So, we’ve all heard it by now. Microsoft is announcing a bunch of new features like Recall.
And while yes, you can disable said features, there will most likely be a point where you can not.
I personally use my PC for playing videogames and creating them, so let’s explore Linux!
The current state of gaming on Linux
So, I personally installed Pop!_Os because I have an Nvidia GPU in my PC and generally Nvidia is a pain to use on Linux, and Pop!_Os manages to make the experience better. If you have an AMD GPU your life will be easier.
So, I installed Steam and the EA Games launcher. I could not get the EA launcher to work at all on external drives with the correct formatting, so for testing I just used Steam.
Steam has a tool based on Wine called Proton, which is made for the Steam Deck but is available for all Linux users which is nice and that makes this journey possible. Of course, Proton emulates the games meaning that games will not run perfectly, anticheat might block you and the CPU will receive heavier loads.
Sadly, I had a bit too many issues. For example The Finals would occasionally crash mid-game, a lot of Gmod addons would straight up crash and fullscreen/borderless fullscreen crashes games when they get out of focus. Cyberpunk 2077 also ran very poorly on the lowest possible settings at 20fps, which is not acceptable sadly and was caused by high CPU usage.
Apart from that, I preferred most factors of my Linux experience over Windows 11 especially since Linux will never get Copilot.
Why I switched back to Windows 10 instead
So, Proton is not perfect of course, and because of this I opted for native gaming instead.
I have found Windows 10 to be stable and actually more performant than 11 on my PC, and best of all: no Copilot!
If Linux does not work out for you this will be your best option, especially since you do not have to work around a lot of things.
To compare, The Finals and Gmod addons do not crash anymore, fullscreen/borderless fullscreen do not crash when out of focus and best of all, I can run Cyberpunk 2077 at 60fps+ on high graphical settings.
Conclusion
I really wanted to use Linux on my PC, but sadly it does not suit well for what I need meanwhile Windows 10 meets the same criteria for me and it works great for my use cases.
Thank you for reading!