Linux Mint is still going strong after being my daily driver for 4 months, and I don't think i will be going back anytime soon.

I’m gonna get shit for it, but gaming on Linux really isn’t great imo.

My experience is that it’s a pain in the arse to get anything running, performance is worse, vsync is fucked, no HDR, doesn’t work with Hue Sync, and then a hundred other miscellaneous problems.

Proton is an incredible achievement from a technical standpoint, and if people are happy to put up with issues to protect their privacy then good on them, but I think people oversell how good the actual Linux gaming experience is.

P.S. I don’t need suggestions on how to fix the issues I listed. I’m more than able to resolve them if I had the time, I just don’t want to have those problems to start with.

Linux games work just fine on my SteamDeck.

Not sure how to add pictures here yet so you have to imagine Leo laughing with drink here.
I guess I'm a "casual gamer" and I tend to avoid games using anti-cheat (not clear on how much access to my computer I'm giving that software). So far, for me, the games have "just worked". I'm even alpha testing a new game (Palia) in Lutris and it seems to be working just fine.
Actually, I have had minimal problems overall. The only games I have been unable to play are those with 'Easy Anti Cheat'. But more often than not I can click install on Steam and start playing games first try just like on Windows. I do still check tho on protondb if anyone else has had issues getting the game to work just out of habit.
Most things are easy to get running in my experience, and I've never noticed performance loss. My only gripe is lack of RTX support, but I plan on switching to AMD anyway so I'm not too fussed.

Not sure what you mean by vsync being fucked?

I do keep windows installed tho, because modding Bethesda games specifically has been a major pain in the ass for me on Linux. Outside of that and a couple other minor things I play everything in Linux with little effort. Still wouldn't recommend it to the average Joe though, but I love to tinker.
For what it’s worth, Apex Legends literally runs smoother on my Arch Linux install than my Windows 10 install. It was completely unexpected, but a very welcome discovery.
It's absolutely far from perfect, but I'm happy because of how much better it's gotten compared to how it used to be. Like, similar to like how everytime I find myself complaining about emptying my shitty dishwasher I remind myself that not long ago I had to do them by hand.
Yeah I tried it as well and it worked, but it was annoying. I used Ubuntu and every now and then some of my games would break after package/OS updates, which sucked because the games usually took effort to work well. I already spend my day solving tech problems and really don't feel like dealing with it after work, so I settled for Windows as my desktop.

Still, it's way better than it was 10 years ago and it keeps improving. With Windows continuing and worsening its anti-consumer practices I could see myself on Linux for desktop usage in the future at some point.
Speaking as someone who has had a lot of issues running windows games in Windows in the past I gotta say, my experience is the other way around, sure they both have issues but when linux has them I actually have a way to fix them, often with just clicking a few bottons to install libraries

Unless it's through steam, then it just works in my experience
I honestly agree, the only exception is the steam deck. I don't know how, but that thing runs games really smooth. I really want CoD, BF2042 and R6S to support Linux, these games are stopping me from daily driving linux.
- Yeah, I imagine that’s helped by Valve working hard to get games running on a device they have a lot of control over, making it easier to fix/optimise games.
  
  Gaming on Linux will obviously continue to improve, but I think it will always be playing catch up and I don’t see most game devs bothering to support it, unfortunately.
I wholeheartedly agree that people massively oversell gaming on Linux.

If you're lucky though you might be in a position where most of the games you play not only run on Linux but actually run better than on Windows, even non natively through Proton, how ever that black magic works.

I still dual boot Windows though for those few outliers which is annoying, especially when it wants to update itself after you didn't use it in 4 months and everything runs very slow.

I run both windows 10 and linux on different machines, I legit had a nightmare last night that my windows machine updated itself to windows 11.

Mint is an excellent "daily driver" option. I used it for years. Running EndeavourOS these days but nothing bad to say about Mint. If I'd have stayed with it, I'd have likely moved to LMDE by now though. Although, that's more about my concerns with the direction Canonical is heading than Mint itself.

I was actually thinking about that, I might do the same if Ubuntu decides to move away from support deb packages like they said they would.

https://liquorix.net/

The liquorix kernel has done wonders for me on that front. Your experience will vary though.

The most dangerous curl sudo bash on the internet :P meh it's probably fine...

People always paint Mint as a "beginner distro". That's just so dumb. Mint is perfectly fine for anybody who just wants stuff to run in their computer with minimum hassle. If you like tinkering, by all means install Arch. But if you just want something that works, use Mint.

I've explained it this way; If Windows is an "Automatic" and, say, Arch is a "Stick Shift", then MInt is a "Paddle Shift". You can drive it around like an automatic all day but, if you want direct access to the gear box, it's right under your fingertips.
Isn't that what they mean by "beginner distro"? Something that just works?
- But it implies that if you use it, it means you're not that knowledgeable. As if knowledgeable people need to recompile their kernel every day just because they can.

Linux Mint is fantastic; it beat out Tumbleweed as my daily driver, and that's saying something.

Just got Elite Dangerous running today on my fresh Ubuntu. Loaded the modules for the z52 hotas, copied my bindings from my windows instance and there she flies. That makes 3 out o3 for my most played games in Ubuntu.

So far ED is running flawlessly. I need an equivalent for ED market connector though. But that can be manual gor the moment.

There was a flatpack release for the ED market connector awhile ago, I have no idea if it's still functioning (i have gotten in the habit of doing it manually too) but you might want to check it out. https://flathub.org/apps/io.edcd.EDMarketConnector

I used Linux mint back in the Mint 17.0 days and loved it. I have since gone back to windows and use Ubuntu for my headless server but haven’t tried mint in a while maybe I should go back especially with how much gaming on Linux has evolved. I really hate windows and only use it for games so it’s an exciting time to move back to Linux.

I haven't played ED in a long time. I'll probably load it up sometime now. I've been using arch for almost a year now, I was going back and forth between that and debian for a while. But I prefer arch for it having an easier package manager, in my opinion.

The only thing keeping me from switching to Linux full time is clip studio

Have you tried Wine or a VM?
- I've heard it works with wine, just not well. I haven't seen it suggested to use a windows VM for it tho... Curious to know if that may work
Have you tried the Lutris wine preset for it? https://lutris.net/games/clip-studio-paint/

I always liked Mint when I daily drove it years ago. Nowadays since Steam appears to be more user-friendly I’m wondering if I should try something like Pop so I don’t have to do any troubleshooting / run a dual-boot just to run games.

When I was distro hopping to discover what would be my daily driver I found POP annoying to handle some of the more day-to-day tasks A lot of unnecessary fluff and handlebars around the place. I feel like Mint doesn't give you training wheels. Rather it just teaches you why things are the way they are. For example on the first-time boot PopOS. when prompting me to update some programs, it failed and crashed the package manager leaving me clueless and forcing me to open it again and sort out that I needed to update the package manager. Meanwhile, over on Mint's first-time boot, the update manager refused to let me continue with updates until I updated the package manager FIRST, then explained to me what each symbol meant and how to update things. I may have already known what everything did, but it was still far more helpful in the short term and a cleaner experience.

How’s your experience running Ody on Linux?

Runs fine for me on Manjaro. 🤷‍♂️

I've been really enjoying Mint Cinammon! I still can't commit to it being my daily driver, since i can't seem to get my art software of choice (clip studio paint) to work with wine. (Or overwatch, but that's less of a dealbreaker) Maybe one day~

Have you checked lutris? They have a wine preset for clip studio paint https://lutris.net/games/clip-studio-paint/ And for overwatch 2 https://lutris.net/games/overwatch-2/
- hey what, woah will definitely check these out, thank you so much!
Have you tried Krita?
- yes, and it's cool! but i'm kind of committed to CSP since i paid for the license and i like the workflow in it a lot, lol

Having this issue with Dyson sphere program, strangely enough, changing graphics settings does nothing, changing the fps-ups slider only changes ups, and the only way I can raise fps is to use a mod to disable rendering of almost everything, making the game unplayable

That's a fun game. Glad to run into someone else that has played it.

To each is own distro, I used Ubuntu for years, Mint/Cinnamon after that for ~3 years and now MX Linux/xfce AHS on my new PC, they all work, no problem 😉

Ps4 straight up got abandoned when it comes to space legs. Sitting here with only elite dangerous.

The only reason I'm still with Windows is that I do Renders in DAZ 3D with a large Asset library and Italy as render engine. That doesn't work on Linux sadly.