Sword of Linuxcles.
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
425 points (98.0% liked)
Games
17596 readers
506 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I just swapped to Ubuntu on my straggler/media server Windows 10 desktop. Have been running Gentoo on another PC for years but never had so much trouble as trying to setup bumblebee with a GTX960 - holy crap nvidia suck so hard. The other PC is all AMD so I was living in blissful ignorance.
This is the third time today that I have seen a reference to the sword of Damocles. Almost as if the entire fucking world feels like it’s only a thread away from destruction…
I've been seeing it a lot more recently, too. IRL even.
Did it get used by sometime famous recently or something?
There was a king once named Damocles that had a sword suspended over his throne that could come crashing down at any random moment and kill him, to remind himself of the fragility of his power, and human life.
I have no idea how that anecdote might apply to people in power in this day and age, or why people would reference the anecdote.
Glares at the fraying rope
I know the source and the idiom. I just don't know why it's picked up in popularity recently.
I also don't know why its use as an idiom doesn't quite align with the story. It's usually used to describe a situation where the threat of destruction isn't random. For example, in the OP, the danger is the end of support for Win 10, not randomness.
I tried to switch to Linux several days ago, but there were clear issues regarding games that weren't tied to Steam. Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, Bottles, and so forth all had shortcomings regarding compatibility, handling of DLC, or lack of user-friendliness. Then I tried to use a VM, which was a frustrating rabbit hole. Virt-Manager supports GPU passthru, but you have to jump through hoops to identify PCI addresses and to configure correctly. Boxes initially seemed promising, but had no apparent way of storing the VM on my gaming drive. (Linux terminal commands are beyond my understanding.) Considering how big games are getting, and the size of my collection, that is a bad combo. Virtualbox doesn't have GPU passthru, so the performance sucked.
As a gamer, I currently find Linux to be insufficient. I was wanting to switch due to security concerns regarding Microsoft, especially in light of the Trump Regime's willingness to ignore law and norms. My concern is that they could use Windows as a spy, or to seal up my computer to punish those who go against Dogey America. As it is, I will have to use some scripts from Github to break Windows Update if I hear of Richmond being infiltrated by the Xitler Youth.
Here's hoping that Gabe decides to invest much more heavily in Linux to make it casual friendly - I want my mods, cheats, Japanese locale games, emulators, and so forth to all work seamlessly and without compromise. I would seriously pay $400 smackers to have an OS that is capable, flexible, compatible, friendly, and most importantly, MINE.
The days of just buying Windows 7 Ultimate and not thinking about Microsoft was glorious.
You should definately look at PlayOnLinux for those game. It is an app to help leverage all Wine setup and configuration. Normally with Steam and this would should be able to run almost everything.
tried to use a VM
Yeah, this is where you went wrong. It's possible, but it really doesn't solve anything IMO, has the possibility of getting detected (so anticheat bans), and can often run worse. It's possible to get a sane setup, but what are you really gaining over just dual booting? You're still running Windows, after all, but now you have drawbacks (and some benefits) of a VM.
Can you be more specific about what didn't work? As in, games, platforms, etc. If it's a game with anticheat, you're probably SOL on Linux, but I have Heroic working just fine on both my Linux desktop (openSUSE) and Steam Deck. I usually launch through Steam to use Steam input and manage Proton versions, and it seems to work fine for GOG and EGS. Some games have issues, so check protondb.com if that's the case, but most work just fine.
The idea here with the VM is two-fold: First, to keep a potential Windows Big Brother update from spying on my documents and whatnot, while also preventing it from tampering with the security of my PC. Secondly, to maximize compatibility, since I lost trust in Linux to not have technical issues with my gaming. That means mods, Japanese games, emulators, and so forth. Windows is simply more reliable and documented, unlike Linux. If something goes wrong with a game playing on Windows, there is decent odds of me troubleshooting. My hardware should be able to handle a VM, it being a 5950x with a RTX 4090+3060, and 128gb of RAM.
Anyhow, I don't really remember the specifics regarding how my efforts with Lutris, Heroic Game Launcher, and so forth went: I don't like remembering unpleasant things. All that I recall is assorted errors or lack of features that rattled my willingness to trust Linux for gaming. I will try again some years for now, if I hear Linux has become more suitable to the task.
If it's not an anticheat issue, Linux is probably suitable right now. Linux is quite different from Windows, but most problems have simple solutions if you know where to look, which usually means knowing who to ask.
That said, I think you'd be better off with a dual boot. That way you only need one GPU, and you can slowly move your gaming to Linux, falling back to Windows if something doesn't work right.
That said, I totally understand if you're burned out from it. Just know that there are a lot of Linux users who are happy to help if you get motivated to try again.
What distro did you try?
I’ve been on bazzite for some time now and haven’t had any of those problems
Sorry it didn’t work out for you like Linux Mint works for me (I switched full time to LM in December 2024).
If you haven’t already, switch to Windows 10 LTSC in the interim. I have a feeling Linux will only improve over time with greater compatibility with Proton. Since Win 10 LTSC is supported until 2029, that’s plenty of time for for more kinks to be worked out and you can potentially try Linux again.
I am already on a Internet of Things edition, which is the debloated version of Windows. However, that still leaves the possibility of Microsoft going fascist and sending out a Big Brother update.
Regarding Linux, it was indeed Mint that I tried to use - it seemed similar to Windows, at least visually. Getting standard software was easy enough, and things seemed promising until I started to migrate my gaming. I mod my games a fair bit of the time, or play niche stuff that hardly has support on Windows. It became very apparent that Linux can't handle that, not yet. In a couple of years I will revisit Linux.
I switched to Nobara Linux at the end of last year, and for the most part when I consider how often I'd have to fix Windows stuff, it's not that much more work. Still not the same though, and I keep a Windows partition around for certain stuff even though I groan having to load into it
Microsoft said Windows 10 would be the last version I'd ever use. They didn't know how right they were. I've been gradually switching to Linux, and will absolutely never use Windows 11 or any other version they put out.
I built a new gaming PC and installed Linux on it. After years of threatening to do it, I finally followed through and made the switch.
load more comments
(14 replies)
load more comments
(25 replies)
I enjoy this headline writing style. Imagine if we turned "try these 7 tricks" headlines into "Dionysius I of Syracuse would like you to try these"
The whole point of the Sword of Damocles was that the threat was always looming and Damocles didn't know when it might fall. We know exactly when Microsoft says they are going to drop support. There's a decent chance that they'll push that date back due to slow adoption at least once.
This is more about rats not fleeing the sinking ship until the sea has reached the bow.
Well, the real moment it becomes an issue is when a significant vulnerability is found after EOS. So I guess after EOS is when the sword of damocles starts hanging above every win 10 user..
Personally I'm on the edge of the ship just waiting to jump off once i have my new pc (probably next week).
More like rats not joining a leaking ship. I've been through enough windows upgrades to know: Don't be the first! You'll only end up paying to be a software tester for a product MS had to ship before it's ready to keep the shareholders happy.
Don't be the first one in the water after the shark warning ...
With the shit they built into 10 I really would not be surprised if they put in a kill switch
"Sword of Damocles" like bitch we used service pack 2 XP for ever. "We won't support something" means nothing if the original product was built right.
...Ohhh now I see the problem. Nevermind, everybody, carry on.
I know people still running XP sp3 (firewalled off the net) and it still does the job. They claimed to have killed 7 but between FOSS and enshittification pushback I reckon it's gonna be like the PS2
They are gonna have to pry windows 10 from my cold dead hands. I was sold 10 on the premise that it was going to be "the last windows OS I would need".
Fuck you Microsoft.
At the moment I’m 50/50 between switching over to Linux full-time, or full booting Windows 10 LTSC.
But having had to use it for work, I am adamant in saying that Windows 11 will never touch my home system drive.
Linux
One of us, one of us, one of us.
Windows 10 LTSC is supported until 2032 or so. I’ll be avoiding upgrading for a long time.
load more comments
(12 replies)
I enjoyed the visual design of Win 11, but the bloatware, spyware, and AI slop it started to install was just too much. The Steam Deck has proven 99% of Steam games run fine on Linux, so I made the switch and killed my Windows partition a few months ago.
Feels so clean and light running Linux - my god I never knew my PC could run so fast! Windows was really truly awful and I had no idea until I removed it from my life completely. Games run flawlessly on it - I'm using Elementary OS because it's clean and user friendly.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Sword of Damocles? More like the sword of Microsoft can go fuck itself!
If I did anything other than use my PC as a glorified gaming console, I might care about w10 not being updated anymore. Until games literally can't work on the OS, I'll stay on it. And when they do stop working, I'll probably just install Linux.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Pry it from my cold dead hands. I have linux on multiple computers, but it still can’t play all the games and give me my 5.1 surround. Despite all the claims, it’s still not ready for primetime to do all the things windows does.
load more comments
(5 replies)
view more: next ›