- You're gonna install Windows on that PC, I'm gonna install Linux on this one. - [Linus] So it's a race? - First to a usable desktop wins. Ready? - Okay, come on,
Three, - You put obstacles in my way
- two. Okay fine, I'll wait. - I'm going. - Three, two, one. - [Linus] Go Windows. - Gave yourself a head start? - I did not. Video evidence we pressed
it at the same time. - You pressed Enter, I hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete. I've reset the board. - This is not a useful progress bar. - It's what's called a throbber. - It's called a throbber, is it? - Mm-hmm. - I got another throbber to show you. Actually, I'm just flexing my muscles. No I don't wanna see
what's new from Windows. Come on. Are you supporting remote workers? Smartdeploy can help you
deploy windows, apps, patches. and driver updates to
remote PCs over the cloud. Grab your free subscription
worth over $700 at the link below. (upbeat tech music) All right, though I lost. But in fairness to me, I
didn't get to pick a side. I would've chosen Linux
in an OS install race too. - Yeah, I guess. But I needed a way to introduce one of the biggest
improvements in Linux gaming since our last video a year ago. Thanks to the release of Ubuntu 20.04, and distros based on it
like Pop!_OS and Mint, we finally got a truly
pick-up-and-play experience. It's at the point where I'd argue that it's even easier
to do than Windows now. I mean, you saw for yourself, this is fully usable, this
has a driver and everything. For real, if you give it a try, you'll be up and running
with a grandma proof and gaming capable OS in
a few minutes like I was. - What about the elephant
in the room though? Support for your games and stuff. I mean, it's not like
everything runs on Linux. - Yeah true, but significantly
more stuff runs than doesn't. I've got a pretty big library at home, including popular titles like GTA 5 and lesser known ones like
DCS and East Combat 7. Pretty much all of it works fine. Proton compatibility layer was super cool when we first looked at it, translating DirectX Windows-only
games to Vulcan on Linux. And between the official one
and tweaked community versions like those from Tk-Glitch
and GloriousEggroll, 69% of the top 1,000 games on Steam are actually rated gold
or better on Proton DB. And most of the ones that don't work at this point are DRM
or anti-cheat related. - Right. I mean, the problem is, there's nothing that Valve
or the Proton team can do about deliberately Linux incompatible DRM, like how Denuvo Anti-Cheat
made Doom Eternal unplayable. But the good news is that they
actually came out and said that going forward, Denuvo
Anti-Cheat will support Linux. One theory is that this change in stance could have to do with cloud
gaming services using Linux as their platform of choice. - Hopefully it won't have to
matter too much why in the end. But for now, Linux users are getting a better experience than ever, despite the occasional sidelining. - There are still some other
ways that Linux lags behind. The community is so small that issues tend to be lower
priorities for game developers, and newer features can
take longer to roll out. Nvidia's RTX ray tracing for example, hasn't been enabled yet. - Yeah, but to be fair to Nvidia,
they have been rolling out additional ray-tracing
extensions here and there, which is a key step to enabling
the functionality later on, and there's some other big news, too. - For some gamers, check this out, Linux actually meets their
needs better than Windows does, and not just by a little bit. For 16-bit retro gamers for example, Wine offers better
compatibility and stability without having to resort to running games in a virtual machine. And get this, we've recorded
runs with less old games running faster on Linux than on an identical Windows machine. That's not just some random
game that no one plays, like whatever this is. Well, this is--
- Burn, sick burn. - Go ahead. - This is actually a game
that Tim Sweeney published. - Is it really? - Well, it's an Epic MegaGames game. - Okay, it's older than me. - Yes. Well, 1993. - So not quite, but I was seven. - [Anthony] This was possible thanks to Valve's ACO shader compiler, which is designed to
improve performance on GPUs that use Mesa, like AMD's
Vega and Navi based cards, and that's even with Proton overhead. - Don't believe it? Let's take a look. Linux GTA 5, woo! Doesn't make you a better
driver, that's for sure, dang. Oh lucky, my car tipped over. In all seriousness though,
back when this game came out I probably would've said, "Ha ha, AAA gaming on
Linux, get real, please." And yet, here we are. - It's worth pointing out that ACO doesn't work with every game yet. So, it's not yet the default. But performance was already
very good for the hardware thanks to AMD's open-source drivers, and doitsujin's ongoing work with DXVK, which now supports
DirectX 9 titles as well thanks to a merger with the D9VK project. All of that's been rolled up into Proton and is supported out-of-the-box in Ubuntu 20.04 and anything based on it. - Hey, got 'em. Did I die? Okay. So, regardless of your graphics card, you just install the OS, install Steam, install games and play games. If you're on AMD, enable ACO
in Steam's launch options for titles that support
it and you're laughing. As for Nvidia users,
don't stress out too much. - Nvidia drivers aren't
as good as they could be if they were more open like AMD's, but they also aren't as bad
as people make them out to be. And both AMD and Nvidia
support their respective adaptive refresh technology on Linux now, with no additional installs required. - If you wanna quantify your
Linux gaming performance, even that is getting easier. Windows tools like Fraps
or FrameView won't run, but MangoHud by FlightlessMango
works absurdly well. It gives you a configurable
rivet-tuneresque overlay, and you can upload logs to the website and have it automatically generate graphs for frame rates, frame times, 1% minimums, pretty much everything you need. Honestly, if it logged more information like CPU and GPU temperatures, we'd probably switch over to it instead of what we're using in Windows. - [Anthony] It's really good. - By the way, guys, you
might take for granted the controller that Anthony
is using over there, but look closelier. Controller support is
nothing special in Linux. Dualshock 3, DualShock 4,
Xbox 360, Xbox One, 8BitDo, none of those require any
configuration or special drivers, even over Bluetooth. But now, look at this. Even the Xbox One wireless
adapter has a driver for Linux, allowing low-latency wireless operation for four controllers off a single dongle, just like it does on Windows. and the DualShock 4's touchpad
even works as a mouse. - Speaking of DualShock 4, we've actually got a video in the pipeline where we play around with
gyro aiming for games. Get subscribed so you don't miss it. - Hey, what is this? - Nothing, get away. - No.
- Nope. - Ha ha, you have to social distance. So if I come over here, you have to move. OpenRGB. Is that RGB control on Linux? - Yep, OpenRGB is available
on both Windows and Linux, and it supports RGB RAM,
motherboard lighting, GPUs, and even stuff like
Corsair lighting nodes. Despite all the work that's
already gone into it though, it's a little bit basic right now, and it's a pain to get running
on Ubuntu at the moment. But for simple lighting
effects, it's quite enough. - All right, hot shot, how about VR? If I wanna get in some Beat
Saber action, Penguin Edition? - That's tricky. HTC Vive and Valve index have
both worked for a while now, because valve officially
supports them in Steam. But the Open HMD driver
for Oculus and PSVR is currently missing some
rather major features, and the virtual desktop
experience and reprojection are cited as major issues
by all Linux VR users. - That's a real bummer, 'cause
I use virtual desktop a ton, even if it's just to like
fix something about my stream while I'm playing, or
whatever the case may be. And if aside from gaming
you're a content creator, you might have a hard time
switching to Linux full time, even if all your games work. The Adobe suite which, as we
made a video about recently, we're pretty much stuck with
for better or for worse, doesn't run in Wine and there's no native version from Adobe. Same deal with Microsoft Office. - But for the second one, there's at least a web
version if you really need it, and people like Tech Tangents make good work with Linux
alternatives to Adobe. It's potentially a major
change to your workflow, depending on what you're doing though. Some tools are great on their own, like Krita, Blender and GIMP, while others, well, are promising but need a little bit more work. Sufficed to say, there are a
lot of alternatives out there, but for some people it
just won't be viable to run Linux full time,
and that's okay really. - Yeah. I mean, it's frustrating, but Linux on desktop has always been this chicken and egg scenario where, because it's not popular on the desktop, developers don't care because there's not enough
people to buy the software. Yet, because developers don't
care and build that software, it's not popular on the desktop. - Yeah, some developers, (coughing) Epic. - Oh, the cough. - Yeah, get back. (objects falling) - [Linus] I'm good, I'm fine. - Some developers are
kinda dicks about it. And I get the die-hard
Linux veteran's concerns. They think that leaning
on Proton as a crutch might disincentivize game developers from creating native Linux games. But for me, I see Proton
and Wine in general as more of a platform
developers can support that requires little additional effort and allows for the user base to grow. - And the more the user base grows, the more accessible everything becomes. So, at this point, the call to action for
you guys is really simple. Where'd it go? Ah, there it is. Pick up a USB stick and give it a try. You can run it right off the USB without installing it on your main drive, like I did in this recent video where Windows just
straight-up wouldn't run my weird Chinese motherboard that had a baked on graphics
card, but Linux would. Go check out that video, and try it, and check out
our sponsor, Micro Center. Micro Center is open to supply all your work from home or learn
from home technology needs, whether you're a Windows
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filters at the top and front, and two pre installed 120 millimeter fans. So go check out Micro Center,
and this and other specials, at the link in the video description. Thanks for watching, guys. If you'd like to get your feet wet, why not check out our
previous gaming on Linux video that's a bit more of a
tutorial-style noob intro. Anthony and James are gonna
see you guys over there. - Oh, and thanks again to
the Linux Gaming subreddit for providing input on the topics we discussed in today's video. The Penguin Army over there grew by more than 50% since last year. We love to see it.
Really glad to see a mainstream tech channel giving Linux some more love.
Only complaint is that they forgot about DaVinci Resolve being compatible with Linux. Other than that, this video is great.
I'm glad my PC work is on the developer side. So my stuff already works natively on Linux, and half of it is Linux exclusive.
They're getting a little more involved with the broader ecosystem on each one of these (shoutouts to MangoHud and XOW were unexpected), and their take on productivity software was less "Well, I guess linux sucks" and more in line with what most of us know already - that we won't get that kind of support unless the platform gets more popular, and that it's an infuriating chicken and egg issue.
Title is a bit clickbaity, but it's LTT so that's to be expected. Actual video was pretty levelheaded, and I appreciate that their endpoint was "Just grab a USB key and try it!".
8/10, solid overview of where we're at since their last vid on the subject. I'm waiting for a livestream where they make Linus install Gentoo just for the heck of it.
Solid and overall great video.
One thing that I didn't like seeing though was that misleading Twitter comment with the allegedly less than 0.1% users who are responsible for 20% of all support tickets, which was all just made up. I guess this will stick forever now :(
Also not sure when this video was shot, but I feel like they should have mentioned HL:Alyx on Linux when they were talking about VR. Maybe also showing more games which run better or equally on Linux compared to Windows would have been cool. Or saying why anti cheat programs are a problem with the current state of Wine and that it's being worked on.
Still, great video and every positive coverage is always massively appreciated.
Is that a system76 thelio Anthony is working?
Btw. does someone know why Adobe software and office are so hard to run using wine? I would think running a 3D game would be harder, than some "simple" program
Linux gaming is certainly getting better. I don't think one would recommend Linux to someone who just wanted to play games, because there are compromises that have to be made. There are games you will have to give up. I know there are a couple of games that run faster in Linux, and maybe there will be more as time goes by, but by and large, if you're a gamer above all, you'll still be best off on Windows.
But if one wants to get away from Windows, there are fewer and fewer compromises that one has to make in order to do so.
They're wrong on NVIDIA Ray Tracing though, it has been available on Linux for a long time. It launched with Quake II RTX same-day for Linux last year as well as a showcase, have notified them of their error on that info. The article of mine they took a shot of is actually talking about the upcoming vendor-neutral extensions for Ray Tracing that will become part of the official Vulkan spec.