I might not switch on my current daily driver, but I’m seriously thinking of converting an extra PC I have lying around and seeing what all the fuss (foss) is about.
I’ve installed Lubuntu on my ancient laptop and it’s amazing how much faster and more stable it is! It’s almost like a new machine that is also crap for gaming 😄
Mileage will vary depending on the type of games you enjoy. In particular, the worst group of games are multiplayer competitive with invasive anti-cheats - those tend just not work at all.
Otherwise, gaming in general has gotten very viable(especially easy on Steam), they run anywhere from okay to great from my experience.
Same tbh. The laptop I mostly use for browsing and streaming while out and about, but my main is a gaming computer meant for gaming games lol, which is why I’m still running Windows on that one.
The veterans keep telling me that it’s easy to get Windows games to work in Linux, but unless the problem is either Lubuntu specifically or I’m genetically more of an idiot about getting games to work on it thananythingelse, including getting everything elsetowork, “easy” is not the word I’d use…
Dude, Lubuntu is not made for gaming. For gaming, you would want either KDE (preferred over GNOME due to, among others, VRR/FreeSync/G-Sync, HDR and tearing support) or GNOME.
Regarding the distro:
Fedora and openSUSE Tumbleweed are great options if you don’t usually play for hours, as they are more aimed at general use.
Nobara and Bazzite (both Fedora-based) are the best of the best, for ease of use, performance, etc., with the biggest difference between both being that Nobara is mutable, while Bazzite is immutable.
If you want an Arch-based gaming distro, there is CachyOS, but I don’t like it very much.
Yeah I know Lubuntu isn’t much of a gaming distro. I chose it because it’s so lightweight and stable that my ancient and unreliable laptop actually became useful for a sort of dress rehearsal for taking the plunge on my main.
I was trying to make it install and run really old games as proof that, with the right tools and advice from people who’d made them work, I would be able to run the games I usually play on the main in Pop OS or something. After several days of collecting and following advice, I got as far as knowing to use bottles for the install and “add non-steam game” in Steam (with Proton) but couldn’t get bottles to install in a way so that the directory would actually be findable for Steam or even myself outside of the bottles sandbox afterwards.
After a couple days of a bunch of trial and error following all advice on that to the letter failed miserably, I finally reached “fuck this” and decided to save myself the frustration of continuing to do what everyone said works without having it work.
At least on my end, changing Bottles’ permission settings using Flatseal or KDE Plasma’s integrated Flatpak settings to make it have access to all users’ files makes it work correctly.
Remember to always use the Flatpak version of Bottles, because the native versions are usually very outdated and broken (the RPM version, for example, is totally broken and in a version from mid to late 2022).
That’s just it: I AM using Flatseal and as far as I can tell it gave me all of the confirmation that it’s been installed correctly and works…and nothing else. No functionality changes
As for KDE Plasma, a cursory search seems to indicate that it’s not compatible with Lubuntu, which is kind of a deal breakers unless one of the compatible ones is as lightweight AND as stable AND as newbie friendly as Lubuntu, which would be a minor miracle IMO lol
I think you can try your luck with either Nobara or Bazzite, they are very user-friendly. I find Nobara more user-friendly, but Bazzite is an immutable distro, so it is naturally more stable, more secure, etc.
I use Nobara KDE, and the idle RAM consumption is of around 1 GB.
I might not switch on my current daily driver, but I’m seriously thinking of converting an extra PC I have lying around and seeing what all the fuss (foss) is about.
I’ve installed Lubuntu on my ancient laptop and it’s amazing how much faster and more stable it is! It’s almost like a new machine that is also crap for gaming 😄
Gaming is 90% of what I use my PC for, which is what has been holding me back this long.
Mileage will vary depending on the type of games you enjoy. In particular, the worst group of games are multiplayer competitive with invasive anti-cheats - those tend just not work at all.
Otherwise, gaming in general has gotten very viable(especially easy on Steam), they run anywhere from okay to great from my experience.
Same tbh. The laptop I mostly use for browsing and streaming while out and about, but my main is a gaming computer meant for gaming games lol, which is why I’m still running Windows on that one.
The veterans keep telling me that it’s easy to get Windows games to work in Linux, but unless the problem is either Lubuntu specifically or I’m genetically more of an idiot about getting games to work on it thananythingelse, including getting everything elsetowork, “easy” is not the word I’d use…
Dude, Lubuntu is not made for gaming. For gaming, you would want either KDE (preferred over GNOME due to, among others, VRR/FreeSync/G-Sync, HDR and tearing support) or GNOME.
Regarding the distro:
Fedora and openSUSE Tumbleweed are great options if you don’t usually play for hours, as they are more aimed at general use.
Nobara and Bazzite (both Fedora-based) are the best of the best, for ease of use, performance, etc., with the biggest difference between both being that Nobara is mutable, while Bazzite is immutable.
If you want an Arch-based gaming distro, there is CachyOS, but I don’t like it very much.
Yeah I know Lubuntu isn’t much of a gaming distro. I chose it because it’s so lightweight and stable that my ancient and unreliable laptop actually became useful for a sort of dress rehearsal for taking the plunge on my main.
I was trying to make it install and run really old games as proof that, with the right tools and advice from people who’d made them work, I would be able to run the games I usually play on the main in Pop OS or something. After several days of collecting and following advice, I got as far as knowing to use bottles for the install and “add non-steam game” in Steam (with Proton) but couldn’t get bottles to install in a way so that the directory would actually be findable for Steam or even myself outside of the bottles sandbox afterwards.
After a couple days of a bunch of trial and error following all advice on that to the letter failed miserably, I finally reached “fuck this” and decided to save myself the frustration of continuing to do what everyone said works without having it work.
At least on my end, changing Bottles’ permission settings using Flatseal or KDE Plasma’s integrated Flatpak settings to make it have access to all users’ files makes it work correctly.
Remember to always use the Flatpak version of Bottles, because the native versions are usually very outdated and broken (the RPM version, for example, is totally broken and in a version from mid to late 2022).
That’s just it: I AM using Flatseal and as far as I can tell it gave me all of the confirmation that it’s been installed correctly and works…and nothing else. No functionality changes
As for KDE Plasma, a cursory search seems to indicate that it’s not compatible with Lubuntu, which is kind of a deal breakers unless one of the compatible ones is as lightweight AND as stable AND as newbie friendly as Lubuntu, which would be a minor miracle IMO lol
I think you can try your luck with either Nobara or Bazzite, they are very user-friendly. I find Nobara more user-friendly, but Bazzite is an immutable distro, so it is naturally more stable, more secure, etc.
I use Nobara KDE, and the idle RAM consumption is of around 1 GB.
What game are you trying to play and are you using Valves Proton?