I have been daily driving Linux for over two years now and I have switched distros many times. So, when my friend bought a new laptop, I convinced him to install Linux Mint on it. I asked him if he wanted to dual boot, he said no because it would fill up all his storage. We installed Linux Mint. The other day, he wanted to play FIFA 17 on his computer. After 5 whole hours of troubleshooting we were able to get FIFA running smoothly with some issues. Next, he wanted to play Roblox. I guided him through the process of installing Waydroid and libhoudini, only to discover that Roblox would run at 10 FPS. With Minecraft, it wasn’t any better. It took us 1 hour to get it working (not skill issue, he wanted to play cracked through Prism Launcher). Now, he wants to go back to Windows 10. I have already told him about dual boot, but he has only 256GB of storage and he wants to play a lot of games. What should I do? Install Windows to his laptop, install some other Linux distro, or try to convince him more about dual boot? Thanks in advance and sorry for the essay.
Roblox in particular has been super hostile to the Linux community, they’ve two or three times now intentionally changed their application to make it so it won’t run under wine. If Roblox is something that is a hard requirement for him, I would highly recommend against any of the non-windows derivatives. The lead development team on Roblox seems to have the ideology that anything that isn’t Windows is a hacker platform and therefore they attempt to remove access from those platforms wherever possible. I don’t personally agree with it but, it is what it is.
I also wish people would stop blindly recommending Unix platforms as a drop-in replacement for gaming on Windows. I have yet to see anyone who has been able to just install any of the flavors and have it “just work”. I fully agree that we are ages better in terms of compatibility than it was even 5 years ago, but at 100% should be going into it as a “you will have issues prepare to have to troubleshoot” and if this was his first time using anything not windows, I would have hard recommended against nuking the windows install, at the very least shrink the C partition on Windows which can be done via GParted, which thankfully is already pre-installed on the Linux Mint installation media.
It’s disappointing that he is looking to go back, but I can fully understand his frustration, as someone who’s recently retaking the plunge after 6 or 7 years of being on windows again, I find myself getting aggravated at times trying to make hack scripts to make things work as well.
That being said, if he is wanting to go back you shouldn’t force using it, that’s only going to remove the possibility of him switching back in the future(like when MS makes w10 a subscription model either end of this year or the year after which will force w11)
Honestly with the exception of trying out Nvidia drivers until they worked nicely (took 3 tries the first time back when I was on Ubuntu because it had nouveau as default and I miss read the first time) everything worked fine with wine or proton (or was just Linux compatible in the first place) and often I had better performance too.
Now on endeavouros I do more tinkering but I still don’t have any problems except on my Wayland machine which experiences stutter in a few games but I’m guessing that will be fixed later this year with the new drivers and Wayland protocol changes.
If you want to game stick up with Windows, for everything else use Linux.
I would say unless you always want to do troubleshooting for this friend just stick him with windows. At some point it is up to the individual to be able to troubleshoot these issues using the Internet as the resource, but a lot of people just don’t want to mess with that. My own time is too limited to be on call for people.
What should I do?
Install Windows on his laptop, or better yet let him do it and sit besides him for guidance, so that he can learn to reinstall in case something breaks badly.
It’s nice to showcase your favourite OS and make people curious but don’t abuse your friends with your Linux preference by forcing it onto them.
(Also, if you fix everything for them all the time, how will they learn?)
I am trying to make him learn something by explaining what the commands do. For example, I say to them “run
cd Documentswhich changes your current directory to Documents.”. But I agree with you, I will tell him a little more about dual boot, and if he doesn’t want to dual boot, I will help them install Windows.
Well you get an a for effort. But if your friend wants to play windows games it’s better for them to just have windows on the machine. I give it to you and your friend for going all out on a new laptop and putting Linux on it right away.
A more convenient way for a new user to experience Linux is to do a live usb for them. That way they can boot into Linux easily but boot into windows just by removing the usb drive.
I’m really sad to see this “If he wants to play Windows games, let him use Windows” being repeated a hundred times in these comments. Mostly because it’s an echo chamber, but also because Windows games have been better and better under Proton so 80-90% of Windows games on Steam run without a problem on Linux.
I understand your frustration but if you were in this guys shoes and this was your friend calling you all day to do troubleshooting, what would you do? Spend hours of your time helping him become a Linux addict or tell them just to put his computer back to windows and be done with it?
I’m a huge Linux fan but even my main pc and laptop are windows. I use WSL (amazing btw) on the laptop with a kali install. And I’ll use powershell (also really good) on the pc for any ssh needs for my Linux servers.
Unfortunately you chose the wrong distro - Linux Mint isn’t good for gaming - it uses an outdated kernel/drivers/other packages, which means you’ll be missing out on all the performance improvements found in the latest kernel/packages found in more up-to-date distros. Gaming on Linux is a very fast moving target, the landscape is changing at a rapid pace thanks to the development efforts of Valve and the community. So for gaming, you’d generally want to be on the latest kernel+mesa+wine stack.
Also, as you’ve experienced, on Mint you’d have to manually install things like Waydroid and other gaming software, which can be a PITA for newbies.
So instead, I’d highly recommend a gaming-oriented distro such as Nobara or Bazzite. Personally, I’m a big fan of Bazzite - it has everything you’d need for gaming out-of-the-box, and you can even get a console/Steam Deck-like experience, if you install the
-deckvariant. Also, because it’s an immutable distro with atomic updates, it has a very low chance of breaking, and in the rare ocassion that an update has some issues - you can just select the previous image from the boot menu. So this would be pretty ideal for someone who’s new to Linux, likes to game, and just wants stuff to work.In saying that, getting games to run in Linux can be tricky sometimes, depending on the game. The general rule of thumb is: try running the game using Proton-GE, and if that fails, check Proton DB for any fixes/tweaks needed for that game - with this, you would never again have to spend hours on troubleshooting, unless you’re playing some niche game that no one has tested before.
In the case that mint is the problem perhaps a different distro that is still stable and has a large user base would be good as it makes it easier to get support. I think that’s also why those distros aren’t recommended to newbies. I started with Ubuntu which worked fine. I think I could’ve started with most gnome/KDE distros though if they were similarly stable (preferably more). I think having the settings available in a gui was important for my first time.
Thanks I’m going to give this a try.
I really wish people stopped recommending mint for any purpose other than reviving a 20 Yr old laptop into a chromebook.
Mint is perfectly fine for commodity programming and basic office work, too. It’s not that great for gaming but it’s a good distro for boring stuff, even on modern hardware.
Unless your hardware demands it a distro with a modern de would be much better for those imo
The problem is not that games don’t run smoothly. The problem is that games don’t run at all or require major effort to run without issues. Will installing that distro fix the complicated installation of Prism Launcher cracked? I don’t think so. But I agree with you for the fact that I chose the wrong distro. I wanted something easy for beginners.
Bazzite also solves this, sometimes.
But you cant change if Roblox etc actively block Linux compatibility
Why did they even do that?
“SeCuRiTy”
Linux doesn’t have good anti cheat, barely has any players, and is a constant source of noise on tech support forums (because most games aren’t made to work, they just kind of happen to).
You can’t do the same kind of anti cheat on Linux without risking losing a court case about you not sharing your kernel driver source code. Wine is built around swapping out DLLs (which is exactly what most cheats do) and code signing is practically non-existent. There’s no way to determine if someone isn’t messing with your game on Linux, so the moment someone develops a cheat on Linux you can choose between allowing cheats or disallowing Linux. Someone could invest in Linux specific anti cheat for the sliver of market segment it makes up, but it’s just not worth it.
Unfortunately, solving anti cheat server side just isn’t feasible anymore. It used to be, but these days it’s not an option if you intend to keep the game fun and want to make money as a publisher. Single player games and local co-op are a different story, but in my experience those tend to work most of the time.
There’s no way to completely avoid cheaters and I really don’t get why there’s so many windows games that want Kernelmode access. You could still read the memory and emulate inputs based on that or draw something on the screen. It’s probably just causing the cheaters who want to download something and win to get more viruses (which most probably deserve assuming the viruses aren’t too bad), while the game company gets closer to being indistinguishable from a virus itself.
Reading memory is, if the anti chest mechanism is working, not possible without detection. That’s what the kernel mode driver is for, among other things (like detecting spoofed hardware sending fake inputs, hypervisor detection, etc.).
There’s always the analog hole (just point a camera at a screen, together with a keyboard hooked up to an arduino) but software cheats can be prevented quite effectively. There’s a reason cheaters pay three or four figures for a cheat in their “favorite” game, it’s not just good ol’ Cheat Engine trainers anymore.
The problem is that games don’t run at all or require major effort to run without issues.
A major cause for that is the distro - when it comes to gaming, the distro makes a huge difference. The second major cause is the flavor of Wine you chose (Proton-GE is the best, not sure what you used). The third major cause is checking whether or not the games are even compatible in the first place (via ProtonDB, Reddit etc) - you should do this BEFORE you recommend Linux to a gamer.
In saying all that, I’ve no idea about pirated stuff though, you’re on your own on that one - Valve and the Wine developers obviously don’t test against pirated copies, and you won’t get much support from the community either.
Seriously you’re recommending Reddit to a Lemmy user?
If they want to game, can’t commit to only playing steam games, and can’t learn how to use lutris, have them stay on windows. Linux will never live up to their expectations.
Roblox not runnimg is more like a feature. /s
I have been using Linux for years, but I don’t insist anyone to use it, because when they encounter a problem, they blame you.
Let them drown in their filth.
My friend doesn’t blame me. He blames Linux, which also isn’t nice. Of course, it isn’t Linux’s fault that the Roblox developers patched their game so it cannot be ran with wine, but in his eyes, and the eyes of the non tech-savvy people, if it runs on Windows and not on Linux, Linux is doing something wrong.
Its our fault for making him use Linux. Why does it matter what OS people use? Chill my man.
I would never try to convince anyone to use Linux. If they’re happy with Windows, let them use Windows.
I only suggest Linux if they complain about Windows. The only thing gushing about Linux unprompted and unwanted does is sour the waters.
And also double check whether their use case actually works on Linux, all the improvements in recent years are nice but there are still enough edge cases that checking beforehand is a good idea
The only time I forced Linux on anyone was when I gave my youngest brother a free laptop a couple years ago. It’s the laptop I had in college in 2011. It has a Sandy Bridge mobile Core i7. It’s too slow to run modern Windows. I told him he’s free to install Windows, but I don’t have a license to give him. For checking emails and web surfing, though, it was enough, and running Linux wasn’t going to give him trouble with that. To my knowledge (and to his credit), he still runs Linux on it.
Just let him read the arch with wiki.
Better luck next time.
Sounds like he doesn’t want to spend his time tinkering, but playing.
Can’t blame him.
If he wants Windows, why are you questioning what he wants to do with his computer? He’s had enough of playing fuck-fuck with Linux. (Mind, I work with Linux all day, every day, it’s the cat’s meow for dedicated services like Proxmox, TrueNAS, containers, etc).
Go get Win10 LTSC. It gets updates 2x/year, has very minimal bloat.
Then get O&O Shutup to reduce bloat even more.
And you can permanently license it using Microsoft’s own scripts.
Sounds like he doesn’t want to spend his time tinkering, but playing.
Ehhh, I feel like this person is a tinkerer, it’s just the things they wanna tinker with don’t play nice with Linux.
Installing a modded version of Minecraft indicates a desire to tinker. Roblox is a game based around the concept of tinkering. EA games (especially ones from 7 years ago) require some level of tinkering even in Windows.
Please stop reminding me that 2017 was 7 years ago.
Linux and online multi-player games aren’t friends. Steam makes up for a lot. Tools like Heroic can help. Lots of games still don’t work.
Minecraft should work fine if you use the Java version. The other one won’t work. If you only get 10fps in Minecraft, I’m guessing you either ran the Windows version of Java Minecraft on Linux, or your friend is missing GPU drivers for some reason.
All of these issues can be fixed, but I doubt your friend is interested in fixing them. Probably best to go for a dual boot, unless you want to be one of those Linux users. Would also be helpful for determining if the laptop just has a weak GPU or if there’s something wrong with the Linux install.
Personally, I found the install steps for Windows 11 to be the best way to convince people not to use it. It takes forever, asks a million questions about privacy invasion, then gets bitchy if you try to use a local account. With the next update, it’ll also record your screen constantly to train some kind of AI! Setup also takes forever for some weird reason, it takes like three times as long to install and update Windows as it takes Linux.
256GB won’t fit a lot of games, no matter what OS you use. Check if the laptop can be upgraded with a second PCIe drive. If it can’t, check if it has a USB 4 or Thunderbolt port; external SSDs hooked up to USB4 or TB will be almost as fast as normal PCIe drives and offer a whole bunch of storage for a Steam library and such. If your friend only has USB 3 ports, USB 3 ports are also pretty fast if you get a drive with a 10Gbps USB logo.
For your Linux use case, you can configure both operating systems to use the same SSD for game storage if you use NTFS, and use it on other computers as well if that ever comes UP. You could even keep a Linux partition on the SSD (Windows too, I guess, but I don’t really trust Windows on removable storage}.
Just tell him, “Give Linux another shot when you are bored.”.
t. Used to be a Windows tryhard w/ baby duck syndrome, told myself exactly this. Took me a while, but I became a penguin a couple years after.
I was ok with windows but frustrated with it’s ads and updates. Even back then I liked OSS which I later found out was mostly FOSS and I tried out Linux dual boot on my new computer, I’ve probably spent 60h on that windows installation and at this point I only have it to change the settings on a usb device that doesn’t seem to have Linux support, which I’m considering writing something small for if I figure out how those things work.
Most of those 60h were in the first year and then a couple of hours between Ubuntu and endeavouros, making sure I had my backups even if I couldn’t boot into Linux.
Maybe you should have considered the stuff he wanted to do before convincing him to use linux. I could have told you he’d have problems with that stuff. If he said he mainly plays steam games then sure, but not literally the most finicky, cumbersome games to get going in existence. Also out of curiosity because I haven’t even thought about Roblox in like 8 years. I thought that was a browser game?
I had checked and saw that FIFA 17 ran on Linux, so I told him that, and was not prepared for the troubleshooting nightmare that followed.
Minecraft runs fine for me, surely FIFA runs fine with proton (protondb says 2019 -2022 work)? I don’t even get why people use Roblox from what I’ve heard so I have no idea about that.
I have no idea what is going on with that laptop.
Minecraft runs great for me as well.
Prism Launcher seems to be well support on Linux and Minecraft runs fine on Linux (for myself and others) it could be that they’re trying to run a cracked version. Or that and a combination of poor hardware specs for what they’d like to do.
