this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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When Linux gaming reaches 100 percent parity with windows, I'll probably switch. Until then I can't really justify it for my home PC. Give it 5 years or so, I've heard good things about... proton, i think it was called?
That is quite the criteria. Windows doesn't have 100% parity with Windows. ;)
As amazing as proton is, Linux will never have 100% parity with Windows because developers and studios can block it. Honestly most games that don't run right now are intentionally blocked or restricted. If you are interested on what its like though I would strongly encourage throwing Linux on a spare drive or partition and installing steam.
I switched recently to Linux and haven't had issues with the vast majority of my games. Though, I don't play many competitive multi-player games. Those seem to be where the issues remain.
It won't ever. It's been very close for the last 10 years. It won't ever be 100%.
A great example right now is "How do you see what driver your device is using?"
In Windows that's going to device manager -> display adapters -> your device-> properties. Easy and can be easily discovered by thinking "I need to know what driver is running what device" and then going to look for a device manager, and following the trail.
In Linux that's potentially lspci or lsusb or lshw or a combination of each with their own arguments. Linux fails almost instantly because you have to type a command. Windows treat the user with respect for their time and don't tell you to stare at a man page for 10 minutes trying to figure out the exact arbitrary letters to add as arguments to some archaic command.
This is been a problem for decades. There are third-party GUIs that don't tell you the driver being used or tie things together like they show the device but not the driver or not allowing you to manage the driver and aren't included with most distros, so aren't discoverable.
Waiting for Linux is a fool's errand at this point.
TBH, in older versions of Windows, it wasn't easy either, and required installing the GUI tools from NVIDIA or ATI. And even then it wasn't intuitive.
As SteamOS and clones evolve and improve, the UX will hopefully follow and become easier to configure and manage.
Device manager has existed since at least Windows 98, maybe in 95. The GUI for the device manager still allowed you to update, identify, and uninstall drivers. It's been a standard in Windows for decades to manage drivers there but you could also install the specific GPU driver applications from the manufacturer but wasn't strictly required. Now since Windows 10, Windows just ships with a few GPU drivers and uses the one it detects on boot until it can run Windows Update and grab the latest.
But overall, I was talking about any device driver. Not just GPUs.
When I run across Error 0x0000011b or whatever, and there's no official documentation on it, it doesn't feel much like respect for my time at all. I'd sooner stare at a man page for 10 minutes than dig through every Microsoft support forum post and try every weird arcane fix.