RedEye9 wrote on Jan 15, 2016, 14:53:
Only if you want to spend the rest of your life searching for driver workarounds while not being able to play games.
And the games you want to play won't be available, ever, on linux.

I think the problems Linux has right now can be solved with enough attention. Just a few years ago you could count the number of Linux games released in a given year on a single hand. Over the course of about 2-3 years the number Linux games rose pretty dramatically. It still has years before it will be even considered on the level of OSX to justify a port of an AAA game.

Just think back a few decades to the horrors of early DOS and Windows Gaming was like. I remember before I had proper internet access that I had to scrounge through the PC manuals to find out the ports/IRQs just so you can use the Sound Card. Or having to modify the config.sys/autoexec.bat to setup minimize memory usage or to load a TSR driver to be able to have mouse support in a game. To be honest Linux gaming is light years beyond that mess.

Windows had the virtue of a few decades of developer support and resources to solve lot of that initial difficulty. Linux could have that if Valve and other parties keep their resolve for a few more years.

Should you cut yourself off from the majority of recently released games, after already choosing to cut your performance to a third? Tough question. I'll have to think about that one for a while.

It's a question of what laptops are for. People buy laptops to do work on them. Gaming laptops have been and will always be retarded: to get comparable performance you have to spend about three times as much money, for a 6lbs monstrosity of a laptop with 2 hours of battery life.

So if you have and routinely use a laptop, it's presumably because you have work to do, which presumes you have a job, which further presumes that there are roughly 1000 times more worthwhile games to play than you have time to devote to them. That means what little time you do spend gaming is going to be selectively spent on a handful of titles, and most certainly NOT playing every major release simply because you derive your core identity from being a "gamer".

In that context, being able to play CS:GO, with significant but not huge performance gains over Windows, on the Ubuntu/Fedora/Gentoo laptop you use for work may in fact be all you need to satisfy your gaming needs, because if you take your career and family and social lives seriously, its doubtful you have time for anything more than that.

NKD wrote on Jan 15, 2016, 15:34:
At least the Linux fanboys...

Speaking as one of those "fanboys":

• I dual boot because I do want the best selection of games available
• I buy almost every major title that becomes available for Steam and quite a few indie titles. While I am pragmatic, and understand that the market share of Linux is excruciatingly tiny, I also understand that someone has to break the chicken-and-egg stalemate. So I do my little part to help show that there is an interest in gaming on Linux.
• My actual performance numbers skew pretty heavily in favor of Linux. It boots faster, even with decrypting the disk, uses less system memory, and, in native vs native comparison, it almost invariably comes out ahead. KSP, for example, actually performs better by about 40%.
• Drivers are a non-issue. Even if you're new to Linux and using the wonderfully new user friendly Linux Mint, there are plenty of driver managers that now come baked in to all the major distros that download the most stable proprietary driver sets for your hardware. I literally haven't had to hunt for a driver in years and I have hopped through all the major distros that either are, or based on, Debian, Red Hat, Arch, or SUSE. I've settled on Korora which is the best Fedora based experience I've ever had the pleasure of using. Hell, even my mother uses it as she's about as technically savvy as any 60+ year old person is bound to be.

I don't get the Windows fanboyism, either. It's just an OS, not a member of your family. Be platform agnostic and enjoy the benefits of all platforms. Yes, even OSX.

NKD wrote on Jan 15, 2016, 15:34:
Should you cut yourself off from the majority of recently released games, after already choosing to cut your performance to a third? Tough question. I'll have to think about that one for a while.

At least the Linux fanboys quoted in the article talk some sense: dual boot at most.

some games yes, some games work fine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in a bubble about Linux, but the gains achieved since Valve got involved are immense, and goes to show what happens when heavyweight industry support happens. That's not discounting Unity, SDL and other great tech enabling development outside of windows.

Should you cut yourself off from the majority of recently released games, after already choosing to cut your performance to a third? Tough question. I'll have to think about that one for a while.

At least the Linux fanboys quoted in the article talk some sense: dual boot at most.

RedEye9 wrote on Jan 15, 2016, 14:53:
Only if you want to spend the rest of your life searching for driver workarounds while not being able to play games.
And the games you want to play won't be available, ever, on linux.

Note that the article is about "gaming laptops" not "gaming desktops". While I love my laptop and use it far, far more than my desktop gaming rig, the fact is that you are going to have to drop a lot cash ($2500+) to get something even comparable to the hardware in a $800-1000 gaming desktop. So, if your primary criterion for OS selection is "be able to play every game I could possibly want, but on my laptop" then you clearly haven't put a lot of thought into what form factor of PC you should buy. Anyone playing games on a laptop is doing so with the understanding that they WILL have to lower graphics settings from time to time, and that they aren't going to be able to run the 2016 equivalent of Crysis, i.e. you won't be able to play all the games you want.

With that all in mind is Linux a bad OS for a gaming laptop these days? Not unless you're willing to invest upwards of $3000 in an overpriced "gamer's laptop" that still won't be as good as your $800 gaming desktop.

RedEye9 wrote on Jan 15, 2016, 14:53:
Only if you want to spend the rest of your life searching for driver workarounds while not being able to play games.
And the games you want to play won't be available, ever, on linux.

Antiquated advice.

Yes. Yes you should.

Only if you want to spend the rest of your life searching for driver workarounds while not being able to play games.
And the games you want to play won't be available, ever, on linux.