284
Linux gaming is getting faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features
(www.xda-developers.com)
this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
284 points (99.3% liked)
PC Gaming
14685 readers
449 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
how shit of a software company do you have to be where your own os's software running through a translation layer on another operating system is threatening to run faster than natively on your os. somethings gotta snap.
NEEDS MORE COPILOT
...Copilot/Windows or as I like to call it, Copilot+Windows...
I want to interject here for a moment … what you call Windows is actually Copilot/Windows …
Well we do have Microslop Copilot 365 now. It's only natural that Microslop Copilot 11 is the name of the OS.
I'm so happy to see countries in europe wholly moving to linux. I'm six months into cachyos, and 9 months into overall linux on my main system every day. 3 months into fully switching at work. I've worked in mac shops in the past in various IT roles so it's not hard for me to drop windows entirely anyway. We're seeing more and more support from companies for linux too, even nvidia is getting serious.
I still wish we had a third real option for phones but the sacrifice is too high in that realm for now.
I have iPhone SE 1st gen (circa 2016 or so) and iPhone 12 mini. One has iOS 15, another has iOS 26. I see almost no difference. If there was some Linux system with feature parity of iOS 6, I’d use it. But there’s no hardware that works properly, I assume. Or maybe there is, but it’s too expensive and too niche for now.
iOS is what I currently use because they seem marginally better than google for privacy lately, but I don't trust any of it anymore with how easy all government orgs seem to be able to obtain methods of accessing things that they should have no way to do unless the user provides credentials or biometrics. The pre-ios-26 vulnerability is pretty bad and just requires visiting a website iirc too so probably be careful with those older devices if you're still using them.
The biggest problem with android alternatives is google play attestation driving MDM, I do a lot of work with MDMs lately so I can't really go that route. This style of lockdown where big brother (big tech companies) monitors everything about your phone seems to be where we're going in the US with mandating identification to be proven to use devices, sign up for services, or otherwise interact with the internet. The noose is around our necks but the stools we're standing on haven't yet been kicked away.
Thanks for going into details about it. I wasn’t really thinking about vulnerabilities with the older devices. It’s weird as when I think about it now, it’s quite obvious.
But if we’d take me personally, I don’t remember last time I opened browser with them. They, old devices, are some utilities for me. Say, old iPhone, I only record voice memos with it. Old iPad, only serves YouTube, and so on. What I rather meant about iOS 6 feature parity is having a simple barebones OS that works, but the browser is updated. That’s what my Linux laptops (and, well, desktop too) are: I use sway wm with quite minimal set of software, but the browser is obviously updated. I used to run Firefox Nightly for years, but at some point I’ve got lazy about it, and use just a regular Firefox. I own an old Android 8 phone, with no Google services (microG is there, however) and F-Droid. I have no idea whether that’s okay for today’s, but I don’t use it much either. It’s too slow to casually use it daily with comfort.
I have a couple of Windows tablets (Surface 3 and Lenovo Miix 2) that run Linux, and it’s close to what I’d like to have on a smartphone. But they’re far from being reliable. Hardware quality is very bad, and I use them out of experiment rather than I truly enjoy them. I have no idea how we can get the mobile market back, too little of us care, and even if the number would grow, it’s quite difficult to assemble your own hardware, I assume. Perhaps Graphene OS’ new hardware partner would improve anything… but I don’t believe it.
Which is a different product than Copilot/Windows+
it's not just the software that runs better, in many cases it's the hardware too.
Take laptop batteries for example. users will state over and over how their batteries last a lot longer when their system is running linux as opposed to windows.
It was then that microsoft found out that constant monitoring and stealing every little bit of information while flooding the users with ads and unwanted and unneeded AI is bad for batterylife. Who knew, except everybody?
It used to be the opposite a lot of the time. Power management used to be a huge problem. Lately though things got a lot better.
I was about to say, my experience with battery life on Linux has not been a positive one.
It's less of a translation layer and more of a reimplementation. But yes, it does demonstrate how shitty Microsoft is that other people can implement its APIs better than it can.
a reimplementation built from reverse engineering and documentation that lies, meanwhile microsoft are the ones who should know how it all works, but apparently not.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines not even standard reverse engineering either. It's incredibly impressive
The original code was probably sent through AI optimisation and the comments were lost
The news here is that NTSYNC is more efficient than the Linux emulations that came before it, not that it's faster than the original Windows implementation.
with less LOC btw
Threatening to? When was the last time you used Windows? Maybe you've forgotten just how much of a slug it is for gaming. Hell, just opening Steam can be a five minute ordeal depending on what Microsoft wants you to do first.
Excuse me? Windows sucks on every front, not only for gaming. Get your facts right! /s
Sounds like you're not running 32 ssd's in raid 0 😏
....god... god fucking damnit.
IN THIS ECONOMY?
yeah switching to Linux is likely a lot less work if you factor in the price of the hardware you need to run games windows 11 smoothly at your current pay per hour(or salary/hours worked)...
Unless you "need" to play a game that uses "kernel level anti cheat"... then you're SoL... 😞
My brother ordered an ssd and amazon sent him like 12.
I so wanted him to make a huge raid 0.
If you count all the aggressive pop ups and prompts and notifications and other bullshit that you can't turn off any time you try to just use your own fucking computer... 10 minutes from power button to game launch. Linux? Less than 2.
To be honest, Microsoft's software is running against an API that uses a translation layer to talk to an older API. Multiple layers of this happen before you get to hardware, mostly for compatibility with legacy software that uses the older APIs.
Not to mention MS have rewritten their frontends for their apps several times and keep them each time.
We need MOAR Vibe Coding!!!
-- Satya Nadella, probably
Fauxgramming