I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop
90 points by rau
90 points by rau
I think most people here are missing that this article is aimed at gamers. So it doesn't matter if distros have been usable for general computing for a while. What's important to this person and their audience are the recent improvements to the WINE ecosystem and graphics.
Laptops are still a mixed experience, but most PC gamers are on desktop, and the article's title explicitly mentions those.
I'm happy to see a fairly big gaming news site post this, I think it's more interesting for the meta factor that progress is paying off, not about what's possible for the average lobster.
and the article's title explicitly mentions those.
A friend of mine exclusively used a laptop as their desktop. He would just buy the most powerful one he could get since he didn't see the utility of having more than one PC. I don't think it's explicitly mentioned, but the term is used colloquially as your "main PC".
There have been a number of cycles of a laptop (with external kb/mouse/monitor) being just as good as a tower as your main computer, when the best tower you could get was...
68030 (maybe 80386?)
PPC G3, Pentium III, PPC G4
Core {2} {Duo}
And my current Core i9-13900HX laptop loses very little to either 13900K or 14900K desktops -- I've run benchmarks such as Linux kernel compiles and Verilator simulations on mine and a friend's 14900K desktop and there is only 10% in it. My 2023 laptop is faster than my huge 2019 water cooled 32 core (64T) Threadripper 2990WX in every way.
Laptops are still a mixed experience
I think laptops are great too, but you need to cherrypick hardware a bit. It's unfair to expect any machine to work, given the lack of cooperation from manufacturers. On reasonably standard x86_64 hardware, things work really well IMHO.
I don't know I'd make that assertion even still.
I'm using a Surface Pro 6 (2018) since it's the laptop I own. I finally got fed up with Windows casually using 4 of its 8 GB of RAM leaving me with very little space to do productive work with only vscode and a firefox tab or two open. I installed Kubuntu since it sounded like the easiest path with the best support for the hardware. It works, mostly, but I still run into weird bugs with the hardware like being unable to adjust brightness, unable to go into battery saving mode, weird graphical artifacts at the edges of the screen, coming out of sleep being unresponsive, but I did win on battery and RAM usage where my normal flow was maxing out the RAM, I now sit comfortably around 5-6GB committed.
If I had more RAM on the laptop, I think I would've stuck with Windows and used WSL2 instead.
Since it's the laptop I own
I've had a much better time running Linux since I started buying hardware with the intent of running Linux in the first place. I wouldn't expect macOS to work on random hardware made by Microsoft so I think it's pretty amazing Kubuntu does at all. I think a lot of the reputation Linux has comes from Windows refugees with random hardware.
If you check lists like this one when you pick your hardware, you'll have a better time, and I don't think it's unreasonable to check your hardware for compatibility with the software you like before purchase
The three "featured" laptops are certified to work with 22.04 :lolsob: (or maybe they just haven't updated their website for several years)
In the past, Surface devices weren’t well supported (too many bespoke components?), but maybe that’s changed. Have you seen this? https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface
Ironically, all of the Microsoft Surface devices I have inherited can’t run a supported version of Windows anymore, so they’ll either end up on Linux or in the e-cycle bin.
My partner uses a Microsoft Surface I set up with Gnome and NixOS and this set of kernel patches + drivers for the touchscreen. There's a few snags that come up every now and then (the wifi driver causes a kernel panic during poweroff every now and then (might have been fixed by now), and sometimes to get out of sleep you need to close the keyboard/lid and open it again) but for the most part it works fine and I've heard no complaints in >1 year.
Thanks! That is honestly one of the killer NixOS features I want to try: being able to copy a config that’s optimized for a specific device.
I don't think I'd be able to do it without NixOS. It drives the maintainership burden down a lot, particularly on devices that I don't use often. I have no idea how complicated it is to use a patched kernel in other distros but I don't think it's as easy as NixOS makes it!
Yes! I went through this process just last month, so I'm very recently migrated and using the latest available drivers. I mostly use the laptop for web browsing or hacking on scripts / some Rust projects when traveling. I've used Linux for a while (~eight years professionally) out of necessity from my work and interest, but not as a primary desktop aside from a few delves into Ubuntu a decade or more ago.
Yawn.
Linux has been "okay" for desktop usage for several decades now. The set of things that are finicky is moving away from essential things (modem network drivers, then wifi drivers, then GPU drivers, touchpad... now someone down this thread is complaining about the difficulty of setting up HDR support), but there will always remain some less-comfortable zone around new hardware or compatibility with proprietary software. For some this has never been an issue, for some the issues vanished years or decades ago, and for some this will forever remain an issue and they will prefer (or be forced to use) a proprietary operating system for reasons.
Two things are relatively new (as in: from the 2020s):
someone down this thread
Yep, me.
is complaining about the difficulty of setting up HDR support
Yes, when the article in question is about PC Gaming, and all platforms except Linux have great support for HDR in gaming, I think it's fair to complain that Linux lags here.
I certainly did not mean this as a disparaging remark -- this limitation is on-topic and I trust you that it is troublesome. I'm just pointing out that, relatively to "not being able to connect to the network" (which would be a common failure point if installing your first Linux distribution in the 2000s, and even sometimes in the 2010s if you assumed wifi would work and had certain hardware), or "not being able to use my GPU", this is a rather niche issue. Again, there is nothing wrong with it, it's a fair complaint, but niche.
I don’t think there is any operating system I find usable atm.
I agree that tha macOS WM is pretty bad, but there's plenty of ways to make it work better. I use PaperWM.Spoon and I love it - it's like niri but for macOS, and despite the limitations it does a pretty good job. Plenty of people use yabai and I used to like it too, but PaperWM is just much better.
I don't get the macOS hate. It's an opinionated OS/GUI but not horrible.
It is a valid opinion that macOS GUI is not great. I used it for a decade, but it feels sluggish and kind of cumbersome to use compared to KDE.
And somebody using sway et.al. could be sharing this opinion even more.
Valve has been working on Linux support for gaming for well over a decade now: the original Steam Machine was released in 2015! What changed in recent years is that at last it got to the point of being ready for the mainstream.
I'm really excited about what System76 is doing with PopOS and Cosmic. And we also Value with the Steam Machine. I think this year we'll at least see some nice change in the space
I use Ubuntu on my laptop (ASUS Zenbook), and while I wouldn't switch back to windows,
(I guess some of this is my own fault for buying a random windows laptop and expecting it to just work with linux. In any event, I would not recommend this experience to someone who doesn't want to get deep in the linux weeds.)
To add to this - just buy a computer that will work with Linux. If you're buying a computer, just buy one that works with Linux. You will be a happy chappie.
This has been true for well over a decade. It's easier to set up and use than anything else available except maybe android if android is ok for your needs.
I really want to switch to Linux for my gaming HTPC, but HDR support is still wonky and requires too much configuration to be worth it, and Windows has some gaming features (like Auto HDR) that make it so much more pleasant to use. Gaming in HDR is so much better and an incredible step change on a good TV with games that support in well that I don't want to give it up.
How are you setting it up? I run 'gamecope --hdr-enabled --steam -- steam -gamepadui' from tty and it works fine, but I don't tweak the HDR further.
"I run from tty" is literally the opposite of what gamers want to do :) I just want to press the button in steam and make game go!
Quite a sweeping statement. I got into programming via gaming on Windows, long before I had ever touched a Linux machine.
I can't make it a push of a button (reliably at least) unless you have integrated graphics, but I can make you a disk image if you have Intel or AMD GPU and an USB stick.
The only reason i keep a windows install now is for 2xko (uses riot vanguard for kernel anti cheat). Last I checked a few anti cheat/DRM tools dont fully work on linux but im hopeful within another year or two that can finally be figured out.
Im hopeful the steam machine is one of the last pushes to get linux more widely used, steam deck has already done a lot of the leg work
Any of the kernel-level ones don’t. EasyAntiCheat has an options devs can enable to allow Linux but the Linux AC apparently sucks.
I was surprised to find Arc Raiders worked first try under Proton, and with decent performance. That said the perf was still ~10% worse which was noticeable. So close.
I'm using an nvidia RTX 4070 Ti and my understanding is AMD GPUs are better-supported.
I'm still amazed Microsoft's CEO didn't drag Gabe Newell into a board room and give him the speech from Network when Valve started developing Linux gaming infrastructure.
Why would you have to be 'brave' to say the Linux is good? Or is it a subliminal scam-web-browser advertisement of sorts?..
This post is on PC Gamer and is meant for a PC gaming audience where Linux is not very well established. The "brave" part is probably a little bit of clickbait on the editor's part.
I’m picking up the Steam Machine as soon as I can.
I’ve already switched to Linux for around a year now and quite like it. This will just be a hardware and convenience upgrade.