In Arch, the current NVIDIA driver automatically sets KMS and the kernel command line and hyperland changes are no longer needed. Basically it just works now.

My "gaming" laptop is completely effed on most distributions, and forces me to use Linux Mint to select an older driver (which also causes problems.)

The terminal screenshots are terrible, too. They're using a non-monospace font and the kerning is messed up, making everything double-wide.

Came to say something about the ads too. Ended up not even reading the article it was so bad.

You can do that now, and for at least the last year.

Very few games don't work anymore, and most that don't are using kernel level anti-cheat or are generally hostile to users anyways (Fortnite and Destiny 2 could work, but they actively block Linux).

I main Fedora with an Nvidia 3080 and haven't had issues for quite some time now.

I'd just go AMD. The drivers there are much more mature due to Google and Valve contributions, and the performance of an 9070 XT is great while being cheaper than the equivalent 5070 Ti. FSR4 is a solid competitor to DLSS and works in any game that supports FSR 3.1.

Anti-cheats won't work, I keep a Windows drive just for Battlefield 6.

I use Debian 13 with an Nvidia 50 series card and I’m able to play games fine. Currently playing ARC Raiders and it works great.

I think there are still some common anti cheats that don’t work. But single player has been flawless for me.

https://www.protondb.com/dashboard

> Top 10 - 20% Platinum - 30% Gold - 10% Silver - 30% Bronze - 10% Borked

I'd probably say at least Gold is "reliably click and play without fiddling", so probably we're around 20-50% there right now, if we consider the top 10 games on Steam. Once you start considering top 100 or top 1000, it starts to look a lot better. But still, mainstream games are lagging seemingly.

Wait no longer! Per capita I doubt 5% of games use kernel-level anticheat. Almost anything else runs pretty painlessly.

I can run 99% on Linux + AMD + X11, on Ubuntu 24. The only problematic one is Witcher 3 which insists on Wayland which breaks everything else. Even the UT5 titles work well enough, but then again our gaming is not your gaming and you might be more demanding that we are.

I'm trying to recall how NVidia behaved for games, but my daily driver is an old 1050 Ti that's been rock solid for years now, also X11.

Maybe the problem is Wayland not NVidia?

I don't even know when I ran into a game that didn't run off Steam on Linux. There's some fiddling gamescope on Wayland to get them to perform well, but most just run out of the box with great performance.

The stuff that doesn't work typically don't work because kernel level anticheats, so a few competitive titles but even in that space many titles still run.

It has been my experience that this is currently the case. I haven't had to even open protondb or search for a workaround in over a year. The only titles I know that don't work are a handful of multiplayer games that have intentionally disabled linux support.

I play everything in Ubuntu on my 4080

From CS2 (native) to the Final Fantasy XV demo (not native) and everywhere in between

Many of the replies completely missed the part about Nvidia, sigh.

I unfortunately still see a lot of Proton bug reports that don’t repro on AMD cards. Hoping that improves soon, I’m sure Valve would love to tell hardware makers that Nvidia GPUs are supported.

I'd wager that 95% of Steam titles does run on Linux. Admittedly some big and popular games use invasive anti-cheat that's not supported, but they're less than 5%.

~30+ years

Yeah haven't had issues with mine (3090)

3840x2160@59.99700

3840x1080@143.99899

...there is a nvidia bug on some cards where they idle high with multi monitors ~50W. Pretty sure that's OS independent though

I noticed this myself, both gnome and kde. It turned out to be that leaving Firefox open for long periods of time caused this.

What protocol is missing from Wayland?

Yes Wayland doesn't have a printer protocol like Xorg, I know.

This isn't Linux, it's Arch running Hyprland. If Grandma wants that combination she knows what Wayland is.

If you want Linux that works, get a Chromebook. If you want to play games, use Bazzite.

Your grandma doesn't need to know what wayland is to use linux. This is an enthusiast forum for people interested in this exact topic.

ChromeOS is a far better "Grandma" distribution than Windows or MacOS. Linux is simultaneously both the most Grandma friendly and least Grandma friendly, including every point in between.

You need to compare apples to apples, aka pre-installed vendor supported operating systems. If you're comparing installing an unsupported OS on unsupported hardware, Linux is far superior. Try installing MacOS on a Windows computer or Windows on a Mac if you're truly masochistic.

Are you saying windows and macos do not have any bugs? I have news for you.

Also wevare talking here about archlinux + hyperland compositor, not the typical Fedora, Mint or Ubunti/Zorin distro. Tinkerer's gonna tinker while the other users just use their computer regardless of the OS.

Linux isn't a single OS. It's hundreds of different and weird combinations.

There are Linux distributions that are better than Windows or iOS for grandma to use as well as distributions where you need to be an expert to do anything.