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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Linux is good now
Alconicon wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
Gaming should be a no brainer. Windows dual boot and license is cheap
enough.
Windows for gaming, Ubuntu as desktop default, Arch Linux on Laptop,
MacOS on the other Laptop.
Games are not the problem, but that one game i want to play on a
saturday evening when i have time, is the problem. That one i haven't
tried out yet.
notorandit wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
Let me put gaming aside for a minute.
Linux is not good. Some hardware support is still
reverse-engineering-based, or based on a few individuals best effort
activity. Linux needs manufacturers' first hand commitment to quality
opensource to be truly good.
Linux is not good. Some software is not on feature-parity among
operating systems. With Linux being the software kingdom poor
Cinderella. Linux needs software feature parity to be truly good.
Linux is not good. Because too much mainstream new PCs comes with some
other operating system pre-installed (and paid for) even if you won't
need it. Linux needs freedom of choice sing first PC power on, like a
stub to download whatever OS you want (to pay for) or to boot from
removable media for Linux to become truly good.
Linux is not good. Because there is still "stuff" that require some
specific non-linux software running under some specific non-linux
operating system to be made useful things. We need manufacturers to
ditch this for linux to become truly good.
I am a happy user of Linux on my primary PC since 20+ years now. But I
still have to fight for my freedom every now and again because of one
or more of the above points.
Now let's jump back to gaming.
Linux is not good because game industry thinks proprietary platforms
and operating systems are better for their business. There is only 1
platform fully supporting Linux and too few titles. Gaming Linux hardly
hits 5% of the market share, basically the same as Desktop Linux. While
Server Linux is beyond 75%.
I think reasons could be two-fold.
On one hand, Linux is not perceived by industry as attractive as other
proprietary platforms. Maybe industry can squeeze much more money from
the latter.
On the other hand, it could be that most of the development resources
are NOT ORIENTED towards gaming and desktop, so these markets simply
lag behind.
Of course, I could be totally wrong: these are my humble opinions with
some facts backing them.
Live Long, Linux!
devinprater wrote 1 hour 44 min ago:
Linux is even getting more accessible. I'm thinking of Elementary OS
which not only posted about their accessibility work, but linked to the
articles which really fired things up. I'm a Fedora guy, mainly because
I want the latest Orca, AT-SPI2 and such, so I don't feel like an
Ubuntu dirivitive would work as well.
So I installed Fedora on my work machine and find that I can still get
all of my work done. Well except the parts that require testing
accessibility on Windows screen readers or helping with Windows-related
issues.
The only thing I miss now are the many addons made for NVDA, especially
the ones for image descriptions. But if I can get something to work
with Wayland, I could probably vibe code some of them. Thank goodness
for Claude Code.
sylware wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
Well, until it is a native elf/linux game, because the shabby
compatibility, not reliable in time, zero official technical support
(which is legally required for paid games), proton(wine), ewwwww...
The only sane ways: either a 'correct' set of native elf/linux
binaries, or proton = 0 bucks (namely only free-to-play, with 0 cent in
any micro-transactions).
mixxit wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
Deluding ourselves here it's nice to think the day has finally arrived
but it hasn't
We need to address the problems rather than pretending it's already
great
Shutting down your laptop and having to wait five minutes for systemd
to shutdown because of some timeout when you need to get your flight is
just one of those reasons you end up going back to windows
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote 1 hour 38 min ago:
<< Deluding ourselves here it's nice to think the day has finally
arrived but it hasn't
Apart from systemd, tell me what isn't great. The whole benefit of
the ecosystem is that you can pick and choose your system components
and if you don't like any of then, build your own. I am not trying to
be dismissive, if I use a windows these days, it is for work and some
errant vm to run windows specific app ( hr block comes to mind -- I
am just not willing to spend time to run it any other way ).
geoffbp wrote 2 hours 20 min ago:
Itâs year of the Linux desktop!
stinkbeetle wrote 2 hours 33 min ago:
Linux _is_ good now. It was good before but it's good now too.
globular-toast wrote 2 hours 42 min ago:
I probably sound like a hipster or something, but it really feels like
many people are finally catching up to the way I've been working for
the past 15 years.
I fully switched to GNU/Linux back then and have never looked back.
Initially I was quite evangelical but got tired of it and gave up
probably around 10 years ago thinking "oh well, their loss". But slowly
more and more of the world has switched over, first servers, then
developer workstations and now finally just "normal" users.
Similarly, I've always been hugely invested into my tools and have a
strong distaste for manual labour. I often watch how others work and
can't believe how slow and inefficient it is. Typing up repetitive
syntax every time, copy/pasting huge blocks of code, performing
repetitive actions when booting their PC etc. I simply haven't been
doing this for my whole career, I've been writing scripts, using clever
editors, using programming languages to their fullest etc.
I think this is why LLMs don't seem like such the huge breakthrough to
me as they do to others. I wasn't doing this stuff manually before,
that's ridiculous. I don't need to generate globs of code because I
already know how to get the computer to do it for me, and I know how to
do that in a sustainable and maintainable way too. It's sad that LLMs
are giving people their first real sense of control, when it's actually
been available for a very long by now, and in a way that you can
actually own it, rather than paying for a service that might be taken
away at any moment.
0xbadcafebee wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
Linux can't be a good desktop, almost by definition.
1. Look at commercial desktop OSes (Windows, MacOS). They spend
hundreds of millions to develop and maintain the OS, do updates,
quality assurance testing, working with hundreds of thousands of
hardware vendors and enterprises, etc, just to try to not break things
constantly. This is with "an ecosystem" that is one stack developed by
one company. And even they can't get it right. Several Linux-Desktop
companies have tried to mimic the commercial companies by not only
custom-tailoring their own stack and doing QA, but sometimes even
partnering on certified hardware. They're spending serious cash to try
to do it right. But still there's plenty of bugs (go look at their
issue trackers, community forums, package updates, etc) and no
significant benefit over the competition.
2. There is no incentive for Linux to have consistency, quality, or a
good UX. The incentive is to create free software that a developer
wants. The entire ethos of the OSS community is, and has always been, I
want the software, I make the software, you're welcome to use it too.
And that's fine, for developers! But that's not how you make something
regular people can use reliably and enjoyably. It's a hodge-podge of
different solutions glued together. Which works up to a point, but
then...
3. Eventually Linux desktop reaches a point where it doesn't work. The
new mouse you bought's extra buttons don't work. Or the expensive
webcam you bought can't be controlled because it requires a custom app
only shipped on Windows/Mac. Or your graphics card's vendor uses
proprietary firmware blobs causing bugs on only Linux for unknown
reasons. Or your speakers sound like crap because they need a custom
firmware blob loaded by the commercial OSes. Or your touchscreen can't
be enabled/disabled because Wayland doesn't support the X extensions
that used to allow that to work with xrandr. Or your need to look up
obscure bootloader flags, edit the bootloader, and restart, to
enable/disable some obscure fix for your hardware (lcd low power
settings, acpi, disk controller, or any of a thousand other issues).
Or, quite simply, the software you try to install just doesn't work;
random errors are popping up, things are not working, and you don't
know why. In any of these cases, your only hope is... to go on Reddit
and ask for help from strangers. There's no customer support line. Your
ISP ain't gonna help you. The Geek Squad just shrugs. You are on your
own.
And this is the most frustrating part... the extremely nerdy core
fan-group, like those on HN or Reddit, who are lucky enough not to be
experiencing the problems unique to Linux, gaslight you and tell you
all your problems are imagined or your fault.
heresie-dabord wrote 3 min ago:
> Linux can't be a good desktop, almost by definition.
By your problem statements 1, 2, and 3, there is never likely to be a
great desktop OS. The best that we will ever have is a compromise (no
cyber pun intended).
1) every OS is buggy, 2) every OS is a hotch-potch, and 3) users end
up yelling at the clouds then forced to upgrade to the next version
of frustration.
> who are lucky enough not to be experiencing the problems unique to
Linux, gaslight you
It isn't just luck , people use Linux every day to do their jobs and
pursue their interests. But if no GNU/Linux distro works for your
uses, you have whatever commercial OS you are currently using to meet
your needs.
As for actual gaslighting , yikes I hope that large groups of people
are not conspiring to ruin your day. I personally react in a similar
way when corporations tell me please wait, your call is important to
us, our menu options have changed.
lunar_rover wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
For single player gaming, probably. Actual desktops still suffer from
significant technical and design issues.
Wayland spent a decade to be mostly usable with rough edges, Flatpak
sandbox is really rough and most things are designed by amateurs.
Still Windows destroying itself made the gap closer than ever, right
now is a great chance to gain market share and funding and
professionals.
theodric wrote 3 hours 41 min ago:
The second Eternal September has truly kicked off
gste wrote 3 hours 46 min ago:
Now that Microsoft are removing support for Windows 10, which is still
running on many not-that-old devices that don't support Windows 11, I
think the correct, mainstream advice HAS to be to install Linux on
those machines. Those are still perfectly usable machines that can be
used for productivity or enjoy a massive catalog of games.
We've reached a point where Microsoft greed and carelessness is
degrading Windows from all angles. With the constant forced Copilot,
forced sign-ups, annoying pop-ups and ads, it is figuratively unusable;
in the case of machines stuck on Windows 10 it is literally unusable.
They are now banking entirely on a captive market of Enterprise
customers who have invested too much to quit. The enshittification is
feature complete.
gigatexal wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
Still canât play big titles with anti cheat like call of duty. Only
reason Iâm stuck on windows on the gaming PC is Iâm somewhat
addicted to BO7 zombies.
freakynit wrote 4 hours 0 min ago:
Insights from discussion threads (updated just now):
HTML [1]: https://hn-discussions.top/linux-desktop-2026/
internet_points wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
now if only Thinkpads were good again :-/
utopiah wrote 4 hours 13 min ago:
Been working and playing on Linux for years, from 2D indie e.g. Baba is
You to AAA e.g. Elden Ring, BG3, Expedition 33 to AAA VR e.g.
Half-life: Alyx to VR indie e.g. Cubism and my experience has just been
great.
It's MY system and I do whatever the heck I want, from play boring
stuff to weird prototyping. I get no, like literally 0, anti-feature.
I'm not "scared" that an update will limit my agency. I'm just zen and
that is priceless.
Also, quite importantly, it works wonderfully with all my other devices
and peripherals. I go from Bluetooh headsets easily, I switch monitors,
video projectors, XR devices, CV camera inputs, I share files with KDE
Connect, I receive SMS notification from my (deGoogled) Android phone,
I reply from my desktop, I get notification when my SteamDeck is soon
out of battery, etc. ALL my devices play nicely with each other.
So yes, Linux is good now. It's been for a while but it's been even
better for the last few years.
WhereIsTheTruth wrote 4 hours 34 min ago:
"Bazzite"
You know this is a psyop when they can't resist mentioning Microsoft's
product
aquir wrote 4 hours 35 min ago:
Once a company releases a MacBook quality Linux laptop, Iâm in!
kderbe wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
Steve Burke from GamersNexus tested eight games from their benchmark
suite on Linux last month. Although his conclusion was generally
positive, there were problems with nearly every game:
- F1 2024 didn't load due to anti-cheat
- Dragon's Dogma 2 and Resident Evil 4 had non-functional raytracing
- Cyberpunk 2077 with raytracing on consistently crashes when reloading
a save game
- Dying Light 2 occasionally freezes for a whole minute
- Starfield takes 25 minutes to compile shaders on first run, and
framerates for Nvidia are halved compared to Windows
- Black Myth: Wukong judders badly on Nvidia cards
- Baldur's Gate 3 Linux build is a slideshow on Nvidia cards, and the
Windows build fails for some AMD cards
If you research these games in discussion forums, you can find some
configuration tweaks which might fix the issues. ProtonDB's rating is
not a perfect indicator (BM:W is rated "platinum").
And while Steve says measurements from Linux and Windows are not
directly comparable, I did so anyway and saw that Linux suffers a
10-30% drop in average FPS across the board when compared to Windows,
depending on the game and video card.
tuetuopay wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
AFAIK this comes down a lot to NVIDIA not doing enough efforts for
the Linux drivers. There is a pretty well documented and understood
reason for the perf hit NVIDIA GPUs get on Linux.
Honestly, considering where we came from, a 10-30% perf drop is good
and is a reasonable tradeoff to consider. Especially for all the
people that don't want to touch Windows 11 with a 11-foot pole (which
I am), it's a more than decent path. I can reboot into my unsupported
Win10 install if I really need the frames.
Really, Linux benchmarks need to be split between AMD and NVIDIA.
Both are useful, as the "just buy an amd card lol" crowd is ignoring
the actually large NVIDIA install base, and it's not like I'm gonna
swap out my RTX 3090 to go Linux.
Thanks for the comparison! Would you have an apples to apples, or
rather an NVIDIA to NVIDIA comparison instead of "across the board"?
I'd suspect the numbers are worse for the pure NVIDIA comparison, for
what I mentioned above.
vladms wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
> Baldur's Gate 3 Linux build is a slideshow on Nvidia cards
I played Baldur's Gate 3 on Linux on a GeForce GTX 1060 (which is
almost 10 years old!) without a fan (I found later that it was
broken) and I generally did not have issues (couple of times in the
whole game slowed for couple of seconds, but nothing major).
utopiah wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
> Baldur's Gate 3 Linux build is a slideshow on Nvidia cards
Not at all my experience which makes me question the rest. Also [1]
most people seem quite happy with it so it's not a "me" problem.
Finally the "10-30% drop in average FPS across the board" might be
correct, then so what? I understand a LOT of gamers want to have "the
best" performance for what they paid good money for but pretty much
NO game becomes less fun with even a 30% FPS drop, you just adjust
the settings and go play. I think a lot of gamers do get confused and
consider maximizing performances itself as a game. It might be fun,
and that's 100% OK, but it's also NOT what playing an actual game is
about.
HTML [1]: https://www.protondb.com/app/1086940
ThatPlayer wrote 30 min ago:
Those are mostly reports for the Windows build of Baldur's Gate 3,
running through Proton. He's talking about the newer Linux native
build of the game from 3 months ago.
There's a few reports there for the native version of the game: [1]
, with similar Nvidia GPU issues and a fix.
HTML [1]: https://www.protondb.com/app/1086940#9GT638Fuyx
kqr wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
One thing I'm curious about: how is the laptop dual-GPU situation these
days?
I opted to install Linux in a VM under Hyper-V on Windows to avoid
hassles with the dual GPUs in my ThinkPad P52, but this comes with
several other hassles I'd like to avoid. (Like no GPU access in Linux
at all...)
TiredOfLife wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
It's not like Windows comes with built in support for running linux
with gpu support.
HTML [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-...
SilentM68 wrote 4 hours 59 min ago:
Linux is the best. Been using it since Slackware, RedHat first came
out, now use Ubuntu or any distro which makes it easy to interact with
its Desktop, e.g. GNOME :)
dismalaf wrote 5 hours 47 min ago:
Linux has been good for years. The only thing that's changed is that
Valve put a bunch of effort into Proton so now Linux has enough game
titles for that to no longer be an excuse to not switch.
I've been using Linux full-time (no other OSes at all) for nearly 20
years. Went through all my university education using only Linux.
It's problem free if you use it like a grandma would (don't mess with
the base system) and even if you mess with it, most things are easily
reversible.
That being said, I have noticed that the newfound interest in Linux
seems to be a result of big tech being SO abusive towards its customers
that even normies are suddenly into computing "freedom".
weinzierl wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
Long time Linux on the desktop
user here. I don't feel Linux has become significantly better recently.
It's more that Windows reached a new low that is just below the
threshold for many. Also, Apple, what are you doing?
starky wrote 3 hours 52 min ago:
A large part of it is that for most people, the vast majority of
their computer use is in a web browser. Even "standalone" programs
are often just an Electron app so they don't even have to use their
computer differently than they are used to. Yes Windows has gotten
bad, and Linux no longer has some of the major issues people would
frequently run into (e.g. hardware compability is largely a
non-issue, audio just works, etc.), but I think it is mostly that
things are just way more platform agnostic today.
tracker1 wrote 6 hours 38 min ago:
I'd say it's both... In particular 6.16 seems to be a defining point
in terms of stability and performance at least for me. My RX 9070XT
is finally running with no issues since 6.16 that I've noticed in any
of the admittedly few games I play.
Mesa, the kernel drivers and Proton have all seen a lot of growth
this past year combined with a bunch of garbage decisions MS has
doubled down on... not to mention, enough Linux users in tech
combined with Valve/Steam's efforts have made it visible enough that
even normies are considering giving Linux a try.
scottmcdot wrote 7 hours 14 min ago:
With LLMs it's now much easier to navigate Linux and bash. Definitely
happy with Linux Mint as a Windows alternative.
mrheosuper wrote 7 hours 50 min ago:
I have been switching between linux-windows for a while now, and i
think 2026 is not the year of linux for now.
Linux still suffer from the same fragmentation issue: Oh you want to
play game, you should use distro X, oh you want an average
web-browsing, working, you should use distro Y, or for programming, use
Z. Of course all of them can do what other can do, but the community
decided that the way it is.
Yesterday i read a reddit thread about an user sharing his issue with
pop-os, and most(if not all) comments saying he is using the wrong
distro. He is using latest release (not the nightly build), which is a
reasonably thing to do as new user.
Not sure if Linux Mint has changed this, but i remember having to add
"non-free" repo to use official Nvidia driver. Not a big deal to people
who know what they are doing, but still, that is unnecessary firction.
vpShane wrote 7 hours 5 min ago:
I just got a laptop for Christmas (first thing I've bought for myself
in a good while) with 64GB of DDR5 RAM, a video card inside of it,
AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, AMD Radeon 6550M. 144hz screen.
Not the best, but works for me.
I put CachyOS on it, using Steam just run the game's installer adding
it as a game to your library -- you just select which proton you want
(cachyos-proton) as a dropdown in the Properties in the Steam
library. that's it.
it's lightweight, arch (I ditched manjaro), runs KDE and games
perfectly, cursor IDE runs great, VMS run great.
first thing I did when I got it from fedex was remove Windows and put
Linux on it. I thought 'maybe I'll just bite the bullet and sign up a
Microsoft cloud account to be able to access ..my desktop' and 1/4
through its install I held the power button and popped a flash drive
in. just say no to windows and you'll all be happy, trust me.
the only effort it required was for me to say f this on using Lutris
and just use Steam as the wrapper.
2026 is definitely the year for linux. every year is. valve heavily
invested in Arch, proton, and is using Linux on their devices and
honestly: Windows is spyware, and after their vibe coded jank 25H2
update that broke a ton of things and Windows 10 being EOL, I hope
more people get to enjoy throwing Ventoy on a USB stick with a bunch
of linux isos copied over to it and boot and play with what they
love.
so I disagree, 2026 is the year for Linux, and Linux is love.
grajmanu wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
I am using Linux in different flavours for the past 10 years. It has
become more reliable for the the time. The last 5 years had noticeable
few issues across the distros.
shmerl wrote 8 hours 31 min ago:
Yes, it's good. Also agreed that AMD would be best GPU experience.
dmix wrote 8 hours 39 min ago:
Windows is just that bad.
fb03 wrote 9 hours 2 min ago:
The only thing that still makes me maintain a Windows installation is
playing League of Legends. Everything else (I mean, real work) is done
on Linux
adamddev1 wrote 9 hours 8 min ago:
All I want for Christmas is a M4 MacBook Air with Linux that works with
perfectly with all the hardware.
mantra2 wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
Adobe keeps me on macOS, otherwise Iâd love to use something like
Ubuntu as a daily driver.
1970-01-01 wrote 9 hours 30 min ago:
>3.2% of overall Steam users.
The success measurements are quite strange. How am I supposed to think
Linux is finally good when 96.8% of users do not care to adopt it. I
can't think of anything else with that high of a rejection rate. The
vast majority do not consider it good enough to use over Windows.
oreally wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
From what I've heard most of that 3% is steam decks, so the growth
isn't exactly people switching their daily OS driver.
snvzz wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
The phoronix story re: steam stats has actual data on that. It's
just a fifth.
Joel_Mckay wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
Unless one has a rack of older GPU hardware that uses an abandoned EOL
NVIDIA kernel driver difficult to install past kernel 6.12.x Then one
faces the harsh reality of Windows users rightfully laughing at a
perpetually Beta Linux OS, as Win11 still boots with the older drivers.
while the dkms build randomly implodes at some point.
People dual boot SSD OS for very good reasons, as kernel permutation is
not necessarily progress in FOSS. Linux is usable by regular users
these days, but "Good" is relative to your use case. YMMV =3
Animats wrote 9 hours 36 min ago:
If only.
Ubuntu seems to be slowly getting worse.
- Firefox seems to be able to freeze both itself and, sometimes, the
whole system. Usually while typing text into a large text box.
- Recently, printing didn't work for two days. Some pushed update
installed a version of the CUPS daemon which reported a syntax error on
the cupsd.conf file. A few days later, the problem went away, after
much discussion on forums about workarounds.
- Can't use more than half of memory before the OOM killer kicks in.
The default rule of the OOM killer daemon is that if a process has more
than half of memory for a minute, kill it. Rust builds get killed.
Firefox gets killed. This is a huge pain on the 8GB machine. Yes, I
could edit some config file and stop this, but that tends to interfere
with config file updates from Ubuntu and from the GUI tools.
None of these problems existed a year ago.
braiamp wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
What are you talking about? Firefox hasn't been single process since
more than 10 years ago. At most, it uses 7% for the main process and
I have thousands of tabs open. I can't talk about the other two, but
I've had processes use 60% of the system memory without problem
(everything else is slow due swapping, but that's expected).
semilin wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
These seem annoying, but I'd argue that these problems are in some
ways less significant on Linux than on Windows. If some function of
Windows is broken or unsatisfactory, there is not necessarily a way
to fix it.
But you can adjust your own system. It'd be unhelpful of me to
suggest to an unhappy Windows user that they should switch to another
operating system, as that demands a drastic change of environment. On
the other hand, you're already familiar with Linux, so the switching
cost to a different Linux distribution is significantly lower. Thus I
can fairly say that "Ubuntu getting worse" is less of a problem than
"Windows getting worse." You have many convenient options. A Windows
user has fewer.
trinsic2 wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
Im really glad Linux is getting more attention now. Thanks Microsoft.
trinsic2 wrote 10 hours 32 min ago:
Windows is so bad that I think there end game is that they are trying
to push everyone to cloud apps. At that point it doesn't matter what OS
you use.
sroerick wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
It is interesting and fascinating to see the growth of Linux.
As many have pointed out, The biggest factor is obviously the
enshittification of Microsoft. Valve has crept up in gaming. And I
think understated is how incredibly nice the tiling WMs are. They
really do offer an experience which is impossible to replicate on Mac
or Windows, both aesthetically and functionally.
Linux, I think, rewards the power user. Microsoft and Apple couldn't
give a crap about their power users. Apple has seemed to devolve into
"Name That Product Line" fanboy fantasy land and has lost all but the
most diehard fans. Microsoft is just outright hostile.
I'm interested to see what direction app development goes in. I think
TUIs will continue to rise in popularity. They are snappier and overall
a much better experience. In addition, they work over SSH. There is now
an entire overclass of power users who are very comfortable moving
around in different servers in shell. I don't think people are going to
want to settle for AI SaaS Cloudslop after they get a taste of local
first, and when they realize that running a homelab is basically just
Linux, I think all bets are off as far as which direction "personal
computing" goes. Also standing firmly in the way of total SSH app
freedom are IPhone and Android, which keep pushing that almost tangible
utopia of amazing software frustratingly far out of reach.
It doesn't seem like there is a clear winner for the noob-friendly
distro category. It seems like theyre all pretty good. The gaming
distros seem really effective. I finally installed Omarchy, having
thought "I didn't need it, I can rice my own arch", etc, and I must say
the experience has been wonderful.
I'm pretty comfortable at the "cutting edge" (read, with all my stuff
being broken), so my own tastes in OS have moved from Arch to the
systemd free Artix or OpenBSD. I don't really see the more traditional
"advanced" Linuxes like Slackware or Gentoo pulling much weight. I've
heard interesting things about users building declarative Nix
environments and I think that's an interesting path. Personally, I hope
we see some new, non-Unix operating systems that are more data and
database oriented than file oriented. For now, OpenBSD feels very
comfortable, it feels like I have a prayer of understanding what's on
my system and that I learn things by using it, the latter of which is a
feature of Arch. The emphasis on clean and concise code is really quite
good, and serves as a good reminder that for all the "memory safe"
features of these new languages, it's tough to beat truly great C
developers for code quality. If you're going to stick with Unix, you
might as well go for the best.
More and more I find myself wanting to integrate "personal computing"
into my workflow, whether that's apps made for me and me alone, Emacs
lisp, custom vim plugins, or homelab stuff. I look with envy at the
smalltalks of the world, like Marvelous Toolkit, the Forths, or the
Clojure based Easel. I really crave fluency - the ability for code to
just pour out - none of the hesitation or system knowledge gaps which
come from Stack Overflow or LLM use. I want mastery. I've also become
much more tactical on which code I want to maintain. I really have
tried to curb "not invented here" syndrome because eventually you
realize you aren't going to be able to maintain it all. Really I just
want a fun programming environment where I can read Don Knuth and make
wireframe graphics demos!
MangoToupe wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
Only compared to windows. Sadly, we're still stuck with a PC clone for
the near future.
bigyabai wrote 10 hours 48 min ago:
Sounds like Darwin is finally meeting it's nominal fate.
brainzap wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
When I got a steamdeck I open excel and started playtesting a few
games, to many bugs, so I sold it
jimbo808 wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
I quit gaming a year ago and no longer have a consumer OS installed on
any machine. I can't imagine ever willingly going back after getting
used to being able to set my machine up any way I want, and know it
will work exactly as I've specified, and won't ever spy on me or
monetize my data, and actually has an ecosystem for extending it in
basically any way I can imagine, with no bloatware, an app ecosystem
with no bundled spyware or adware, etc.
edferda wrote 11 hours 4 min ago:
Recently switched to Linux Mint from Windows and it has not only been
good. It has been cathartic. I enjoy computers again! I am self-hosting
some services, what an absolute joy.
scottmcdot wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
Same! I made a comment earlier that it's now very easy to navigate
bash with guidance from ChatGPT.
mmmpetrichor wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
I have always wanted to use linux as my main OS. I tried with Ubuntu
twice the past and always ran into really painful hurdles or missing
features. This year I tried again with Mint and it absolutely stuck the
landing. I have completely switched my desktop and laptop (and plex
server) to mint. I have never even booted back into windows. I have
not had any big issues and have been able to make it better than my
windows desktop ever was.
pregnenolone wrote 11 hours 22 min ago:
Unfortunately, TPM based Passkeys still are not a thing on Linux.
digiown wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
What would that be useful for? A properly implemented software
passkey like Keepassxc would be secure against anything short of a
local root exploit. A TPM would not really help against that either.
pregnenolone wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
Passkeys were designed to be bound to a device. Also I don't like
using browser extensions as password managers or connecting them to
a browser via an extension. It's been proven not to be safe many
times.
PacificSpecific wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
We've made the switch and it's been great. On top of my that my partner
who is not a computer person picked up Linux Mint to the level she can
use Windows in a couple weeks.
Daunk wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
I'm not against Wayland, but I think Wayland is currently not good for
the Linux ecosystem. I've had lots of friends try Linux, and they've
had issues with Discord global keyboard shortcuts not working, and
window positions not restoring at application start, and lots of other
small issues, which add up in the end. But once they switched to X11,
they've all been very happy.
semilin wrote 9 hours 23 min ago:
I think Wayland is good for more technical users. Going from i3 to
sway or bspwm to river feels like essentially nothing has changed. On
the other hand, Gnome X11 to Wayland might be a bigger shock.
Unfortunately, Wayland inherently can't be like Pipewire, which
instantly solved basically 90% of audio issues on Linux through its
compatibility with Pulseaudio, while having (in my experience) zero
drawbacks. If someone could make the equivalent of Pipewire for X11,
that'd be nice. Probably far-fetched though.
aidenn0 wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
It can absolutely be like that. Global keyboard shortcuts not
working is a deliberate design choice in Wayland (as is
non-foreground apps not having access to the clipboard).
tigrezno wrote 1 hour 45 min ago:
Gnome is bringing global shortcuts AFAIK in the next stable
version
ryukoposting wrote 9 hours 30 min ago:
Yup. I fully understand that X11 is a shitshow under the hood, but it
works and Wayland frequently does not work. Screen recording, window
positions, various multi-monitor and calibration issues, ...
On my laptop I use to write blog posts, that never ever gets plugged
into a second screen? Sure, Wayland's great. On a computer that I
expect normal people to be able to use without dumb problems? Hell
no!
cedws wrote 6 hours 57 min ago:
Comparing X11 and Wayland isnât even correct because for a
functional desktop you need Xwayland anyway. X11 never went away,
we piled more code on top and now we have an eternal transitionary
period and two ways of doing things.
wpm wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
"window positions not restoring at application start"
Well you see, you are actually just silly for wanting this or asking
for this, because it's actually just a security flaw...or something.
I will not elaborate further.
willis936 wrote 8 hours 54 min ago:
--geometry is an exploit that will end in your financial ruin.
Spend your weekend figuring out which tiling manager and dbus
commands will come close to approximating a replacement before
giving up and realizing you can manually move windows for the rest
of your life. Two plus two is five.
Daunk wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
Spot on.
3form wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
Which desktop environment do your friends use?
Daunk wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
They started with Hyprland, GNOME or KDE Plasma. Most of them have
ended up using Cinnamon, and the rest use XFCE.
willis936 wrote 8 hours 51 min ago:
hyprland is a fun spectacle, but takes insane effort to make
remotely livable. Also any apparent shortcut (dotfiles) will do
nasty damage to your install. Anyone hypr-curious should sandbox
in an install they don't mind wiping.
philajan wrote 8 hours 14 min ago:
Iâm really curious about your experience, what distro you
used hyprland on, what dotfiles did damage to your install etc.
I just installed hyprland yesterday and outside of having to
switch back to i3 once to install what they had set for a
terminal in their default config(kitty), I havenât had to
leave again.
willis936 wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
Asahi and hyde. "Nasty damage" isn't irreparable, but it
would be significant effort to enumerate every small touch
that affects defaults from other DEs and restore them. There
is no "restore all touched configs to default" afaik. Since
my asahi install was a lightly used toy anyway I just
reinstalled. My next attempt will be with a VM that I make
image backups of.
throw2312321 wrote 5 hours 13 min ago:
What does hyprland offer over i3?
steve-atx-7600 wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
Hahaha. Try sharing a couple old printers and scanners connected to a
Linux box on your home network. At best, when itâs working you get
lowest common denominator functionality. Want to run some vms ? Works
great until you update your distro and the vm hosts kernel modules
arenât compatible anymore. Oh, want to use a later version of some
package like docker? Did I use apt or snap or flatpack???
Yes, you can get this stuff working, but if you enjoy doing other
things in life, have a job and donât life alone, it is SSSOOOOO much
easier to get a Mac mini. Or even windows 11 if thatâs your thing.
bigyabai wrote 11 hours 49 min ago:
Sounds ultra-specific to your experience. VMs, package management and
networking are all things that macOS and Windows stumble with for
regular usage. I've used all three OSes professionally, and Linux
requires the least configuration to get work done.
scaramanga wrote 12 hours 18 min ago:
Switched in, ooh i dunno, '98 or '99. Quality is about where it was
then relatively speaking. Sure things have improved, mainly just
systemd, and we got ACPI and later power management stuff for laptops.
Prior to that windows was better on laptops due to having the
proprietary drivers or working ACPI. But it was pretty poor quality in
terms of reliability, and the main problem of the included software
being incredibly bare bones, combined with the experience of finding
and installing software was so awful (especially if you've not got an
unlimited credit card to pay for "big professional solutions").
Every time the year of the Linux desktop arrives, I'm baffled, since
not much has changed on this end.
mkozlows wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
I'm sorry, but no. I ran Slackware 96, Red Hat 4.2, Mandrake 5.0, a
bunch of Ubuntus from 12.04 onward, and Fedora now. It is absolutely,
qualitatively different now than it was at the turn of the century.
In the Red Hat 4.2 days, it was something that I was able to use
because I was a giant nerd, but I'd never ever ever have recommended
it to a normal person. By Ubuntu 12.04, 15 years later, it was good
enough that I'd recommend it to someone who didn't do any gaming and
didn't need to use any of the desktop apps that were still then
semi-common. In 2026, it's fine for just about anyone unless you are
playing particular (albeit very popular) games.
3form wrote 11 hours 36 min ago:
This is a strange statement for me, because I'd say that since '99
almost everything has changed. Maybe your definition of quality is a
bit different than mine.
mcny wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
I tried to use Linux back in high school. I had a Pentium 4 computer
which was pretty fast for its time. However, I had a dialip windows
soft modem. You remember the driver situation. I had to boot to
Windows to check my email.
Also, I was basically a child and had no idea what I was doing (I
still don't but that's besides the point). Things have definitely
gotten better.
shadowdev1 wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
(cue arrogance)
People on HackerNews complaining about Linux Desktop is pretty
disappointing. You guys are supposed to be the real enthusiasts... you
can make it work.
(cue superiority complex)
I've been using Linux Desktop for over 10 years. It's great for
literally everything. Gaming admittedly is like 8/10 for compatibility,
but I just use a VM with PCIe passthrough to pass in a gpu and to load
up a game for windows or use CAD, etc. Seriously, ez.
Never had issues with NVIDIA GFX with any of the desktop cards.
Laptops... sure they glitch out.
Originally Wine, then Proton, now Bazzite make it super easy to game
natively.
The only issues I ever had with games were from the Kernel level
anti-cheats bundled. The anti-cheats just weren't available for Linux,
so the games didn't start. Anyone familiar with those knows its not a
linux thing, it's a publisher/anti-cheat mechanism thing. Just lazy
devs really.
(cue opinionated anti-corporate ideology)
I like to keep microsoft chained up in a VM where it belongs so can't
do it's shady crap. Also with a VM you can do shared folders and
clipboard. Super handy actually.
Weirdly enough, MacOS in a VM is a huge pita, and doesn't work well.
moffkalast wrote 24 min ago:
(cue nitpicking) Can Okular sign a damn pdf with a pfx certificate
yet or do I still need a PhD to set that up? MS office has an online
version now but it is arguably very ass and Libreoffice is not even
worth a mention, using it feels like time travelling twenty years
back.
Linux would be the desktop of choice years ago if anything from Adobe
or Office actually worked on it, the two things that make the world
go round. Valve has done their part to develop Proton, but there is
no equal push for things people can't do work without.
Cort3z wrote 3 hours 43 min ago:
I have been working professionally on Linux for many years. But about
once a year I have to reinstall the os because it craps out for
various reasons. The same story goes for most of my team, but for
some reason they seem ok with this. My issue with Linux is this: I
donât feel like a consumer, but a janitor. I donât want this. Yes
you can do whatever you want, but I donât want to do those things.
I want to write code and play games, not maintain the intricacies of
a running computer.
For a server there is no better choice than Linux, but for my
desktop/laptop, I find other alternatives better. Perhaps I havenât
found «the right distro», if so let me know, but until Linux is as
low maintenance as windows or macos, it will be for those with an
interest in doing that maintenance.
I realize I have a love-hate relationship with Linux. It is perfect,
but flawed.
vladms wrote 1 hour 57 min ago:
You mention the "right distro" but you did not mention what have
you tried or with what you had problems with.
From my experience, some examples: for gentoo you are much more
than a janitor - you must be everything all the time; for redhat
based - you can get a major headache with some version upgrades;
for arch (currently using, same install from 7 years) - update
monthly and I had very few and minor issues
anttiharju wrote 3 hours 16 min ago:
re: on feeling like a janitor
I tried running various Linux distros on my desktop some years ago
and definitely agree on the crap-out experience and having to
reinstall. Eventually settled on macOS and it's been okay.
The game changer for me has been Nix. It works on macOS. I have had
coworkers use it on Ubuntu. I am soon planning to switch to NixOS.
People complain about the syntax but honestly AI gets you around
that. You will still do janitorial work, but you mostly only need
to do it once.
rounce wrote 2 hours 2 min ago:
{
nix.gc = {
automatic = true;
dates = "weekly";
options = "--delete-older-than 30d";
};
}
jimbob45 wrote 3 hours 22 min ago:
I agree that itâs not quite grandma-safe but Iâd like to know
which distros youâre using that canât even last a year.
kombine wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
I've been using Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my laptop and
desktop respectively. Both are going around a year, and I haven't
had major issues with them.
raincole wrote 4 hours 27 min ago:
> Originally Wine, then Proton, now Bazzite make it super easy to
game natively.
For many people, this is called "barely working at all." And as I get
older I am becoming one of those people so quickly.
mistercheph wrote 1 hour 50 min ago:
I agree, this is why I also consider Windows barely working, I had
to install 7 then 8 then 10 then 11 what's next? It should just
turn on and work stop changing it around and making me install
different random crap to get it working.
mrheosuper wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
>but I just use a VM with PCIe passthrough to pass in a gpu and to
load up a game for windows
Many games refuse to run in VM, even if that VM is windows one. I bet
there is a trick to bypass, but then you are at risk of being banned
or can't receive support when needed.
scaramanga wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
I've observed that most "enthusiasts" are really just brand
ambassadors. They've been captured by some proprietary software that
doesn't run on Linux, and that's the problem of Linux. The day their
set of products runs perfectly on Linux is the day Linux will be
ready for them.
mkozlows wrote 6 hours 22 min ago:
I mean, yes. That's how people work: They don't care about the OS
for itself, the OS is a means to run the software they want to run,
and it'll be ready when it runs that software.
(I'm typing this on my Linux desktop right now... but also have a
separate Windows PC for running the games I want to run that don't
work on Linux yet. When they work, I'll be thrilled to put Linux on
that machine or its successor.)
kombine wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
> I've observed that most "enthusiasts" are really just brand
ambassadors.
Well said, and in the tech community that's predominantly Apple. We
need to change this.
weaksauce wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
I think that if affinity chooses to make it work well on linux that
would be a game changer for a lot of people. daVinci resolve works
on linux for video so having a proper photo editor/illustrator tool
that is not gimp would open up the option for most people to daily
drive it. that's really the missing piece.
thayne wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
> Weirdly enough, MacOS in a VM is a huge pit
That isn't weird. It's by design. MacOS is only designed to run on
Apple hardware, and a VM, even if the host is Apple hardware isn't
really Apple hardware.
apt-apt-apt-apt wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
Anybody that plays games (e.g. ages 1 to 30) will be hard-pressed to
use linux. It's just not an option, and dual-booting has high friction.
ndom91 wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
This is just not true anymore. The only things that don't work
anymore are a few AAA titles that use particular types of anti-cheat
systems that rely on Windows kernel drivers (League of Legends is one
that comes to mind).
If I remember correctly, after the Crowdstrike
BSOD-all-windows-instances update last year Microsoft wanted to make
some changes to their kernel driver program and these anti-cheat
measures on Windows might need to find a new mechanism soon anyway.
That's a long way of saying, it's plausible that even that last
barrier might come down sooner rather than later.
not_a9 wrote 8 hours 50 min ago:
Anticheat has very different requirements to antimalware.
Some interesting reads on what modern anticheats do: [1] [2] [3]
[4] (less in detail and less IDA pseudo)
HTML [1]: https://github.com/0avx/0avx.github.io/blob/main/article-3...
HTML [2]: https://github.com/0avx/0avx.github.io/blob/main/article-5...
HTML [3]: https://reversing.info/posts/guardedregions/
HTML [4]: https://game-research.github.io/
jimmar wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
I'm slowly de-Microsofting my computing. I've traded OneDrive for
Syncthing. I ditched one PC for a Mac. I have the technical skills to
run Linux effectively, but the biggest obstacle for my Linux adoption
is distro fatigue. Run Ubuntu? Debian? Fedora? PopOS? Kubuntu? Arch?
The article introduced yet another one to consider--Bazzite.
The Linux world is amazing for its experimentation and collaboration.
But the fragmentation makes it hard for even technical people like me
who just want to get work done to embrace it for the desktop.
Ubuntu LTS is probably the right choice. But it's just one more thing I
have to go research.
joe200 wrote 51 min ago:
Ubuntu is optimised for corporations, as this is the main source of
income for Canonical. Try Debian _testing_.
timbit42 wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
Ubuntu stopped caring about the desktop experience when the switched
to Gnome. Now they have annoying SNAPs. They are a business and they
are going to continue enshitifying it.
I haven't tried Bazzite because I'm not into gaming but Linux Mint is
working very well for a lot of people coming from Windows. It just
works and has great defaults. Windows users seem to pick it up pretty
easily.
Also, Linux Mint upgrades very well. I've had a lot of success
upgrading to new versions without needing to reinstall everything.
Ubuntu and other distros I've tried often have failed during
upgrading and I had to reinstall.
foresto wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
Pick a popular distro, and during installation, put your /home
directory on its own partition. This way, you won't have much to
reconfigure if you ever have a reason to switch distros. (You might
not ever have a reason; they're all pretty capable.)
If using Ubuntu LTS for gaming, you might want to add a newer kernel:
[1] Linux Mint would also be a reasonable pick.
HTML [1]: https://ubuntu.com/kernel/lifecycle
delecti wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
I think fragmentation is the wrong way to look at it; they're all
basically compatible at the end of the day. It's more like an endless
list of people who want to min-max.
Any reasonably popular distro will have enough other users that you
can find resources for fixing hitches. The deciding factor that made
me go with EndeavourOS was that their website had cool pictures of
space on it. If you don't already care then the criteria don't need
to be any deeper than that.
Once you use it enough to develop opinions, the huge list of options
will thin itself out.
ndom91 wrote 12 hours 47 min ago:
As a beginner, just pick Ubuntu and get on with your life imo.
Switching distros isn't that big of a lift later on and pretty much
everything you learn carries over from one to the other. It's much
more worthwhile to just pick _something_ and learn some basics and
become comfortable with the OS imo.
SonnyTark wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
A long time ago when I was in University, I was a volunteer in the
Ubuntu group. In addition to evangelizing Linux/OSS, We were trying to
convince our University to switch to opensource software for at least
some engineering education with only a little bit of success.
After a particularly busy OSS event a non-programmer friend of mine
asked me, why is it that the Linux people seem to be so needy for
everyone to make the same choices they make? trying to answer that
question changed my perspective on the entire community. And here we
are, after all these years the same question seems to still apply.
Why are we so needy for ALL users and use-cases to be Linux-based and
Linux-centric once we make that choice ourselves? What is it about
Linux? the BSD people seem to not suffer from this and I've never heard
anyone advocate for migration to OSX in spite of it being superior for
specific usecases (like music production).
IMO if you're a creator, operating systems are tools; use the tool that
fits the task.
dwaite wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
Because there are people who care about Free software from a
philosophical standpoint on how societies should function and
interact.
The community aspect of free software both pushes for more people to
participate (and often for other groups to be excluded as "wrong" or
"evil").
But that community only offers secondary benefits to those who are
authors or painters or photographers rather than software developers
- economic factors, risk aversion, functionality, and so on. The
FLOSS communities are almost invariably driven toward hobbyists and
developers rather than authors, artists, gamers, and the like -
people whose interest lies outside of tinkering with and/or improving
software.
The BSDs were never really a movement in that sense, and macOS is
still just a product even if there are enthusiastic users of them
both.
Similarly on the Linux side: Android, Steam Deck, and countless IoT
devices are examples of successful products where the Linux aspect of
them is not really even advertised.
kombine wrote 6 hours 49 min ago:
> why is it that the Linux people seem to be so needy for everyone to
make the same choices they make?
This is the sort of question an apolitical person would ask a liberal
(I am aware liberalism had been tainted in the recent times), like
why is it you people are so needy and constantly preaching about
democracy?
devnullbrain wrote 8 hours 12 min ago:
When you (try to) use libre software, the problems you run into tend
not to be related to insufficient engineering, but more societal and
economic, where they would be less likely to appear if there were
more people in your cohort.
Examples:
- An important document is sent to me in a proprietary format
- A streaming service uses a DRM service owned by a tech giant that
refuses to let it work with open source projects
- A video game developer thinks making games work on Linux isn't
worth getting rid of rootkit anticheat
The downside is Windows users would have to live in a world without
subscription-based office suites, locked down media, and letting the
CCP into your ring 0.
jact wrote 9 hours 27 min ago:
Itâs bad for society for the desktop OS market to be a proprietary
monopoly. It basically allows Microsoft to extract rent from the
public defender.
I do understand the evangelism being obnoxious. I donât advocate
for people to switch if they have key use cases that ONLY windows or
OS X can meet. Certainly not good to be pushy. But otherwise, people
are really getting a better experience by switching to Linux.
I_am_tiberius wrote 10 hours 27 min ago:
Because we want the best for other people.
IAmGraydon wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
I would be 100% off Windows if it werenât for Adobe Suite and Ableton
Live not being ported to Linux. Iâm guessing both of these companies
are avoiding it not for technical reasons but because Linux is a
support nightmare given all of the distros and variations of the
platform.
api wrote 13 hours 4 min ago:
All Linux desktop has to do is stay still and it will catch up with
Windows, which is progressively getting worse.
kentonv wrote 13 hours 5 min ago:
I switched all the machines at [1] over to Linux a couple months ago.
So far, we've experienced noticeably fewer problems on Linux compared
to Windows. Stability and performance are better. I can't think of one
game we tried that didn't work. And wow is it nice not to have all the
ads and crapware in our faces anymore.
(I'm aware that Battlefield series and League of Legends won't work due
to draconian anti-cheat -- but nobody in my group cares to play those I
guess.)
HTML [1]: https://lanparty.house
ahartmetz wrote 59 min ago:
It keeps surprising me how many people don't care about some of the
most popular games today. I mean I don't care about Battlefield or
League of Legends neither, but in earlier decades of PC gaming,
almost everyone had some of the most popular games. Doom, Half-Life
(1 + 2) and such.
The games market today seems more similar to music in its
fragmentation.
a_humean wrote 19 min ago:
Well yes.
The addressable consumer market is just a lot bigger and more
diverse than it used to be. You go back to the early late 90s and
its a market dominated by teenage boys. Go back and look at some of
the 00s and early 10s E3 presenations from the big three and its
very cringe inducing how focused they are on a teenage boy
demographic and appearing edgy and how blatantly sexist they are in
their language. For example, at the E3 conference where MS
announced xbox live (2004?) they explictly said that girls don't
play games (there were actually plenty of girls that did play games
at that time), but they might want to use xbox live to design
t-shirts to sell to boys on their online marketplace. This was also
still the era of booth babes trying to pull in men to booths with
barely dressed women. Nearly every game ad was just a wall of
exposions and violence or just the latest NFL game.
Today you have fully grown adults in their 30-50s with very
different tastes and you have a lot lot more women and girls
playing.
On top of we have a lot of diversity in who creates games and the
kinds of games they can create and still be commerically
successful. Lots of interesting narratively focused games, puzzles
games, platformers, and more artsy games. But if you want your
multiplayer shooter battlefield and CS2 are still there for you.
cdgfdfdgf wrote 1 hour 37 min ago:
what stability and performance? yeah, i dont see bsds but bluetooth
doesnt work and it doesnt wake up after sleep 85 percent of the time.
kind of crap really
dtj1123 wrote 42 min ago:
Bluetooth is admittedly less snappy than on Mac or Windows,
although it absolutely does work. As for wake after sleep, I've not
had a single issue in five years of daily driving Linux. No idea
what you're talking about.
harles wrote 7 hours 9 min ago:
I see not being able to install invasive kernel level anti-cheat as a
positive. I uninstalled all Riot games before they rolled it out. I
wouldâve been pretty miffed if I had accidentally gotten their
kernel modules simply because I wasnât reading tech news before the
auto update.
jakebasile wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
I'm sorry if you hear this a lot, but your house is so cool, and I
must admit I am more than a little jealous.
I've also said it here before but I will just give up on PC gaming
wholesale before I go back to Windows. It's crazy how much gaming on
Linux has improved in just the past couple years.
asymons wrote 8 hours 26 min ago:
league of legends is basically the only thing holding me back from
switching to Linux for myself :/ really want to just swap over to
linux fully. love your website + house!
Terr_ wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
Moved everything over a few months ago, and I still have a game or
two that requires Windows... but so far dual-booting has been more
than enough.
In some ways, the minor barrier is almost beneficial, in terms of
clearly separating work-time and play-time.
logicchains wrote 3 hours 0 min ago:
Great excuse to start learning DOTA. You won't regret it (until a
few thousand hours of gameplay later you realise how much of your
life you wasted on it).
stavros wrote 1 hour 15 min ago:
I mean, of course he'll regret it, as he probably regrets
learning LoL. But yes, DotA is the better game of the two,
according to my objective opinion.
chmod775 wrote 6 hours 51 min ago:
Some would consider not being able to play that game a feature!
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote 1 hour 55 min ago:
You might be saying it in jest, but I think there may be
something to this line of thinking. Whenever I read about
anything on HN and bazzite comes up, it feels like the beginning
of a new holy war is approaching. I am starting to wonder if the
concern from the 'older' linux crowd is that the gamers will
introduce changes to linux that will corrupt it more than systemd
ever could ( like kernel level drm in games ).
stavros wrote 1 hour 14 min ago:
I think the GP means because the game is a time sink, but you
raise an interesting point. I wanted to say "that'll never
happen", but someone could fork Linux, add DRM, and then that
becomes massively popular and we're done.
bloating8731 wrote 8 hours 53 min ago:
Does this mean the GitHub repo linked with the scripts now include up
to date linux versions? Last time I looked it was all windows
specific, but I'd love to setup something similar with stations for
(much lower power) versions.
kentonv wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
Sorry, I haven't gotten around to updating it yet, although it
basically works to follow the same instructions except replace
Windows with Linux and skip all the workarounds for
Windows-specific bugs.
z3t4 wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
I used multi seat in Linux with SystemD, i just threw in some old
grapchics cards and sound cards in my gaming PC so that the children
could play on separate monitors while I worked. Multi seat is very
cool. When upgrading to a new gaming PC it was much cheaper to build
4 separate machines because cpu's and motherboards with enough pcie
lanes are very expensive.
GPU's still run at decent performance with half the pcie lanes
available, so if you already got a gaming PC with many slots and dont
need top performance it could still be worth it to get two more cheap
gpus and use multi seats - for those building a mini lan gaming room
at home.
One annoying thing is that linux cant run many different GPU drivers
at the same time, so you have to make sure the cards work with the
same driver.
Properitary 3rd party multi seat also exist for Windows, but Linux
has built in support and its free.
seg_lol wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
This is awesome! [1] I am super curious about your setup. I played
with MS years ago, but I lost the need. It is a super cool tech
that I'd love to see its efficiencies embraced in some way.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration
z3t4 wrote 17 min ago:
Install an old GPU,
Connected a monitor to the extra GPU,
connect mouse and keyboard,
Use the loginctl command to list available devices/usb ports and
attach them to a seat.
I suggest using Arch linux although loginctl should be available
in all distributions using SystemD now.
If you don't have enough USB ports you can use a USB hub, some
monitors comes with USB hub. And some with built in sound, or you
can use wireless headset.
My main issue was that driver support was dropped for my oldest
GPU card. So one day when I upgraded the OS it just stopped
working. So to be on the safe side get another GPU like the one
you already have.
aqme28 wrote 10 hours 11 min ago:
On a similar note, performance is sometimes better. As a direct
comparison, the steam version of the Lenovos Legion S handheld is
significantly more performant than the windows version. Like 20%
better FPS and double the battery life. Literally the only difference
between the two is the OS.
eru wrote 9 hours 47 min ago:
Though from what I've read, Microsoft could fix that relatively
quickly, if they made some tweaks to Windows (and called it a
special 'handheld gaming edition' or so).
For some reason, the Lenovo Legion S's Windows still comes with a
lot of baggage and background services etc.
joseda-hg wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
If LTT is to be believed, this is in the works
Maybe SteamOS managed to ruffle enough feathers to start moving
the inertial colossus that is Microsoft, not that I have much
trust on their willingness to leave a good idea remain good in
the long term
reincarnate0x14 wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
I recently heard that Star Citizen of all things, still in eternal
development hell, runs really well on Linux.
Also, amazing house, my friend is enamored of the cat-transit. I used
to live not too far from you :)
b112 wrote 1 hour 40 min ago:
cat-transit
You cannot say such things without more info. I envision cats
sitting on small trollies.
crabmusket wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://lanparty.house/#catwalk
b112 wrote 27 min ago:
Cool. Thanks
ThatPlayer wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
Did you ever get those local SSDs as copy-on-write overlays on Linux?
I imagine it'd be easier with btrfs support for seeding device:
HTML [1]: https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Seeding-device.html
kentonv wrote 11 hours 4 min ago:
Yes, on Linux I was able to move the copy-on-write overlays to use
local disks, which is one reason it performs much better
(admittedly not a reason that would affect most people).
I am just using dm-snapshot for this -- block device level, no
fancy filesystems.
bigyabai wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Battlefield 4's anticheat runs fine on Linux, if you end up needing
one. It definitely slakes my BF fix, in the same way Deadlock is
filling the LoL-shaped hole in my contemptible subsistence.
valorzard wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
Your house sounds like a great place to hold a fighting game local
tournament (or something like the old Smash Summit series for Smash
Bros Melee and Ultimate before Beyond The Summit shut down)
LeoPanthera wrote 11 hours 26 min ago:
What distro?
kentonv wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
Debian... mostly just because it's what I'm most familiar with. I
don't have strong opinions on distros.
LeoPanthera wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
But you use it for games, right? So I figured you'd pick one
based on how well it runs Steam. (And maybe for GPU drivers.)
kentonv wrote 11 hours 9 min ago:
Steam supports Debian well.
I download the nvidia drivers directly from nvidia. Their
installer script is actually pretty decent and then I don't
have to worry about whether the distro packages are up-to-date.
siikanen wrote 57 min ago:
I'm curious why bot just boot SteamOS? I'd imagine that being
the easiest way to go
argsnd wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
I find that Fedora hits the right balance of stability while
being up to date for anything desktop and specifically gaming
focused, Debian has different priorities and packages can be a
bit too old. And itâs less of a faff than Arch.
joe200 wrote 58 min ago:
You are comparing Fedora with Debian stable. Everyone who wants
to have Debian stability (and ecosystem) with the most new
upstream software should go for Debian Testing (and don't be
fooled by the name "testing" !).
Debian Stable is for servers, Debian Testing is for desktops.
Just try Debian Testing
(and I used Slack, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian)
ahartmetz wrote 40 min ago:
This is from like 20 years ago, but I remember Debian Testing
as the one where updates broke the system most frequently, or
maybe the longest without fixes: Stable was stable, Sid /
unstable was what most Debian developers were using... and
Testing was the weird thing that was neither a release nor
tested and fixed "live" by developers.
What changed?
eru wrote 9 hours 45 min ago:
Archlinux can be a pretty good choice for gaming. Not
necessarily because of anything Archlinux does: most distros
can do anything, if you configure them.
No, just because the Steamdeck's distro is built on Arch, and
so you can piggyback on what they are doing.
kentonv wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
Eh, aside from GPU drivers -- which I download directly from
nvidia anyway -- I don't feel like gaming is much affected by
the distro packages being a couple years old. We pretty much
just run Steam, Discord, and Chrome on these things, and those
all have their own update schedule independent of the distro.
sznio wrote 2 hours 57 min ago:
I'm hopeful that's been fixed by now, but when I switched to
Linux a year ago I started with Debian, and had a lot of
issues with input latency for games on Wayland. Switched to
Fedora which was two KDE versions ahead and never had that
issue again.
joe200 wrote 55 min ago:
Because you used Debian stable (which is mostly for
servers).
Try Debian Testing. And don't get fooled by its name
"testing" - it is because Debian community reserved
"stable" for Debian stable. Debian testing is also stable
:-)
tapoxi wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
You're right because the games run in containers anyway,
steam-runtime.
abrookewood wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
Yep, I've been gaming exclusively on Ubuntu (mainly because I want my
desktop to match my servers) for several years. If you aren't playing
the latest AAA FPS, then everything pretty much works.
xattt wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
Iâve used Ubuntu since 7.04 and recently jumped from Ubuntu to
Debian. It feels more like home than ever before.
All the things youâre used to without the corporate
âsugarcoatingâ.
curt15 wrote 10 hours 3 min ago:
How much work is it to get snaps out of your way? Canonical seems
to be going all in on them as their business strategy.
unixhero wrote 30 min ago:
Just use Linux Mint
josteink wrote 1 hour 21 min ago:
> How much work is it to get snaps out of your way?
If you donât want what makes Ubuntu Ubuntu, why not just run
vanilla Debian instead?
ahartmetz wrote 51 min ago:
Ubuntu releases supported (aka "really supposed to work")
versions much more frequently than Debian, or I would have
switched already. As it is, I just make the appropriate changes
to purge Snap and run Firefox from a Mozilla apt repo and
Thunderbird from Flatpak via Flathub.
hugmynutus wrote 7 hours 36 min ago:
Setting up `apt` to pull from a different repo (to say install
firefox.dpkg instead of snap) requires like 3-4 commands which
are easily searchable.
I'd had effectively zero issues avoid snaps.
jakebasile wrote 7 hours 44 min ago:
I also game on Ubuntu and snaps have never been in my way. I
actually like them and wish more non-game software was
distributed this way, but Canonical has a brown thumb when it
comes to growing their weird little side projects.
abrookewood wrote 9 hours 50 min ago:
Not that much. TO be honest, I have a few installed (Heroic Games
Launcher for one), but the main one I wanted to avoid was Firefox
- which is easily doable. It is annoying that we have yet another
way of packaging apps - would have been better if they just
supported Flatpack
jscyc wrote 9 hours 32 min ago:
Do you ever find it "updated" to the snap version? I have
Ubuntu on my work laptop and every so often after an update
Firefox will suddenly be the snap version and I'll have to
reinstall it.
zerocrates wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
As someone else says, for Firefox (and Thunderbird) I just
uninstalled the package manager version entirely and dropped
Mozilla's regular distro-agnostic binary tarballs in my home
folder. Using the built-in update systems also avoids that
problem from .deb versions where updating the package could
make the browser yell at you that it needs to be restarted
when you try to open a tab.
ragall wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
Mozilla also has its own Apt repository, which can be more
convenient.
lelandbatey wrote 8 hours 37 min ago:
I recommend downloading the executable-in-a-tarball form of
Firefox and running that. I personally do that with Nightly,
and I find it works quite well.
Brian_K_White wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
I no longer remember all the exact steps I did but I only
googled them in the first place so presumably they are there
to be googled still. But it's possible to fully remove snapd
and all snap support and then taboo it so that it never comes
back. Or at least, it's been a few years and it hasn't come
back. FF has remained a real .deb from the mozillateam ppa.
It was a few different steps though not just uninstalling a
few packages but also editing some apt config files I think.
Sorry that sounds useless but like I say I just googled it up
at the time, did 15-20 minutes of reading and poking, and
never had to touch it again since then. It's been several
version bumps.
..edit..
I installed a dummy package that displaces the nagware about
the pro version too so I never get those messages during apt
update any more.
Taking a quick definitely incomplete look I see at least:
/etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla.pref
Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 501
Package: thunderbird*
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 501
/etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10
and removed ubuntu-pro-esm-apps and ubuntu-pro-esm-infra from
that same dir
but also there is a mozillateam ppa in sources.list.d, and I
don't see any installed package name that looks like it might
be that dummy ubuntu-pro-esm thing, so maybe it got removed
during a version upgrade and I never noticed because ubuntu
stopped that nonsense and it isn't needed any more? Or there
is some other config somewhere I'm forgetting that is keeping
that hole plugged.
Anyway, it WAS a little bit of fiddling around one day, but
at least it was only a one and done thing so far.
I kind of expected to be off of ubuntu by now because once
someone starts doing anything like that, it doesn't matter if
you can work around it, the real problem is that they want to
do things like that at all in the first place. Well they
still want what they want and that problem is never going
away. They will just keep trying some other thing and then
some other thing. So rather that fight them forever, it's
better to find someone else who you don't want to fight. I
mean that's why we're on Linux at all in the first place
right? But so far it's been a few version bumps since then
and still more or less fine.
varun_ch wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
As an aside..
I went down a mini-rabbit hole learning about the LAN Party House,
read your website and about Sandstorm[0] and how that ended up with
you at Cloudflare leading Workers. Thatâs a really cool and
honestly inspirational path. Would love to learn more if youâve
written elsewhereâ¦!
[0]
HTML [1]: https://sandstorm.io/news/
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 10 hours 43 min ago:
I was also impressed by his wife's Chez JJ work. I suspect that she
has done much more impressive stuff, but that kind of thing is a
dime a dozen, in SV. The hacker housing stuff speaks to her
humanity, and I like humans.
sirjaz wrote 13 hours 9 min ago:
If Microsoft could get their heads out of their rears, they could
potentially get back to a better OS for gaming. The hybrid kernel Dave
Cutler designed is in many ways still better than the Linux kernel.
It's the userland that is the issue with Windows 11. Look just by
enabling true nvme support you close the gap between Linux and Windows
performance wise.
Biganon wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
I'm tired of people saying Steam on Linux just works. It doesn't.
Tried running Worms: instant crash, no error message.
Tried running Among Us: instant crash, had to add cryptic arguments to
the command line to get it to run.
Tried running Parkitect: crashes after 5 minutes.
These three games are extremely simple, graphically speaking. They
don't use any complicated anti-cheat measure. This shouldn't be
complicated, yet it is.
Oh and I'm using Arch (BTW), the exact distro SteamOS is based on.
And of course, as always, those for which it works will tell you you're
doing-it-wrong⢠.
tuetuopay wrote 1 hour 21 min ago:
As an Arch (btw) user myself, yes, you're doing something wrong.
Arch won't hold your hands to ensure everything required is
installed, because many dependencies are either optional (you have to
read the pacman logs) or just hidden (because it's in the game
itself). Valve actually does a great job providing a "works
everywhere" runtime as their games are distributed in a flatpak-like
fashion, but things can seep through the cracks.
The compositor can have an effect. The desktop settings. The GPU
drivers. What's installed as far as e.g. fonts go. RAM setup, with or
without swap.
As for steamOS, the real difference, is that despite being
Arch-based, you're not installing Arch, but steamOS. A pre-packaged
pre-configured Arch linux, with a set of opinionated software and its
set of pre-made config files, for a small set of (1) devices. It's
not really Arch you're installing, but a full-blow distro that
happens to be arch-based.
That said, I understand your frustration as I've hit this many times
on a laptop with dual graphics. Getting PRIME to run with the very
first drivers that supported it was fun. Oh and I'm likely to hit the
same walls as you since I just switched my gaming rig to Arch. GLHF!
arendtio wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
Well, but many games just work. Actually, I try starting the games
without any tweaks before heading over to protondb.com, and often
they run just fine.
But it is also true that many games still require minor tweaks. For
example, just last week, I found out that I had to enable hardware
acceleration for the webview within Steam, just to be able to log in
to Halo Infinite. It was just clicking a checkbox, but otherwise, the
game would not have been playable.
But I am always surprised when you find out you have those kinds of
issues with Windows as well.
lawn wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
> Worms, Among Us, Parkitect
All three games works perfectly well on both Steam OS and on my kid's
PC running CachyOS without any intervention.
arcfour wrote 7 hours 3 min ago:
> And of course, as always, those for which it works will tell you
you're doing-it-wrong⢠.
This sounds like you are rejecting help because you have made up your
mind in frustration already.
Because you are doing it wrong. If you want an OS that just works,
you should use Ubuntu or Fedora. Why is SteamOS based on Arch then?
Because Valve wants to tweak things in it and tinker with it
themselves to get it how they like.
You don't.
So use an OS that requires less from you and that tries to just work
out of the box, not one that is notorious for being something you
break and tinker with constantly (Arch).
vladms wrote 1 hour 48 min ago:
I am using Arch and all the games I played on Steam (at least 20,
not the ones mentioned above) worked perfectly.
One thing that I do though is get most games at least one year
after release, when probably many issues are fixed. I had tons of
issues many years ago, with buggy games bought immediately after
release (on Windows back then), so now I changed strategy...
vbezhenar wrote 10 hours 4 min ago:
Yeah, the same. I sometimes google "wine WoW issues" and every time
there are recent threads, so I don't even try. Linux has the long way
to become gamer platform.
HKH2 wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
Ironically, quite a few Linux-compatible games only work for me in
compatibility mode.
mason_mpls wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
You are definitely doing it wrong, I rarely have issues and when I do
I just switch comparability tools. I play multiple indie games,
marvel rivals, I played lots of among us on my machine in 2020.
Running Pop OS
lanfeust6 wrote 11 hours 9 min ago:
Don't use Arch unless you don't mind spending time troubleshooting
and configuring.
fendy3002 wrote 11 hours 20 min ago:
As other have said, it's usually driver or configuration issue, which
is why I prefer using the prebuilt, pre-installed steam deck.
polivier wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
You can force a Proton version in the game settings. "Proton
Experimental" almost always fixes any issue you may have.
casey2 wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
The games don't fail to run because they are so "graphically
powerful" they fail to run because you chose to set up your system
without the necessary runtime.
There are people who make stripped-down versions of windows. Is it
fair to say that because these releases exist that windows isn't
"just works" either?
jzb wrote 12 hours 41 min ago:
I imagine the people saying âit just worksâ are saying it because
it does, at least for them.
SteamOS is based on Arch, but customized and aimed at specific
hardware configurations. Itâd be interesting to know what hardware
youâre using and if any of your components are not well supported.
FWIW, Iâve used Steam on Linux (mostly PopOS until this year, then
Bazzite) for years and years without many problems. ISTR having to do
something to make Quake III work a few years ago, but it ran fine
after and Iâve recently reinstalled it and didnât have to fuss
with anything.
Granted, I donât run a huge variety of games, but Iâve finished
several or played for many hours without crashes, etc.
webstrand wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, and I've never had trouble running a
game that's rated gold or above. I've even gotten an Easy AntiCheat
game to work correctly.
I've been gaming on linux exclusively for about 8 years now and
have had very few issues running windows games. Sometimes the
windows version, run through proton, runs better than the native
port. I don't tend to be playing AAA games right after launch day,
though. So it could be taste is affecting my experience.
markus_zhang wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
I just bought another second Dell workstation (admit I hated those)
and canât wait to install SteamOS when it is released to the
public. I donât care about AAA gaming but the integrated card
should be able to handle most of the games from ten years ago.
zouhair wrote 12 hours 52 min ago:
I use EndeavourOS, I just installed Worms and Among Us and they are
playing right out of the box for me.
net01 wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
Arch is nice if you want to tinker. Based on your reasoning, I
wouldn't recommend it.
But if you still want arch-based, I would recommend EndevourOS, and
for even a simpler/better distro, Bazzite.
senectus1 wrote 11 hours 58 min ago:
Split the difference, Fedora.
its cutting edge but not in a way that can lead you to make
mistakes like arch (BTW).
Its still open to customizing but out of the box is very damn
usable and flexible.
joe200 wrote 54 min ago:
Even better is Debian testing :-)
casey2 wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
some people want machines that do everything but don't want to do
everything to maintain them or even set them up
kentonv wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
These games are all rated gold or platinum on protondb, indicating
that they work perfectly for most people.
Hard to say what might be going wrong for you without more details. I
would guess there's something wrong with your video driver. Maybe you
have an nvidia card and the OS has installed the nouveau drivers by
default? Installing the nvidia first-party drivers (downloaded from
the nvidia web site) will fix a lot of things. This is indeed a sore
spot for Linux gaming, though to be fair graphics driver problems are
not exactly unheard of on Windows either.
Personally I have a bunch of machines dedicated to gaming in my house
( [1] ) which have proven to be much more stable running Linux than
they were with Windows. I think this is because the particular NIC in
these machines just has terrible Windows drivers, but decent Linux
drivers (and I am netbooting, so network driver stability is pretty
critical to the whole system).
HTML [1]: https://lanparty.house
tuetuopay wrote 1 hour 26 min ago:
> Installing the nvidia first-party drivers (downloaded from the
nvidia web site) will fix a lot of things
Interesting. I saw somewhere else you're using Debian. Is it as
opposed from Nouveau or the proprietary drivers from the Debian
repos?
I'm currently testing to daily drive my desktop with linux on an
NVIDIA GPU, and the Arch wiki explicitly recommends drivers from
their repos. However, arch is rolling and the repo drivers are
supposedly much more up to date than Debian's ones. Though, I'll
keep your comment if I run into anything.
MangoToupe wrote 10 hours 49 min ago:
> Installing the nvidia first-party drivers (downloaded from the
nvidia web site) will fix a lot of things.
Crazyâit used to be that nvidia drivers were by far the least
stable parts of an install, and nouveau was a giant leap forward.
Good to know their software reputation has improved somewhat
kentonv wrote 5 hours 27 min ago:
Nouveau has never been good for gaming. Not their fault (they had
to reverse engineer everything), but it was only really ever
viable for mostly 2D desktops in my experience.
snvzz wrote 7 hours 26 min ago:
NVIDIA on Linux is a pain, either path.
Whereas, AMD just works and is thus standard recommendation.
kentonv wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Everyone says this but it is not my experience at all. Every
time I try AMD cards I run into weird problems. The Nvidia
drivers are a pain to install and tend to break randomly on
kernel updates, but once built properly they always just work
for me...
tormeh wrote 1 hour 25 min ago:
Did you use the proprietary AMD drivers? You need to use the
open source drivers. As far as I know these should be the
default on all distros, so just click through the OS
installer, install Steam, and start gaming. Don't touch the
drivers.
coherentpony wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
> Personally I have a bunch of machines dedicated to gaming in my
house ( [1] )
Woah, that is extremely cool. Very nice work, sir.
HTML [1]: https://lanparty.house
tombert wrote 12 hours 59 min ago:
I don't have your other games, but I do have a few Worms games and
they worked out of the box for me with GE Proton on NixOS.
I'm not saying "you're doing it wrong", because obviously if you're
having trouble then that is, if nothing else, bad UX design, but I
actually am kind of curious as to what you're doing different than
me. I have an extremely vanilla NixOS setup that boots into
GameScope + Tenfoot and I drive everything with a gamepad and it
works about as easily as a console does for me.
keyringlight wrote 12 hours 38 min ago:
If anything this is the challenge with PC as a platform being so
varied, any random software/hardware/config variation could bring a
whole load of quirks.
That probably includes anything that isn't a PC in a time-capsule
from when the game originally released, so any OS/driver changes
since then, and I don't think we've reached the point where we can
emulate specific hardware models to plug into a VM. One of the
reasons the geforce/radeon drivers (eg, the geforce "game ready"
branding) are so big is that they carry a whole catalogue of quirk
workarounds for when the game renderer is coded badly or to make it
a better fit to hardware and lets them advertise +15% performance
in a new version. Part of the work for wine/proton/dxvk is going to
be replicating that instead of a blunt translation strictly to the
standards.
tombert wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Yeah, I think Linus himself pointed out that the desktop is the
hardest platform to support because it's unbelievably diverse and
varied.
With regards to Linux I generally just focus on hardware from
brands that have historically had good Linux support, but that's
just a rule of thumb, certainly not perfect.
WolfeReader wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
The article's title - and the original title of the submission - was
specific, bold, and contained a call to action. The new title is bland
and unspecific (Linux has been "good" for servers for decades now).
Please revert this submission to use the correct title.
running101 wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
Year of the Linux desktop!
hecifato wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
Iâve been around the block with Linux distributions since 2020. I
personally think that Bazzite is the way to go for most people coming
from Windows, or people experienced with Linux that want something as
close to âset and forgetâ as you can.
One thing that can be annoying is how quickly things have moved in the
Linux gaming space over the past 5 years. I have been a part of
conversations with coworkers who talk about how Linux gaming was in
2019 or 2020. I feel like anyone familiar with Linux will know the
feeling of how quickly things can improve while documentation and
public information cannot keep up.
synergy20 wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
Linux is my main and sole desktop since around-2006. I needed windows
for TurboTax a few hours a year in the past but that's it, I did not do
PC games though, just regular desktop stuff including developing code.
Aldipower wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Same here, since 1997 though, running the tax software in a virtual
machine with Linux as host.
MerrimanInd wrote 13 hours 37 min ago:
I love this. I spent my holidays hearing non-technical family members
complain about their ever deteriorating Windows experiences, issues
that make me righteously angry at Microsoft.
IMO the next important unblocker for Linux adoption is the Adobe suite.
In a post-mobile world one can use a tablet or phone for almost any
media consumption. But production is still in the realm of the desktop
UX and photo/video/creative work is the most common form of output. An
Adobe CC Linux option would enable that set of "power users". And
regardless of their actual percentage of desktop users, just about ever
YouTuber or streamer talking about technology is by definition a
content creator so opening Linux up to them would have a big effect on
adoption.
And yes I've tried most of the Linux alternatives, like GIMP, Inkscape,
DaVinci, RawTherapee, etc. They're mostly /fine/ but it's one of the
weaker software categories in FOSS-alternatives IMO. It also adds an
unnecessary learning curve. Gamers would laugh if they were told that
Linux gaming was great, they just have to learn and play an entirely
different set of games.
Klonoar wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
Your entire comment could be written 20 years ago and it would just
about fit perfectly.
orbital-decay wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
Photoshop (for example) largely works in Wine, although it's not
stable enough for production usage. The problem is the CC itself and
the installer, which is unimaginably bloated and glued to the
Internet Exp... I mean Edge Web View and many other Windows-only
things.
duttish wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
I've been on Linux desktop for ages, but it's not quite stable enough
that I can recommend it to anyone. Space Marine 2 was the first game in
quite a while than didn't just work out of the box, but...
E.g three weeks ago nvidia pushed bad drivers which broke my desktop
after a reboot and I had to swap display (ctrl-alt-f3 etc), I never got
into gnome at all, and roll back to an earlier version. Automatic
rollback of bad drivers would have saved this.
Are Radeon drivers less shit?
keyringlight wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
It might depend on the distro, but were you running a 10 series or
earlier? They dropped Pascal and earlier CPUs with the v590 driver, I
know Arch migrated what the nvidia package installed in such a way
that could leave someone without an appropriate driver unless they
manually moved to a different source.
Then again Arch is one of those distros that has the attitude that
you need to be a little engaged/responsible for ongoing maintenance
of your system, which is why I'm against blind "just use (distro)"
recommendations unless it's very basic and low assumptions about the
user.
[0]
HTML [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1prm8rl/archanno...
duttish wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
I'm on bog standard Ubuntu (25.04 maybe?) because it's what I know
and I don't really care about it as long as it works. Which...
well, seems above :}
mrkeen wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
I've had mixed experiences with AMD. Back in the day - a bit after
Linus told Nvidia to fuck off - I tried to get my Radeon 5850HD (i
think?) working on Ubuntu. It was one of those things I spent the
whole weekend (OS reinstalls really add up) trying to make work, to
no avail. Relative to that nonsense, the equivalent proprietary
Nvidia driver just worked after being installed.
A couple of months ago I bought a second hand RX 7800 XT, and
prepared myself for a painful experience, but I think it just worked.
Like I got frustrated trying to find out how to download and install
the driver, when I think it just came with Linux Mint already.
diabllicseagull wrote 13 hours 36 min ago:
I've been using a full amd build with arch on it for years now. never
had graphics related issues after an update. my biggest gripe is with
the hdmi organization and how we can't have proper support with open
source drivers.
QuadrupleA wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
Been so happy with my switch to Linux about 8 months ago. The nvidia
gremlins that stopped me in prior years are all smoothed out.
One big plus with Linux, it's more amenable to AI assistance - just
copy & paste shell commands, rather than follow GUI step-by-steps. And
Linux has been in the world long enough to be deeply in the LLM
training corpuses.
epistasis wrote 13 hours 49 min ago:
Honestly I loved it a lot more pre-2022, when Ubuntu added a super
aggressive OOM killer that only operates on the level of an entire
systemd run unit. Meaning that if you are running computation in, say,
a shell and one for your subprocesses running computation takes too
much memory, it takes out the entire shell and terminal window, leaving
no trace of what happened, including all the terminal logs.
And if you are running Chrome, and something starts taking a lot of
memory, say goodbye to the entire app without any niceties.
(Yes, this is a mere pet peeve but it has been causing me so much pain
over the past year, and it's such an inferior way to deal with memory
limits tha what came before it, I don't know why anybody would have
taken OOM logic from systemd services and applied it to use launched
processes.)
rick_dalton wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
This is really annoying me as well. I use a program for work that can
occasionally use a lot of ram, while saving or interpolating for
example. On my little MacBook Air with just 8GB of ram everything
works fine, it just swaps a whole lot more for a short period. On my
desktop with 16GB ram and Ubuntu oom just kills it, my workaround is
the swapspace package which adds swap files under high load, works so
far.
mixmastamyk wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
How does Mint work? I recommended it regardless for removing snap.
mort96 wrote 13 hours 41 min ago:
It sounds like your primary issue is that you have a severe RAM
deficiency for what you're trying to use your machine for. Any OOM
killer, be it the kernel's per-process one or systemd-oomd's
per-service one, only exists to try to recover from an out-of-memory
scenario where the alternative is to kernel panic (in the case of the
kernel's oom killer) or for the system to completely lock up (in the
case of systemd-oomd).
Try doing less at once, or getting more memory.
digiown wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
> getting more memory
A bit hard to do now :(
epistasis wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
My primary issue is that a system that did an OK job at dealing
with low memory situations has been replaced with a completely
inadequate system.
If your solution is "don't ever run out of memory" my solution is
"I won't ever use your OS unless forced to."
Every other OS handles this better, and my work literally requires
pushing the bounds of memory on the box, whether it's 64GB or 1TB
of RAM. Killing an entire cgroup is never an acceptable solution,
except for the long-running servers that systemd is meant to run.
mort96 wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
The kernel OOM killer has never done an adequate job for me. It
tends to hesitate to kill anything until the system has literally
been completely 100% unresponsive for over half an hour. That's
completely unacceptable. Killing a cgroup before the system
becomes unresponsive is a million times more desirable default
behaviour for a normal desktop system (which Ubuntu Desktop is).
Of course, if it's absolutely not compatible with your work, you
can just disable systemd-oomd. I'm wondering though, what sort of
work are you doing where you can't tune stuff to use 95% of your
1TB of memory instead of 105% of it?
orbital-decay wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
As far as I know, Windows just grinds to a halt entirely, system
processes start crashing, or you get a BSOD, and mobile OSes kill
the app without any trace. I never had an OOM situation on Macs
so I don't know about macOS.
Windows is unstable even if you have more than enough memory but
your swap is disabled, due to how its virtual memory works. It
generally behaves much worse than others under heavy load and
when various system resources are nearly exhausted.
There are several advanced and very flexible OOM killers
available for Linux, you can use them if it really bothers you
(honestly you're the first I've seen complaining about it). Some
gaming/realtime distros are using them by default.
p_ing wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
Even NT4 handled OOM scenarios better than modern Linux. No, it
didn't grind to a halt, it would grind the rust off of the
spinning platters. But it would continue to run your
applications until the application was finished or you
intervened.
saghm wrote 13 hours 45 min ago:
I have to wonder if Ubuntu's prescriptive stance on things like this
is becoming increasingly outdated in an age where there's actually a
decent experience out of the box for a lot more stuff on Linux. I've
long since moved on from using it personally for my devices, but I'm
fairly certain my tolerance for spending effort tinkering to get
things working like I want is a lot higher than even most Linux
users, so it's hard for me to gauge if the window have moved
significantly in that regard for the average Linux user.
timbit42 wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
I find it interesting how many people have Ubuntu in mind when it
comes to a Linux desktop when it hasn't been a great experience
ever since they switched to Gnome. They don't really care about the
desktop anymore. They are now a corporation that is enshitifying
their product with things like SNAPs.
If you want a distro that really cares about the desktop experience
today, try Linux Mint. Windows users seem to adapt to it quite
quickly and easily. It's familiar and has really good defaults that
match what people expect.
epistasis wrote 13 hours 22 min ago:
It's not just Ubuntu, Arch is just as bad. The primary problem is
systemd, which provided an adequate OOMd for daemons, but then all
the distributions seem to be using it for interactively launched
processes
If anybody can help me out with a better solution with a modern
distribution, that's about 75% of the reason I'm posting. But it's
been a major pain and all the GitHub issues I have encountered on
it show a big resistance to having better behavior like is the
default for MacOS, Windows, or older Linux.
saghm wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
Interesting, either I haven't run into it much or I haven't
recognized the source of it when it's something I have
encountered.
tmtvl wrote 11 hours 38 min ago:
It's funny how you say the way it used to be was better when
people always complained about the OOM killer waiting until the
system had entirely ground to a halt before acting, to the point
some preferred to run with 0 swap so the system would just
immediately go down instead.
Regardless, I believe EarlyOOM is pretty configurable, if you
care to check it out.
mlacks wrote 13 hours 49 min ago:
I moved to linux this month for good once i realized I no longer needed
microsft services (Excel for example "runs on Mac" but is missing
important features). I chose redhat because its what I've been using
for over a decade at work and feels like home. Only thing I miss is
Capcut as that workflow was pretty ironed out. Getting the hang of
KDENlive
BrandoElFollito wrote 13 hours 55 min ago:
What is really blocking the move for me is zScaler, Zoom (they may
exist on Linux, not sure about how integrated they are) but especially
Outlook (the client). The OWA version is subpar and without it I cannot
function in a work environment.
byte_0 wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
I had a similar issue, but I ended up installing Debian and running
Windows 10 as a virtual machine with VirtualBox. The webcam can be
accessed as if were installed on the guest OS and haven't had a
problem with Zoom or Teams. Just sharing in case it helps.
BrandoElFollito wrote 3 hours 35 min ago:
I considered that but is is such a waste of resources in my case: I
deliberately use a lighter laptop that just covers my dev needs.
But yes, this is a possibility, or accessing the windows via rdp.
The loss would be with the "always-handy" kind of setup, where
Outlook is a click away and pops up its calendar reminder
BLKNSLVR wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
> without it I cannot function in a work environment.
This is more about what you choose as your operating environment, not
what your work imposes as your working environment.
Most places of work, mine included, run Microsoft services that lock
them into the ecosystem incredibly tightly.
As per the article title, "if you want to feel like you actually own
your PC", this is about your PC, not the one provided to you by your
workplace (since it's likely owned by them).
One thing I'm worried about in my work environment is Microsoft
enforcing the web versions of Office and deprecating the stand alone
desktop applications. The web versions are a massive step down in
terms of functionality and ease of use. Your mention of OWA makes me
feel as if that is what Outlook will be sacrificed for at some point
in the future anyway.
BrandoElFollito wrote 3 hours 38 min ago:
I could use whatever in my job, I just need access to these key
tools.
I have the same concern regarding the Outlook desktop client. I
briefly used the web based one and it is way less convenient in a
work setting.
nsxwolf wrote 13 hours 56 min ago:
What makes Linux a viable desktop for so many people now is the fact
that they donât need to run very much software anymore. It runs
Chrome so youâre good.
christophilus wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
I switched in 2020. I run Fedora and Arch. I donât miss MacOS at all.
The last Windows I used was 8, so my opinion is out of date, but
yeah⦠I donât miss Windows, either.
knallfrosch wrote 14 hours 3 min ago:
If people put half the amount of their time into fixing Windows as they
do installing software on Linux, it'd be way better.
Instead of distro upgrades, spend 3 minutes disabling the newest AI
feature using regedit.
But, as the author rightly notes: It's more about a "feeling." Well
then, good luck.
cedws wrote 14 hours 5 min ago:
I've been sceptical of the 'Linux desktop' for a long time, but I
recently started using Bazzite on my gaming PC and I'm super impressed.
In just a few years since I last daily drove a Linux distro it's come
such a long way. KDE Plasma is fast and beautiful.
So far all the games I want to play run really well, with no noticable
performance difference. If anything, they feel faster, but it could be
placebo because the DE is more responsive.
mat_epice wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
After a few months of testing the waters, I just moved my gaming PC
over to full-time Linux this weekend. Proton has really been
revolutionary, as I haven't yet encountered something in my Steam
library that won't work.
johnea wrote 14 hours 11 min ago:
> actually own your PC
It's funny they would choose this phasing.
This is exactly the way I described my decision to abandon windoze, and
switch to linux, over 20 years ago...
tigerlily wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
This is really shaping up to be the Century of Linux on the Desktop.
subdavis wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
Adoption has really picked up since 1900.
amlib wrote 13 hours 23 min ago:
Previous millennium adoption also really pales in comparison to
current millennium. Let's hope it keeps going strong in the next
millennium
bitanarch wrote 14 hours 18 min ago:
HDR still doesn't really work on Linux w/ nVidia GPUs.
1. 10bpp color depth is not supported on RGB monitors, which are the
majority of LCD displays on the market. Concretely, ARGB2101010 and
XRGB2101010 modes are not supported by current nVidia Linux drivers -
the drivers only offer ABGR2101010 and XBGR2101010 (See: [1] ).
2. Common browsers like Chrome and Firefox has no real support for HDR
video playback on nVidia Linux drivers. The "HDR" option appears on
YouTube, but no HDR color can be displayed with an nVidia GPU.
Also, video backgrounds in Google Meet on Chrome are broken with nVidia
GPUs and Wayland. Ironically it works on Firefox. This has been broken
for a few years and no fix is in sight.
The "HDR" toggle you get on Plasma or Mutter is hiding a ton of
problems behind the scenes. If you only have 8bpp, even if you can find
an app that somehow displays HDR colors on nVidia/Wayland - you'll see
artifacts on color gradients.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/main/ke...
jact wrote 9 hours 36 min ago:
I find that running HDR games in standalone steam gamescope works
great for my OLED tv. Not perfect, but great.
3A2D50 wrote 12 hours 24 min ago:
I have Interstellar on 4K UltraHD Blu-ray that features HDR on the
cover, Sony 4K Blu-ray player (UBP-X700) and a LG G4 OLED television.
I also have an AVR (Denon AVR-S760H 7.2 Ch) connecting both the
Blu-ray and a PC running Linux with a RTX 3060 12GB graphic card to
the television. I've been meaning to compare HDR on Linux with the
Blu-ray. I guess now better than never. I'll reply back to my post
after I am done.
3A2D50 wrote 10 hours 38 min ago:
Television HDR mode is set to FILMMAKER,
OLED brightness 100%,
Energy Saving Mode is off.
Connected to AVR with HDMI cable that says 8K.
PC has Manjaro Linux with RTX 3060 12GB
Graphic card driver: Nvidia 580.119.02
KDE Plasma Version 6.5.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.21.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version 6.12.63-1-MANJARO
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Display Configuration
High Dynamic Range: Enable HDR is checked
There is a button for brightness calibration that I used for
adjustment.
Color accuracy: Prefer color accuracy
sRGB color intensity: This seems to do nothing (even after
apply). I've set it to 0%.
Brightness: 100%
TV is reporting HDR signal.
AVR is reporting...
Resolution: 4KA VRR
HDR: HDR10
Color Space RGB /BT.2020
Pixel Depth: 10bits
FRL Rate 24Gbps
I compared Interstellar 19s into Youtube video in three different
ways on Linux and 2:07:26 on Blu-ray.
For Firefox 146.0.1 by default there is no HDR option on Youtube.
4K video clearly doesn't have HDR. I enabled HDR in firefox by
going to about:config and setting the following to true:
gfx.wayland.hdr, gfx.wayland.hdr.force-enabled,
gfx.webrender.compositor.force-enabled.
Color look completely washed out.
For Chromium 143.0.7499.169 HDR enabled by default. This looks like
HDR.
I downloaded the HDR video from Youtube and played it using MPV
v0.40.0-dirty with settings --vo=gpu-next --gpu-api=vulkan
--gpu-context=waylandvk. Without these settings the video seems a
little too bright like the Chromium playback. This was the best
playback of the three on Linux.
On the Blu-ray the HDR is Dolby Vision according to both the TV and
the AVR. The AVR is reporting...
Resolution: 4k24
HDR: Dolby Vision
Color Space: RGB
Pixel Depth 8bits
FRL Rate: no info
...I looked into this and apparently Dolby Vision uses RGB
tunneling for its high-bit-depth (12-bit) YCbCr 4:2:2 data.
The Blu-ray looks like it has the same brightness range but the
color of the explosion (2:07:26) seems richer compared to the best
playback on Linux (19s).
I would say the colors over all look better on the Blu-ray.
I might be able to calibrate it better if the sRGB color setting
worked in the display configuration. Also I think my brightness
setting is too high compared to the Blu-ray. I'll play around with
it more once the sRGB color setting is fixed.
*Edit: Sorry Hacker News has completely changed the format of my
text.
bitanarch wrote 11 hours 43 min ago:
Try it with different monitors you have. The current nVidia Linux
drivers only has BGR output for 10bpp, which works on TVs and OLEDs
but not most LCDs monitors.
My monitors (InnoCN 27M2V and Cooler Master GP27U) require RGB
input, which means it's limited to 8bpp even with HDR enabled on
Wayland. There's another commentator below who uses a Dell monitor
and manages to get BGR input working and full HDR in nVidia/Linux.
3A2D50 wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
I'll look into that tomorrow. See my other comment for Linux vs
Blu-ray.
EnPissant wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
I don't think this is true. I can go into my display settings in kde
plasma and enable HDR and configure the brightness. I have a nvidia
blackwell card.
bitanarch wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
You can enable, yes. But (assuming you're on an LCD display and not
an OLED), you're likely still on XRGB8888 - i.e. 8-bit per channel.
Check `drm_info`.
Also, go to YouTube and play this video: [1] Do it once on "HDR" on
Linux, and then on Windows. The "HDR" in nVidia/Linux is fake.
The brightness you see on Plasma or Mutter is indeed related to the
HDR support in the driver. But - it's not really useful for the
most common HDR tasks at the moment.
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onVhbeY7nLM
EnPissant wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
I asked claude to investigate:
Your Display Configuration
Both monitors are outputting 10-bit color using the ABGR2101010
pixel format.
| Monitor | Connector | Format | Color
Depth | HDR | Colorspace |
|------------------------|-----------|-------------|-------------
|--------------|------------|
| Dell U2725QE (XXXXXXX) | HDMI-A-1 | ABGR2101010 | 10-bit
| Enabled (PQ) | BT2020_RGB |
| Dell U2725QE (XXXXXXX) | HDMI-A-2 | ABGR2101010 | 10-bit
| Disabled | Default |
* Changed the serial numbers to XXXXXXX
I am on Wayland and outputting via HDMI 2.1 if that helps.
EDIT: Claude explained how it determined this with drm_info, and
manually verified it:
> Planes 0 and 3 are the primary planes (type=1) for CRTCs 62
and 81 respectively - these are what actually display your
desktop content. The Format: field shows the pixel format of the
currently attached framebuffer.
EDIT: Also note that I am slowbanned on this site, so may not be
able to respond for a bit.
EDIT: You should try connecting with HDMI 2.1 (you will need a 8k
HDMI cable or it will fall back to older standards instead of
FRL).
EDIT: HDR on youtube appears to work for me. Youtube correctly
indentifies HDR on only 1 of my monitors and I can see a big
difference in the flames between them on this scene:
HTML [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJWvAhNq34
bitanarch wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
Ok. I've been using DisplayPort 1.4a with my 4090 at the
moment. Maybe I'll try HDMI 2.1 and see what happens.
I'm actually surprised that YouTube HDR works on your side -
perhaps it's tied to the ABGR2101010 output mode being
available.
bitanarch wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
No luck for me with HDMI 2.1 - still seeing XRGB8888 on my
monitors after HDR enabled.
That's still pretty crappy. Monitors do not say whether they
support BGR input signals or not as opposed to RGB.
EnPissant wrote 12 hours 44 min ago:
Was it an 8k cable? Are you on wayland?
bitanarch wrote 11 hours 49 min ago:
I'm on Wayland and the cable is HDMI 2.1 ultra high
speed, which means 8k. Xorg is already gone on Ubuntu
25.10.
The GPU and monitor combination has full 10-bit HDR in
Windows. But in Linux it's stuck at 8bpp due to nVidia
driver not having 10-bit RGB output.
EnPissant wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
I donât think your problem is RGB instead of BGR.
Thatâs just the compositorâs work area and your
monitor never sees it (it includes an alpha channel).
Have you tried KDE Plasma? It sounds like KWin uses
10-bit planes by default when available. Maybe
Ubuntuâs compositor (Mutter?) doesnât support 30
bit color or must be configured? Or maybe you need the
nvidia driver >= 580.94.11 for VK_EXT_hdr_metadata (
[1] )
HTML [1]: https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-580.94.11...
bitanarch wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
I don't have a Dell U2725QE, but on InnoCN 27M2V and Cooler
Master GP27U there's no ABGR2101010 support. These monitors
would only work with ARGB2101010 or XRGB2101010 which nVidia
drivers do not provide.
Here's what I'm getting on both monitors, with HDR enabled on
Gnome 49: [1] Maybe you're lucky with the Dell. But as I
understand, HDR playback on Chrome is still broken.
HTML [1]: https://imgur.com/a/SCyyZWt
wirybeige wrote 9 hours 36 min ago:
HDR playback in chrome on KDE works as expected from what I
can tell. For GNOME 49.2 it does not, it doesn't get the
luminance that it should at this time. 49.3 may fix this.
EnPissant wrote 13 hours 54 min ago:
It's not obvious how to interpret the output. I pasted it into
chatgpt and it thinks I am using "Format: ABGR2101010" for both
monitors (only 1 has HDR on) so I don't trust it.
EDIT: See my sibling comment.
bitanarch wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
Under the Planes section, look for planes that have non-zero
"CRTC_ID". Those are the planes that actually get output to
your monitor.
Here's what I'm getting on an RTX 4090 / InnoCN 27M2V and
Cooler Master Tempest GP27U.
HTML [1]: https://imgur.com/a/SCyyZWt
fruitworks wrote 14 hours 18 min ago:
nvidia
yunnpp wrote 14 hours 13 min ago:
The way it's not meant to be played.
jetbalsa wrote 14 hours 15 min ago:
Right, it IS nvidia's fault at this point, but its still like what?
90% of the consumer GPU market.
hollandheese wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
For aftermarket purchase sure, but 95% of consumer machines are
using either Intel or AMD integrated graphics.
HansHamster wrote 13 hours 46 min ago:
Funny how it went from "just get an Nvidia card for Linux" and
"oh my god, what did I do to deserve fglrx?" to "just get an AMD
card" and "it's Nvidia, what did you expect?"
bitanarch wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
They're also selling $3000 nVidia AI workstations that
exclusively uses Linux. But what if you want to watch an HDR
video on it? No. What if you want to use Google Meet on
Chrome/Wayland? It's broken.
solumunus wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
Tried to switch to Linux plenty of times over the past few decades,
this year it finally stuck. I can confidently say Iâll never install
Windows again. Everything pretty much just works and any issues Iâve
had have been quickly resolved with the help of LLMâs.
the_af wrote 14 hours 24 min ago:
What amazes me is that on Steam they no longer make the distinction (in
the standard library view) between Windows and Linux: every game is
assumed to launch in Linux, using Proton behind the scenes it needed.
There's still a "Linux games" toggle but now every game appears
ungrayed by default.
And it mostly works! At least for my games library. The only game I
wasn't able to get to work so far is Space Marine 2, but on ProtonDB
people report they got it to work.
As for the rest: I've been an exclusive Linux user on the desktop for
~20 years now, no regrets.
franczesko wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
I wouldn't mind and wouldn't be surprised by Valve phone at some point
Pxtl wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
I've been giving Linux a go as a daily driver for a few months.
I tried Cinnamon and while it was pleasantly customizable, the
sigle-threadedness of the UI killed it for me. It was too easy to do
the wrong thing and lock the UI thread, including several desktop or
tray Spices from the official repo.
I'm switching to KDE. Seems peppier.
Biggest hardware challenge I've faced is my Logitech mouse, which is a
huge jump from the old days of fighting with Wi-Fi and sound support.
Sound is a bit messy with giving a plethora of audio devices that would
be hidden under windows (like digital and analog options for each
device) and occasionally compatibility for digital vs analog will be
flaky from a game or something, but I'll take it.
Biggest hassle imho is still installing non-repo software. So many
packages offer a flatpak and a snap and and build-from-source
instructions where you have to figure out the local package names for
each dependency and they offer one .Deb for each different version of
Debian and its derivatives and it's just so tedious to figure which is
the right one.
foresto wrote 10 hours 46 min ago:
> Biggest hardware challenge I've faced is my Logitech mouse
In case it helps:
HTML [1]: https://github.com/libratbag/piper
Pxtl wrote 10 hours 4 min ago:
Sadly the project feels semi-abandoned. No new releases so I had
to build it from source. Also the PR board seems to be ignored
(one or two of those are mine - I tried to fix the misleading
button labels).
howdyhowdy123 wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Can I run Solidworks on Linux yet? Excel? Labview? Vivado? Adobe
products? Altium Designer? (Matlab is mostly yes) Not everybody is just
writing Javascript and PHP.
Can I get a laptop to sleep after closing the lid yet?
Not that long ago the answer to these questions was mostly no (or sort
of yes... but very painfully)
On Windows all of this just works.
wright-goes wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
I hear you, and also value Excel and a few other products, but I hit
my perosnal limit with Windows enshittificatoion early last year and
changed my daily driver at home to Linux.
I added a couple VMs running windows, linux, and whatever else I need
in proxmox w/ xrdp/rdp and remina, and it's really the best of both
worlds. I travel a good deal and being able to remotely connect and
pick up where I left off while also not dealing with windows nagware
has been great.
class3shock wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
Still no big CAD names that I'm aware of (annoyingly), Libre Calc
works fine for me as an Excel alternative, I have used Matlab on it
but not recently, not sure on the others.
Laptop sleep and suspend can still be finicky unfortunately.
I will say my experience using CAD or other CAE software on windows
has gotten progressively worse over the years to the point that FEA
is more stable on linux than on windows.
We do really need a Solidworks, Creo or NX on linux though. My hope
has been that eventually something like Wine, Proton, or other
efforts to bring windows games to linux will result in us getting the
ability to run them. They are one of the last things holding me back
from fully moving away from windows.
maccard wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
> Can I get a laptop to sleep after closing the lid yet?
> on windows all of this just works
Disagree on the sleep one - my work laptop doesnât go to sleep
properly. The only laptop Iâve ever used that behaves as expected
with sleep is a macbook.
speff wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
That's funny - my work MBP won't go to sleep properly, lol. Often
come back to work after the weekend to find a dead laptop.
Klonoar wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
Then you have a significant outlier experience for that platform.
Itâs more than fine for people to dislike Apple products but
this is simply not an area where other platforms have them beat.
speff wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
Not sure why you're insinuating that I dislike apple products.
My personal mb air doesn't have this issue and most of my
household is on apple.
I'm also seeing results for "macbook pro doesn't go to sleep
when lid closed", so other people see this problem too. You
can't really claim that other platforms have them beat here if
there isn't data to support the claim.
Klonoar wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
> Not sure why you're insinuating that I dislike apple
products.
Your comment was written in a manner that echos the same
anti-Apple bias that's frequently found on HN. If that's not
you, then it's just a misread on my part.
> You can't really claim that other platforms have them beat
here if there isn't data to support the claim.
I can, because by and large those are still anecdotal
experiences posted online. The deeper integration of
OS/hardware due to Apple controlling the entire chain has
made sleep mostly a non-issue; it's typically a misbehaving
application that might prevent it. There are valid reasons an
app might need to do that, so it's not like macOS is going to
prevent it - but if sleep's not working right on macOS, it's
typically a user error.
This is different from Linux (and Windows, to a lesser
degree) where you have a crazy amount of moving parts with
drivers/hardware/resources/etc.
bigyabai wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
Macs do sleep well, when they manage to sleep. Sometimes macOS
takes issue with certain programs, the last stack I used at
work had a ~50/50 chance of inhibiting sleep when it was spun
up.
All in all, I've given up on sleep entirely and default to
suspend/hibernate now.
Klonoar wrote 7 hours 40 min ago:
A buggy program preventing sleep is a bug in that program,
not a mark on the overall support and reliability of sleep
functionality in macOS.
There are valid reasons why a program might need to block
sleep, so it's not like macOS is going to hard-prevent it if
a program does this. Most programs should not be doing that
though.
voidfunc wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
These are all pretty niche products at this point. For the true
professionals that need these tools they're stuck but most people can
find reasonable alternatives for their hobby or side hustle.
howdyhowdy123 wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
Or... they can use Windows and not have to bend over backwards. I
know this because I keep trying and giving up believe me.
cevn wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Adobe works
dashim wrote 14 hours 28 min ago:
I use a Linux PC every day but I wouldn't recommend it to normal
people. They're not going to feel any renewed sense of ownership from
it, just annoyance at having to think about technical gibberish when
they just want to get on with using the computer.
oreally wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Thanks for the counterbalancing post. Linux isn't quite there yet.
timbit42 wrote 10 hours 38 min ago:
Yeah, because getting ads and pushed to use more Microsoft products
all day long isn't an annoyance when they just want to get on with
using the computer.
dwaite wrote 2 hours 2 min ago:
However, they don't need to learn YAML or read configuration
manuals to dismiss an ad.
chuckadams wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
Just recently started using the desktop machine (under my desk, as
opposed to my laptop which sits on my desktop) and put NixOS on it, and
found myself pleasantly surprised. There's certainly still some parts
of NixOS that require some expertise and getting your head around its
package model, but overall I was surprised at how idiotproof it was to
install and use. I mostly play games on it with Steam, which also Just
Works.
bigyabai wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
NixOS is really a profound experience, once you embrace it. I used
Arch for ~3 years and ended up reinstalling it maybe 15 times on my
desktop alone. Switched to NixOS and I've used the same installation
for 3 years, synced with my laptop and server, switching from x11 to
Wayland to KDE to GNOME then back again with no problem.
It doesn't feel real sometimes. My dotfiles are modularized, backed
up in Github and versioned with UEFI rollback when I update. I might
be using this for the rest of my life, now.
yndoendo wrote 5 hours 20 min ago:
I also have the same Arch install from 2014 on my main hardware.
Each replacement computer is nothing more then taking the old drive
out, placing it into an USB enclosure, booting a USB live, setting
up the partitions on the new drive, and _rsync_ the content from
the old to the new, finalizing with registering the UEFI boot
loader.
One just need to make sure that you use the proper _rsync_ command
options to preserve hard links or files will be duplicated.
Macha wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
As a counter point I had the same arch install from 2014 until
2024, when I switched to NixOS
sroerick wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
I've heard of people doing this and I'm really interested in this.
Can you recommend a write up on this or further reading?
bigyabai wrote 10 hours 56 min ago:
I personally remember being inspired by Erase your Darlings and
Paranoid NixOS Setup back in the day, less for the hardening
measures and more because of how great the Nix syntax looked.
Huge, monumental ass-pain setups could be scripted away in one or
two lines like it was nothing. You could create wildly optimized
configurations for your specific use-case, and then divide them
into modules so they're portable.
It's not advisable to switch to one of these paranoid
configurations outright, but they're a great introduction to the
flexibility provided by the NixOS configuration system. I'd also
recommend Xe's documentation of Nix Flakes, which can be used on
any UNIX-like system including macOS: [1] [2]
HTML [1]: https://xeiaso.net/blog/nix-flakes-1-2022-02-21/
HTML [2]: https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/
HTML [3]: https://xeiaso.net/blog/paranoid-nixos-2021-07-18/
sroerick wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
Do you have a solution for keeping files? Or are you all in the
cloud?
xena wrote 10 hours 35 min ago:
For what it's worth: I no longer suggest the use of NixOS for
any purpose. I only have one NixOS system in my house because
it's my NAS and I am a coward.
sroerick wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
What do you use and/or suggest?
nosrepa wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux desktop"
JohnLocke4 wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Yes. The reason the year of the Linux desktop has yet to arrive is
because most people don't understand this joke. Linux is powerful
because it is made for power users (although certain distros are
changing this)
sylens wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
I've been really enjoying my experience using CachyOS on my (formerly
Windows) gaming PC. I chose to use Limine and btrfs so now if it gets
borked by a bad package install/uninstall I can roll back pretty
easily. My next step is to replace my Nvidia GPU with an AMD one so I
can stop worrying about that aspect in the future.
pjb88 wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
Any recommendations for a distro?
I've used Mint in the past, loved it until I spent a day trying to get
scanner drivers to work. Don't know if that's changed now, was 4 years
ago
weaksauce wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
cachyos is a good os that is also performant. arch though so there
are quirks around the rolling update model but you always have the
newestish packages and if you update regularly there seems to be less
headache.
mixmastamyk wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
Yes, Mint for most people.
I am using Fedora on machines with new hardware and liking it as
well. It has small pluses/minuses vs Mint.
delaminator wrote 13 hours 16 min ago:
Simple, Debian with i3-wm
riffic wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
the Universal Blue project has got a great suite of distributions:
HTML [1]: https://universal-blue.org/
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote 14 hours 18 min ago:
You're going to get everyone's opinion here. Try a bunch of the major
ones and see what works best. I did this and landed on Fedora but
ymmv
lawn wrote 14 hours 26 min ago:
Today I'd recommend CachyOS. While I haven't connected a scanner,
everything else I've tried just seems to work.
desireco42 wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
Omarchy is pretty streamlined for developers and you can play games
as well as they work well.
phren0logy wrote 14 hours 18 min ago:
I tried a number of distros and settled on Omarchy because it has a
coherent design and nice aesthetics, but it has some weird quirks
about messing with my dotfiles on updates. It's so new I suspect
this will be ironed out soon.
nodesocket wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
I have a Windows 11 PC strictly for gaming. Nearly every-time I
interact with Windows it infuriates me with garbage code, Microsoft
business BS and anti-privacy. Iâd love to switch but has Linux gaming
solved the anti-cheat requirement issue? Do Epic and EA games work on
Linux?
I also play a decent amount of Flight Simulator 2024 and losing that is
almost a non-starter for switching.
rolph wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
anticheat is not a linux issue, its a developers issue.
it seems facially easy to solve. pair players with the type of game
they want.
turn on anticheat if you want to join no cheat sessions.
if you want a cheat game turn off anticheat and you join sessions
with other cheat players.
the whole dilemma comes out of malignant users that enjoy
destruction of other users ability to enjoy the game.
go nuclear on clients that manage to join anticheat sessions with
cheats turned on.
aborsy wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
Linux desktop is amazing. Coming from Debian, I installed Windows and
had to quickly purge it from my hardware! Super bloated, slow,
constantly phoned some CC center, automatically connected to OneDrive,
â¦
Debian is a breath of fresh air in comparison. Totally quiet and
snappy.
drnick1 wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
Debian (stable) is great but I wouldn't use it for a gaming PC on
modern hardware. The drivers included are just too old. Bazzite or
Arch (DIY option) seem better options.
foresto wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
Debian Stable gamer here, with modern hardware, having a great
time.
> The drivers included are just too old.
This can usually be fixed by enabling Debian Backports. In some
cases, it doesn't even need fixing, because userland drivers like
Mesa can be included in the runtimes provided by Steam, Flatpak,
etc.
Once set up, Debian is a very low-maintenance system that respects
my time, and I love it for that.
system2 wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
Linux is not suitable for the average user. I use Xubuntu on all my old
computers, but I am 100% sure a normie would not tolerate the tedium of
it. People want shiny icons with animations and a bunch of garbage on
their computers to make them feel they are doing something. Linux is
too static for that.
If I have an issue with an application or if I want an application, I
must use the terminal. I can't imagine a Mac user bothering to learn
it. Linux is for people who want to maximize the use of their computer
without being spied on and without weird background processes. Linux
won't die, but it won't catch Windows or Mac in the next 5 decades.
People are too lazy for it. Forget about learning. I bet you $100, 99%
of the people in the street didn't even see Linux in their lives, nor
even heard of it. It is not because of marketing, it is because people
who tried it returned to Windows or Mac after deciding it is too hard
to learn for them to install a driver or an application.
timbit42 wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
I wouldn't recommend Xubuntu for the average user. What you feel is
about Xubuntu, not Linux. Normies are doing well adapting to Linux
Mint. It's easy for Windows users to get used to within a few days
and it has sane defaults that match what users expect. It just works.
mixmastamyk wrote 13 hours 10 min ago:
Outdated view. Regular people ask for help at the genius bar or IT
poindexter all the time. And pretty icons are plentiful.
system2 wrote 4 hours 50 min ago:
I bet you $100 you can't find a single person on the street using
Linux. It is that rare.
GnarfGnarf wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all national
governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic sovereignty.
(My customer demographic is seniors & casual users).
sowbug wrote 14 hours 3 min ago:
Curious: do enterprises using Windows suffer through all the
system-level ads and nagware? Or do they get a version that lets
their employees actually focus on work instead of learning the many
reasons they should consider switching back to Edge?
krelas wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Itâs all turned on by default even in Windows 11 Enterprise. You
can turn everything off via AD Group Policy or your MDM but you
have to go through the labyrinth of Windows policies and find them
all. Thankfully you only have to do it once and then push it to all
of your devices.
Shacklz wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
No nagware but, at least on the machines of my colleagues, an even
worse enemy: Microsoft Defender with all the checkboxes ticked.
Grinds the machine to an absolute halt for any development work -
sometimes the responsible security department has mercy and gives
exceptions for certain folders/processes, sometimes not.
Numerlor wrote 2 hours 31 min ago:
From my tests defender has minimal impact on performance even
when doing a full scan, except for making some io slower when
you're e.g. unpacking new files but NTFS is plenty slow by itself
there
Enterprise likes to layer multiple invasive security products
though that'll do a lot worse than defender
BLKNSLVR wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
My work machine is grossly slow due to all the various security
software.
Loading Teams can take minutes. I'm often late to meetings
waiting for the damn thing to load.
Feels like early 90s computing and that Moore's Law was an excuse
for bad coding practices and pushing newer hardware so that "shit
you don't care about but is 'part of the system'" can do more
monitoring and have more control of 'your' computer.
jackvalentine wrote 13 hours 52 min ago:
You _can_ curate the Enterprise edition a lot more with group
policy/intune and remove all that stuff but my experience has been
most corporate IT departments donât care/donât know how to do
it, and MS will just randomly enable new things without asking the
same as home editions and you have to keep an eye on it and go to
disable them.
Itâs super annoying!
sirjaz wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
Enterprise and ltsc have none of the nagware or tracking. Ai is
still there though
desireco42 wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
I get people are tired of Year of Linux on Desktop, but I feel like
last year it actually started happening for real. Mostly due to Arch
which is not what I ever expected.
On one hand we have Steam that will make 1000s of games become
available on easy to use platform based on Arch.
For developers, we have Omarchy, which makes experience much more
streamlined and very pleasant and productive. I moved both my desktop
and laptop to Omarchy and have one Mac laptop, this is really good
experience, not everything is perfect, but when I switch to Mac after
Omarchy, I often discover how not easy is to use Mac, how many clicks
it takes to do something simple.
I think both Microsoft and Apple need some serious competition and
again, came from Arch who turned out to be more stable and serious then
Ubuntu.
desireco42 wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
My main joy of Linux is to have tilling manager and to have same
machine on which I can both play games and work. Which since Windows
I couldn't make happen.
teekert wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
There is a strange, but pleasant feeling when you hear someone claiming
âtheyâre early to Linuxâ and think itâs going to be something
big. (Happened recently.)
baby wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
What pc would someone recommend as someone who just wants to toy around
and dont necessarily need the power?
TiredOfLife wrote 3 hours 45 min ago:
Steam Deck. It has been my main computing device for 2 years.
antod wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
An ex lease Thinkpad T Series with Intel graphics is a good choice
for value and compatibility. eg a T490 or T14 era machine.
Using hardware at least 6-12 months old is a good way to get better
compatibility.
Generally Linux drivers only start development after the hardware is
available and in the hands of devs, while Windows drivers usually get
a head start before release. Brand new hardware on a LTS (long term
support) distro with an older kernel is usually the worst
compatibility combo.
layer8 wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
Some N100 based mini PC.
WillAdams wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
Grab one of the old Windows 10 machines which are showing up from
corporations upgrading to Windows 11.
babl-yc wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
I switched my desktop from macOS (10+ years) to Ubuntu 25 last year and
I'm not going back. The latest release includes a Gnome update which
fixed some remaining annoyances with high res monitors.
I'd say it pretty much "just works" except less popular apps are a bit
more work to install. On occasion you have to compile apps from source,
but it's usually relatively straightforward and on the upside you get
the latest version :)
For anyone who is a developer professionally I'd say the pros outweigh
the cons at this point for your work machine.
__turbobrew__ wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
> The latest release includes a Gnome update which fixed some
remaining annoyances with high res monitors.
Amazing that high dpi still doesnât work. I tried to run linux on
4k in around 2016-2017 and the experience was so bad I gave up.
coffeebeqn wrote 13 hours 21 min ago:
What issues? Iâm running Mint on a 4k monitor and havenât had
any issues in years
hedgehog wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
Mixed and fractional scaling both mostly don't work (not
complaining, but those a common for people with laptops and
external displays).
mixmastamyk wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
Again, I've had two 4k monitors on Linux for about ten years, and
it has worked well the whole time. Back then I used "gnome tweak"
to increase the size of widgets etc. Nowadays its built into mate,
cinnamon, etc.
lotsoweiners wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
Did you start using Linux on the Mac hardware or on PC hardware? I
have a late era Intel Macbook and was considering switching it to
Ubuntu or Debian since it is getting kinda slow.
hodgehog11 wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Not the OP, but I have a 2015 Macbook Pro and a desktop PC both
running Linux. I love Fedora, so that's on the desktop, but I
followed online recommendations to put Mint on the Macbook and it
seems to run very well. However, I did need to install mbpfan ( [1]
) to get more sane power options and this package ( [2] ) to get
the camera working. It runs better than Mac OS, but you'll need to
really tweak some power settings to get it to the efficiency of the
older Mac versions.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan
HTML [2]: https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd
babl-yc wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
I switched to a new x86 machine. Running Linux on Mac just made
things unnecessarily complicated and hurt performance. Im still
open to using docker on Mac to run Linux containers but once you
want a GUI life was simpler when I switched off.
spiffytech wrote 13 hours 51 min ago:
> The latest release includes a Gnome update which fixed some
remaining annoyances with high res monitors.
Interesting, I've had to switch off from Gnome after the new release
changed the choices for HiDPI fractional scaling. Now, for my
display, they only support "perfect vision" and "legally blind"
scaling options.
kccqzy wrote 10 hours 54 min ago:
By default Gnome doesnât let you choose any fractional scaling in
the UI because it has some remaining TODOs on that front. So from
the UI you choose 100% or 200%. But the code is there and it works
if you just open a terminal and type a command to enable this
âexperimentalâ feature.
Now whether or not this feature should have remained experimental
is a different debate. I personally find that similar to the fact
that Gmail has labeled itself beta for many years.
umanwizard wrote 10 hours 44 min ago:
Gmail labeled itself beta for many years (past tense). Not âhas
labeledâ which would imply it is still doing so.
spiffytech wrote 10 hours 46 min ago:
I've got the feature turned on. But Gnome 49 only supports
fractional scaling ratios that divide your display into a whole,
integer number of pixels. And they only calculate candidate
ratios by dividing your resolution up to a denominator of 4.
So on my Framework 13, I no longer have the 150% option. I can
pick 133%, double, or triple. 160% would be great, but that
requires a denominator of 5, which Gnome doesn't evaluate. And
you can't define your own values in monitors.xml anymore.
yndoendo wrote 6 hours 53 min ago:
My Framework 13 with a 2880x1920 screen running Gnome 49 on
Arch allows for selecting 125, 133, 150, 166, 200, 250, 266,
300, 333, and 375.
org/gnome/mutter/experimental-features;
scale-monitor-framebuffer, xwayland-native-scaling
spiffytech wrote 2 hours 1 min ago:
You've got the new 2.8K display, which Framework introduced
specifically for its improved DPI scaling. I have the
original 2.2K display (2256x1504).
kccqzy wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
Oh thatâs interesting. I didnât know that! I personally
donât use fractional scaling any more.
delaminator wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
I switched in 1999. I've never really had any problems in all that
time.
Although it was to BSDi then, and then FreeBSD and then OpenBSD for 5
years or so. I can't remember why I switched to Debian but I've been
there ever since.
I'm sat here now playing Oxygen Not Included.
tkiolp4 wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
But what about laptops? I donât use desktop machines anymore (last
time was in 2012). Apple laptops are top notch. I use ubuntu as vm
(headless) for software development tho
panny wrote 12 hours 30 min ago:
>Apple laptops are top notch.
Not working with Linux is a function of Apple, not Linux. There is
a crew who have wasted the last half decade trying to make Asahi
Linux, a distro to run on ARM macbooks. The result is after all
that time, getting an almost reasonably working OS on old hardware,
Apple released the M4 and crippled the whole effort. There's been a
lot of drama around the core team who have tried to cast blame, but
it's clear they are frustrated by the fact that the OEM would
rather Asahi didn't exist.
I can't personally consider a laptop which can't run linux "top
notch." But I gave up on macbooks around 10 years ago. You can call
me biased.
gfody wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
I just put Asahi on an M2 Air and it works so incredibly well
that I was thinking this might finally be the year linux takes
the desktop .. I wasn't aware of the drama w/Apple but I imagine
M2 hardware will become valuable and sought after over M3+ just
for the ability to run Asahi
buu700 wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
I did some investigation into this the other day. The short answer
seems to be that if you like MacBooks, you aren't willing to accept
a downgrade along any axis, and you really want to use Linux, your
best bet today is an M2 machine. But you'll still be sacrificing a
few hours of battery life, Touch ID support (likely unfixable), and
a handful of hardware support edge cases. Apple made M3s and M4s
harder to support, so Linux is still playing catch-up on getting
those usable.
Beyond that, Lunar Lake chips are evidently really really good. The
Dell XPS line in particular shows a lot of promise for becoming a
strict upgrade or sidegrade to the M2 line within a few years,
assuming the haptic touchpad works as well as claimed. In the
meantime, I'm sure the XPS is still great if you can live with some
compromises, and it even has official Linux support.
umanwizard wrote 10 hours 42 min ago:
> Linux is still playing catch-up on getting those usable
This is an understatement. It is completely impossible to even
attempt to install Linux at all on an M3 or M4, and AFAIK there
have been no public reports of any progress or anyone working on
it. (Maybe there are people working on it, I donât know).
snazz wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
In his talk a few days ago, one of the main Asahi developers
(Sven) shared that there is someone working on M3 support.
There are screenshots of an M3 machine running Linux and
playing DOOM at around 31:34 here: [1] Sounds like the GPU
architecture changed significantly with M3. With M4 and M5, the
technique for efficiently reverse-engineering drivers using a
hypervisor no longer works.
HTML [1]: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-asahi-linux-porting-linux-...
umanwizard wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
> In his talk a few days ago, one of the main Asahi
developers (Sven) shared that there is someone working on M3
support.
Thanks, I guess I stand corrected.
> There are screenshots of an M3 machine running Linux and
playing DOOM at around 31:34 here
That is encouraging! Still, there is no way for a normal to
user to try to install it, unless something changed very
recently.
prmoustache wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
Can't one use MacOS only as an hypervisor and do everything else
in a linux VM.
umanwizard wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
Yes, this is what I do. The main pain point is that the
touchpad is emulated as a scroll wheel so you donât get
pixel-perfect scrolling.
lll-o-lll wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
No hd scroll wheel?
I donât exactly understand this setup. Whatâs the vm
tech?
umanwizard wrote 8 hours 48 min ago:
What I mean is: on a normal laptop, when you scroll with
two fingers on the scroll wheel, the distance you scroll is
nearly a continuous function of how much you move your
fingers; that is, if you only move your fingers a tiny bit,
you will only scroll a few pixels or just one.
Most VM software (at least all of it that I've tried)
doesn't properly emulate this. Instead, after you've moved
your fingers some distance, it's translated to one discrete
"tick" of a mouse scroll wheel, which causes the document
to scroll a few lines.
The VM software I use is UTM, which is a frontend to QEMU
or Apple Virtualization framework depending on which
setting you pick when setting up the VM.
lll-o-lll wrote 5 hours 29 min ago:
Yeah OK. Googling and LLMing around, it sounds like
youâd need to use the proprietary Parallels to get hd
scroll on a mac from the touchpad.
amlib wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
Best you can do is build a high end desktop at home and access it
remotely with any laptop you desire. The laptop performance then
becomes mostly irrelevant (even the OS is less relevant) and by
using modern game streaming protocols you can actually get great
image quality, low latency and 60+ fps. Though, optimizing it for
low bandwidth is still a chore.
Have that desktop be reachable with SSH for all your CLI and sys
admin needs, use sunshine/moonlight for the remote streaming and
tailscale for securing and making sunshine globally available.
mrheosuper wrote 7 hours 23 min ago:
Bandwidth is not really a problem if you live in decent city. The
problem is latency and data usage. 1 Hour streaming consumes GBs
of data, that's a big problem if you use cellular network.
Latency is another problem, recently LTT video show that even as
low as 5-10ms added latency can negatively impact your gaming
performance, even if you don't notice. You begin to notice at
around 20ms.
cs02rm0 wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
I love Linux, it was all I ran for years. But, unfortunately, I
needed the better hardware more and haven't been able to find a
viable way back.
mkozlows wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
Works well if the laptop has hardware designed to support Linux.
Framework stuff is great, for instance.
gerdesj wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
"laptop has hardware designed to support Linux"
I've had Linux running on a variety of laptops since the
noughties. I've had no more issues than with Windows.
ndiswrapper was a bit shit but did work back in the day.
What issues have you had?
mkozlows wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
I haven't, because I buy hardware that's designed to work with
Linux. But if you buy hardware that doesn't have Linux drivers,
it just won't work. That might mean Wifi not working, it might
mean a fingerprint reader not working, etc.
SomeHacker44 wrote 13 hours 58 min ago:
I have the HP Zbook Ultra G1a. AMD 395+, 129GB RAM, 4TB 2280 SSD.
Works great with Ubuntu 24.04 and the OEM kernel. Plays Steam
games, runs OpenCL AI models. Only nit is it is very picky on
what USB PD chargers it will actually charge on at all. UGreen
has a 140W that works.
Updated Mesa to the latest and the kernel too.
Tsiklon wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
Iâve found Appleâs 140w charger to be sufficient for this
machine under full load. Running Bazzite and Windows natively
babl-yc wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
I don't have an x86 laptop at the moment so sticking with Macbook
for now. My assumption is Mac laptops still are far superior given
M-series chips and OS that are tuned for battery efficiency. Would
love to find out this is no longer the case.
LennyHenrysNuts wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
It's been good for twenty years, the only difference is that OP finally
gave it a fair go.
TiredOfLife wrote 3 hours 47 min ago:
But now it is good and also has working networking, audio and you can
watch videos and scroll webpages without screen tearing.
goodcanadian wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
I'm glad that I am not the only one saying this. I made the switch
20+ years ago for my day to day use, and I have rarely experienced
any problems with it.
unethical_ban wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
Proton for games had changed things dramatically. Gamers can legit
switch to Linux with barely a second thought, without being
technical.
Linux/x86 still is poor for battery life compared to Apple.
ako wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
Most people donât care about gaming, so they shouldnât care
about proton. What changed recently for those who donât care
about gaming?
Zhyl wrote 9 hours 46 min ago:
A pretty bold statement for the largest entertainment medium in
the world.
unethical_ban wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
We don't agree on the premise.
Sharlin wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
The hint here is in the domain name of the article URL.
jakeydus wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
Iâd argue the majority of casual online PC discourse is driven
by gaming. By the numbers LTT is the largest PC/IT/consumer
computer YouTube channel and the majority of their content is
focused on gaming.
Thatâs my impression anyway.
pygar wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
Every year at around this time there is a lot of linux related content
in tech media.
It's a slow moving evergreen topic perfect for a scheduled release
while the author is on holiday. This is just filler content that could
have been written at any point in the last 10 years with minor changes.
blitzar wrote 14 hours 2 min ago:
2026, the year of linux
dham wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
Except every year you didn't have people like Pewdiepie and DHH
pushing Linux. As as channels like GamersNexus doing Linux
benchmarks. At the same time Windows and Mac making very dumb
mistakes. So this time it does feel different, even if it might not
be in the end.
em3rgent0rdr wrote 14 hours 18 min ago:
I don't think the prevalence of these articles this time of year is
because the authors go on holiday, but instead is because the new
year is the perfect time to ponder: "Will this be the year of the
Linux desktop?"
solumunus wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
Perhaps it could have been written, but it would have been far less
accurate.
queuebert wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
What an abysmally cynical take. More good stuff is good. Be happy
about it.
subdavis wrote 14 hours 27 min ago:
I guess everyoneâs in a âfuck it Iâm ready to try some new
stuffâ mood too so this content is perfectly suited for new years.
Would never have noticed this without your comment.
sho_hn wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years, and I've been
using it on the desktop since 1999, so I lived through the infamous
"Year of the Linux Desktop" era.
I've not seen anything like the current level of momentum, ever, nor
this level of mainstream exposure. Gaming has changed the equation,
and 2026 will be wild.
Klonoar wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
I wouldnât agree.
The level of momentum feels roughly equivalent to the era of Ubuntu
coming around in the mid-2000s. We have been here before.
devnullbrain wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
Ah, the mid-2000s, just before Linux became the dominant user
kernel on Earth.
InsideOutSanta wrote 14 hours 15 min ago:
Not just gaming. This year, both Windows and Mac OS had absolutely
terrible years. The Mac effed up its UI with liquid glass, to the
point where Alan Dye fled to Meta. Microsoft pushed LLMs and ads
into everything, screwing up what was otherwise a decent release.
On the other hand, on the Linux side, we had the release of COSMIC,
which is an extremely user-friendly desktop. KDE, Gnome, and others
are all at a point where they feel polished and stable.
BuyMyBitcoins wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
Gaming, and Microsoft enshittifying Windows 11 to an absurd degree.
The bloat is astounding. This is especially egregious now that RAM
costs a fortune.
sho_hn wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Ditto macOS.
To be honest, I always figured we'd make it in the long run.
We're a thrifty bunch, we aim to set up sustainable
organizations, we're more enshittification-resistant by nature.
As long as we're reliable and stick around for long enough.
mkozlows wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
Windows 8 era had the same vibe.
sudo_and_pray wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
This time there 2 big factors that were not there in '12.
1. 'office' cloud services - now you just need a browser for
majority of docs/sheet/slides tasks
2. gaming - while it was possible back, but it was really hit or
miss with a game. Nowadays vast majority of games work on Linux
out of the box.
mkozlows wrote 6 hours 13 min ago:
Yeah, fair! Same sentiment about Microsoft now as then, but
fewer real blockers on the Linux side.
weslleyskah wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
And still, look at all the comments on the article bashing Linux
because of compatibility, driver and hardware issues.
CuriouslyC wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
Still less than the number of people bashing windows.
jakeydus wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
[flagged]
tomhow wrote 12 hours 14 min ago:
Please avoid sneering and internet tropes on HN.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Zealotux wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
It's good until you boot your system and end up with an unrecoverable
black screen that meeses your day of work for no good reason. Linux is
free if you don't value your time.
snvzz wrote 7 hours 21 min ago:
Never had that happen to me in 25 years of Linux use.
kaylynb wrote 14 hours 27 min ago:
Not in my experience. I've run both Windows and Linux for the last
decade and Windows is the only OS that I ever have problems with
updates wasting my time and breaking things. I've been running
image-based Linux for the last two years and the worst case is
rebooting to rollback to the last deployment. Before that it was
booting a different btrfs snapshot.
Fun aside: I had a hardware failure a few years ago on my old
workstation where the first few sectors of every disk got erased. I
had Linux up and running in 10 minutes. I just had to recreate the
efi partition and regenerate a UKI after mounting my OS from a live
USB. Didn't even miss a meeting I had 15 minutes later. I spent hours
trying to recover my Windows install. I'm rather familiar with the
(largely undocumented) Windows boot process but I just couldn't get
it to boot after hours of work. I just gave up and reinstalled
windows from scratch and recovered from a restic backup.
zamalek wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
You aren't comparing Linux to anything here.
Windows has recently been a complete shitshow - so even if Linux
hasn't gotten any better (it has) it is now likely better than
fiddling around with unfucking Windows, and Windows doing things like
deleting all your files.
jetbalsa wrote 14 hours 12 min ago:
You can put some work into windows to slim it down some, a
unattended generator to turn most of the crap off on install, then
Shutup OO goes a long way
zamalek wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
> You can put some work into windows
That's exactly my point.
There's an ever growing list of things to do in order to fix
Windows, and that list is likely longer than Linux. This whole
"your time is free" argument hinges on Windows not having exactly
the same issue, or worse.
advael wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
I dunno, I spend less time fighting with any of my several linux
systems than the macbook I'm required to use for work, even without
trying to do anything new with it. I choose to view this charitably
and assume most of the time investment people perceive when switching
operating systems is familiarity penalties, essentially a switching
cost. The longer this remains the case, the less charitably I'm
willing to view this.
greenbit wrote 14 hours 13 min ago:
Of course, MS seems to enjoy inflicting familiarity penalties on
its established user base every couple of years anyway. After
having your skills negated in this way enough times, the jump to
Linux might not look so bad.
jbstack wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
You can also mitigate a lot of the "familiarity penalties" by
planning ahead. For example, by the time I made the decision to
switch from Windows around 15 years ago, I'd already been
preferring multi-platform FOSS software for many years because I
had in mind that I might switch one day. This meant that when it
came time to switch, I was able to go through the list of all the
software I was using and find that almost all of it was already
available in Linux, leaving just a small handful of cases that I
was able to easily find replacements for.
The result was that from day 1 of using Linux I never looked back.
jbstack wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
You can't really make blanket statements like this about "Linux" in
general because it depends on what distro you use. For example, in
NixOS to fix this type of problem all you have to do is rollback to a
previous configuration that is known to work. I've not used it, but I
believe Arch has something similar.
Even with imperatively configured distros like Ubuntu, it's generally
much easier to recover from a "screen of death" than in Windows
because the former is less of a black box than the latter. This means
its easier to work out what the problem is and find a fix for it.
With LLMs that's now easier than ever.
And, in the worst case that you have to resort to reinstalling your
system, it's far less unpleasant to do that in a Linux distro than in
Windows. The modern Windows installer is painful to get through, and
then you face hours or days of manually reinstalling and
reconfiguring software which you can do with a small handful of
commands in Linux to get back to a state that is reasonably similar
to what you had before.
howdyhowdy123 wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
"Screen of death" in Windows? I haven't heard of one of those in
over a decade.
Al-Khwarizmi wrote 13 hours 21 min ago:
I spent years (maybe a decade) without seeing them in the Windows
7 and early 10 era, but in the last few years I have them
sometimes. Many seem Nvidia-related, but I also remember some due
to a bad update that broke things in some laptops.
WolfeReader wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
I've had one, although it was due to a vendor releasing
inconsistent driver updates.
Incidentally, I can now honestly say I've had more driver issues
with Windows than Linux.
wewewedxfgdf wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
Linux is a viable alternative to Windows/MacOS if you stand back and
squint.
Not up close due to the vast number of inconsistencies.
This could only be fixed by a user experience built from the ground up
by a single company.
jaapz wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
Have you worked with windows recently? It basically consists entirely
of inconsistensies
9763468975325 wrote 13 hours 59 min ago:
Spoken like a true Windows UX aficionado. Who doesn't love multiple
system settings apps, a mix of minimal new context menus and
overcrowded legacy context menus just one more click away.
tredre3 wrote 13 hours 50 min ago:
> Who doesn't love multiple system settings apps, a mix of minimal
new context menus and overcrowded legacy context menus just one
more click away.
I get that you're making a Windows joke, but this describes Linux
equally well.
p_ing wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
Actually having just installed OpenSuSe w/ KDE, certain right
click menus just generate errors OOTB, or control panels flat out
don't work.
The UX leaves a lot to be desired.
WolfeReader wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
Please give an example of an "inconsistency" which makes Linux not a
"viable alternative to Windows/MacOS"
yunnpp wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
To be clear, are you suggesting Windows is the standard of
consistency?
Even modern macs fall short of the UX Apple has traditionally been
known for...
regularfry wrote 14 hours 28 min ago:
Only true if those inconsistencies actually matter to your workflow.
Not going to deny that they exist, obviously, but their impact is
largely overplayed (and gratuitously downplayed on Windows, in my
experience).
wewewedxfgdf wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Yes Windows also sadly has become very inconsistent.
MacOS is highly consistent compared to Windows.
Perhaps Linux operating systems like Steam or ChromeOS might
finally create a beautiful and consistent UI.
lawn wrote 14 hours 3 min ago:
KDE is vastly better than Windows already.
MostlyStable wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
It is good, and for 99+% of use cases for 90+% of users (who mostly use
nothing but the browser), they will hardly even notice a difference,
besides the lack of obnoxious, instrusive MS behavior.
However, despite really, really wanting to switch (and having it
installed on my laptop), I keep finding things that don't quite work
right that are preventing me from switching some of my machines. My
living room PC, which is what my TV is connected to, the DVR software
that runs my TV tuner card doesn't quite work right (despite having a
native linux installer), and I couldn't get channels to come through as
clearly and as easily. I spent a couple of hours of troubleshooting and
gave up.
My work PC needs to have the Dropbox app (which has a linux installer),
but it also needs the "online-only" functionality so that I can see and
browse the entire (very large) dropbox directory without needing to
have it all stored locally. This has been a feature that has been being
requested on the linux version of the app for years, and dropbox
appears unlikely to add it anytime soon.
Both of these are pretty niche issues that I don't expect to affect the
vast majority of users (and the dropbox one in particular shouldn't be
an issue at all if my org didn't insist on using dropbox in a way that
it is very much not intended to be used, and for which better solutions
exist, but I have given up on that fight a long time ago), and like I
said, I've had linux on my laptop for a couple of years so far without
any issue, and I love it.
I am curious how many "edge cases" like mine exist out there though.
Maybe there exists some such edge case for a lot of people even while
almost no one has the same edge case issue.
hodgehog11 wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
I permanently switched from Windows to Linux about five years ago. I
had the same issue as you with Dropbox, so I switched to using the
Maestral client for Dropbox instead which has support for selective
sync. Works like a charm for me.
caspar wrote 12 min ago:
+1 for Maestral, have been using it for about a year on my Linux
install and it works seamlessly.
isatis wrote 14 hours 27 min ago:
I agree, I'd cut off dual booting and go full Linux when the hardware
and software I use supports it. One of which being a PCIe Elgato
capture card, another being an audio mixer with no driver support and
the alternatives are very hacky and too complicated for me.
Paracompact wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
I just switched to Linux. It's a great gig, and I'm actively
encouraging everyone I know still infected with the malware known as
Windows 11 to switch.
But some of the drawbacks really aren't edge cases. Apparently there
is still no way for me to have access to most creative apps (e.g.
Adobe, Affinity) with GPU acceleration. It's irritating that so few
Linux install processes are turnkey the way they are for Windows/Mac,
with errors and caveats that cost less-than-expert users hours of
experimenting and mucking with documentation.
I could go on, but it really feels like a bad time to be a casual PC
user these days, because Windows is an inhospitable swamp, and Linux
still has some sharp edges.
SomeHacker44 wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
I use OneDrive and Google Drive heavily and there just are not good
clients for Linux for those that I have found. Especially with the
ability to not sync files but still "look" like they are there in
the filesystem. That is my main stopper now.
HankWozHere wrote 6 hours 21 min ago:
Whilst initially reluctant to - I have made a once off payment to
Insync ( [1] ) many years ago for my Google Drive account - and
has worked flawlessly.
HTML [1]: https://www.insynchq.com
zamalek wrote 14 hours 41 min ago:
FUSE will provide Dropbox in a more integrated way than Windows (eg.
terminal) and a cursory Google revealed some projects for Dropbox
that do the JIT download you are after - they are old, but I wager
still work just fine (an inactive project can just mean that it's
complete).
WaxProlix wrote 14 hours 49 min ago:
There are plenty. I run only Linux at home but CAD software for
hobbies (Fusion 360), most games that want kernel level anti cheat,
some embedded DRM-enabled media, all sort of just fail. Other things,
like GPU tuning or messing with your displays/drivers are harder than
they should be. My Bluetooth earbuds just don't work with my Linux
machines.
smj-edison wrote 11 hours 44 min ago:
How did you get Fusion 360 running? I've tried multiple times but
it always gets stuck at the installer.
qwerpy wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
I donât think he did get it running. Itâs one of my main
blockers as well. Last time I tried I got as far as it starting
up and logging in to their identity server via the browser, but
the redirect back to the application didnât work. Such a silly
thing that prevents it from working. Why does a CAD program need
to online auth, anyway? (I know the reason but itâs an annoying
one)
3eb7988a1663 wrote 14 hours 37 min ago:
Bluetooth is such a crapshoot for me, I feel like everyone else
must be using the single blessed chip and forgot to share the memo.
hollandheese wrote 12 hours 31 min ago:
Intel.
adamkittelson wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
I made the move about a month ago to bazzite on my desktop with an
nvidia graphics card. I still have my windows drive for when I need it
but that's pretty rare. Bazzite isn't perfect but we've reached the
point where the rough edges are less painful than the self sabotage
microsoft has been inflicting on their users in recent versions of
windows.
CivBase wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
I think we've reached a point where Windows is about as rough as
Linux. But the problem is still that people are familiar with Windows
and have learned how to deal with the roughness; not so on Linux. And
so long as Windows owns the business and education sectors, it will
always have the benefit of that familiarity.
gcr wrote 14 hours 50 min ago:
This is the key. Itâs not that 2026 is the year of the Linux
desktop, but rather 2026 is very much not the year of the Windows
desktop.
Bazzite is rough in the way that all distributions are, but I imagine
Windows 11 is rougher.
fylo wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
I tried bazzite but ended up on cachyos. The whole layered /
immutable thing got a bit annoying. I'd rather just run snapshots
and manage my packages more traditionally
plagiarist wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
I love the layered thing except for the rough edges.
Unfortunately the rough edges for me are that Linux
containerization and permissions are completely idiotic.
In Fedora Atomic it should be foolishly easy to set up a system
account, with access to specific USB devices via group, and
attach a volume that can easily be written to by a non-root user
inside of the container.
mac-attack wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
Between this and the dual boot diaries podcast it's great to see
mainstream PC outlets covering Linux more broadly.
savolai wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
Linux desktops have felt flaky for me for a few years now. Iâm trying
to figure out how much of that is bad choices vs real problems.
Ubuntuâs default desktop felt unstable in a macOS VM. Dual-booting on
a couple of HP laptops slowed to a crawl after installing a few desktop
apps, apparently because they pulled in background services. What
surprised me was how quickly the system became unpleasant to use
without any obvious âyou just broke Xâ moment.
My current guess: not Linux in general, but heavy defaults (GNOME,
Snap, systemd timers), desktop apps dragging in daemons, and OEM
firmware / power-management quirks that donât play well with Linux.
Server Linux holds up because everything stays explicit. Desktop
distros hide complexity and donât give much visibility when things
start to rot.
Does this line up with othersâ experience? If yes, what actually
works long-term? Minimal bases, immutable distros, avoiding certain
package systems, strict service hygiene, specific hardware?
drnick1 wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
> Does this line up with othersâ experience? If yes, what actually
works long-term? Minimal bases, immutable distros, avoiding certain
package systems, strict service hygiene, specific hardware?
No, not really. A Linux desktop with a DE will always be slower and
more brittle than an headless machine due to the sheer number of
packages/components, but something like Arch + Plasma Shell (without
the whole KDE ecosystem) should be very stable and snappy. The
headaches caused by immutable distros and flatpaks are not worth it
IMO, but YMMV.
class3shock wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
I've been using Kubuntu for years with good results. I prefer KDE to
Gnome, which Kubuntu takes care of, and I normally add in the flatpak
repositories so I don't need snap. That has generally worked well for
me in the last 5 years.
For certain timeperiods I have needed to switch to Fedora, or the
Fedora KDE spin, to get access to more recent software if I'm using
newer hardware. That has generally also been pretty stable but the
constant stream of updates and short OS life are not really what I'm
looking for in a desktop experience.
There are three issues that linux still has, which are across the
board:
- Lack of commercial mechanical engineering software support (CAD &
CAE software)
- Inability to reliably suspend or sleep for laptops
- Worse battery life on laptops
If you are using a desktop and don't care about CAD or CAE software I
think it's probably a better experience overall than windows. Laptops
are still more for advanced users imho but if you go with something
that has good linux support from the factory (Dell XPS 13, Framework,
etc.) it will be mostly frictionless. It just sucks on that one day
where you install an update, close the laptop lid, put it in your
backpack, and find it absolutely cooking and near 0% when you take it
out.
I also have never found something that gave me the battery life I
wanted with linux. I used two XPS 13's and they were the closest but
still were only like 75% of what I would like. My current Framework
16 is like 50% of what I would like. That is with always going for a
1080p display but using a VPN which doesn't help battery life.
lawn wrote 14 hours 23 min ago:
Not at all.
I've run Void Linux + Xmonad for many years without any such issues.
I also recently installed CachyOS for my kid to game on (KDE Plasma)
and it works super well.
advael wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
We live in a world with the internet and distributed version control,
so essentially every piece of software in the world has a tradeoff
where the people maintaining it might push an update that breaks
something at any time, but also those updates often do good things
too, like add functionality, make stuff more efficient, fix bugs, or
probably most crucially, patch out security vulnerabilities.
My experience with FOSS has mostly been that mature projects with any
reasonable-sized userbase tend to more reliably not break things in
updates than is the case for proprietary software, whether it's an OS
or just some SaaS product. YMMV. However, I think probably the most
potent way to avoid problems like this actually ever mattering is a
combination of doing my updates manually (or at least on an opt-in
basis) and being willing to go back a version if something breaks.
Usually this isn't necessary for more than a week or so for
well-maintained software even in the worst case. I use arch with
downgrade (Which lets you go back and choose an old version of any
given package) and need to actually use downgrade maybe once a year
on average, less in the last 5
loeg wrote 14 hours 50 min ago:
The only real obnoxious slow-down daemons I'm familiar with are the
"system indexing" things (GNOME Tracker, KDE Baloo) -- highly
recommend disabling them.
Fronzie wrote 14 hours 50 min ago:
With debian and KDE (both personal preference), but no snap or
flatpak, it works wonderfully. Power/sleep-management has become
better than a default windows install. All hardware, including the
fingerprint sensor, just works.
azangru wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
Could you share the model of your laptop?
ErroneousBosh wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
> Does this line up with othersâ experience?
Not really, no. What did you install that slowed things down?
> If yes, what actually works long-term?
Plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, running on an ancient Thinkpad T430
with a whopping 8GB of RAM and an SSD (which is failing, but that's
not Linux's fault, it's been on its way out for about a year and I
should probably stop compiling Haiku nightlies on it).
Can you give an example of which desktop apps are "dragging in
daemons"?
rvnx wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
Edited: My bad, I misread, started ranting about Gimp, how terrible
this software was
ErroneousBosh wrote 11 hours 28 min ago:
It's not the greatest, for sure, but it's a complex tool for a
complex task.
If you think Gimp is terrible you'll hate something like DaVinci
Resolve.
neoCrimeLabs wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
Gimp is not typically used as background process. It's primary
use is as an interactive tool with a UI, therefore it's not
typically a daemon. [1] -
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)
rvnx wrote 14 hours 9 min ago:
Thank you for the kind and actually helpful answer, especially
in the face of a rant. I will pay more attention next time.
stryan wrote 14 hours 45 min ago:
GIMP is definitely not a daemon; I don't think it even has a run
in the background mode. Maybe something with snaps?
rvnx wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
No no, just misread, my fault, sorry. Mixed "dragging up
demons" and then it reminded me of my traumas with GIMP,
PulseAudio, CUDA, etc
stryan wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
Ah, fair and understandable :)
lorenzohess wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
2026 YOTLD?
zamalek wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
Its going to be a decade, the slow erosion of Window's market share,
and we might already be in it.
ofalkaed wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
The personal desktop has fallen in relevance enough for that to be
possible. The goalposts moved, now linux needs to have phone, tablet,
and laptop with smooth effortless integration between them all.
I recently switched to using a thumb drive to transfer files to and
from my phone/tablet, I became demoralized when faced with getting it
all setup.
jaapz wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
What integration between phone and desktop would you like to see?
ofalkaed wrote 14 hours 15 min ago:
YOTLD has nothing to do with my needs and wants and I am
perfectly happy with my thumb drive and the weird little ways
linux imposes itself on my life.
regularfry wrote 14 hours 31 min ago:
KDE has phone and laptop integrated well enough for me. It's worth
giving it a try but the more devices you want integrated the more
of a risk it is in case it doesn't quite work right. But I've got
enough other devices in the house which I can't put KDE on (work
laptop, Windows machine I need for some specific software) that I
can recommend [1] over thumb drives.
HTML [1]: https://github.com/9001/copyparty
ofalkaed wrote 14 hours 19 min ago:
I actually intended to set everything up but did not have time
and needed to copy some files, so dusted off a thumb drive. I am
liking it quite a bit and I think I prefer it to the
alternatives.
sporkxrocket wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
Android is Linux, so it does have a phone, tablet and many other
form factors like television.
omnicognate wrote 14 hours 36 min ago:
> smooth effortless integration between them all
No, thank you! The "smooth, effortless [, compulsory, mandated,
enforced] integration" between my Apple devices is the very worst
thing about them.
Scaevolus wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
2026 YOLOTD!
sieep wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
+1 for CachyOS. I also recommend Mint and Pop!_OS if you prefer Debian
based distros.
PaulKeeble wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
I think its interesting that mainstream PC gaming press is now talking
about Linux. We have the benchmark Youtube channels doing some
benchmarks of it as well and plenty of reports of "it just works",
which is pretty promising at least for the games that aren't
intentionally excluded by DRM. For me its still controllers and
equipment incompatibility due to my VR headset and sim wheel/pedals
setup, I use Linux everywhere else in my router and home servers. I
just hope that Nvidia notices that there does appear to be a swing
happening and improves their driver situation.
fxtentacle wrote 2 hours 8 min ago:
The Quest 3 works offline with ALVR streaming over a private
(non-Internet connected) WiFi network. Together with my 3090 I get 8k
@ 120fps with 20ms latency over a WiFi6e dongle. I had to manually
install the dkms for the dongle on PopOs, but apart from that it just
works. ALVR starts SteamVR and then I use Steam to start the game.
Proton seems to use Vulcan for rendering.
bilekas wrote 6 hours 41 min ago:
> I just hope that Nvidia notices that there does appear to be a
swing happening and improves their driver situation.
I firmly believe that Nvidia doesn't want the general public to ever
have better hardware than what is current as people could just run
their own local models and take away from the ridiculous money
they're making from data centers.
In step they're now renting their gaming GPUs to players with their
GeForce now package.
The market share for Nvidia of gamers is a rounding error now against
ai datacenter orders. I won't hold my breath about them revisiting
their established drivers for Linux.
kouteiheika wrote 4 hours 15 min ago:
> I firmly believe that Nvidia doesn't want the general public to
ever have better hardware than what is current as people could just
run their own local models and take away from the ridiculous money
they're making from data centers.
You're underestimating them. They don't even want rich professional
users to own hardware that could compete with their datacenter cash
cow.
Take RTX 6000 Pro, a $10k USD GPU. They say in their marketing
materials that these have fifth-generation tensor cores. This is a
lie, as you can't really use any 5th-gen specific features.
Take a look at their PTX docs[1]. The RTX 6000 Pro is sm_120 in
that table, while their datacenter GPUs are sm_100/sm110. See the
'tcgen05' instructions in the table? It's called 'tcgen05' because
it stands for "Tensor Core GEN 05". And they're all unsupported on
sm_120. [1] -
HTML [1]: https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/parallel-thread-execution/#re...
dijit wrote 12 hours 11 min ago:
Iâll keep repeating it: the more people vote with their wallet, the
more game companies will deploy Linux - including the anticheat.
EAC has the support for Linux, you just have to enable it as a
developer.
I know this, I worked on games that used this. EAC was used on Stadia
(which was a debian box) for the division, because the server had to
detect that EAC was actually running on the client.
I feel like I bring this up all the time here but people donât
believe me for some reason.
ThatPlayer wrote 11 hours 51 min ago:
> EAC has the support for Linux
This does not mean it supports the full feature set as from EAC on
Windows. As an analogy, it's like saying Microsoft Excel supports
iPad. It's true, but without VBA support, there's not going to be
many serious attempts to port more complicated spreadsheets to
iPad.
arwineap wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
I'm surprised to hear you are having trouble with wheels / pedals, we
should be there already! [1] Hopefully vr headset support will get
better
HTML [1]: https://github.com/JacKeTUs/linux-steering-wheels
rounce wrote 2 hours 17 min ago:
For VR support Monado works very well for me with both Pimax
(base-station tracked) and WMR (inside-out tracked) headsets.
Fr0styMatt88 wrote 9 hours 9 min ago:
Funnily enough the most annoying things on my system at the moment
is RGB and keyboard/mouse customisation.
I havenât found a tool that can access all the extra settings of
my Logitech mouse, not my Logitech speakers.
OpenRGB is amazing but Iâm stuck on a version that constantly
crashes; this should be fixed in the recent versions but nixpkgs
doesnât seem to have it (last I checked).
On the other hand I did manage to get SteamVR somewhat working with
ALVR on the Quest 3, but performance wasnât great or consistent
at all from what I remember (RTX 3070, Wayland KDE).
rounce wrote 2 hours 14 min ago:
Have you tried running the windows RGB utility via Wine with
HIDRAW enabled for the device?
Alternatively, given youâre running NixOS you can just override
the `src` of the derivation with a newer version. This is part of
the point of running NixOS: making small modifications to
packages in the fly.
starky wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
I was annoyed recently because I replaced my GPU and I had to
boot into Windows for the first time in months and install
drivers just to turn off the RGB on the card because OpenRGB
wouldn't find it.
hinkley wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
When that steam deck clone came out and games played better on
SteamOS than on Windows on the exact same hardware, it woke a bunch
of people up. Microsoft scrambled to bring the startup time and
footprint down but shots had already been fired.
You donât want a vendor you have to publically shame to get them to
do the right thing. And thatâs MS if any single sentence has ever
described them without using curse words.
Trasmatta wrote 13 hours 34 min ago:
I've got the Legion Go S with Steam OS, and that shit is great.
It's stable, my games run well, the OS is pretty much entirely in
the background, but I can still access it fully if I need to. Love
it.
fooker wrote 14 hours 14 min ago:
The last remaining roadblock is kernel level anti-cheat frameworks.
Pretty horrible technology, and unfortunately a good majority of the
gaming industry by revenue relies on it.
mrheosuper wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
I am wondering can game be shipped with their own "kernel" and
"hypervisor", basically an entire VM. Yes performance will take a
hit, but in my experience with my own VM, it's like 15-20%.
fooker wrote 7 hours 27 min ago:
Yes, maybe.
Modern games already employ a bunch of VM-like techniques for
tamper protection.
This has effectively killed PC game piracy.
marcyb5st wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
I always wondered. Isn't exactly what eBPF would allow you to do?
Assuming that cheats work by reading (and modifying) the memory of
the game process you can you can attach a kprobe to the sys_ptrace
system call. Every time any process uses it, your eBPF program
triggers. You can then capture the PID and UID of the requester
and compare it against a whitelist (eg only the game engine can
mess with the memory of that process). If the requester is
unauthorized, the eBPF program can even override the return value
to deny access before the kernel finishes the request.
Of course there are other attack vectors (like spoofing PID/process
name), but eBPF covers them also.
All of this to say that Linux already has sane primitives to allow
that, but that, as long as devs don't prioritize Linux, we won't
see this happening.
chii wrote 8 hours 6 min ago:
> your eBPF program triggers
but how does the anti-cheat know that the kernel is not modified
such that it disables certain eBPF programs (or misreports
cheats/spoofs data etc)?
This is the problem with anti-cheat in general (and the same
exists with DRM) - the machine is (supposedly) under the user's
total control and therefore, unless your anti-cheat is running at
the lowest level, outside of the control of the user's tampering,
it is not trustworthy. This leads to TPM requirements and other
anti-user measures that are dressed as pro-user in windows.
There's no such thing in linux, which makes it inoperable as one
of these anti-cheat platforms imho.
marcyb5st wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
Great point. As I mentioned there are other attack vectors and
you can mitigate them. For mitigating what you are mentioning
for instance you don't just run one eBPF program, but you run a
cluster of them that watch each other:
(The following was refined by an LLM because I didn't remember
the details of when I was pondering this a while back)
All your anti cheats are eBPF programs hooked to the bpf()
syscall itself.
Whenever any process tries to call BPF_PROG_DETACH or
BPF_LINK_DETACH, your monitors check if the target is one of
the anti cheats in your cluster of anti-cheats.
If an unauthorized process (even Root) tries to detach any of
your anti-cheat processes, the eBPF program uses
bpf_override_return to send an EPERM (Permission Denied) error
back to the cheat.
(End LLM part)
Of course, you can always circumvent this by modifying and
compiling the kernel so that those syscalls when targeting a
specific PID/process name/UID aren't triggered. But this raises
the difficulty of cheating a lot as you can't simply download a
script, but you need to install and boot a custom kernel.
So this would solve the random user cheating on an online
match. Pro users that have enough motivation can and will cheat
anyway, but that is true also on windows. Finally at top
gaming events there is so much scrutiny as you need to play on
stage on vetted PCs that this is a non-issue
arianvanp wrote 4 hours 10 min ago:
It's open source. Somebody will simply publish an AUR package
with a custom kernel that is one command away. You're
underestimating the capability of motivated nerds to make a
good UX when needed :p. This is how we ended up with SteamOS
in the first place
But given Linux kernel is monolithic and you can enforce
signing of kernel modules too, using TPM to make sure the
Kernel isn't tampered with is honestly the way to go.
pca006132 wrote 7 hours 45 min ago:
but how can you prevent the user from modifying the kernel?
marcyb5st wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
You can't, but circumventing anti cheats already happens on
windows with all their fancy kernel level anti cheats.
I believe the goal is to make it so uncomfortable and painful
that 99.999% of the users will say fuck it and they won't do
it. In this case users need to boot a custom kernel that they
download from the internet which might contain key-loggers
and other nasty things. It is not just download a script and
execute it.
For cheat developers, instead, this implies doing the
modifications to allow those sys-calls to fly under the radar
while keeping the system bootable and usable. This might not
be trivial.
eru wrote 9 hours 44 min ago:
Well, if you go by revenue, mobile gaming dwarfs all else.
MegaDeKay wrote 12 hours 21 min ago:
I'd say there are two remaining roadblocks. First and biggest is
kernel level anti-cheat frameworks as you point out. But there's
also no open source HDMI 2.1 implementation allowed by the HDMI
cartel so people like me with an AMD card max out at 4K60 even for
open source games like Visual Pinball (unless you count an adapter
with hacked firmware between the card and the display). NVidia and
Intel get away with it because they implement the functionality in
their closed source blobs.
badgersnake wrote 1 hour 0 min ago:
I donât understand why they canât support AMDPort 2.1 which
coincidentally has the same connector and protocol.
fc417fc802 wrote 2 hours 2 min ago:
This is the first I learned of this since personally I have no
need of anything over 4k@60 (that already borders on absurd in my
mind). I'm curious if this is something that's likely to get
reverse engineered by the community at large?
Outrageous that a ubiquitous connection protocol is allowed to be
encumbered in this way.
mcv wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
Does AMD not support Display Port? I'm not an expert on this, but
that sounds to me like the superior technology.
tapoxi wrote 11 hours 0 min ago:
TVs don't support displayport, so it makes Linux PCs like the
Steam Machine inferior console replacements if you want high
refresh rates. A lot of TVs now support 4K/120hz with VRR, the
PS5 and Xbox Series X also support those modes.
(Some games support 120, but it's also used to present a 40hz
image in a 120hz container to improve input latency for games
that can't hit 60 at high graphics quality.)
mcv wrote 2 hours 45 min ago:
Why don't TVs support displayport? If HDMI 2.1 support is
limited, a TV with displayport sounds like an obvious choice.
I thought audio might be the reason, for as far as I can
tell, displayport supports that too.
pqtyw wrote 2 hours 28 min ago:
I think it's not really an issue for 95-99% of users who
uses devices with non open source drivers so there is no
incentive for manufacturers to add it?
krzyk wrote 5 hours 15 min ago:
Do consoles support anything above 60 FPS?
tyfon wrote 4 hours 3 min ago:
My PS5 can do 4k/120 hz with VRR support, not sure about
the others.
RamRodification wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
Are there games running at 4k 120hz?
tapoxi wrote 2 min ago:
Call of Duty and Battlefield both run at 120, most
single player games (Spider-Man, God of War, Assassin's
Creed etc) will allow a balanced graphics/performance
which does 40 in a 120hz refresh.
shantara wrote 14 min ago:
Touryst renders the game at 4K120 or 8k60. In the
latter case, the image is subsampled to 4K output.
maccard wrote 2 hours 3 min ago:
Full 4k - very few, but lots are running adaptive
resolutions at > 2k and at 120hz
amlib wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
Correction, you can get 4K@120hz with HDMI 2.0, but you won't
get full chroma 4:4:4, instead 4:2:0 will be forced.
In my case I have an htpc running linux and a radeon 6600
connected via hdmi to a 4k @ 120hz capable tv, and honestly,
at the sitting distance/tv size and using 2x dpi scaling you
just can't tell any chroma sub-sampling is happening. It is
of course a ginormous problem when on a desktop setting and
even worse if you try using 1x dpi scaling.
What you will lose however is the newer forms of VRR, and it
may be unstable with lots of dropouts.
foresto wrote 11 hours 26 min ago:
Is HDMI really a roadblock to gaming when DisplayPort exists?
RachelF wrote 7 hours 4 min ago:
The Chinese tech manufacturers are so sick of the HDMI
licencing mafia that they've developed their own replacement
for it:
HTML [1]: https://www.techpowerup.com/335152/china-develops-hdmi...
zaptheimpaler wrote 11 hours 1 min ago:
It's a blocker if you want to use a TV, there are almost 0 TVs
with DP. This HDMI licensing crap is also the reason a Steam
Deck can't output HDMI > 4K@60 unless you install Windows on
it.
eru wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
Aren't there some hardware dongles to translate from DP to
HDMI?
sznio wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
DP is something like a free superset of HDMI, so you can
use a fully passive DP-HDMI cable. Obviously the feature
set will be limited, but it will work.
DP however can't transfer audio, which doesn't matter for a
desktop but matters a lot for a TV.
cesarb wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
> DP is something like a free superset of HDMI, so you
can use a fully passive DP-HDMI cable.
No, it's not, the protocol is completely different (DP is
packet-based while HDMI traditionally was not, though
AFAIK HDMI 2.1 copied DP's approach for its higher speed
modes). When you use a passive DP-HDMI cable (which AFAIK
is not fully passive, it has level shifters since the
voltages are different), it works only because the
graphics card detects it and switches to using the HDMI
protocol on that port; if it's not a dual-mode port (aka
"DP++" port) it won't work and you'll need an active
DP-HDMI adapter.
> DP however can't transfer audio, which doesn't matter
for a desktop but matters a lot for a TV.
On the desktop I'm using to type this message, I use the
speakers built into the DP-connected monitor (a Dell
E2222HS). So yes, DP can and does transfer audio just
fine. If it couldn't, then active DP to HDMI adapters
wouldn't be able to transfer audio too.
The only thing DP doesn't have AFAIK is ARC, which might
matter for a few more exotic TV use cases, and HEC, which
AFAIK nobody uses.
eurleif wrote 1 hour 35 min ago:
DisplayPort can absolutely carry audio; see Wikipedia:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort
zaptheimpaler wrote 9 hours 13 min ago:
Last I checked, even the best ones that are high quality
don't support VRR.
ThatPlayer wrote 7 hours 58 min ago:
A recent one seems to work with VRR: [1] DP1.4 though, so
you're still going to need compression.
HTML [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1...
zaptheimpaler wrote 5 hours 1 min ago:
Wow that's awesome work in that post! I've also bought
a few things from UGreen now, they're great.
charleslmunger wrote 6 hours 49 min ago:
Yup this works but there's as of yet no HBR13.5 or
better input so you're not getting full hdmi 2.1
equivalent. But if you don't care about 24 bits per
pixel DSC then you can have an otherwise flawless
4k120hz experience.
HTML [1]: https://trychen.com/feature/video-bandwidth
ThatPlayer wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
Up until a year or two ago, the majority of monitors (and
graphic cards) used DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1. With HDMI 2.1
(42 Gbps) having more bandwidth than the DisplayPort (26 Gbps).
This is my case with my relatively new/high-end RTX 4080 and
OLED monitor. So until I upgrade both, I use HDMI to be able to
drive a 1440p 240hz 10-bit HDR signal @ 30 Gbps.
wincy wrote 8 hours 47 min ago:
I had said I wouldnât upgrade from my RTX 3080 until I
could run âtrue 4Kâ.
I finally got the 240hz 4K uncompressed but it required
buying a $1300 Asus OLED monitor and the RTX 5090. It looks
amazing though, even with frame gen. Monster Hunter had some
particularly breathtaking HDR scenes. I think it uses
DisplayPort 2.1? Even finding the cable is difficult,
Microcenter didnât have them in April and the only one that
worked was the one that came with the monitor.
PacificSpecific wrote 11 hours 21 min ago:
I want to play games on the same fancy lg tv I use with my
consoles. I just checked and it does not appear to have
displayport.
markus_zhang wrote 12 hours 40 min ago:
I actually think itâs better to exclude the AAA games from Linux.
coppsilgold wrote 13 hours 6 min ago:
Competent cheat makers don't have much difficulty in defeating
in-kernel anticheats on Windows. With the amount of insight and
control available on Linux anticheat makers stand little chance.
The best Valve could do is offer a special locked down kernel with
perhaps some anticheat capabilities and lock down the hardware with
attestation. If they offer the sources and do verified builds it
might even be accepted by some.
Doubt it would be popular or even successful on non-Valve machines.
But I'm not an online gamer and couldn't care less about
anticheats.
Too wrote 3 hours 29 min ago:
> The best Valve could do is offer a special locked down kernel
with perhaps some anticheat capabilities and lock down the
hardware with attestation.
That would require essentially turning it into a console or
Android.
fc417fc802 wrote 1 hour 33 min ago:
Not really. Measured boot and remote attestation are a thing.
Couple with reproducible builds to address security and privacy
concerns.
Hardware support would inevitably be somewhat limited but
that's still better than the situation with either consoles or
kernel anticheat.
krupan wrote 8 hours 24 min ago:
Not a gamer, but it seems like super competitive games should be
played on locked down consoles not custom-built PCs where the
players have full control?
Also, for more casual play, don't players have rankings so that
you play with others about your level? Cheaters would alll end
up just playing with other cheaters in that case, wouldn't they?
bee_rider wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
This console idea would also be better for truly competitive
games, because players should have a level playing field in
terms of framerates.
fc417fc802 wrote 1 hour 31 min ago:
At one point I recall that Valve implemented a rating system so
that cheaters who got reported would all end up playing in the
same pool with each other.
iknowstuff wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
Yeah this is also the model Microsoft is moving to. A separate
attested vm for games, immutable to the rest of windows.
Fr0styMatt88 wrote 11 hours 19 min ago:
Anticheat is one of those things where I probably sound really
old, but man itâs just a game. If you hate cheating, donât
play on pub servers with randoms or find a group of people you
can play with, like how real life works.
For competitive gaming, I think attested hardware & software
actually is the right way to go. Donât force kernel-level
malware on everyone.
mrheosuper wrote 7 hours 47 min ago:
Usually the one with kernel anti-cheat is competitive one(GTA,
BF, LOL).
avazhi wrote 8 hours 56 min ago:
You clearly donât play competitive shooters and thus arenât
qualified to opine on the matter.
Competition vs other human beings is the entire point of that
genre, and the intensity when youâre in the top .1% of the
playerbase in Overwatch/Valorant/CSGO is really unmatched.
Nursie wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
I think the problem comes when someone makes a cool, fun, silly
little game that is otherwise great when played with randoms,
and cheating just sorta spoils it.
Case in point from a few years back - Fall Guys. Silly fun,
sloppy controls, a laugh. And then you get people literally
flying around because they've installed a hack, so other
players can't progress as they can't make the top X players in
a round.
So to throw it back - it is just a game, it's so sad that a
minority think winning is more important than just enjoying
things, or think their own enjoyment is more important than
everyone else's.
As an old-timer myself, we thought it was despicable when
people replaced downloaded skins in QuakeWorld with
all-fullbright versions in their local client, so they could
get an advantage spotting other players... I suppose that does
show us that multiplayer cheating is almost as old as internet
gaming.
zaptheimpaler wrote 10 hours 57 min ago:
Sorry but you're just old IMO :) PUBG or Arc Raiders have over
100 players in a game. Even Valorant or League have 10 players
in a match. It's definitely not easy to find 9 friends to play
the same game at the same time as you. And playing any of these
games with a cheater can completely wreck the match. If the
cheaters go unchecked, over time they start to dominate games
where like 30% might be cheaters who can see through walls and
insta headshot you and the entire multiplayer mode of the game
is ruined. Even worse some cheaters are sneaky, they might have
a wallhack or a map showing all players but use it cautiously
and it can be quite hard to prove they're cheating but they
build up a huge advantage nonetheless. Most of us are happy to
have effective anti-cheat, and it's not forced upon us. I
understand the tradeoff to having mostly cheater-free games is
having to trust the game maker more and am fine with that. Riot
for example is quite transparent about what their anti-cheat
does, how it works and I don't consider it "malware" anymore
than I consider a driver for my graphics card to be "malware"
even if they do operate in kernel mode.
chii wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
> I don't consider it "malware" anymore than I consider a
driver for my graphics card to be "malware" even if they do
operate in kernel mode.
the bloggers/journalists calling it malware is doing the
conversation a disservice. The problem is only really the
risk of bugs or problems with kernel level anti-cheat, which
_could_ be exploited in the worst case, and in the best case,
cause outages.
The classic example recently is the crowdstrike triggered
outtage of computers worldwide due to kernel level
antivirus/malware scanning. Anti-cheat could potentially have
the exact same outcome (but perhaps smaller in scale as only
gamers would have it).
If windows created a better framework, it is feasible that
such errors are recoverable from and fixable without outages.
fc417fc802 wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
I'm not giving a small time software vendor proprietary
access to my machine at that level. I honestly think that
anyone who accepts it must be woefully uninformed about the
risks involved.
I'm already salty about the binary blobs required by
various pieces of firmware.
novok wrote 8 hours 53 min ago:
I play a lot of dota 2 and never really notice anything that
is obvious cheat wise. IMO league would probably be fine to
do valve level anti cheat, it's even a less twitchy of a game
than dota.
FPSs can just say 'the console is the competitive ranked'
machine, add mouse + keyboard support and call it a day. But
in those games cheaters can really ruin things with aimbots,
so maybe it is necessary for the ecosystem, I dunno.
Nobody plays RTSs competitively anymore and low-twitch MMOs
need better data hiding for what they send clients so
'cheating' is not relevant.
We are at the point where camera + modded input devices are
cheap and easy enough I dunno if anti-cheat matters anymore.
ryandrake wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
> Most of us are happy to have effective anti-cheat
I could almost get on board with the idea of invasive kernel
anti-cheat software if it actually was effective, but these
games still have cheaters. So you get the worst of both
worlds--you have to accept the security and portability
problems as a condition for playing the game AND there are
still cheaters!
zaptheimpaler wrote 4 hours 17 min ago:
It's kind of like when people say Google is getting worse
and has too many spam results even while I suspect they're
actually improving, but the volume and quality of spam has
gone up 100x so it looks like they're doing worse. The
question is what is the base rate of attempts to cheat and
how many of those attempts does kernel anti-cheat prevent
vs. conventional mechanisms. I don't have the answer, but
my intuition is cheating is more accessible and viral in
many ways now with professional level marketplaces and
actors working to build and sell cheats. I also don't think
the industry would dedicate so much effort into invasive
anti-cheat which is difficult, risky and gets them negative
PR unless they felt it truly necessary. Counter Strike a
few years ago had huge, huge numbers of cheaters and the
super popular games like that attract a lot of attention.
But ultimately, this is a cat and mouse game like search &
SEO, so you're right there are still cheaters and getting
that number to 0 is probably impossible.
refulgentis wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
Worst of both worlds? In theory this is accurate, in
practice, it isnât. The crux of why people are fine with
it as far as I can identify is âbut these games still
have cheatersâ - people arenât looking for 0 cheaters
so much as < X% are cheaters, keeping the odds low than any
given match they are in has a cheater.
Fr0styMatt88 wrote 10 hours 18 min ago:
Really good points about big games and your comparison to
graphics card drivers is pretty convincing. Changed this
old-timerâs mind a bit.
ndriscoll wrote 10 hours 31 min ago:
This was never an issue 20 years ago when we had 64 player
servers, but the 64 player servers also generally had a few
people online with referee access to kick/ban people at any
given time. That seemed like it worked well to me.
kaoD wrote 1 hour 52 min ago:
Exactly 20 years ago I was both a competitive CS player and
I also liked reverse engineering so I was somewhat
interested in the cheating community and even programmed a
custom injector and cheat for CS (it was surprisingly easy
if you knew a bit about Windows APIs).
Cheats were a problem. Not even a nascent problem, but
already established. Bad enough that VAC was released in
2002, Punkbuster in 2000...
In competitive gaming you cannot just find a stable friends
group to play against: you need competition, and a diverse
one. We somewhat palliated this by physically playing in
LAN, but that still limits to a radius around you and it's
cumbersome when you can just find an opponent online (we
had manual matchmaking on IRC before modern matchmaking
existed).
The problem is that cheating can be very subtle if done
correctly. The difference between "that guy is better that
me" and "that guy can see through walls" is pretty much
undetectable through non-technical means if the cheater is
not an idiot. This poisons the competitive scene.
Competitive gaming is huge. It was big back in the day but
now it's a monster. Just check the largest categories on
Twitch: LoL, TFT, WoW, CS, Valorant...
theshackleford wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
Some real rose tinted glasses here.
ThatPlayer wrote 10 hours 0 min ago:
It was still an issue enough that some developers made
BattlEye for anti-cheat 20 years ago for Battlefield games.
It's still one of the more popular anticheats today.
Other games did similarly. Quake 3 Arena added Punkbuster
in a patch. Competitive 3rd party Starcraft 1 server ICCUP
had an "anti-hack client" as a requirement.
sylens wrote 10 hours 16 min ago:
That's really the paradigm shift - communities were
self-organizing and self-moderating before. Now game
publishers want to control all aspects of the online
experience so they can sell you content and skins, so that
means matchmaking and it means they have to shoulder the
moderation burden.
kaoD wrote 1 hour 30 min ago:
> communities were self-organizing and self-moderating
before
This led to legit players that were just good being
banned by salty mods, or cheaters that were subtle enough
to only gain a slight edge not being banned.
eru wrote 9 hours 41 min ago:
The barrier to entry has also dropped a lot and the
market has broadened.
It's a bit like complaining that these days people just
want to watch TV, instead of writing and performing their
own plays.
jauntywundrkind wrote 12 hours 9 min ago:
This seems both semi probably but also like maybe a bit of a
critical moral hazard for Valve. Right now folks love Valve. They
do good things for Linux.
Making a Valve-only Linux solution would take a lot of the joy of
this moment away for many. But it would also help Valve
significantly. It's very uncomfortable to consider, imo.
drnick1 wrote 13 hours 38 min ago:
Clearly, when there will be enough Linux gamers another solution to
the kernel-level anti-cheat issue will be found. After all, the
most played competitive shooter is CS and Valve has does not use
kernel-level AC.
stackghost wrote 13 hours 17 min ago:
Isn't it pretty much an open secret that JVM-based cheats can
trivially bypass VAC?
xboxnolifes wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
The competitive CS leagues do use AC though. The big issue for
these games is the free-to-play model does not work without
anti-cheat. Having a ~$20 fee to cheat for a while before getting
banned significantly reduces the number of cheaters, and that's
what CS does with their prime server model.
And for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Valorant is the most
played competitive shooter at the moment.
jsheard wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
> After all, the most played competitive shooter is CS and Valve
has does not use kernel-level AC.
Valve doesn't employ kernel AC but in practice others have taken
that into their own hands - the prevalence of cheating on the
official CS servers has driven the adoption of third-party
matchmaking providers like FACEIT, which layer their own kernel
AC on top of the game. The bulk of casual play happens on the
former, but serious competitive play mostly happens on the
latter.
pityJuke wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
The best description I've been able to give of the dichotomy of
CS is this: there is no way for a person to become good enough
to get their signature into the game, without using
kernel-level ACs.
dfxm12 wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
You don't have to play these specific games though. I mean, what's
your privacy, what's not being bombarded by ads in your OS worth to
you? Have you taken an honest thought about this?
tnel77 wrote 13 hours 20 min ago:
Yes, but sometimes it is nice to socialize with other people and
they might play these types of games. I donât enjoy Call of
Duty, but Iâll play it from time to time so I can chat with my
brother (this is the only way to get him on the phone/microphone
for some reason). I value the time I am spending with him more
than a bit of privacy (in that context).
I am very pro-Linux and pro-privacy, and hope that the situation
improves so I donât have to continue to compromise.
dontlaugh wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
If you want to play games with friends, you have to play whatever
the group plays. This is especially problematic as the group
tries out new games, increasing the chance you canât join
because youâre not on Windows.
bigstrat2003 wrote 11 hours 0 min ago:
My friends are understanding that I don't play games with
rootkit anti cheat (whether on Linux or Windows). There are
enough games that we can play other games together still, and
when they want to play the games with such anti-cheat (e.g.
Helldivers 2) they simply play without me. No big deal.
downloadram wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
i've read helldivers2 kernel component only runs on a normal
windows install, you should be able to play on linix via
wine/proton without any of that
keyringlight wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
Personally I'd be interested to see what would happen if
Sony/MS did what they could to make keyboard/mouse experience
as good as possible on their consoles (I'm writing from a
position of ignorance on the state of mouse/keys with current
consoles) and encouraged developers to offer a choice in
inputs, so that the locked-down machines can become the place
for highest confidence in no/low cheaters. If other people want
to pay through the nose to go beyond what consoles offer on the
detail/resolution/framerate trifecta then I'm sure they could
do so, but I really don't see how you lock down an open
platform. That challenge has been going for decades.
eru wrote 9 hours 40 min ago:
Well, Nintendo's latest console comes with two mice that you
can both use at the same time even.
bentcorner wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
> I'm writing from a position of ignorance on the state of
mouse/keys with current consoles
I'm far from an authority on this topic but from my
understanding both Sony/MS have introduced mkb support, but
so far it looks to be an opt-in kind of thing and it's still
relatively new.
tormeh wrote 13 hours 14 min ago:
This really depends on the friends you have. I've never
encountered this limitation because no one in my friend group
plays competitive ranked games. Basically anything with private
sessions doesn't require anticheat, so Valheim, RV There Yet,
Deep Rock Galactic, etc. all work fine.
dontlaugh wrote 13 hours 11 min ago:
Sure, that helps.
But even then, when everyone is trying out a new indie game
thereâs a chance it wonât work on non-Windows. Itâs
happened to me.
tormeh wrote 4 hours 23 min ago:
I think indies are safe. The potential problem I can see
lying ahead - at least for me - is Battlefield.
eru wrote 9 hours 39 min ago:
Yes, but Linux really has gotten a lot better in recent
years. At least whatever runs on Steam. I almost never
had any problems with newer indie games.
diabllicseagull wrote 13 hours 27 min ago:
besides ads and privacy concerns it's been such a delight not
having to deal with unwanted updates, hunting phantom processes
that take up cpu time, or the file explorer that takes forever to
show ten files in the download folder. I cannot be paid to use
windows at this point.
jsheard wrote 13 hours 57 min ago:
Another unresolved roadblock is Nvidia cards seriously
underperforming in DX12 games under Proton compared to Windows.
Implementing DX12 semantics on top of Vulkan runs into some nasty
performance cliffs on their hardware, so Khronos is working on
amending the Vulkan spec to smooth that over.
braiamp wrote 12 hours 25 min ago:
That's being addressed:
-
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/directx12-performance-is-te
rrible-on-linux/303207/432
-
https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/402/attachm
ents/243/327/2025-09-29%20-%20XDC%202025%20-%20Descriptors%20are%
20Hard.pdf
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpwjJdkg2RE
The problem is on multiple levels, so everything has to work in
conjunction to be fixed properly.
torginus wrote 13 hours 4 min ago:
What percentage of games require DX12? From what I recall, a
surprisingly large percentage of games support DX11, including
Arc Raiders, BF6 and Helldivers 2, just to name a few popular
titles.
At the same time, Vulkan support is also getting pretty
widespread, I think notably idTech games prefer Vulkan as the
API.
jsheard wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
DX12 is overwhelmingly the default for AAA games at this point.
The three titles you listed all officially require DX12, what
DX11 support they have is vestigial, undocumented and
unsupported. Many other AAAs have already stripped their legacy
DX11 support out entirely.
Id Software do prefer Vulkan but they are an outlier.
dijit wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
DX12 is less and less the default, most gamedev that Iâve
seen is surrounding Vulkan now.
DX12 worked decently better than openGL before, and all the
gamedevs had windows, and it was required for xbox⦠but now
those things are less and less true.
The playstation was always âodd-man-outâ when it came to
graphics processing, and we used a lot of shims, but then
Stadia came along and was a proper linux, so we rewrote a
huge amount of our render to be better behaved for Vulkan.
All subsequent games on that engine have thus had a vulkan
friendly renderer by default, that is implemented cleaner
than the DX12 one, and works natively pretty much everywhere.
So its the new default.
csdreamer7 wrote 12 hours 33 min ago:
Godot switched over to DX12 over Vulkan for Windows. Blaming
bad Windows drivers for the reason.
HTML [1]: https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4...
hparadiz wrote 14 hours 7 min ago:
The Linux kernel has eBPF now so if they wanted to start spying on
everything you do they can just do it.
the_hoser wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
That would require that they actually make the effort to develop
Linux support. The current "it just works" reality is that the
games developers don't need to support running on Linux.
hackyhacky wrote 14 hours 4 min ago:
> The Linux kernel has eBPF now so if they wanted to start spying
on everything you do they can just do it.
Sure, except that anyone can just compile a Linux kernel that
doesn't allow that.
Anti-cheat systems on Windows work because Windows is hard(er) to
tamper with.
hparadiz wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
Well yeah but then eBPF would not work and then the anti cheat
could just show that it's not working and lock you out.
This isn't complicated.
Even the Crowdstrike falcon agent has switched to bpf because
it lowers the risk that a kernel driver will brick downstream
like what happened with windows that one time. I recently
configured a corporate single sign on to simply not work if the
bpf component was disabled.
swinglock wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
Well but then attackers just compile a kernel with a rootkit
that hides the hack and itself from the APIs of the BPF
program, so it has to deal with that too or it's trivially
bypassed.
Anticheat and antivirus are two similar but different games.
It's very complicated.
hparadiz wrote 12 hours 53 min ago:
The bpf api isn't the only telemetry source for an anti
cheat module. There's a lot of other things you can look
at. A bpf api showing blanks for known pid descendent trees
would be a big red flag. You're right that it's very
complicated but the toolchain is there if someone wanted to
do the hard work of making an attempt. It's really
telemetry forensics and what can you do if the cheat is
external to the system.
ffsm8 wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
Uh, you'd have to compile a Kernel that doesn't allow it while
claiming it does ... And behaves as if it does - otherwise
you'd just fail the check, no?
I feel like this is way overstated, it's not that easy to do,
and could conceptually be done on windows too via hardware
simulation/virtual machines. Both would require significant
investments in development to pull of
zamalek wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
Right, the very thing that works against AC on Linux also
works for it. There are multiple layers (don't forget
Wine/Proton) to inject a cheat, but those same layers could
also be exploited to detect cheats (especially adding
fingerprints over time and issuing massive ban-waves).
And then you have BasicallyHomeless on YouTube who is
stimulating nerves and using actuators to "cheat." With the
likes of the RP2040, even something like an aim-correcting
mouse becomes completely cheap and trivial. There is a
sweet-spot for AC and I feel like kernel-level might be a bit
too far.
hparadiz wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
All it takes is going to cd usr src linux and running make
menuconfig. Turning off a few build flags. Hitting save. And
then running make to recompile. But that's like saying "well
if I remove a fat32 support I can't use fat32". Yea it will
lock you out showing you have it disabled. No big deal.
tapoxi wrote 13 hours 57 min ago:
The interesting solution here is secure boot, only allow users
to play from a set of trusted kernels.
vbezhenar wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
What do you mean? Ship computer with preinstalled Linux that
you can't tamper? Sounds like Android. For ordinary
computers, secure boot is fully configurable, so it won't
work: I can disable it, I can install my own keys, etc. Any
for any userspace way to check it I'll fool you, if I own the
kernel.
tapoxi wrote 11 hours 6 min ago:
No, just have the anti-cheat trust kernels signed by the
major Linux vendors and use secure boot with remote
attestation. Remote attestation can't be fooled from kernel
space, that's the entire point of the technology.
That way you could use an official kernel from Fedora,
Ubuntu, Debian, Arch etc. A custom one wouldn't be
supported but that's significantly better than blocking
things universally.
digiown wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
You can't implement remote attestation without a full
chain of exploits (from the perspective of the user).
Remote attestation works on Android because there is
dedicated hardware to directly establish communication
with Google's servers that runs independent (as a
backchannel). There is no such hardware in PCs. Software
based attestation is easily fooled on previous
Android/Linux.
tapoxi wrote 10 hours 52 min ago:
The call asks the TPM to display the signed boot chain,
you can't fake that because it wouldnt be
cryptographically valid. The TPM is that independent
hardware.
digiown wrote 10 hours 45 min ago:
How would that be implemented? I'd be curious to
know.
I'm not aware that a TPM is capable of hiding a key
without the OS being able to access/unseal it at some
point. It can display a signed boot chain but what
would it be signed with?
If it's not signed with a key out of the reach of the
system, you can always implement a fake driver pretty
easily to spoof it.
vbezhenar wrote 9 hours 33 min ago:
I guess something like that: [1] Basically TPM
includes key that's also signed with manufacturer
key. You can't just extract it and signature
ensures that this key is "trusted". When asked, TPM
will return boot chain (including bootloader or UKI
hash), signed by its own key which you can present
to remote party. The whole protocol is more
complicated and includes challenge.
HTML [1]: https://tpm2-software.github.io/tpm2-tss/g...
hparadiz wrote 8 hours 49 min ago:
Tpm isn't designed for this use case. You can use
it for disk encryption or for identity
attestation but step 1 for id attestation is
asking the tpm to generate a key and then
trusting that fingerprint from then on after
doing a test sign with a binary blob. The running
kernel is just a binary that can be hashed and
whitelisted by a user space application. Don't
need tpm for that.
tapoxi wrote 10 hours 31 min ago:
This is called the Endorsement Key, and you're
correct, it never leaves the TPM. The TPM is a
"black box" to the OS.
digiown wrote 7 hours 35 min ago:
Ah, got it. With enough motivation this is still
pretty easily defeated though. The key is in some
kind of NVRAM, which can be read with specialized
equipment, and once it's out, you can use it to
spoof signatures on a different machine and cheat
as usual. The TPM implementations of a lot of
consumer hardware is also rather questionable.
These attestation methods would probably work
well enough if you pin a specific key like for a
hardened anti-evil-maid setup in a colo, but I
doubt it'd work if it trusts a large number of
vendor keys by default.
tapoxi wrote 6 hours 55 min ago:
Once it's out you could but EKs are unique and
tied to hardware. Using an EK to sign a boot
state on hardware that doesn't match is a flag
to an anti-cheat tool, and would only ever work
for one person.
It also means that if you do get banned for any
reason (obvious cheating) they then ban the EK
and you need to go source more hardware.
It's not perfect but it raises the bar
significantly for cheaters to the point that
they don't bother.
digiown wrote 6 hours 50 min ago:
> Using an EK to sign a boot state on
hardware that doesn't match is a flag to an
anti-cheat tool
The idea is you implement a fake driver to
sign whatever message you want and totally
faking your hardware list too. As long as
they are relatively similar models I doubt
there's a good way to tell.
Yeah, I think there are much easier ways to
cheat at this point, like robotics/special
hardware, so it probably does raise the bar.
fc417fc802 wrote 1 hour 17 min ago:
Any sane scheme would whitelist TPM
implementations. Anyway fTPMs are a thing
now which would ultimately tie the
underlying security of the anticheat to the
CPU manufacturer.
__MatrixMan__ wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
I'd be less antianticheat if I could just select the
handcuffs at boot time for the rare occasion where I need
them.
Although even then I'd still have qualms about paying for the
creation of something that might pave the path for hardware
vendors to work with authoritarian governments to restrict
users to approved kernel builds. The potential harms are
just not in the same league as whatever problems it might
solve for gamers.
digiown wrote 11 hours 0 min ago:
Once a slave, always a slave. Running an explicitly
anti-user proprietary kernel module that does
god-knows-what is not something I'd ever be willing to do,
games be damned. It might just inject exploits into all of
your binaries and you'd be none the wiser. Since it
wouldn't work on VMs you'd have to use a dedicated physical
machine for it. Seems to high of a price to play just a few
games.
charcircuit wrote 10 hours 19 min ago:
What if the kernel module is only run in a separate VM
than your main one?
Delk wrote 9 hours 16 min ago:
Games that require kernel-level anticheat will probably
try to detect VMs and refuse to run.
charcircuit wrote 8 hours 28 min ago:
The idea is that the hypervisor would also be signed
and provide security guarantees to games to block
cheats from working.
digiown wrote 7 hours 36 min ago:
Being able to snapshot and restore memory is a
pretty common feature across all decent
hypervisors. That in and of itself enables most
client-side cheats. I doubt they'd bother to
provide such a hypervisor for the vanishingly small
intersection of people who:
- Want to play these adversarial games
- Don't care about compromising control of
hypervisor
- Don't simply have a dedicated gaming box
charcircuit wrote 7 hours 20 min ago:
>Being able to snapshot and restore memory is a
pretty common feature across all decent
hypervisors
A hypervisor that protects against this already
exists for Linux with Android's pKVM. Android
properly enforces isolation between all guests.
Desktop Linux distros are way behind in terms of
security compared to Android. If desktop Linux
users ever want L1 DRM to work to get access to
high resolution movies and such they are going to
need such a hypervisor. This is not a niche use
case.
digiown wrote 7 hours 12 min ago:
It "protects" against this given the user
already does not control the hypervisor, at
which point all bets are off with regard to
your rights anyway. It's actually worse than
Windows in this regard.
I would never use a computer I don't have full
control over as my main desktop, especially not
to satisfy an external party's desire for
control. It seems a lot more convenient to just
use a separate machine.
Even mainstream consumers are getting tired of
DRM crap ruining their games and movies. I
doubt there is a significant Linux users would
actually want to compromise their ownership of
the computer just to watch movies or play
games.
I do agree that Linux userland security is
lackluster though. Flatpak seems to be a neat
advancement, at least in regard to stopping
things from basically uploading your
filesystems. There is already a lot of kernel
interfaces that can do this like user
namespaces. I wish someone would come up with
something like QubesOS, but making use of
containers instead of VMs and Wayland proxies
for better performance.
charcircuit wrote 7 hours 6 min ago:
You already don't control the firmware on the
CPU. Would you be okay with this if the
hypervisor was moved into the firmware of the
CPU and other components instead?
I honestly think you would be content as long
as the computer offered the ability to host
an arbitrary operating system just like has
always been possible. Just because there may
be an optional guest running that you can't
fully control that doesn't take away from the
ability to have an arbitrary guest you can
fully customize.
>to satisfy an external party's desire for
control.
The external party is reflecting the average
consumer's demand for there not being
cheaters in the game they are playing.
>It seems a lot more convenient to just use a
separate machine.
It really isn't. It's much more convenient to
launch a game on the computer you are already
using than going to a separate one.
digiown wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
Ah, I see, you're talking about Intel
ME/AMD PSP? That's unfortunate and I'm
obviously not happy with it, but so far
there seems to be no evidence of it being
abused against normal users.
It's a little funny that the two interests
of adtech are colliding a bit here: They
want maximum control and data collection,
but implementing control in a palatable way
(like you describe) would limit their data
collection abilities.
My answer to your question: No, I don't
like it at all, even if I fully trust the
hypervisor. It will reduce the barrier for
implementing all kinds of anti-user
technologies. If that were possible, it
will quickly be required to interact with
everything, and your arbitrary guest will
soon be pretty useless, just like the
"integrity" bullshit on Android. Yeah you
can boot your rooted AOSP, but good luck
interacting with banks, government services
(often required by law!!), etc. That's
still a net minus compared to the status
quo.
In general, I dislike any methods that try
to apply an arbitrary set of criteria to
entitle you to a "free" service to prevent
"abuse", be it captchas, play integrity, or
Altman's worldcoin. That "abuse" is just
rational behavior from misaligned
incentives, because non-market mechanisms
like this are fundamentally flawed and
there is always a large incentive to
exploit it. They want to have their cake
and eat it too, by eating your cake. I
don't want to let them have their way.
> The external party is reflecting the
average consumer's demand for there not
being cheaters in the game they are
playing.
Pretty sure we already have enough
technology to fully automate many games
with robotics. If there is a will, there is
a way. As with everything else on the
internet, everyone you don't know will be
considered untrusted by default. Not the
happiest outcome, but I prefer it to losing
general purpose computing.
charcircuit wrote 6 hours 3 min ago:
>you're talking about Intel ME/AMD PSP?
I'm talking about the entire chip. You
are unable to implement a new instruction
for the CPU for example. Only Intel or
AMD can do so. You already don't have
full control over the CPU. You only have
as much control as the documentation for
the computer gives you. The idea of full
control is not a real thing and it is not
necessary for a computer to be useful or
accomplish what you want.
>and your arbitrary guest will soon be
pretty useless
If software doesn't want to support
insecure guests, the option is between
being unable to use it, or being able to
use it in a secure guest. Your entire
computer will become useless without the
secure guest.
>Yeah you can boot your rooted AOSP, but
good luck interacting with banks,
government services (often required by
law!!), etc.
This could be handled by also running
another guest that was supported by those
app developers that provide the required
security requirements compared to your
arbitrary one.
>That "abuse" is just rational behavior
from misaligned incentives
Often these can't be fixed or would
result in a poor user experience for
everyone due to a few bad actors. If your
answer is to just not build the app in
the first place, that is not a satisfying
answer. It's a net positive to be able to
do things like watch movies for free on
YouTube. It's beneficial for all parties.
I don't think it is in anyone's best
interest to not do such a thing because
there isn't a proper market incentive in
place stop people from ripping the movie.
>If there is a will, there is a way.
The goal of anticheat is to minimize
customer frustration caused due to
cheaters. It can still be successful even
if it technically does not stop every
possible cheat.
>general purpose computing
General purpose computing will always be
possible. It just will no longer be the
wild west anymore where there was no
security and every program could mess
with every other program. Within a
program's own context it is able still do
whatever it wants, you can implement a
Turing machine (bar the infinite memory).
digiown wrote 5 hours 32 min ago:
> Intel or AMD
They certainly aren't perfect, but they
don't seem to be hell-bent on spying on
or shoving crap into my face every
waking hour for the time being.
> insecure guests
"Insecure" for the program against the
user. It's such a dystopian idea that I
don't know what to respond with.
> required security requirements
I don't believe any external party has
the right to require me to use my own
property in a certain way. This ends
freedom as we know it. The most
immediate consequences is we'd be
subject to more ads with no way to opt
out, but that would just be the
beginning.
> stop people from ripping the movie
This is physically impossible anyway.
There's always the analog hole,
recording screens, etc, and I'm sure AI
denoising will close the gap in
quality.
> it technically does not stop every
possible cheat
The bar gets lower by the day with
locally deployable AI. We'd lose all
this freedom for nothing at the end of
the day. If you don't want cheating,
the game needs to be played in a
supervised context, just like how
students take exams or sports
competitions have referees.
And these are my concerns with your
ideal "hypervisor" provided by a
benevolent party. In this world we live
in, the hypervisor is provided by the
same people who don't want you to have
any control whatsoever, and would
probably inject ads/backdoors/telemetry
into your "free" guest anyway. After
all, they've gotten away with worse.
charcircuit wrote 2 hours 29 min ago:
>"Insecure" for the program against
the user.
We already tried out trusting the
users and it turns out that a few bad
apples can spoil the bunch.
>It's such a dystopian idea that I
don't know what to respond with.
Plenty of other devices are designed
so that you can only use it in safe
ways the designer intends. For
example a microwave won't function
while the door is open. This is not
dystopia despite potentially going
against what the user wants to be
able to do.
>I don't believe any external party
has the right to require me to use my
own property in a certain way.
And companies are not obligated to
support running on your custom
modified property.
>The bar gets lower by the day with
locally deployable AI.
The bar at least can be raised from
searching "free hacks" and double
clicking the cheat exe.
>who don't want you to have any
control whatsoever
This isn't true. These systems offer
plenty of control, but they are just
designed in a way that security
actually exists and can't be easily
bypassed.
>and would probably inject
ads/backdoors/telemetry into your
"free" guest anyway.
This is very unlikely. It is
unsupported speculation.
znpy wrote 12 hours 59 min ago:
I wonder if you could use check-point and restore in
userspace ( [1] ) so that after the game boots and passes the
checks on a valid system you can move it to an "invalid"
system (where you have all the mods and all the tools to
tamper with it).
I don't really care about games, but i do care about messing
up people and companies that do such heinous crimes against
humanity (kernel-level anti-cheat).
HTML [1]: https://criu.org/Main_Page
tapoxi wrote 11 hours 3 min ago:
The war is lost. The most popular game that refuses to use
kernel-level anti-cheat is Valve's Counter-Strike 2, so the
community implemented it themselves (FaceIT) and requires
it for the competitive scene.
fooker wrote 13 hours 5 min ago:
You can switch out the kernel in the running Linux desktop.
monerozcash wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
Yep, a plenty of prior art on how to implement the necessary
attestations. Valve could totally ship their boxes with
support for anticheat kernel-attestation.
Is it possible to do this in a relatively hardware-agnostic,
but reliable manner? Probably not.
desireco42 wrote 14 hours 32 min ago:
My VR glasses work on Omarchy, to my surprise, I plugged them and
they work. I have XReal, older model.
MSFT_Edging wrote 14 hours 25 min ago:
Aren't the XReals just displays in the glasses? If they work with
other devices, it's no surprise linux can just use a display
standard.
desireco42 wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
But they work out of the box, which is my point. You can use a
device that can be inbetween which places screen into fixed space
in front of you for example. While it is cool, it is kind of a
hassle to have this device inbetween. I just plug them directly
and they work.
necessary wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
This is a big reason Iâm excited for Steam Frame - high quality VR
on the Linux desktop.
pjerem wrote 13 hours 43 min ago:
AND high quality Linux desktop on the VR :)
ErroneousBosh wrote 14 hours 52 min ago:
Gaming now works better on Linux than it does on Windows. This must
be upsetting for Microsoft, but it was their game to lose.
tombert wrote 13 hours 5 min ago:
Proton has gotten so good now that I don't even bother checking
compatibility before buying games.
Granted, I don't play online games, so that might change things,
but for years I used to have to make a concession that "yeah
Windows is better for games...", but in the last couple years that
simply has not been true. Games seem to run better on Linux than
Windows, and I don't have to deal with a bunch of Microsoft
advertising bullshit.
Hell, even the Microsoft Xbox One controllers work perfectly fine
with xpad and the SteamOS/tenfoot interface recognizes it as an
Xbox pad immediately, and this is with the official Microsoft Xbox
dongle.
At this point, the only valid excuses to stay on Windows, in my
opinion, are online games and Microsoft Office. I don't use Office
since I've been on Unixey things so long that I've more or less
just gotten used to its options, but I've been wholly unable to
convince my parents to change.
I love my parents, but sometimes I want to kick their ass, because
they can be a bit stuck in their ways; I am the one who is expected
to fix their computer every time Windows decides to brick their
computer, and they act like it's weird for me to ask them to
install Linux. If I'm the one who has to perform unpaid
maintenance on this I don't think it's weird for me to try and get
them to use an operating system that has diagnostic tools that
actually work.
As far as I can tell, the diagnostic and repair tools in Windows
have never worked for any human in history, and they certainly have
never worked for me. I don't see why anyone puts up with it when
macOS and Linux have had tools that actually work for a very long
time.
theshackleford wrote 4 hours 58 min ago:
> At this point, the only valid excuses to stay on Windows, in my
opinion
I didnât see a performance increase moving to Linux for the
vast majority of titles tested. Certainly not enough to outweigh
the fact that I want EVERY game to work out of the box, and to
never have to think if it will or wonât. And not all of my
games did, and a not insignificant number needed serious tweaking
to get working right.
I troubleshoot Linux issues all day long, Iâve zero interest in
ever having to do it in my recreation time.
Thatâs a good enough reason for me to keep my windows box
around.
I use Linux and OSX for everything that isnât games, but
windows functions just fine for me as a dumb console and I
donât seem to suffer any of these extreme and constant issues
HN users seem to have with it from either a performance or
reliability standpoint.
threethirtytwo wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
The irony is that gaming on linux got better but the instigator was
not the OSS community. All of it was funded by closed source
software competing with other close source software. The OSS
community by itself did not have the conviction to climb over this
bulwark.
IgorPartola wrote 9 hours 42 min ago:
It isnât about conviction. Gaming takes tremendous resources
and they were not there. But if this starts shifting the tides
there is a possible future where game developers start building
for Linux as a primary target and to run games on Windows or Mac
you would use emulation. In fact this seems like a better overall
approach given that there are no hidden APIs with Linux.
Spivak wrote 11 hours 4 min ago:
Money and resources suddenly materialized once someone realized
that there was profit in it is pretty much the expected way this
goes. OpenTofu happened not because of some OSS force of will but
because a group of companies needed it to exist for their
business.
This flow is basically the bread and butter for the OSS community
and the only way high effort projects get done.
nine_k wrote 13 hours 31 min ago:
But when Steam started to develop Proton, WINE was 90% there!
Valve only had to provide the remaining 90%.
The strength of Linux and Free software in general is not in that
it's completely built by unpaid labor. It's built by a lot of
paid, full-time labor. But the results are shared with everyone.
The strength of Free software is that it fosters and enforces
cooperation of all interested parties, and provides a guarantee
that defection is an unprofitable move.
This is one of the reasons you see Linux everywhere, and *BSD,
rarely.
eru wrote 9 hours 34 min ago:
> This is one of the reasons you see Linux everywhere, and
*BSD, rarely.
I doubt it's a large reason. I'd put more weight on eg Linus
being a great project lead and he happens to work on Linux.
And a lot of other historical contingencies.
nine_k wrote 9 hours 21 min ago:
BSD does a few things right, hence it's used by Netflix (who
share back some of their work), userland of macOS (because
Apple don't like GPL, I assume), PS4 and PS5 (IDK if anything
seeps back upstream from there).
eru wrote 8 hours 5 min ago:
There's also plenty of software available on Linux and
other operating systems that uses the BSD license.
jetbalsa wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
This still has a "sometimes" on it, there are more then a few games
that need magic proton flags to run well, nothing you can't go look
up on protondb, but lots of games you would want to play with
friends might have some nasty anti-cheat on it that just won't let
you play it at all.
ErroneousBosh wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
Exactly. Battlefield 6 for example does not work at all in
Proton.
This is a far better user experience for Battlefield players than
in Windows.
Have you ever actually attempted to play that half-assed buggy
piece of shit?
spockz wrote 14 hours 33 min ago:
Gaming works fine with exception of things like BF6 that require
kernel level anti cheat.
The one thing I havenât been able to get working reliably is
steam remote play with the Linux machine as host. Most games work
fine, others will only capture black screens.
jetbalsa wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
if you are running KDE you can whitelist Steam for remote desktop
work, this is because of wayland.
voidfunc wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
I dont get the feeling they care. Microsoft is so lost under Satya
at this point. Totally blinded by Azure and AI and stock price
growth. At some point they're going to realize all the ground
they've lost and it's going to be a real problem. They're repeating
a lot of the same mistakes that cost them the browser and mobile
market.
casey2 wrote 12 hours 37 min ago:
If people were buying new PCs every year like they used to I'd be
worth it. Turns out there isn't as much value having a "captive
market" on a PC unless it's locked down.
diabllicseagull wrote 13 hours 13 min ago:
Yeah. MS must have been so hurt about losing to the iPhone, they
really jumped the gun on AI as if to avoid a similar mistake.
It's Satya's major play and I think they are already paying for
that decision. xbox is hollowed out so that AI can be funded,
while the pc/console hybrid project is doomed to fail because
"windows everywhere" doesn't work if windows is crap. indeed,
they might be left with just the cloud business in the end.
com2kid wrote 8 hours 27 min ago:
First they jumped the gun on tablets, listening to the tech
media that was saying tablets were going to replace computers.
That resulted in Windows 8.
More recently they've freaked out about ads, app stores, and
SaSS revenue, which has resulted in lots of dark patterns in
the OS.
isnckwndkwmx wrote 10 hours 9 min ago:
And the funniest thing is: not having a mobile platform anymore
will be the death knell for all of their AI efforts.
Iâm not really into this AI shenanigans, but it seems to me
that if you want people to use /your/ bot, you gotta give it to
people in the most seamless and efficient way possible, and
that does not translate well to a desktop OS.
I donât think they would have dethroned iOS or even Android
had they stayed their ground, but they probably wouldâve had
a stronger base to build upon for their Copilot nonsense. Those
that used Windows Phone used it because they loved it, Copilot
couldâve garnered some good rep from those already sold on
Microsoftâs platform; instead, theyâre trying to shove it
down peopleâs throats even though very few people actually
use Windows because they actively like it, most use it because
itâs the âdefaultâ OS and they do not (and care not to)
know any better.
dontlaugh wrote 13 hours 26 min ago:
They donât care, theyâre defunding Xbox and even the Windows
team is hollowed out.
k12sosse wrote 12 hours 54 min ago:
When the rumour was Windows 10 will be the last windows! I
don't think people thought it would because of win11 would be
so unbearable it would finally drive users to Linux.. but here
we are. RIP.
gerdesj wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
"Totally blinded by Azure and AI and stock price growth."
Stock price growth is their core business because that is how
large firms operate.
MS used to embrace games etc because the whole point was all PCs
should run Windows. Now the plan is to get you onto a
subscription to their cloud. The PC bit is largely immaterial in
that model. Enterprises get the rather horrible Intune bollocks
to play with but the goal is to lock everyone into subs.
tombert wrote 13 hours 3 min ago:
It's pretty much every American business now isn't it? Do any
big corporations actually make money anymore?
I thought all of them more or less have operated under
Ponzinomics ever since Jack Welch showed that that worked in
the short term.
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