The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

Gaming on Linux just works! Just ditch Windows already and move to Linux!
So true bestie! :feels: :feels: :feels: Anyway for me majority of my games work out of the box and have been working fine for 4 or more years now, unless it is in one of the following categories. 1) Any game from around the mid 2000's or older, 2) A multiplayer game that requires anti cheat a la Destiny 2, 3) Game that uses some dumbass windows media player and or Media Foundation fix, a lot of these have been fixed, but a lot of them havent, the most recent one I can think of that required me to manually run a script that installed the correct files (which even then didnt work until my third try) was Darksiders Warmastered edition. Which I played for 3 hours before dropping it cause of its boring ass gameplay. If it isnt any of those I'd say your chances of having to tweak anything to get the game working are slim to none.

Aside from all that I wouldnt want anyone who barely understands windows using linux, I use linux cause I like dicking around with things, to the point of having to dick around to make the games work, which if anything is more fun than the games that dont work in the first place. :feels:
 
Been using Linux as my only system since the late 90s. All this talk about taking over Windows or year of the desktop lacks much of that long term insight. I'm just happy and amazed I can play most new or old games whenever I want, I don't even check protondb, they all just work. I can buy new hardware and stick it in and don't even check if its supported on Linux. In other words, Tux bros we're eating good.
 
what exactly did do to change Linux forever?
Nothing, it's just that Brodie Robertson exists to stroke egos of other midwits by overblowing any positive Linux coverage. They don't think, only react. Ideally ignore him and anyone who watches his videos. Same goes for Mental Outlaw and other copycats of the same slop.
Aside from all that I wouldnt want anyone who barely understands windows using linux, I use linux cause I like dicking around with things, to the point of having to dick around to make the games work, which if anything is more fun than the games that dont work in the first place. :feels:
And then dicking around too much, breaking everything and starting from scratch. Not gonna lie, breaking things to then fix them is fun. And yes most Windows users shouldn't touch Linux period. The types that don't even know how to use Windows' command line, AKA niggers.
 
I'm not going to suffer through his video, but just looking at the summary... what exactly did they do to change Linux forever? IIRC, they didn't announce anything new about/for SteamOS, and they've listed Machine and Frame as running SteamOS 3, which is what Deck is currently running.
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They introduced a tool to convert x86 code to arm like wine, to make it work with the vr headset. So potentially that. also they are doing some stuff with android games.

But also likely getting people to think more about linux, running gaming on a "pc" even though I do think for the most part it won't have much more of an effect than the steamdeck did.

I think if it does get popular the biggest thing it will do, is potentially put just a bit more pressure on game companies, and others to make their software work on linux.
 
is potentially put just a bit more pressure on game companies, and others to make their software work on linux
Doubt it, Valve worked so hard on Proton exactly so that developers don't have to worry about Linux. At best you'll hope that Steam Machines will catch on as Linux PC's and will plant a seed of "time to think about porting our shit to Linux" in companies that constnatly refuse to, like Adobe or Autodesk. It'll still be like 10-15 years down the line before they'd actually do anything, but still.

I do hope however that both Steam Machine and Steam Frame will take off as "PC consoles", so that there will be a pressure on game companies to OPTIMIZE THEIR FUCKING SHIT. You shouldn't need 24GB of VRAM to run games that use less than 8 on consoles.
 
Doubt it, Valve worked so hard on Proton exactly so that developers don't have to worry about Linux. At best you'll hope that Steam Machines will catch on as Linux PC's and will plant a seed of "time to think about porting our shit to Linux" in companies that constnatly refuse to, like Adobe or Autodesk. It'll still be like 10-15 years down the line before they'd actually do anything, but still.

I do hope however that both Steam Machine and Steam Frame will take off as "PC consoles", so that there will be a pressure on game companies to OPTIMIZE THEIR FUCKING SHIT. You shouldn't need 24GB of VRAM to run games that use less than 8 on consoles.
I didn't say port them to linux.
 
Is there a trick to making games actually run on Linux? I've tried 6 so far and none of them work except for Half Life 1.
Yeah, use Steam Proton.
Fantastic point Sugriva, doesn't refute my point that it still takes tinkering to get games under Linux working despite what everybody claims.
I don't know the last game I've had to tinker with to get it to work on Linux using Steam Proton. And Windows users aren't immune to games acting up. The main thing you "miss out on" are games with anti-cheat that simply doesn't work on Linux or that the devs won't enable to work on Linux. If that's a deal breaker for someone then they should use Windows and will.
 
I tried to run tf2 and it wouldn't download all the way it just kept saying "corrupt update files" then I tried CS2 and it did something similar. And finally I tried Ready or Not which just didn't launch.

I think I know what the problem is.

TF2 and CS2 have native Linux versions that *should* work, but you may be hamstrung by runtime conflicts if you’re using the Flatpak version of Steam due to how sandboxing works with Flatpaks. It happened to me when I was trying to run the Linux version of Witcher 2, and I was told that it needs GTK2, but that runtime was discontinued.

Try to delete the install of TF2 you have right now, then go to the settings cog on the TF2 page in your library, click on “Properties,” then “Compatibility,” and tick “force use of a compatibility layer,” THEN close out of the settings and reinstall TF2. It should also download Proton and the windows version.

The types that don't even know how to use Windows' command line, AKA niggers

Serious question, Slav Power senpai: how would you suggest a clueless outsider to Windows' CLI to learn it? I'm not proficient in Linux terminal to the point of being able to take a glance at any given shell script and being able to understand what it does, but I know enough to navigate, change directories, install from scripts, general system maintenance, etc. The most I've ever fiddled with the Windows CLI is to get the odd batch file running so I can convert CIA files into CCI files for Citra/Lime3DS/Azahar. Oh and to fiddle with WSL/Cygwin/Chocolatey whenever the urge struck me back when I ran Windows 11 in 2024.
 
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Serious question, Slav Power senpai: how would you suggest a clueless outsider to Windows' CLI to learn it? I'm not proficient in Linux terminal to the point of being able to take a glance at any given shell script and being able to understand what it does, but I know enough to navigate, change directories, install from scripts, general system maintenance, etc. The most I've ever fiddled with the Windows CLI is to get the odd batch file running so I can convert CIA files into CCI files for Citra/Lime3DS/Azahar. Oh and to fiddle with WSL/Cygwin/Chocolatey whenever the urge struck me back when I ran Windows 11 in 2024.
You'd be better off asking @Overly Serious about this one.
 
You'd be better off asking @Overly Serious about this one.
I don't know if better off or not, because I've no idea of @Slav Power 's scripting knowledge on Windows. But as pinged I'll answer. But why not bop on over to the Windows thread where I and others I'm sure will be happy to help. Slav Power is a regular there, too. (As I am certain @teriyakiburns knows. ;) ).

The last time I discussed Powershell in this thread, it ruffled some feathers.

EDIT: I exaggerate a little. Most people here are pretty down for some technical discussion. But a couple of people got into it a bit with me and the Windows thread is better placed for this. I'll write something up there for you and tag you if interested, @Dread First .
 
Serious question, Slav Power senpai: how would you suggest a clueless outsider to Windows' CLI to learn it?
Interact with a command line. Be it in DOSBox, cmd.exe, PowerShell, get the grasp of the basics. How to list a directory, how to navigate back and forth, how to execute software and pass parameters to it, what's a relative and what's an absolute path, what the PATH environment variable does, what a script file does and so on. Eventually you'll find parallels between MS-DOS, Windows and Linux with some obvious differences like how under MS-DOS/Windows it's "dir" and under Linux it's "ls".

Though, the thing about it all is that you need that mindset of a nerd. That this is something that intrigues you and you want to learn it just because. Learning the command line can help you a ton when you realize a lot of the GUI stuff has a lot in common, like LNK shortcuts and how you can pass parameters within them, or how when you set up a path to something it can be relative and how you can use it to your advantage, or how you can add some directory to the PATH variable so that you don't need to invoke the full path to run some program and so on.

Or how you can use scripts to automate certain tasks. For this I highly recommend learning PowerShell, and if you like committing sacrilege, PowerShell 7 is also available for Linux. Think of it as programming lite, where most of the hard work of making software that does this or that is already done and you're left with a documentation of what each command does. Then it's up to you to map out the scheme of what you want to do step-by-step and write it out in a script to automate it for you. Programming isn't like learning a language, but rather learning a syntax that goes from top to bottom that does exactly what it's told to do. Scripting languages like PowerShell or AutoHotkey are a good way to get a grasp of it while being able to quickly make something that's useful to you.

If you need another incentive to try and learn something like this, then trying to run an old game in DOSBox is a good starting point for example. You'll have to interact with a command line to get things running and a lot of it will be transferrable to Windows due to obvious reasons. The end goal of any command line learning is you learning how an operating system works from the practical side of things. What a program is, how it works, how you can influence the way the programs work, the funamentals of paths, variables and so on. All of computing and software is a flowchart, and your goal is to train your brain to see those flowcharts.
 

This gave a decent quick history lesson in the beginning.

But I have never heard anyone say libre the way this guy said it.
This zoomer does pretty cool tech retrospect videos in general. I especially like his videos about uTorrent and Vista, where in the former he also neatly explains the idea of P2P file sharing and why the BitTorrent protocol was such a big deal.
 
how would you suggest a clueless outsider to Windows' CLI to learn it? I'm not proficient in Linux terminal to the point of being able to take a glance at any given shell script and being able to understand what it does, but I know enough to navigate, change directories, install from scripts, general system maintenance, etc.
Try running raw DOS or FreeDOS and try to set it up to your liking. Try to install and run a few applications, do some things you're used to doing in a Unix shell. Forces you to figure things out. You can learn a lot about why things are the way they are in Windows today, like the extensive use of backslashes -- forward slashes are used for most command params in DOS.

cmd.exe is not the same as DOS but it is clearly an evolution and very inspired by DOS. Since it isn't something you really need to interact with extensively, it can be hard to find a reason to do so, but if you know enough from DOS you can just review some of the differences & nice new features it has (like pushd and popd) vs DOS and be fine to do the basics and better understand batch scripting.

This is how most people who moved into the Windows NT line learned it -- they just already knew how to work with DOS.
 
Try to delete the install of TF2 you have right now, then go to the settings cog on the TF2 page in your library, click on “Properties,” then “Compatibility,” and tick “force use of a compatibility layer,” THEN close out of the settings and reinstall TF2. It should also download Proton and the windows version.
You don't need to uninstall the game first. Changing the compatibility from native to Proton will download only the missing/changed Windows files, so you don't have to redownload gigabytes of assets.
 
Try running raw DOS or FreeDOS

This is how most people who moved into the Windows NT line learned it -- they just already knew how to work with DOS.

cmd.exe is not the same as DOS

Jesus Fucking Christ. You're the second person to point the poor sod at DOS or cmd.exe. How old are you people? And do either of you actually do anything meaningful in Powershell? Serious question.

@Dread First I put my reply to you in the Windows thread. It has a few suggestions and though it might seem a little involved, I wrote it as friendly as I could. There are a couple of fundamental differences between Linux and Bash and the Windows environment and Powershell. And if you understand them a lot of your learning will start to become more intuitive than it would be otherwise. If you're interested in something a bit more on the subject of comparision the link I made in my initial reply to where I'd discussed it in this thread previously might be a fun read. But please don't reply on that topic in this thread. Happy to discuss it in the Windows thread, though.
 
How old are you people?
Mentally I fluctuate somewhere between a snotty teenager and a stuck-up boomer. DOS/cmd is a good starting point just to get the grasp of what a command line is. And IMO it's good to get the hand of the Batch retardation given how the Bash retardation of Linux is not that far off, and PowerShell's verbose commands and scripting syntax is too unique for that. PowerShell is a cross between a programming language and a command line, and for raw command line experience it's better to go the hard way.
 
And do either of you actually do anything meaningful in Powershell? Serious question.
I used PowerShell extensively from around when it was first introduced (probably late 2007) until about 2013. Every time I try to get back into it I get extremely annoyed, the wordiness of everything and trying to guess what the contents of the .NET objects are really bother me. If you like it, fine, but I don't want to use it anymore, and wouldn't just recommend trying to learn it unless you had a really good use case for writing scripts in that language. Personally if I want basic scripts gluing together powerful commands POSIX/bash scripting is fine (and I still use msys2 to run these on Windows), anything more complicated I'd rather use Ruby.

Conversely I find the old skills of batch scripting never really went away, from my own memory nor from being used and useful in Windows generally. It's conceptually very similar to POSIX scripting, I could go back and forth on which syntax is more retarded, but working with string output and exit codes is very simple.

DOS is fun to work with and a nice ramp into getting a handle on cmd.exe. 🙄
 
trying to guess what the contents of the .NET objects are
Oh yeah, forgot that PowerShell is object oriented as well. Yeah you don't want that to be your first contact with a command line, hence MS-DOS/cmd is the better choice. It's more old-school and "flat" like Bash, if you challenge yourself to set up MS-DOS all the basic ropes you'll learn will be easily movable to cmd, and you'll just need to supply a few extra bits of info to move to Bash.

PowerShell objects, while powerful and useful once you wrap your head around them, are definitely way too complex and unique for PS to be your first command line experience.
 
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