Hi. I’ve been thinking about trying out Linux for a while now (haven’t used it before). I have 1 PC which I share with my son. I mainly use it to browse the web, listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, Office for work, etc. things like that. Those things have good substitutes from what I’ve read, so not an issue. But my son plays video games like The Sims, Cities Skylines, Stardew Valley, Roblox, Minecraft, Stellaris, Slime Rancher… and from what I’ve seen it’s kind of difficult to game comfortably (stable) on Linux. As for the distro I was considering Ubuntu. Currently on Windows 10 Home. Looking forward to what you guys have to say. All advice welcome. Thanks.

  • Raphaël A. Costeau@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Steam for steam games, Lutris for anything else, Heroic for Amazon, Epic and GOG if you prefer it. Roblox is unsupported, but there are workarounds. For online, not LAN based, games, you will need to check title by title. I recommend Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? for this. Other than that, you are almost 100% cool. If you encounter any problem, you will need to check ProtonDB and Lutris/games sites for each case. But nowadays almost anything runs perfectly out of box.

  • Epzillon@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    You can check ProtonDB for specificerar games compatability. Most games from steam just install and run as usual. But other launchers and some games with anti-cheat can be a bit more wonky to get running or just dont work at all.

  • halloween_spookster@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I have been running Linux full time on my gaming PC for a number of months now. I have found only a few instances where a game hasn’t worked. I know that certain games won’t work because of their invasive or Windows specific DRM, but for me personally I don’t want to play those games anyway. Some examples of games I can play without issue: Horizon: Forbidden West, Brotato, Plate Up, GTFO, Dome Keeper, Noita, Enlisted, Power Wash Simulator, Risk of Rain 2 …

  • hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 day ago

    Dual booting may be the way to go. Sure Steam, Proton, blah blah but there are so many other launchers and AAA games that are not going to be supported at all (or at least not without a bunch of fiddling). For my own kid, I gave up on Linux ages ago and they have a Wintendo now. I have been daily driving Linux since the mid 90s but I’m also practical when I need to be.

    That machine is also isolated on its own VLAN to hopefully reduce the blast radius of whatever garbage it eventually detonates. I make regular backups of it and am ready to repave it at a moment’s notice.

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    Try Linux in a VM (virtual machine) for a while.

    • Low hassle compared to dual booting,
    • no risk of Microsoft randomly doing something to windows that breaks your Linux install.
    • low/No system downtime if you decide you don’t like one distro or another and want to switch,
    • no loss of game data for your son (I’ve lost so many saves because of games putting them in nonsensical places in windows; why is appdata still the default for minecraft saves!?)
  • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Check all the games on ProtonDB, but from what you listed that should all be pretty easy to get working on Linux. 95% of Steam games just work out of the box, with most exceptions being competitive MP games with aggressive anti-cheat. If it’s not a steam game, it’s still likely pretty easy to run, but you might have to use a third party launcher or something depending on what storefront it’s from.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    I have persuaded The Sims to run on Linux; though if the game wasn’t purchased through Steam it can take some doing. No experience with Cities Skylines. Stardew Valley runs very well, I think ConcernedApe releases Linux native versions. My understanding is Roblox deliberately prevents itself from running on Linux. Minecraft Java edition runs on Linux and you’ll find launchers for it in most package managers. An open source alternative called Minetest or recently changed to Luanti exists, but I know it’s not the one his friends play and that’s mostly the point. Can’t say for Stellaris or Slime Rancher.

  • You might consider Linux Mint instead of Ubuntu. A lot of what you want is going to work (and be preinstalled) right out of the box. It’s a great system to start with.

    I play Stellaris and Minecraft on Linux Mint… Stellaris runs fine through Steam. Minecraft, just download the Linux launcher, it will do everything else for you.

  • Legoraft@reddthat.com
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    1 day ago

    From my experience, Cities Skylines works great through proton on steam (it’s a compatibility layer for windows games) and Minecraft has it’s own native launcher (which is downloadable from their site here, you need to use the debian installer for ubuntu). As far as ubuntu native, I haven’t used it a lot. Linux mint is a distro recommended for people who are used to windows most often, you can take a look around.

    As far as the other games go, only slime rancher is one that I know doesn’t work through steam. For most games you can take a look at protondb, where you can just search for the game.

    • PancakeBrock@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      My daughter plays slime rancher off my desktop running Arch streaming to the steam link in her room.

  • CornflakeDog@pawb.social
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    I don’t know if you happen to have any other machines available to you, but I do recommend you consider giving it a go on a machine you don’t share with another person, or at least dual-booting on that machine. It could be pretty jarring to be dumped onto another operating system so quickly, especially as one works out how to use the programs they had been running just fine before.

    I recently made the swap to Linux myself, and a dedicated laptop for that transition has made my life a lot easier. I still have my old laptop on Windows, heavens forbid I absolutely need it, but I do find some issues with compatibility. As another person has mentioned, Roblox does not offer native Linux support, which means you have to run a program that more or less tricks Roblox into thinking you’re playing on a smartphone. You can do the same for Bedrock Minecraft if you want to play cross-platform.

    For a lot of things there are alternatives that tend to work even better in some ways. For others, there are workarounds. And for others yet, you just can’t use some applications you might have been using before.

  • Biskii@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I don’t want to start a new one for a related question. I understand I will probably have to wipe or partition my primary drive, but will I be able to use my other drives as-is, and have access to all of my files and things?

    • verdigris@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      NTFS drives can be used by both Windows and Linux (you might need to install a driver for the latter but most user-friendly distros include them out of the box). So yes, if you have storage drives you’ll still be able to access them from both sides.

      There can be weird issues sometimes with this setup, usually as a result of Windows freaking out because Linux modified some file, but it’s rarely anything severe. Personally I just flipped all my drives to Linux filesystems because they’re nicer for several purposes and I am actively trying to avoid ever using Windows again at this point.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      1 day ago

      Yes. But in terms of gaming Steam seems to have problems if your games are on an NTFS (Windows filesystem) partition. Everything else should work.

      • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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        1 day ago

        It says they do but they kinda mostly don’t. I’m playing from linux on my old steam windows folder on a very much NTFS drive and I never had an issue.

  • estebanlm@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    I guess all those games work out of the box in linux through steam. I personally play just Stellaris from that list, but I do not see why the others wouldn’t.

  • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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    1 day ago

    Dual boot 100% no doubts. Don’t unilaterally impose Linux on your Son, he will likely be cut off from many socialization on current and future popular multiplayer games that may or may not run smoothly on Linux.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      1 day ago

      Pft, just enable wobbly windows and Linux will be the shit.

      For everything else God invented cloud gaming.

      But seriously, my kids had the choice between Windows and Linux. They chose Linux because it looks nicer. The older one is even on Discord with friends who live further away. He finds enough current games that have anti cheat for Linux enabled. And in the end they both always get back to Minecraft and Roblox.

      • dwindling7373@feddit.it
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        1 day ago

        As long as your kids currend and future friends will be on Windows there will be potential issues. There’s also the matter of familiarizing yourself with an environment that monopolyze the professional environment…