Screw it, I’m putting in Linux

This time I’m actually going to do it. I’m going to place Linux on my gaming PC. Calling it now. 2026 is the yr of Linux on the desktop. Or a minimum of on mine.

Linux has been a superbly viable desktop OS for ages. But gaming on Linux is now viable, too. Valve’s exhausting work getting Windows video games to run nicely on the Linux-based Steam Deck has lifted all boats. Gaming handhelds that ship with Windows run higher and have greater body charges on Bazzite, a Fedora-based distro, than they do with Windows. And after studying in regards to the upcoming Steam Machine and Antonio’s expertise operating Bazzite on the Framework Desktop, I wish to attempt it.

To be clear, my desktop works high quality on Windows 11. But the final ratio of cool new options to egregious bullshit is low. I don’t wish to discuss to my laptop. I don’t wish to use OneDrive. I’m certain as hell not going to make use of Recall. I’m bored with Windows attempting to get me to make use of Edge, Edge attempting to get me to make use of Bing, and all the pieces attempting to get me to make use of Copilot. I paid for an Office 365 subscription so I might edit Excel recordsdata. Then Office 365 become Copilot 365, and I attempted to make use of it to open a Word doc and it didn’t understand how.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is ending help for Windows 10, together with safety updates, forcing individuals to purchase new {hardware} or dwell with the dangers. It’s disabling workarounds that allow you to arrange Windows 11 with an area account or with older {hardware}. It’s turning Xboxes into PCs and PCs into upsells for its different companies. Just this week, the corporate introduced that it’s placing AI brokers within the taskbar to show Windows right into a “canvas for AI.” I don’t assume Windows goes to be a greater working system in a yr, so it seems like a superb time to attempt Linux once more.

I’m not usually one to alter frogs midstream, however the water certain is getting sizzling.

That’s to not say I do know what I’m doing. I’ve used Macs for a decade for work, and I dabbled in Ubuntu 20-something years in the past, however in any other case I’ve been a Windows man since 3.1. At first, that’s as a result of it’s what we had at house, later as a result of that’s the place the video games had been, and at last out of pressure of behavior (and since that’s the place the video games had been). I introduced a desktop to school as an alternative of a laptop computer (so I might play video games), and I’ve been constructing my very own PCs for 18 years. I began my journalism profession at Maximum PC journal, testing gaming PC elements.

I attempt to keep aware of all the main working techniques due to my job, so along with my work MacBook I even have a Chromebook, a ThinkPad, and a set of older {hardware} I refuse to eliminate. I can work fairly nicely in Windows, in macOS, or in ChromeOS.

My experiences with Linux over the previous decade, however, have largely been as a collection of extraordinarily non-obligatory Tasks:

All of these initiatives, besides the Chromebook one, took longer than anticipated, and reduce into my vanishingly uncommon discretionary time. That’s additionally the time I take advantage of for gaming, studying, staring into the void, and half-starting organizational initiatives, so you may see how treasured it’s to me.

The prospect of as an alternative utilizing that point attempting to get my laptop again to a baseline stage of performance — that’s, as helpful because it was earlier than I attempted putting in Linux — is tempting, but it surely’s additionally why I haven’t executed it but.

It’s a superb time to attempt gaming on Linux. Antonio and Sean have been having enjoyable with Bazzite, a Linux distro that mimics SteamOS; my buddy and former colleague Will Smith is cohosting a PCWorld podcast known as Dual Boot Diaries with this precise premise.

And what higher system to attempt it on than my private desktop with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super graphics card? I simply rebuilt this factor. The Windows set up is just like six months previous. It’s working about in addition to Windows does.

So actually, why wouldn’t I blow that up and begin over?

Based on listening to 2 and a half episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and a short textual content dialog with Will, I’m going to put in CachyOS, an Arch-based distro optimized for gaming on trendy {hardware}, with help for cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs and an allegedly straightforward setup.

I don’t anticipate issues to go easily. I don’t actually know what I’m doing, and Linux remains to be a really small share of the PC gaming world. As of the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey — the perfect proxy we’ve for PC gaming {hardware} information as a complete — simply over 3 p.c of Steam customers are operating Linux. Of these, 27 p.c are utilizing SteamOS (and due to this fact a Steam Deck), 10 p.c are utilizing Arch, 6 p.c are utilizing CachyOS, 4 p.c are utilizing Bazzite, and the remaining are cut up over a bunch of distros.

So if something goes improper in my set up, it’ll be a variety of forum-hopping and Discord looking out to determine all of it out. But I’ve cleverly organized it so the stakes are solely medium: I’ve different machines to work on whereas my desktop is inevitably borked (and to run packages like Adobe Creative Suite), and if I find yourself spending hours of my discretionary time studying Linux as an alternative of gaming, nicely, that’s not the worst consequence.

Maybe it’ll all go easily and I’ll report again in a couple of weeks, one other prophet of the revolution. Maybe it’ll go terribly and I’ll come crawling again. Only one solution to discover out.