Switching to Linux as daily driver
A recent YT video about installing games on Linux (specifically CachyOS, that i honestly didn't know existed... there's so many distros now!?) caught my attention and got me pondering an actual switch. I guess it got pushed by YT cause i've been following Valve's news lately, with their Steam Machine, Proton etc and naturally their push for Linux Gaming.
Anyway, switching to Linux has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I have always been curious about it and have started playing around with Linux (without going super deep, mind) ever since i got the courage to "risk breaking my PC" by installing shit on it on my own, around early 2000s. Today i am 42 years old engineer, a husband and dad, but also a geek and a big gamer. I am getting really sick of Microsoft's bullshit, the crazy bloat Windows is nowadays, eating tons of RAM to just run the OS, the constant enshitification of the OS (i am still using Win10, refusing to switch to that pile of shite Win11), the constant risk of viruses etc. However, me being a big time gamer as a main hobby and the general "dependence" on windows-based software has kept me away from really making the switch to Linux for now as my daily driver for my main PC. I use Linux on my travel PC since it's way lighter and better than Windows nowadays for simple travel tasks (mails, maps, banking, simple office type tasks, etc usual things), but i haven't really bothered installing it on my main PC for a good while. I have to admit, i hadn't realised how far Linux has actually gone in terms of gaming.
Reading through some posts and watching a few videos, it seems like it's almost there... but is it really?
I will list my main uses-cases for my home PC here, with some comments and questions:
- General use - web, office, whatever - seems pretty much set to me. Compatibility with MS Office files is not 100% seamless and the tools like OpenOffice are maybe a bit less sophisticated than MS Office but it's good enough. Which is the "best" office solution nowadays? I remember using Libre Office and Open Office and i know that the EU is building it's own Office thing right now...
- Photo editing - my second hobby is photography, so i use Adobe Lightroom a lot. I believe there's no native Linux port ? What's the best way to run LR on Linux ? I know there are some alternatives, some are even free/open source, but so far i haven't found anything that can really replace LR in a definitive way. Any suggestions, if running LR doesn't work well for now?
- Gaming - the big blocker for me - Years ago, when i was playing around with Debian, there was no Proton, Wine was a young thing and wasn't really... great. All in all, gaming on Linux was not worth it. As i said earlier, things seem to have changed A LOT since then. What's even more encouraging is that Valve are building their whole hardware branch on Linux, and them being the biggest company in PC gaming, i believe things will only get better from now on. Maybe companies will start writing native Linux editions of their games too one day... In the meantime, there are a few questions still tho
- Compatibility through Proton vs SteamOS - the official SteamOS page claims they have over 18k games compatible now... but does that also mean they are all compatible with any Linux+Proton setup too?
- New games compatibility - Since Proton, if i understand correctly, is a layer that "translates" windows code and sits between games and the OS, it itself needs to be updated to support new releases? Is it case-by-case or more broader compatibility sweeps? Can games be compatible right "out of the box" ? How fast does the project move, currently?
- ARM vs x64 - I know Valve's main focus is on ARM architecture, since their HW runs on it... is the x64 version of Proton affected negatively by that? (Held back, slower, etc)
- Multiplayer and anti-cheat - The big one, i guess. The last few years i've been playing more MP than SP games so this is a big concern for me. I found some info about Steam "working hard" on anti-cheat integration in their HW AND Proton, but no real dates or anything solid. I also found this site - https://www.gamingonlinux.com/anticheat/ - according to which Squad, Deadlock and Arc Raiders, Broken Arrow (games i currently play) should work with Proton, however Foxhole (another one i play) is not on the list at all... And i don't even know how reliable the site is. So, what's the general situation currently, with MP games and anti-cheat? Does it generally work, not work, "works but it's complicated", ... ?
- Performance - from what i see on YT, performance is actually impressive (sometimes better than windows?), but still - what should i expect?
- Other Windows software - Other than office, games and Lightroom for photos, i have many other applications for random shit like focus stacking, home design, digital document signing etc. If there's no native Linux version available, is it possible nowadays to run any Windows-based software on Linux through an emulator of sorts, similar to games through Proton ?
I'd appreciate some genuine answers, not "rtfm" (i will rtfm when/if i get to setting up, don't worry 😛)