Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux

I've been running Bazzite OS on my living room big screen gaming PC since May. It's a really slick fedora-based distro that installs out of the box with Steam, proton, and graphics drivers ready-to-launch for gaming. It was really easy to use, and my games worked perfectly.

My high school age son got a new AMD proc/mb for his birthday, and I was surprised when he said he wanted to try dual booting Bazzite and Windows when we set it up. 2 weeks later, and he decided to kill the Windows boot and just use Bazzite full time. He has no linux experience and just figures it out.

Windows 11 is shit and Linux alternatives are prettier, easier to use, don't shove AI down your throat, and don't steal your data for profit. The time has come.

Linux really is in a good place I've been on it for some months now. It feels like win 7, it doesn't get in your way, it does what you want it to do when you want it to. And if you fuck something up its because you fucked it up... go fix it...
- "Fixing it" has been a lot easier to do lately as well. Most distros set up a rollback feature of some kind these days.
Your son is a badass.
Good on your son! Glad he sees the light. Windows is shittier and shittier all the time. I migrated away from it years ago. It’s absolute poison now.
I'm too old to tinker anymore. Bazzite has been a blessing. Rock solid.
I can’t wait for nvidia to fix the last few graphical glitches in steam big picture and game scope.
I have windows 11 and bazzite as dual boot. I haven’t moved over full time yet though. Mainly due to VR support and sailing…

Microsoft is already responding to the potential shift. The upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld from Microsoft and ASUS will reportedly ship with a gaming-optimized version of Windows 11 with a dedicated Xbox UI and interface that aims to streamline the experience while boosting in-game performance and overall handheld efficiency.

Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don't think this optimisation will make much of a difference.

MS optimization = maximize revenue streams = more ads = more spyware
I don’t believe a thing MS says is ever meant to improve the customer experience.
Given the popularity of the Steam Deck, the Xbox handheld would have to come free with the purchase of any Xbox exclusive game to stand a chance in that sphere, I think. The fact that it's Win11 immediately turns me off and I say this as someone who still uses Windows.
- lol, what is this 'Xbox Exclusive Game' you speak of, in 2025?
And if we take this as an actual attempt at a better handheld experience, then this is just further proof that competition breeds better products for consumers.
Yeah and honestly, whatever optimization they promise — or deliver, for that matter — won't sway me because it's the company itself and the country where it is based that I'm against at this point. So, there's no way I'm ever going to buy any MS handheld.
Given how much Microsoft wants to shove AI tools every where in Windows, I don’t think this optimisation will make much of a difference.
AMD's own Windows drivers also perform much worse in low power situations than the open source Linux drivers, whereas Windows game mode (or whatever it'll be called) is about reducing background tasks that consume RAM. Obviously reducing RAM consumption is beneficial but it's not the whole story.
The thing that confuses me is that Microsoft is no stranger to Linux. They use it in their data centers. It's plainly obvious if you know what other offerings are doing.
Their entire front end stack for azure virtual machines is OpenStack. Some years back they integrated with OpenStack to allow it to manage hyper-v, but OpenStack can also natively manage KVM hypervisors, as it was originally designed to do, and also VMware.
Hell, I'd be surprised if there isn't a Microsoft distro of Linux floating around (not available to the public... Not yet at least).
The people who seem to be pushing Microsoft, more than anyone, are game studios. Their garbage Anti cheat rootkits work best on Windows. So use Windows so they can low jack your PC.
- https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux is a thing, yes. Public and fully open source.
- Microsoft is moving away from allowing anything to run with those low level permissions after that CrowdStrike incident where rogue security software bricked millions of Windows PCs, so that might take out kernel anticheat as collateral damage.
Given how much Microsoft wants to enshitify its services. Windows 11 is proven to be no exception. They have no reason to stop at the Xbox brand. Even Microsoft games like their new flight sim has not escaped enshitification race to the bottom.
Fixed

Microsoft Recall and Steam Deck and Proton are why.

I tried setting up Windows 10 in a virtual machine recently and damn, what a miserable experience that was. "Please wait. We're getting things ready . . . please wait . . . We're getting things ready. Hey, you want Cortana? Tough shiat, we're installing it anyway. Do you need an Office App? Well we're going to install Live365, whether you like it or not. Also, we really want your email address. You don't have a choice. Just give us your damn email address. And your phone number, too."

Installing Linux: 15 minutes later: "You're done. Enjoy."

No to suggest that anyone should install Windows, but if you install Rufus then you can make the Window ISO skip most of the bullshit questions and TPM requirements before you write your flash drive.

If all you do is game, outside of a few key games (Destiny 2, uhh,couple others) the experience on Linux is better for many folks.

The success of Steam Deck has helped a lot. Prior to that Linux ports tended to be very perfunctory and they weren't tested or supported very well. I guess that now there are actual Linux gamers (via Steam Deck), that support has improved. That said, I think outside of Steam Deck and SteamOS, your experience of gaming is going to be extremely dependent on your GPU, driver support and a number of other factors. Things are far more likely to work well on Windows than they would for Linux.
- I could drill down into the work that went into DXVK before Proton came about, enabling the Steam Deck, but that's a boring history lesson. I will concede that newer bleeding edge hardware is far more likely to be plug and play on Windows, but one of the leading reasons I transitioned was Windows removing support for the audio chipset on the motherboard for my Ryzen 1600. Every time I rebooted, I'd have to unpack a zip file and reinstall the audio drivers, it was maddening.
  In my experience (so, totally anecdotal), my hardware is stable longer on Linux than Windows.
For flat games this is true, there is still work to be done for the VR side of things, even that has advanced by leaps and bounds in just the last 2 or 3 years
- check out https://lvra.gitlab.io/ for information on linux VR
- Yeah that's the biggest reason I haven't pulled the trigger on a VR set.
  The pace of hardware for the last few years has been crazy rapid with almost zero thought given to non-windows OS's. The people working on reverse engineering drivers for headsets get one operable just in time for it to be out of date.
I do a lot more than that, so, hard pass.
- Is it all in your browser, because pretty much everything is a web app now.
- I mean, yes, but I also do dev coding work, run AI models, produce audio and video content from my machine. But years ago I adopted a 'No BS' software approach and rid myself of software that was deliberately getting in my way so transitioning to a fully *Nix workflow wasn't an issue for me.
  If anyone working with aggressively anticonsumer software right now tried to switch, it's a nightmare.
lol no
- I never had a single issue so far. Actually, performamce is better on Linux every single time for me. I finally got rid of Windows since I have zero use for it. The only problem could be games with anti cheats.
  I'm always surprised when I hear people claiming they work in IT and find Linux to be complicated. I just installed Fedora on two of my friends' machines. Both are cluless about computers and they are doing perfectly fine. Now for basic tasks including gaming, a granny could use it without much issues if any.
  When was the last time you tried Linux? If it has been a while, you might be surprised how it has changed recently. Proton made everything so much easier.
  I'm not a technical person by the way; just a normal dude who uses Linux now.
- lol ya
- Maybe depends on what distro you are using. There are ones dedicated for gaming.

This is good. This data will eventually help influence game developers to support Linux. It won't happen over night, but we this trend continues, it'll eventually start getting some attention.

Switched to linux (popos - so far so good) this month because fuck microsoft. yeah, some things aren't perfect or require extra steps (modding, usually) but fuck microsoft. Fuck their AI shit, fuck their "recall" spyware, fuck their CEO that babbles about AI while laying off thousands of workers.

I'm a long-time Linux hacker and I'm currently running Pop! OS on my laptop and dev box. It's the best distro I've found yet that Just Works™ (but naturally still allows for all the customization I might want).
- I've also run mint and ubuntu, but this was very smooth.
  The only problem so far are I get a crackling in my headphones in at least one game (guild wars 2), and I'm not sure how to diagnose that. One of the related problems of windows being so dominant is the internet is full of SEO slop for windows problems
- really? I found the customization for Pop/COSMIC extremely limited.
With Pop!_OS you should be in for a good huge update in about 2026 or so. They normally released every half year with Ubuntu, but they haven't done a new release since the 22.04 LTS (Long Term Support) version because they're working on their own desktop environment and it's taking up most of the developer resources.
So hopefully in 2026 they'll release 26.04 with the new COSMIC DE to replace 22.04 with Gnome (with their customizations, also called 'COSMIC' so it gets confusing lol). I think technically they're working on a 24.04, but at this rate I think Ubuntu 26.04 will be out around the same time or even before COSMIC is fully ready.
So there's a decent chance you'll get a whole lot of improvements at once, which is cool

It was written in the scrolls. The day prophezised for hundreds of years: the year of the linux desktop.

The prophecy is being fulfilled, and our prophet Gabe made it possible.

How do you know if someone owns a Steam Deck? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

So anyway, a couple years ago I bought a Steam Deck. And since I bought it, virtually all of my gaming is on the Deck. Prior to that, virtually all of my game time was on a Windows PC. So, for me personally, there's been a big shift towards Linux for gaming.

The other big change that's coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can't be upgraded to Windows 11. These computers are perfectly functional and do everything the users need them to do, and they have no inclination to go out and buy a new computer just because. Especially in this economy. Additionally, there are quite a few people with computers that are capable of running Windows 11, but they have no desire to upgrade to a worse experience and an experience that is randomly different in a myriad different ways for no good reason. Both groups are ripe for the picking in terms of a switch to Linux. No, the year of the Linux desktop is not here, but the conditions for such a change are building. And this Steam data may present a picture of the larger trend. Who knows?

I ran a dual boot back in college to dabble with Linux a bit but gaming support back then was literally nonexistent. The Deck and Proton really reinvigorated that drive nearly a decade later.
This past winter I started a huge degoogling push and trying to replace big tech platforms in general, and I'd also recently quit the only the game I regularly played that didn't run on Linux due to anticheat bullshit,, so I said fuck it and set up a CachyOS dual boot and I haven't looked back since.
The dual boot is just there in case I ever need it for some odds or ends, or in case I break Cachy, but so far I've booted windows maybe 4 times since January.
- This last try at gaming under Linux (about a year ago with a desktop PC and Pop!OS) was a pleasant surprise given that my previous try (same machine, around 5 years before) was an exercise in frustration and I just gave up on it and that partition just stayed there in a dual boot config without being used until I nuked it in this latest try.
  This time it went so well that I'm now full time gaming in Linux and even though Windows is available as dual boot, I haven't booted it in many months. Granted, I don't do online multiplayer so don't suffer from Wine not being compatible with the Windows rootkits used for cheat protection in some of those games.
  And this high success rate is not even exclusively with Steam and Proton - I get about the same rate of success for games from GOG with Wine under Lutris.
  The ease of gaming in Linux seems to have advanced massively in the last few years.
The other big change that's coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can't be upgraded to Windows 11.
The average person just simply won't upgrade. These are the people who find regular updates or shutting of their PC already a pain, what makes you think they would switch to a completely different OS?
They all can upgrade to win 11. Nothing is stopping them. But you have to do a couple of steps.
Either way, Linux is better and Microsoft is playing stupid games.
- Unless their hardware doesn't support it. A lot of people are going to be tossing out perfectly good systems because they don't have a TPM.
- Not in all cases. My desktop PC came with windows professional (10), back in 2021. Upgrading to windows 11 is not included for free (not even to windows 11 "basic"), I need to pay a new license.

Okay, I finally installed a new SSD yesterday so I could dual boot and put CachyOS on it. Played a few games and it worked surprisingly well.

But it did take quite a bit more doing than installing Windows. The USB drive wouldn't boot when made with Rufus and I don't quite get how to manage the games installed in Proton (like where is their virtual C: drive?).

I plan on migrating more of my stuff onto Linux in the coming days and will see if it can't replace Windows eventually for me.

Welcome to gaming on Linux!
how to manage the games installed in Proton (virtual C drive)
They can be found in: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/
<game app id>
/pfx/drive_c/ For Elden Ring for example the path is: ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1245620/pfx/drive_c/
Biggest blockers are games with invasive and unsupported anti cheat or very new games. Check https://www.protondb.com/ for the latest reports on games.
I've had a lot of success using Ventoy for my USB drive writing needs. Every steam game has it's own folder for it's virtual windows directory. You want to look in /home/your_name/.steam/steamapps/compatdata The folders are all strings of numbers, each being the ID of the respective steam game. You can find the ID for any steam game just by going in it's store page and looking at the URL. You don't usually need to mess with this though, just browse the game files in your /steam/common folder.
- Yeah Ventoy did the trick for me eventually but then I ran into the next issue, namely that the instructions said to place the ISO on the drive. What I actually needed to do was to mount the ISO and to copy the files contained therein to USB.
  Thanks for pointing out the folder location. That was it. Now I don't have to launch the Battle.Net installer each time I want to play Hearthstone (added it to Steam as an external game, which is not a bad idea, if a bit awkward).
  Next will be how to share my Steam libraries between OSes and retain access to my (cloud) saves. Making first steps there with mounting my existing drives... but now I have to learn how to edit FSTAB... sigh.

Won't miss those years tweaking Windows to uninstall or disable bloatware and malware. I don't mind if more or less people migrate to Linux, I'm just grateful to those who are making and improving such amazingly good distros. 💪💛

Instead you'll spend your time littering your own computer with bloatware!

I've been using Arch for a little over a year, and it's been fun. I've learned so much more about computers and Linux itself. I highly recommend trying out Linux and you can do it here: https://distrosea.com/ - It's a website where you can try out different Linux distros in your web browser.

Lemmy Linux copium is one of the strongest in the world.

How else are we going to achieve nuclear fission?
- Don't you mean fusion? Fission is separate and we've already achieved it a long time ago.

It's not so much about users switching, it's more about the ones that will stick with it. And that we can't know for a few years yet.

Valve put together a good product this time compared to the first steam machines push. Most games work without fuss and it's priced well. They didn't start the handheld PC market but they sort of Apple'ed it by taking something other companies had been doing and streamlined it enough to get mainstream copycats, Lenovo/Asus/etc. Plus SteamOS/bug picture looks a lot better today than 10 years ago. So proven market/platform that can again try to undercut Windows machines in price because Linux is free and leverages the work of open source developers

Yeah, by a whole permille I bet.

Glad to be part of a trend, for a change!

I've been running Linux on my desktop for more than 30 years, so I've switched for a while. And while I'd certainly like to see it become more commonplace, I'm not sure a few decimal points are really going to change anything. It's nice that it's making progress, of course, but all in all, it's rather insignificant.
While it's under 10, or more likely 15%, nobody will care about it.

Developers already care about it. Not all of them, not all the way, but many are aiming for steam deck compatibility via proton. It's not perfect, and some devs are vehemently holding out, but it's progress!
- That doesn't seem to take a lot of effort. It's still a windows binary. And it's unfortunately simpler than figuring out if the user runs X or not.
macOS is barely 15% and people care a lot about it.
- People care a lot about macOS because you can charge users $15 for a GUI wrapper around a terminal command and they will pay and even recommend your app. I'm not even joking, there are a thousand examples of apps like this. If your app actually does anything, you can charge $30 and they will pay.
  Now on Linux you could release the cure for cancer for $0.99 and you'd get screamed at. And I say that as a Linux user. Which means you need significantly higher numbers than macOS to achieve the same revenue, which also means the companies developing the commercial software that holds back adoption of Linux will take a long while before starting to care.

Common Windows L

As people already stated in the comments, this may not be a permanent change for some (they find out something like destiny 2 refuses to work on Linux without bans, some other tools needed for certain use cases are not there yet or windows only), but I think is super important people understand there are alternatives, and not only windows or Mac. Hopefully gives more people awareness that something else is out there. And would be really cool if we had more of the user base that is on the verge to throwing away the machine because of windows 11 restrictions and instead, gives machines a second chance.

All we can do is guide them. Personally, I guide them to treasure I cannot have, since I'm damn near obligated to run and deeply understand Microsoft Windows because I work for IT support.
All of my work tools are Windows centric.
- I do use windows for work as well, but if people want adoption, it starts at home. I do see a need for Linux distros in general will have to make even a bigger shift for the user needs instead of whatever agenda people like to imply (I think open source is a good goal, but if I introduce Linux to someone, I will not for certain preach endlessly about this).
  We need more adoption, but I also see some camps will decide to further distance themselves from these groups of users.

I put KDE plasma on my elderly Mom's surface laptop. She uses it mostly for organising photos, and she's loving it. She complained that windows always "messes with her settings". If she gets it, you can too.

Just tried gaming on Linux because I forgot my Ally and was stuck on my laptop. Sorry, guys, it still sucks. It's getting better, though. Perhaps in another 10 years.

uh oh you said something against Linux on Lemmy
Could you be more specific? I've had very few issues gaming on Linux and haven't felt like I've been missing anything. Mind you, I do skip games with kernel anti-cheat, but that's the only real broad category of games I know have issues.
- This specific time, I couldn't synchronize my save files for GOG games. Something that is completely transparent on Windows.

So Linux bumps up 2 percentage points due to steam decks and all the linuxbois are taking a victory lap

Windows lives in your head rent free

You're worse than vegans, at least vegans have a moral position.

Edit: screenshotting this for when the mods ban me again

What an extremely normal way to respond to this post
- what an extremely neurotypical way to respond to my medically induced outrage
I'm in the process of jumping into Linux. Still getting my sea legs, but your take just seems intentionally inflammatory.
I'm not sure what you thought you were accomplishing by posting it.

What’s the best Linux distro to play games? Im currently on Ubuntu 22.04 and won’t leave it as my main but I have a AMD TR 1950 with a GTX 1080 TI will to play some final fantasy.

If you just want an experience as straight forward as the steam deck I have heard that the move is to just run Bazzite.
All the major desktop distros play games about as well as one another, assuming you set them up correctly.
Choose a distro based on other criteria, like the release cadence and admin tools that you find most comfortable. If you don't have any particular needs or preferences, I guess you could save 10 minutes by choosing a distro that installs Nvidia drivers by default, but it's not going to run games appreciably better than the others.
- Garuda Linux if you want something that just works out of the box, but with the power to do whatever you want. It's basically Arch with all the gaming stuff pre-configured for you.
- Not sure what you’re saying…. I download drivers for my hardware, download and install steam and my game and start playing? Or is it not that straight forward yet?
I left Debian for Arch recently and let me tell you, you immediately feel the difference with running the latest drivers for your machine. The bleeding edge drivers have upped my frames per second significantly in videos games compared to sticking with stable releases on Debian (and Ubuntu).
With the built-in archinstall script making Arch so easy to get going, I’d only reach for anything else if I really needed the stability.
- For anyone else reading this who plans to use Debian Stable for gaming, you really should enable Stable Backports. This gives you the option of newer drivers, kernel, etc. (you pick what you need individually) without having to give up the low-maintenance stability of the base system.
All major distros are fine, but there are some niche that specialise in making it easy for people to play games. I use Garuda Linux for that reason. It has it's own app that helps handling OS maintenance, you can install things like Heroic Launcher, Steam, and Proton with a couple of clicks, you have a nice app that checks for updates, etc., etc.
It's still Linux, which means random shit breaks for no reason, but for gaming and not having to worry about keeping the OS alive it's great.
- Linux in no way means that "random shit breaks for no reason", if anything that's Windows. Some distributions may be easier to break if you don't know what you are doing but that is not an OS problem.
I use arch, but they're all equivalent. A distro is more like a preconfigured linux
Just pick one of the popular ones and tinker
- Arch is the one thing that should be absolutely not recommended to beginners. Even implying that it is a suitable beginner distro in any way like you have done in this comment is only likely to drive away users when they inevitably get confused.
  Existing Windows users mostly are not interested in even knowing of the existence of the Arch Wiki. They will just give up and conclude Linux is shit.
I highly recommend Nobara.
- idk why you're downvoted hella ppl use proton ge and hes the one making nobara
Like the others have said, all major distros are fine. Ubuntu is or used to be Valve's "favourite distro" and the package that you can get from Valve's website is for Ubuntu. That being said, software on Linux should be installed using the package manager (the Software Centre) and not downloaded from the Web.
You may wish to upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS later. This is fairly easy (you can use the Software Updater application) but the newer versions have better drivers and newer GNOME versions which may bring better performance.

Anyone have good experiences with the NVIDIA 50 series on Linux? I've tried a bunch different flavors over the years and I'm fairly distro agnostic as long as it doesn't get too esoteric.

Also weird question does anyone know if Single Player Tarkov with Project Fika works on Linux? I think it should

Yeah, my gaming rig, running bazzite. Works how it should, no fuss, games well. Give it a run I say
My gaming distro of choice is Garuda. As long as I keep everything up to date, everything just works.
But it's also an Arch based distro so everything is bleeding edge, which poses risks of it's own. I've not had it bite me yet, but the risk is there.

Anyone know if CP2077 runs better on Linux than Windows?

By much? With HDR?

Sorry for the drive by comment, but this is like the one game my 3090 can’t quite handle to my satisfaction. I've thoroughly disabled the thing from rendering in Linux and don’t want to undo all that… But if I could get like another 10% over Windows, that would be incredible. Even 5% would be awesome.

As I promised, my own Cyberpunk testing of Windows Vs Linux on mostly the same hardware (they are on different SSDs, but I don't think that'll have a drastic impact).
TLDR: Windows framerates seem inconsistent, it's first benchmark I ran (the first Ultra without DLSS) was way faster with no explanation. Aside from that and Ray Tracing: Overdrive, Linux seems to win, and by a large degree (+28 FPS average on the Low preset seems ridiculous).
I don't think these results are broadly applicable to more machines. You probably won't get +28 FPS by switching to Linux.
My best guess is that the performance difference may have a lot to do with different power/thermal targets, or that Windows was doing a lot in the background (it was running an update, but I didn't expect a huge impact).
I'm guessing that on most hardware the performance difference will be pretty small.
Hardware: ROG Zephyrus G15 GA503QR Laptop Ryzen 9 5900HS, 16 GiB DDR4 RTX 3070 Laptop GPU 2560x1440 screen, up to 165 Hz
All benchmarks: plugged into OEM power supply. I held the laptop vertically so there were no restrictions to its airflow.
Game: Cyberpunk 2077 V2.3 with Phantom Liberty DLC, fullscreen 2560x1440. Values are given as Min / Average / Max FPS displayed by the game's built in benchmark.
Linux (Bazzite 42): NVIDIA driver 575.64.05 Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD Performance power profile
Low Preset ( no upscaling): 57.49 / 68.42 / 83.86 FPS
Ultra Preset(no upscaling): 32.91 / 39.27 / 49.71 FPS
Ultra (DLSS Transformer model, Auto): 41.11 / 48.70 / 61.30 FPS
Ray Tracing: Low Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 44.12 / 51.70 / 61.63 FPS
Ray Tracing: Ultra Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 29.24 / 34.26 / 39.81 FPS
Ray Tracing: Overdrive Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 15.03 / 17.71 / 20.45 FPS
Windows (Windows 11 Home 23H2): GeForce Game Ready Driver 580.88 SK Hynix HFM001TD3JX013N SSD "Turbo" power profile (in ASUS Armoury Crate)
Low Preset (no upscaling): 35.68 / 40.68 / 45.17 FPS
Ultra Preset(no upscaling): 40.53 / 52.88 / 65 FPS
Ultra Preset (no upscaling, Round 2): 29.68 / 35.63 / 39.94 FPS
Ultra (DLSS Transformer model, Auto): 36.71 / 47.20 / 55.32 FPS
Ray Tracing: Low Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 28.55 / 32.41 / 35.85 FPS
Ray Tracing: Ultra Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 22.23 / 27.25 / 30.86 FPS
Ray Tracing: Overdrive Preset (DLSS transformer model, Auto): 17.74 / 19.96 / 22.64 FPS
this is like the one game my 3090 can’t quite handle to my satisfaction
Nvidia and Linux don't have the best history. Their driver are not open source, so Valve developers have no means to improve performance and fix bugs on a driver level.
Success stories of Linux gaming are usually about Radeon and Arc GPUs whose drivers are fully open source.
- This is what I was afraid of, and reflects my experience in the past, unfortunately. I am intimately familiar with Nvidia’s drivers and my random Linux black screens…
  I would have gotten a 7900 TBH, but prices were terrible at the time.
- What? I have a 2060 and shit runs fine. Nvidia's drivers have improved a lot since the 2010s.
- And Directx 12(VKD3D) as of writing this has issues on Nvidia
Hey there! Recently downloaded Cyberpunk again to test my graphics card out.
openSUSE Tumbleweed, a 144hz 1080p ultrawide monitor (21:9), i9-10850K, nvidia 5080, raytracing and all settings on ultra, no DLSS fake frames only DLAA
I was getting from 75-120 (120 could be lower or higher as I can’t get to my computer right now) depending on what was on screen. In the city with lots of neon and ads going while driving around? 75-80 fps
Inside a building or not near any of the reflective causing lights? 90-120
I’m pretty sure my CPU is bottlenecking me for the most part, but it has never sweated on anything I threw at it, so didn’t see the need to upgrade just yet.
Hopefully that helps you out a little! I’ve got a lot of games I can report back on too, if needed! :)
- Thanks! Though it doesn’t mean much without a windows reference :P
  I’m pushing my poor 3090 to 4K with just RT reflections but a bunch of mods, and I’m generally getting over 60 with no framegen (which is my target).
  FYI I found the game actually looks better with most of the RT disabled:
  RT shadows tend to be blocky and flicker, while raster shadows “miss” more shadows but are razor sharp and stable.
  RT lighting is neat for, say, reflecting a neon billboard, but I find it often clashes with built in raster lighting. For instance, it turns neon signs into blobs and messed up the Arasaka atrium in the intro.
  RT reflections look incredible, especially in rain. No downside as far as I can tell.
  Path tracing is a whole different ballgame my card can’t handle. But (when modded to fix it) it’s apparently extra incredible, and basically disables all the other in game settings.
  Check out the digital foundry video too, which shows some of this
I am not sure, as I've actually only played it under Linux. I have a laptop with an RTX 3070. It's able to handle the raytraced low setting at 1080p, but I just run High instead so that the fan isn't as loud. And in my opinion that even looks pretty good. I might try start it under windows and run its benchmark because I'm curious now! I'll update here if I remember to do this test.
- Also, you might be able to fix that!
  I clock limit my 3090 to like 1700MHz-1750Mhz with Nvidia-smi (built into the driver) since any faster is just diminishing returns. You might check what “stable clocks” your 3070 runs at, and cap them slightlt lower, and even try an under volt as well.
  Be sure to cap the frame rate too.
  Do that, and you might be able to handle RT reflections and otherwise similar settings without much noise. The hit for just that setting is modest on my 3090 but much heavier with full “low” RT
With path tracing it runs significantly worse than it does on Windows. Without it, it runs roughly the same. RTX 4060 Ti.
- Awesome, thanks!
I think there's huge variability, but as a gross overgeneralization AMD gpus run Cyberpunk 2077 a bit faster on Linux than Windows, and nVidia gpus run it a bit slower on Linux than on Windows.
If you've got a spare usb hard drive you could always install Linux there for a test drive though. You might be able to find a setup that gets you the extra performance you're looking for.
- I already dual boot CachyOS! In fact I spent a lot of time tweaking schedulers, power, undervolting the GPU and such for compute performance, but I think it’s well tuned for gaming too.
  It’s just annoying because I beat the GPU into submission with tons of settings (as Nvidia is funny with Wayland), so its display out is totally disabled. It’s a lot to undo.
Anyone know if CP2077 runs better on Linux than Windows?
That's entire dependent on a whole host of things. CPU, GPU, distro (mostly kernel version), open source vs proprietary drivers, proton version etc. Also some numbers can artificially look better if the feature is just straight up ignored by proton, or just broken. If you're looking for some bleeding edge features then probably not.
- 7800X3D, Nvidia 3090, CachyOS, the latest arch kernel with whatever tweaks they have, I assume git Proton and all the distro's riced settings. On CP2077's side I’d like RTX reflections and DLSS as the only exotic settings, though I did run a mod that hacks in FSR 3.1 framegen.
  I realize I probably have to test this myself, heh. But from what I gather (and past experience on a laptop 2060 with Linux) is that Nvidia is disadvantaged on Linux in this scenario.

Steamdeck

I'm doing my part! Moving to a new country in a few days, part of the prep for that was to ditch my Windows desktop and I've been setting up a Linux laptop. Arch with KDE Plasma is so far the most enjoyable experience I've had with an OS

I've tried at various times to switch to Linux in the past. I'm enough of a turbo nerd you'd think it would have been easy for me but it was never quite there for one reason or another. This latest attempt though hot damn it's all smooth sailing. I've even converted one of my friends to Mint and making progress convincing people who don't want to use Windows 11 to just make the switch

Nvidia seems to be the biggest hurdle for most people. The simplest solution I've found has been universal Blue, Bazzite (specifically the Nvidia images). You don't have to think twice about Nvidia as everything is preconfigured for you out of the gate, forever, in perpetuity.
I'm not aware of the x3d issues you speak of.
- People often repeat that Nvidia is a nightmare to get working and that you need to install some sort of pre-packaged distro that configures Nvidia for you but... that hasn't been true for years?
  Get any distro you want, from Fedora to Arch, install nvidia-open, reboot... that's it? Maybe install extra packages for 32 bit support, video decoding and CUDA if you want, optionally. Not different from installing Nvidia drivers on Windows at all, except you're not running a .exe, but that's true for any package.
- In my experience the version of Pop!OS with Nvidia support also works out of the box with no hassle.
  I suspect the horror stories are from people who had to install the Nvidia support themselves.
I'm on Bazzite for almost a year now and I didn't have a single issue with my 5800X3D.
What distro your using?
Don't know about the X3D chips, but my 3070 TI is running flawlessly under Nobara (a Fedora flavor) - a few months ago there has been a huge boost in stability with the support of explicit sync.

Honestly, I kinda suspect the tariffs are speeding this up. I recently upgraded my desktop due to the suspicion that prices are gonna go bonkers shortly and since I was basically rebuilding it anyway, I went ahead and switched my last windows PC to Linux. Been a lot smoother than I had suspected, highly recommended.

I actually watched the prices increase by about 10-20% while ordering computers from work. This was through Dell so clear as mud normally for any given computer but the value of my invoices jumped by a clear 10-20% after the tarrifs started biting back in April
- Seems like an increase a bit in preparation. Who knows what they'll be/what shortages will occur over the next couple of years. After all, the current bluff is a 100% tariff on chips. Which is why if you're planning to upgrade in the next year or two and have the money, it might be a decent idea to pre-emptively update your parts before they jack up further.

It'll be a slow grind. I view. Linux today similar to Macs in like 2003. Low single digit market share but increasing adoption. What doesn't match is the lack of a huge company pushing out flagship advertised laptops/desktops with them that tie in to a very popular device like iPods. But today there's so many more computers being used that a low single digit market share today is probably way more people than Macs back in 2003. And Linux gaming today is better than gaming on MacOS has ever been. Today MacOS is like 15%

Beware some issues if your hardware isnt popular, I have freezing on all kernels past 6.136-2, so I'm stuck there. (test them all every update, no matter what I get hella random freezing requiring a power button restart) It is very stable and fast tho, kinda scary thinking the bug never gets fixed tho, still new to Linux and assuming it's bad to not update the kernel longgerm.

I had that issue last time I switched to Linux. Thankfully eventually it went away. It should help to distro hop to a more bleeding edge distro. Fedora specifically gets system updates every night through Discover.
- I'm on cachyos, thought arch was the most bleeding edge
Nvidia?
- all amd ryzen 6900hx 6850mxt

Neigsendoig and I happened to be Linux users since 2020. We're actually glad to see that people are noticing the writing on the wall.

It was inevitable.