Those who tried Linux and went back to Windows, what caused you to go back to Windows?
Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
Games and Photoshop. Linux is nice, but if you're a serious gamer its not even in the solution space.
Define "serious gamer". I play almost everything on Linux with little to no downsides, especially in Dota2 and CSGO or single player games.
Yeah, Proton has made leaps and bounds the past few years with the sheer amount of time and money Valve is funneling into it. Now you can often expect newly released games to run just fine on Linux through steam, the big remaining hangup being anti-cheat software.
I would guess a "serious gamer" is one who wants to play all the latest AAA multiplayer games. Just not possible for Linux to work for 100% on Day 1 with the ridiculous kernel-level anti-cheats.
For me, even though I play mainly on Linux, the issue is with random niche mods or hardware; Tobi eye-tracking, headtracking, VR.
This is so wrong. 99% of my 450 game library on Steam works perfectly. Great performance with proton.
Use gimp
Not here to disagree, just here to advocate for Krita over Gimp. I found it much more pleasant to use for digital art
Oh haven't heard of it, I'll check it out!
I'd be interested to know the breakdown of AAA titles in that library!
Gimp is appropriately titled as it is a joke compared to Photoshop. If this is the closest suggestion to a suitable replacement it will guarantee windows/osx always has a place in my work environment.
For AAA titles (not gonna list every one), here's a few:
Hogwarts Legacy, Dead Space remake, Resident Evil 2/3/4/7 remakes, God of War, Returnal, The Last of Us Part 1, Uncharted 4, all the Assassin's Creeds, Atomic Heart, the Batman games, Bioshock games, Dark Souls 1/2/3, Death Stranding, Elden Ring, Days Gone, Dying Light 1/2, all the Far Crys, Final Fantasy 7 remake, FF8-15, Ghostrunner, GTA5, Hi-Fi Rush, Spider-Man/Miles Morales, Tomb Raider games, Sekiro, Sonic Frontiers, Star Wars (all) and Jedi Fallen/Survivor, The Division 1/2, The Witcher 1/2/3, Yakuza (all), plus more
Oh hey that's pretty solid. What's the state on Rocket League?
Do you have it through Epic or Steam? I was unfortunate and got it after it was delisted from Steam.
But it does work, I'd use Heroic Launcher for it.
Gaming is the only reason I dual-boot back to Windows. Out of curiosity, what's your distro and hardware config? I've had no luck with Proton or Lutris on Suse or Ubuntu. I don't think I've ever been able to play a game all the way through without issues. Not sure if it's my distro choices, Nvidia drivers, or the specific games I try to play. Even Steam Deck certified games do not work properly for me.
Hardware is 5950x, 64gb ram and a 4090. Although before I had a 3070 Ti.
I'm on Arch, but what problems are you having with proton or Lutris? Which Nvidia drivers do you have installed (dkms?) and what kernel?
With the state of proton, I almost never have to check the force compatibility tool and select a version, it'll work out of the box. There have been a few exceptions of course.
With Lutris, I got stuck on an error about architecture. I tried changing WINEARCH to WIN32, but it didn't work. Tried making a new systemwide default prefix in win32, didn't work. Went down a bit of a rabbit hole on Google but I was not able to get the game to even install, let alone run.
With proton, games install and typically run, but not without issues. For example, when Return to Monkey Island launched, it was Windows-only, so I tried it in Proton. It worked for a day, then mouse input just stopped working entirely. Half an hour of trouleshooting later I decided it would be easier to just boot into Windows. That's the general experience I've had with Proton, even for Steam Deck certified games. And then sometimes games run but with unacceptable performance, like Stray.
Until recently I was stuck on the 510 drivers because the newer ones broke CUDA in the Ubuntu repositories. That was recently updated to I think 525, but I haven't tried any games since updating. But I also had similar problems on Suse with drivers from Nvidia, and the old Ubuntu LTS (18.04 was it?).
If Lutris is going to be so finicky about Wine versions and prefixes, I wish it would just bundle its own instead of using the system wine. I use Wine for other things and can't easily nuke my whole config.
I've basically given up on playing non-native games on Linux. It seems like this is a "me" problem but I can't imagine what's so unique about my Steam install. I try to keep as close to stock Ubuntu LTS as possible precisely to avoid these issues, but here I am.
Gaming on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed without any problem so far. First with Nvidia, now with amd.
Seriously? My Nvidia drivers broke every time I got a kernel update on Tumbleweed. Eventually I pinned the kernel to an old version. Gah.
Maybe my PC is just haunted.
No Valorant on Linux :(
Last time I checked Valorant worked with wine/proton-ge