this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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The other two main TL;DWs are that:
He justifiably complained about PVP games having non-Linux-compatible kernel-level anti-cheat.
His benchmark testing showed a big performance difference between Windows and Linux on his system, which has an AMD Radeon 7900 XTX. Being an admitted noob, he didn't notice that it was an unusual discrepancy and figured that worse gaming performance in Linux was "real," but a bunch of folks in the comments are telling him that RDNA 3 drivers have a known issue that means the card probably isn't running at full power and tweaking the settings can probably fix it.
Which is another points against Linux. Stuff should work correctly out of the box. That's what average user expects.
That's why Windows isn't ready for mass adoption
Average users can't even remember to set their proper monitor resolution/refresh rate in windows or in games.
Or enable XMP/Expo profiles for RAM.
Or enable RE-BAR / Hypervisor support.
Smooth brains around'.
I helped my mom with her windows install when the update half a year ago nuked keyboard support (I had to use the onscreen keyboard just to login). Before thar I had to forcefully install the correct wifi driver as well to get it working properly. This is was running from their factory installation. Stuff working correctly out of the box is a problem on both platforms.
Its not the fault of linux that the hardware manufacturer doesnt make functioning drivers tho...
Yes it is.
For the end user, if one platform has driver support and the other one doesn't, then one platform works and the other one does not.
"It's not my bug" is a thing engineers get to say to close issues on their backlog, but it doesn't magically fix the problem for the end user if the other side says the same thing (or doesn't care).
If you want people to use Linux, then Linux has to work, and that includes the third party drivers.
The user perceiving it as such, doesnt make it so. It makes a difference because if you acknowledge and make visible that it is AMDs fault, then they will be more likely to fix their shitty driver. Over all linux does have much better hardware support than windows, but with newer hardware the vendors are just oddly slow sometimes.
It does make it so.
I get so tired of shouting this from the rooftops in the general direction of FOSS devs and advocates. UX is the only thing that matters. If the user can't use it, it doesn't exist.
No, Linux doesn't have "much better hardware support than Windows". It is harder to set up and maintain, so it's worse. It doesn't matter if you can make it work. It doesn't matter if you can make things work that don't work on Windows. If I plug it in and it doesn't go, then it's worse.
This doesn't make me mad because I want to defend Windows, this makes me mad because I really, REALLY want Linux to do well, along with other FOSS alternatives to enshittified commercial software, and this is an absolute brick wall blocker for that. I don't know how FOSS spaces take away control from whiny engineers who think the current situation is functional, but somebody needs a UX equivalent of a Linus Torvalds shouting abuse at coworkers about how garbage their UX is (that everybody finds hilarious for some reason. Maybe the next step is getting some HR).
Meanwhile all five generations of GCN are varying levels of abandoned officially on Windows while Mesa supports AMD cards going back to GCN1, and even more recently started to enable AMDGPU support by default on GCN1 and 2.
But yeah, as for Windows having better support, GCN1-3 are long since buried officially for that OS, and Polaris and Vega have a foot in the grave at this point as they're curtailed to security updates only officially on Windows, contrasted against Mesa still actively supporting that older hardware. Also, can't emulate RT on RX 5000-series and older cards on Windows, while you can on Linux.
And yes, I'm aware of R.ID modded drivers for those older cards in Windows, but for this context, I'm only counting official driver support.
You are listing edge cases. Nobody cares.
You buy a laptop, you install Linux and it goes. That's the bar for mainstream usage.
If you have an older computer that no longer gets MS or AMD updates it's cool that Linux can be installed on it and be marginally safer, but it's disingenuous to not acknowledge that in that scenario unsupported Windows still works, by definition. For people on older hardware their older hardware is already working.
Linux can, at best, have a lighter footprint (and be less full of decades of leftover garbage) and make some forward compatibility available on very old devices, but it's not unlocking hardware that wasn't working because it didn't have drivers. Windows does do that in general, and especially for newer or niche hardware. Lying to ourselves about this is not doing anybody any favours.
Aside from lots of people still holding onto RX 580s or 590s because those can still apparently run a lot of stuff at passable quality settings, let alone the Vega 56 and 64 and even the RX 5700 and 5700 XT still being really capable on their own, and yeah, RT emulation on pre-RX 6000 cards is a Linux-exclusive feature and hasn't been implemented in Windows yet and I don't know if it ever will be.
Even GCN2 cards like the R9 390 or 390X can still hold their own once you get around the Vulkan 1.2.170 limitation, which can be easily accommodated for by using DXVK 1.10.x, as long as you're fine with the higher power draw vs. the RX 580 or 590 assuming everything is stock and you didn't undervolt them or set an artificial power cap in Corectrl, plus the RX 580 and 590 support Vulkan 1.3 and thus can run the latest version of DXVK.
Why would it be? Again, nobody cares.
The GPU makers want to sell you new GPUs, so they don't care. The game makers don't have much of an incentive to cater to whatever percent of the 10% of AMD users are stuck on ancient hardware, so it's not cost effective for them to care. The users are glad to extend the life of some devices, I'm sure, but the narrow band of software and features this enables is just going to get smaller over time as new software comes out, so as a collective the amount of caring will only go down.
Again, you are talking about edge cases. We are considering a blob of several billion devices in a rat race to sell, refresh and upgrade billions more. Linux will grow as it comes preinstalled in new devices, justifying additional support from manufacturers in a constructive loop. I'm not against it serving as a remedial OS to salvage old ewaste at all, but that's not how you turn it into a major player on desktop devices.
Oh, and for the record, I have some 6 series AMD GPUs around the house still. Even with native RT your assessment of their modern viability is... optimistic.
The older games and even going as recently as the PS4 and XB1 generation, will still be around for the foreseeable future in both official and unofficial capacities, though, with some of those previous-generation titles even having an official DRM-free release on GOG to boot.
And really, there's nothing interesting in the current generation outside of indie stuff, as far as the big AAA releases go, they largely appear to be slop this generation.
And, once again, nobody cares.
You are substituting your interests for the market. I'm happy that you're happy with what you have, but your opinion isn't relevant here.
What is relevant is what is installed in the hardware that is selling and will sell in the next few years. Nobody is shipping 5700s on prebuilts in 2026.
You want to see Linux in more systems? You get that by selling more systems with preinstalled Linux that don't give people an incentive to revert them back to Windows and by getting more people with preinstalled Windows on new systems to at least dual boot.
You and I are sunk cost. We're the residual 2% of users that were already using Linux before Valve shipped one prebuilt handheld system with that level of setup. I care about people buying the second one from Lenovo and about convincing Asus to make more of these and eventually about extending those options to tablets, prebuilts and laptops as well as handhelds.
That's how you both increase the Linux install base and add more third party support on both drivers and software. And hey, good news, you get to keep replaying Bioshock all you want forever. But you're not the priority here.
Its really not tho. Have you installed Windows 11 to a PC? Shit takes forever to remove all the ads, garbage and AI features. You literally have to edit the registry to get a usable system. Installing a popular linux distro takes like 5 minutes and then you just install whatever software you need. Any normal consumer device you plug in just works out of the box, no need to install drivers that are then again filled with bloat, ads and often even malicious code or vulnerabilities. Like ffs sake Windows 11 doesnt even function at all on a good portion of desktop computers in use today because of the TPM requirement.
Just last weekend i helped someone that never used linux before to switch. The actual install took less than 5 minutes. GPU drivers come preinstalled with the distro and work out of the box. Then another 30 minutes or so of installing and setting up all the programs they need. Another 30 minutes to copy all their old files over and explaining some general differences and thats it. Literally zero tinkering required and they are happily playing their steam games at peak performance.
Ofcourse you can get unlucky with your hardware which then involves a very annoying amount of tinkering, but when the baseline on windows is already fuckloads of tinkering then having to do tinkering sometimes is not at all a bad trade off.
I dual boot on most of my devices and I have PCs around the house going back to Windows 95.
I am also proposing that "just this week I installed Linux for my mom" becomes the next "year of Linux desktop" and is treated with similar derision, because man.
In all seriousness, this is delusional. All Windows devices out there work out of the box and come with Windows preinstalled, so there isn't an installation in the first place, just a first time setup. Installing Windows the way I like it takes some tinkering, but MS's assumption is that most normies don't have a way they like at all and will happily take the default. They are right about this.
There is certainly more clicking on a Windows install in that you have to say no to a bunch of stuff, but it's ultimately fairly equivalent these days.
The problem with Linux isn't installing it (sweaty Arch users aside), the problem is what happens next. You can get lucky and have everything work, particularly with Bazzite and other distros that have a narrow focus and provide specific installers targeted to specific hardware, but if something in your PC doesn't work out of the box you're SoL.
In the example from this video the guy found out their AMD GPU was running about 25% slower than expected, so now what? And that's before he reaches an ungraceful boot failure and is stuck out of the OS instead of going into an automated recovery process.
You have to troubleshoot on Windows as well, as you do on any computer, but the likelihood of hitting an issue in the first place is lower due to it being the baseline platform, and the paths to a resolution are also more streamlined. That's the definition of harder to set up and maintain.
The sooner the Linux community gets over the delusional bubble they live in after getting their systems set up and fine tuned the faster a transition to Linux for more people will be. The delusional rah-rah isn't helping.
I should add that in my experience Linux developers and maintainers are WAY less unrealistic about the current state of Linux in these areas than vocal online advocates. This is more a community problem than a development or strategy problem, although there's some of both in there as well.
You're right that it's Linux's problem, but that doesn't mean it's Linux's fault.
Sure. No argument from me here.
That's just life, though. You so very often have to solve problems someone else created that get in your way but not theirs.
@TheBat @grue how do you define not working correctly ? ...
the GFX Card booted
the GFX Card rendered the desktop
the GFX Card rendered Games
... the only issue it wasn't as fast as possible ...
-> solution on windows -> you report and get a new driver or you get a new driver cause you don't know that you don't have the max performance
-> solution on linux -> you report and get a new driver or you get a new driver cause you don't know that you don't have the max performance
^^^ where is the difference ?
Oh yeah because spending half a day manually downloading and installing a zillion drivers and their bloat and rebooting between each install is peak ootb-functionality.
Meanwhile I was in CP2077 literally 5 minutes after booting a fresh install of Bazzite. On the exact same computer.
Cringe.
But that responsibility is not on the OS. It's a vendor and publisher responsibility. When a game doesn't work on Windows, people don't blame Microsoft. Admittedly the game was made for Windows. But most publishers and developers will give the same response to gamers, “fuck off, the game was for Windows XP, not W10 or W11. We will remake it and make you pay $60 again to play a game you already played 15 years ago. You are on your own until then.” The vast majority of old games that are still playable, are so through an effort from third parties. Like mod developers and vendors like Valve and GOG keeping compatibility alive.
Linux, as it has become abundantly clear after the SteamDeck and Proton, already makes gaming out of the box extremely easy and entirely viable. It was the other side of the equation who were being dickheads. Or, as an example, like Epic, or Genshin Impact, who intentionally go out of their way to break Linux viability for their games with utmost hatred.
you’re absolutely right, but it’s still the gaming experience as a whole on linux. is it unfair? absolutely! but it’s still the experience
Which operating system works out of the box for gamers that requires zero tweaks? Is it windows? Are you sure it's windows?
More so than Linux, yeah. No system is perfect, but some are less fiddly than others.
Stuff should work correctly out of the box. That’s what average user expects. Linux is getting better at that every single day, is Windows? Linux is where the innovation is for the user, not Windows or any other proprietary, profit-seeking OS. Is it perfect? Probably won't ever be. Will it get better? That's up to us and our actions. Will windows or any other proprietary OS get better because of our actions?
Linux is getting better... but it's still nowhere near the default Windows position. A major factor in this is because development focuses on Windows for most studios, and frankly Linux is so fractured that it's difficult to make a game work on everything Linux.
But, that's Linux's main strength. It has a wider flexibility than other operating systems ny design. It will likely never be as "out-of-the-box" as Windows, no matter how much they sabotage themselves.
The average Windows user would have to change wildly for them to care about 99% of the changes that most power users would. You can see that in most other platforms, like YouTube, reddit, Netflix and other streaming services. They enshittify day by day and the average user shrugs and says "that's the way it is" and continues on.
@Zorque @dreadbeef
My whole comment -> check out https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/11/check-out-linux-porter-ethan-lee-show-off-how-linux-games-are-built-and-packaged/ and the video in it.
PS: This guy really knows what he is talking. All of his linux ports are top notch and if needed he provides extremly fast updates. GLIBC updates breaking stuff ( which has happen once in alot of years) -> he got you
Most shit on windows needs adjustments out of the box to work correctly... That's just all PCs
That's the whole thing with consoles is that you don't have to do that
This is just not true of Windows. I trust you aren't talking about settings in-game, of course.
I'm tired of people conflating gaming as a whole to extremely mainstream titles that fit into "online PVP with malware anti-cheat" such as Apex Legends, Valorant, and Battlefield, and then bashing Linux for "poor gaming experience".
Their experience with titles they enjoy is very valid, as valid as any other, but it's not the entirety of gaming and OS experience, at all. There's tons of games that run extremely well on Linux, even out of the box, no tinkering required, both on Nvidia and AMD hardware.
Grrr.
Personally, I find the Linux incompatibility with games that want to do shit to the kernel a plus so I don't accidentally install one without realizing it comes with malware.
To your first comment about incompatible anticheat - in must cases it's a conscious decision the publisher makes. Are We Anti-Cheat Yet it's a good resource. Personally I find my OS preventing me from being able to run a privacy invading rootkit to be a pro as well.
To the second comment, a good amount of games bench better on Linux, not sure what's going on with his system so I agree.
Definitely unfortunate to see a creator publishing content without first doing some research but that's more and my common nowadays.
This YouTuber in particular does indeed just frequently throw out statements without properly checking whether they are even true at all.
It’s a big problem with this guy for sure, but also he’s usually pretty good at admitting when he’s wrong and calling himself out on it. I wonder if he’ll look into this again to get some clarity.
I am kind of shocked about the 7900 xtx. I have the same GPU and I am getting good performance under Linux.
I did some just for fun benchmarking on Doom The Dark Ages last night and I expected Linux to be slightly slower due to the built in ray tracing but I actually got better avgs under Linux. The max frame rate was slightly higher under Windows but the lows were way better under Linux. Overall fairly close performance with a slight edge to Linux.
Maybe Bazzite is doing some magic here. What distro was he using?
Edit: I watched a bit of it, he is running Bazzite, no idea why he is seeing such crazy different numbers. I typically run Proton GE, and I assume he is running Proton Stable, so that would make a dent. People are mentioning low power mode in the comments, but I never have had any issue with that and my 7900 xtx. I haven't had to do anything weird or out of the ordinary.
I think it’s most likely due to me not playing the same games he is, Stalker 2 is basically the only he is playing that I have played in the past and I've haven't done a comparison of that game on Linux vs Windows.
I've come across multiple times situations which arise from known issues leading to a worsened experience for the user. Linux cannot solve all problems, some are difficult to solve or some require solutions which may not be possible to be resolved but in any case, what the user usually misses, is that the OS identifies these situations and inform the user.
In this case, Jay would've really been off better if the user interface was able to simply inform the user of the circumstances or the limitations that it had detected.
We dont actually know what was causing the performance differences between linux and windows in Jays testing. I've noticed sometimes linux is + or - 20% the performance of windows even with everything configured correct.
I dont like telling people that the preformance is going to be better than windows. I just point out that the preformance on linux is good enough to have an enjoyable experience. I'll take a 10% preformance hit to escape windows.
Wait, I have a 7800x3D and 7900 XTX and feel like I’m getting exactly the performance I’d expect for 1440p gaming. What do I need to look into to see if I’m leaving performance on the table? I’m using Arch so latest rolling kernel drivers seem to be working fine based on my monitoring of card stats and “feel” when playing modern games. Since performance has been fine out of the box, I never suspected I could be missing something so it would be nice to verify one way or another.
This is what I had to do couple of years ago: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1500#note_1854170
It seems it has been fixed since.