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.
UPDATE: Of course I will help him install Windows on his computer if he wants so, I don’t want to force him to use Linux after all. I just wanted him to give it a try, and maybe daily drive it, if he can.
EDIT: Because for some reason it was misunderstood, let me clarify it here. Roblox ran with poor performance on Waydroid, not Minecraft. I just said that the installation of Prism Launcher cracked was difficult. After that, Minecraft ran smoothly without any problems.
Unfortunately you chose the wrong distro - Linux Mint isn’t good for gaming - it uses an outdated kernel/drivers/other packages, which means you’ll be missing out on all the performance improvements found in the latest kernel/packages found in more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.
I really wish people stopped recommending mint for any purpose other than reviving a 20 Yr old laptop into a chromebook.
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Unless your hardware demands it a distro with a modern de would be much better for those imo
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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.
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?
Bazzite also solves this, sometimes.
But you cant change if Roblox etc actively block Linux compatibility
Why did they even do that?
“SeCuRiTy”
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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.
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Thanks I’m going to give this a try.
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.
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.
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.
Its our fault for making him use Linux. Why does it matter what OS people use? Chill my man.
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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?
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.
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.
You skipped a few steps. Before you install Linux for your friend, you should first ask him what he uses the PC for, and if he plays games, what games does he play.
Your friend plays only the games that are a pain to make work on Linux, or straight up don’t work. What else does he want to play, fortnite? Maybe some destiny? Lol Let them be. Windows is for them, Linux isn’t, and that’s ok.
Ooh ooh! Genshin for good measure! That one even absolutely REFUSES to play in a VM or emulator!
I’ve been playing genshin on Linux for almost a year now. Hint, Heroic games launcher ;)
If that works I’m de installing Windows
It may seem petty, but I actually really like Genshin (and Honkai: Star Rail for that matter), and I had Windows already there, anyway
EDIT AreWeAntiCheatYet confirms Genshin should work:
Though they confirm Honkai: Star Rail is broken:
Guys, search for “an anime team” on github. You don’t even need to configure Heroic/Lutris/Bottles.
Do you guys really believe that the Linux community will not find a way to play with waifus?
Honkai won’t work, only genshin.
Guys, search for “an anime team” on github. You don’t even need to configure Heroic/Lutris/Bottles.
Do you guys really believe that the Linux community will not find a way to play with waifus?
Oh I know about that some launcher thingy. It’s available for both, but very iffy. It worked for honkai for a while then just quit out of nowhere. And it never worked for genshin
I played Genshin with it for about 6 months before I quit and it worked pretty well, the downside is that when the game is updated the launcher has to be updated too and that takes some time. I never missed the dailies though.
And Genshin’s launcher needs to be told to install under C:\Program Files instead of that Z: drive, it’s installing!
Too bad about Star Rail, though.
I guess the 60 GiB monolith of a Windows installation has exactly one function, now.
The honkai one stopped working for good for me and the genshin one just refuses to work from the start.
Okay, happily Genshin is working fine for me! Honkai SR doesn’t, indeed.
Sounds like your friend is absolutely not the target audience for a linux-based operating system. If he wants to play windows games and use software designed for windows, then he should be using a Windows OS. Anything else would be providing a suboptimal experience for him.
Personally, I’ve been using various Linux-based OS since 2004, as a software developer I use a lot of commandline tools, and many tools and applications designed for Linux. If I were using exclusively tools and applications designed for Windows, then I would be using Windows. No need to make life more difficult for yourself and others.
This right here. I know lemmy is all “LINUX IS FOR EVERYONE!” But it isn’t.
I know this would go against Google’s self interest but they are best poised to make Linux mainstream. Chrome OS can play android games natively. But it’s all close source.
It wouldn’t take much to make the ecosystem for general Linux. I don’t know if the other android-based OSes are working on this but anything we can do to push gaming into Linux would help it to become a better everyday OS
anything we can do to push gaming into Linux would help it to become a better everyday OS
I feel like the SteamDeck and SteamOS have already done more for Linux gaming than ChromeOS ever had the potential for.
You know what makes my Linux distribution perfect? My windows partition that I can switch to quickly.
Lol, nice. And accurate.
People keep pushing Linux everything.
I run Linux as Proxmox, VM’s, containers, etc. Great stuff.
I have Mint on a laptop… What an awful experience. It’s tremendously better than it was in 2000, but holy cow the issues and incompatibilities.
Right up front two major issues with Linux:
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No standard UI - it’s different on every system
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No standard tools - you can’t rely on the same tools being on every machine
Right up front two major issues with Linux:
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No standard UI - it’s different on every system
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No standard tools - you can’t rely on the same tools being on every machine
These seem like pretty fundamental traits, since Linux is only the kernel. I think a better way to compare other OSs to Linux would be comparing them to specific Linux distros, since those often do have standardized installs.
But there’s not really a great answer for which distro or distros should be used to represent the whole linux ecosystem… and that fragmentation has both pros and cons.
Like, I really love my Arch desktop, but it took lots of time to learn and configure. And it often breaks with updates— it’s not something most users would want. However, I get cutting-edge updates and features, and I have specialized my entire OS to best work for my workflows.
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My wife and I gave a Linux computer to a friend’s kid. I think I used something called Grapejuice to install Roblox, which ran perfectly for about a year. Then it broke because they wrote a new game client or something, but the kid just said “it’s ok, I’ll play other games instead.” Best Linux gamer attitude :)
You have to be doing something seriously wrong to make Minecraft run poorly. It has native support for Linux.
I’ve been down this road, java Minecraft is fine, bedrock Minecraft is not. Most people and cross platform play Minecraft use the bedrock version. It’s literally Microsoft saying FU linux
Microsoft: Bedrock is truly cross-platform!
Linux: Heyy…
Microsoft: No, not that much cross-platform
Minecraft ran pretty well, the installation procedure was just difficult, because we were using this (which was a mistake).
Let him go back to Windows. You already planted the idea of using Linux in his head. Next time he gets tired of windows for any reason, he knows there is an alternative and he’ll consider switching to Linux on his own.
His experience was one of torment and suffering just to play one game. Dude will be windows until logging in requires you to submit a butthole scan and get punched in the face, and maybe even past that.
Your average user is comparing the time to setup a new game vs a punch in the face, no contest punch in the face all day! Now if you are getting punched in the face for more than 5 hours then maybe they will start considering an alternative…
That’s the issue though. On windows I click install then launch. Unless Linux gets better with gaming or windows gets much worse, most people won’t migrate.
There’s very few people that hear about Linux and then switch over the next day. It’s something that needs to fester in your head for a while. I didn’t start using Linux full time until like a decade after I tried it for the first time
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.
Just bail out, it wasn’t meant to be. I tried a similar thing with family a few times and they always went back to Windows.
Linux is unfortunately not for people that aren’t at least a bit tech savvy. If you insist on them using Linux you’re gonna be on call to fix their shit all the time.
For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person. I cannot expect much from system where even installing stuff is stuck at pre 2000 era.
It also works reliably and be supported by anyone (Windows that is)
For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person.
Yeah but things just work by default more often on Windows than on Linux. “Linux being Linux” is also the most common cause of Linux problems.
Linux usually does give you the tools to fix problems more easily than Windows but that’s where the tech savviness comes in.
People need to quit pressuring others into Linux. Linux users and Microsoft have that in common.
OS should not be in the way of whatever you want to do. Does not matter if it is gaming as a need. You have your answer.
Minecraft runs natively on Linux. What was the issue?
They were trying to run it cracked through an alternative launcher.
Oh, yeah your cracked launcher designed for Windows probably won’t work well without tinkering.
Prism runs better than the official launcher on both windows and linux, I don’t what the issue is. Java maybe?
The launcher wasn’t cracked. It’s a cross-platform open source launcher that works quite well under linux. The game itself was cracked, meaning they were trying to play without having purchased it.
Bro can’t spend €10 on a game but can spend €200 on a new Windows disc lol
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.
