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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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how do i game on linux without a steam deck? (for windows games)
Is really just:
Of course, like in windows, something could go wrong and you need to tinker a little bit to fix it but for the vast majority is just like that.
Yeah for both Ubuntu and Arch on two separate computers in my house, the process was just install the distro then install steam + Lutris (steam for steam games, Lutris for every other kind of game like League or WoW).
Installing steam games is identical in Linux and Windows for the vast majority of games. Installing non-steam games is arguably easier since you never have to go to a web browser.
Honestly the only reason Windows is "easier" is because it's preinstalled on computers. As someone who has fresh installed Linux and Windows, Linux is miles easier to install. To install Windows 11 I tried following their recommendations (enabling TPM and secure boot in bios), but the W11 installer still didn't like my 2 year old computer, so had to open up the command prompt, regedit, and add 3 Bypass registry DWord 32 bit values. Then actually installing the O.S you just sit there and wait with an unusable computer. Linux installations have nice GUIs that are far more modern, don't require weird terminal hacks, and you have a usable computer while it's installing (you can open up Firefox and browse the web for example).
\rant
Man some time ago I had to install Win 11 on a laptop for my relative and nothing that I tried worked. I give up for a time and installed Zorin OS just to see how the distro looks like and of course no problems during installation. Later I tried again the Win 11 and the Zorin installation fixed whatever problem windows had with the driver.
Why are you installing w11 though?
Every year or two I give Windows a genuine try for around a month. WSL2 is actually pretty decent, it's a massive improvement on the Windows development experience I had back in 2015 when I tried running Windows full time doing Python/Ruby/Java development. Required cygwin, git bash, power shell, and cmd depending on what I was doing. It was a special kind of nightmare. Lots of native gems couldn't compile, lots of tooling issues, etc.
Now you can use exclusively Windows terminal, keep essentially all your development stuff in a Linux subsystem, and pretend you're in Linux. Integration with things like vscode or intellij is quite decent with the WSL.
That said, I hate Microsoft, hate the lack of customization, hate the default UI, hate the split between Windows 95-style settings and new Windows 10+, it's inconsistent as hell. Moving windows across monitors with different scaling still resizes the windows in a very archaic way. You can't reasonably use multiple desktops because you can't easily rebind keys to swap desktops without third party software. I've changed DEs in Linux for smaller issues than these.
Thanks for the reply. You're way above my pay scale with PCs lol I appreciate it.
Just adding: if you have an AMD GPU, the drivers are now included in the Linux kernel, so there is no manual install needed for those. For nvidia, you do still have to jump through some install hoops.
The easiest way is to install Steam on your Linux distribution of choice. Next you activate steam play in the steam settings to use the proton compability tool which allows playing windows games on Linux. You can check ProtonDB to see how well your game should work and see if tinkering or additional settings might be needed. A lot of steam games will just work. If you don't want to use steam, you can also try Lutris or Wine directly, but this approach will need ALOT more setting up and tinkering.
Linux gaming will sometimes cost you more effort but I think it's worth it to get away from Microsoft and have my freedom to set up my system how I like. Feel free to ask if you have more questions.