Millions of devices is a huge amount though.
Microsoft created directx and its been an integral part of game dev since, not the only reason as I’m sure if Linux had a large market share we’d see devs jumping over
Well, that’s what happens when you don’t have crazy spyware services running in the background. Also Windows, just like any Microsoft product, is very inefficient and wastes lots of resources.
I’ve not run windows for years, but I straight up refuse to believe there’s a seventeen percent performance uplift. Magic does not exist. Linux must be skipping some rendering.
They’re a bunch of cherry-picked games that have a decent amount of Linux work run on pretty solid Linux hardware that performs well. The tests are legit. They just don’t generalize.
You’ll be surprised to learn how much overhead Windows has and how much system resources they take up to keep all their trackers and bloat running in the background. It really makes a startling difference when you switch to a Linux OS. It can even make your hardware feel more powerful, because it only needs to deal with the game’s performance, and not also running a shitton of unneeded services in the background all the time.
Or maybe Windows 11 is just as heavy as shit.
Considering for most games it’s 100% slower, I’m not cheering just yet.
The issue is support not performance.
Every game I’ve bought this year has ran perfectly in Linux. And I don’t check the Linux status before I buy them. Yolo has paid off
Same here, the only games that don’t work are the ones that’s ship with anti cheats the behave like root kits (a really nasty type of malware).
In my experience, most games either don’t work at all (very rare), or work 99% as well as on Windows. For instance, I’m playing Hitman WoA right now, and opening the Steam overlay makes the game run in slow motion until I restart it, and it goes in the single-digit FPS if my laptop is charging. Very rarely does a game run better on Linux than Windows. Alt- tabbing in particular is broken in a lot of games, some of them outright crashing.
Never encountered this issue you have, by any chance on Linux you are using a old version of proton or nvidia GPU?
I’m on an Intel/nVidia dual-GPU laptop.
Same. I think 80% of my pre existing library already worked and then every game ive bought since the switch runs perfect. I used to check protondb first, now I just yolo and add my report later.
Exactly. I don’t care much for Windows bloat, but if 100% of games run on Windows and even 99% of games run on Linux, I’m sticking with Windows for gaming. It’s just that simple. If that ever reverses, then I’ll switch to Linux for gaming.
I just don’t buy games that don’t run on Linux.
There are already too many games I want to play for the time I have so the very few games that don’t run on Linux are not worth my time.
I’m ok with not having access to the 1% of games out there that want to act like rootkits
Probably not most anymore but still plenty of them.
Doesn’t really surprise me, I’ve had a Steam deck since launch and the performance on Windows titles has always been impressive, even considering its relatively low-end hardware.
The only thing preventing me from dual-booting my desktop is lack of software RAID support in most distributions (by this I mean RAID configured in the BIOS but not using a dedicated hardware controller).
To be fair, that bios-managed RAID is still using a hardware controller. It’s embedded in the motherboard.
Anyway, hardware RAID is discouraged in home/workstation environments as you don’t have control over how the controller implements it. So if the board breaks, it’s harder to retrieve your data.
Linux has support for real software RAID, for example using LVM or filesystems that have that feature. It’s easier to setup than it may sound. Most distributions can enable that during installation of the OS.
It must be very hard to exactly compare games between Windows and Linux because it’s possible that emulation in Proton, WINE or the driver means some settings or extensions might not be enabled even if they appear to be. DirectX emulation is also bound to slow things down so a game probably has to be use OpenGL or Vulkan directly.
So while I can well believe that Linux can keep up and possibly exceed Windows, it needs a careful technical eye to ensure a true comparison is happening.
It’s getting hard to do just between AMD and Nvidia on Windows.
I’m old enough to remember the days when reviewers showed macro shots of the wires in half life 2 to test AA between different cards.
Does anyone even test that enabling “Ultra” settings results in the same configuration across vendors/generations? I’m pretty sure LTT Labs found cases where it wasn’t.
ltt labs, good one
To be fair if anyone is motivated to discover flaws in testing methodology and publicly disclose them right now it’s Labs.
Okay, so say I did switch to Linux. I would have to transfer all of my files that I have saved from Windows and try to make them compatible with being on Linux. It’s also very excruciating and mentally painful that I would just have to start from scratch. I like all the various things I have saved on my PC i would not want to lose them
I mean transferring files isn’t so difficult. Linux supports NTFS so it’s as easy as opening the files in the file browser and moving them to your linux partition.
But yes in my experience it does take a few months to transition and in that time I did move back to Windows a few times, but eventually I stuck with Linux since it had a lot more features and benefits over Windows
Can you be more specific?
I may be reading this wrong, but it sounds like you think Linux requires all your files to be converted to some other format before you can use them. There is no such thing as a Windows-JPEG and a Linux-JPEG, it’s just a JPEG. All your files will still work. It’s the software that opens the files that might need to change (e.g. MS Word or Photoshop).
Unless you’re talking about filesystems like NTFS and ext4, in which case there is no argument to be made as Linux supports NTFS already. In my experience, it “just works”.
What kind of files are you talking about? The vast majority of files will just work once you install an application to handle them. Images, video, audio, etc should all work out of the box on most distro.
“Try to make them compatible” isn’t something you should ever have to worry about for files. Files are files, and you don’t have to convert them to some other format in order to use them. Rather, you’ll just need to install the relevant apps from your distribution’s package manager. GIMP handles Photoshop files no problem for instance. No conversion or such, just… Open them like you would on Windows by double clicking.
As long as you have your files backed up properly it shouldn’t be too difficult. If you don’t, I’d be more worried about what happens if one of your drives failed and how you’d retrieve that data.
I like all the various things I have saved on my PC i would not want to lose them
Then make sure you’re taking backups and follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy at minimum. Backblaze is a great option for Windows users to help with that, since it can back up your whole PC for a fixed cost each month.
There’s no reason to rush to start using Linux. If you’re interested, you can always dip your toes in with something like the Steam Deck or booting from a USB drive
I can understand. Don’t need to switch. It’s normal to enjoy what you’re used to.
But what about Fortnite and Valorant?
Let’s hope these tik-tok games remain on Windows.
