I think it might be fun to do it, but from an enthusiasts (or bored person’s) perspective.
In practical application you’d need to have huge gains to even warrant the attempt, and half of those people would still go back to using just Windows even with the deficit just for convenience sake.
Not sure. I’ve used Mint casually, have heard Garuda Linux is the gaming distro, could throw that on my second rig &/ laptop to see how it compares. My friend uses Manjaro with AMD card and doesn’t use Windows at all. I made & keep handy installation flash drives for Mint and Win10 and Mint actually is the faster install.
If you’re going to game on Linux a Radeon is HIGHLY recommended with Open drivers. Nvidia’s desktop drivers are getting better but still years behind AMD’s. AMD’s closed drivers aren’t terrible but they run into similar issues as Nvidia ones. Surprised AMD doesn’t copy some of the opensource features into their Windoze drivers.
If you plan on using your Linux box as a workstation then closed Nvidia or AMD drivers are recommended and work very well.
Depends on the game. Usually CPU heavy games run better on Linux. Games that properly use the Vulkan layer also work better. Running a game on Linux these days is like running a console. Install your app (point and click), login to Steam or Blizz app and click play. Most of the complex items are taken care of for you. If you want to get the few extra % perf or need to fix bugs then you have to start looking into tweaks.
That’s changed a ton. Valve invested a ton of resources into Proton.
WoW has been rock solid on Linux.
Stellaris had to run on Linux for me. Windows CPU scheduled resulted in short freezes, Linux cleared that up.
You might have to wait some time to get some games to have parity to Windows. For example Ray tracing isn’t as fleshed out because of the Vulkan community. Might take a few months for that feature.
Education starts now.
WINE. Literally means Wine is NOT an EMULATOR. It takes native instruction (windows) and makes it work in a different environment.
A Virtual Machine is a ‘virtual’ set of hardware, THAT will NOT give good performance because a Virtual machine is a synthetic software translation layer of ‘pretend’ hardware that is running in a software engine.
So you have to run a machine inside hardware, horrible performance… for GAMES. There is no direct access to hardware… well there is but you need a professional version of Virtual Machine to do it, which costs $$$…
Basically don’t do it. VM are good for some things but games is NOT one of them.
WINE on the other hand allows you to take WoW.exe and copy it to a folder in Linux and run it… (don’t even need a single piece of Microsoft OS installed). WINE spent years analyzing and extracting libraries and code to figure out how to make it work in Linux.
WINE actually works very well but since it’s not 100% Microsoft genuine code there is no guarantee how it will function. I tried it myself, works great, however you need to understand Linux.
You can’t be a Linux novice and run WINE and expect it just work, you need to learn some Linux commands. The reason Linux has not been mainstream (even Blizzard has mentioned it a few times on Official blue threads) there are too many forks of Linux. Forget the debian vs RPM vs Suse, each Linux distribution has many phases that there is no ‘officially’ supported OS for Linux. There are generally ACCEPTED Linux OS.
Whether or not Linux outperforms Windows depends on a few factors… For one users, gamers and enthusiasts forget… Windows is NOT a streamlined OS. IT’s not tweaked for performance. IT’s NOT. IT’s tweaked for USER EXPERIENCE, meaning there is bloatware pre-installed (most people don’t buy a bare motherboard and install Windows themselves). You buy a machine with Windows pre-installed and that Windows install comes with ‘string attached’ 3rd party software. You can install Windows yourself and make it a streamline OS however.
So it’s not a fair comparison. IF you build a Windows by taking an official genuine Microsoft endorsed code ISO and install the latest stable build and install ALL the native motherboard drivers and 3rd party drivers (Video, SSD, etc) and do NOT install extras like Anti-virus, backup utilities, overwolf, steam, onedrive, discord none of that stuff… Windows performs great. The problem is each of these APPs have background services that could and do interfere with Wow… they take CPU cycles… each APP and service running is one more cycle (time slice) that doesn’t contribute to WoW.
Linux is a no-frills streamline environment because there aren’t many utilities for it, and you have to assume the Linux has drivers for your motherboard… only way to know is install it and test it yourself.
I am a Linux \ Windows Engineer. I have been working with both for more than 15 years, one might say I am an expert of sorts, just giving background not bragging.
all things being equal there is NO Way you can get BETTER performance on the SAME hardware in Linux than Windows, its literally IMPOSSIBLE. Why? Because the video, motherboard, drive, controllers, CPU ALL have Windows drivers, those vendors are 100% made by the hardware manufacture and they are certified to work in Windows.
You will NOT find any vendor that official supports Linux… maybe you can find an old driver that MAY work but it’s at your own risk. ALL games are 100% certified for Windows not Linux. This also has stability problems on Linux for APPS running under Wine as well, so I would rather run Windows with less problems than deal with Linux quirks… and there are a few of them, enough that MOST people like me run Windows specifically for games because forget performance it just works better in Windows than Linux. Linux is great for command line and programming and development but not gaming.
That being said install WINE copy WoW to that Linux install and run it. The drivers are basic not optimized or certified for Linux. Do the same in Windows native install, no frills or bloat… Windows will run circles around Linux on the SAME EXACT hardware (dual boot if you want).
WE are talking Windows 10 specifically not older versions of Windows. Guaranteed you won’t see comparison of Windows \ Linux how I am describing. Those comparisons that show Linux is ‘faster’ is putting fresh install of Linux vs pre-install Windows, that’s the ONLY way Linux is faster.
Otherwise what I am saying is… Linux is good, but not faster than Windows running native drivers, games on certified hardware. no way. Microsoft has worked hard with vendors for years to make Windows 10 perform at it’s best, period.
Since I know Linux very well enterprise, desktop, I know how to create file system caching top performance Linux tweaks… WINE is STILL not native code it’s a ‘hack’ not to say they didn’t do a good job, but it’s NOT optimized for every system like Windows. Windows has libraries built in from vendor to detect EXACT hardware specs and pretty much you don’t NEED any drivers on certified hardware once Windows is fully installed. Linux you can’t see what drivers are missing first of all… you HOPE it detects and runs well but it’s generic drivers that works with a wide variety of hardware but not 100% tweaked to your hardware specs.
WINE still has SOME translation in it and there is no DirectX 12 optimize video card libraries… to make WoW run at the best speed… maybe for some thing its good but not BETTER than Windows.
There is a new subsystem that you can install in Windows 10 right now for free, it’s called WSL. This only works in Windows 10.
There is a 2.0 version of WSL that is being tweaked and worked on… it’s Linux running NATIVE in Windows. You can drop to a Linux shell and run linux command mixed with Windows commands on the same command line. You can test Linux on your own machine. It’s like a 5 minute install and a reboot and that’s it.
The ONLY caveat is graphics hasn’t been perfected yet so you still can’t run GUI apps (well there are ways to get SOME to work) but games are out of the question… but maybe in a year or 2 Microsoft may well figure out how to make GUI WSL and we can start to see optimize games running in Linux… it depends…
But given that Windows (and this is a FACT not some made up stat) runs on 85% of ALL world computers… and Linux is something like less than 5% footprint… Windows will be the king of games for some foreseeable future.
Find any commercial game… go to the website… you will NOT see a ‘Linux’ version of that game. Ask yourself why is that? IF Linux is SOOO good then why aren’t vendors proposing to use it? The answer is complicated but starts with the fact that Linux has too many ‘flavors’ and many different versions… Linux is it’s own worst enemy.
Ubuntu is probably the leading most adopted Linux right now… it’s good but STILL you can’t find ‘official supported’ games on Ubuntu, you just will not.
Blizzard HAD a beta for Linux for like a minute they HAD a downloadable test for Linux Wow… but they stopped it because it was just too much of a headache to support. The biggest problem for Blizzard is they had to support the USER not the game… people complained about things not working because it was clear the users were clueless about how Linux worked and they were interested in ‘trying’ the game but without basic knowledge of the Linux OS. So not only is the game having problems but the OS itself wasn’t correctly configured and Blizzard just abandoned the entire Linux project all together.
The same could be said for Windows. Build 1607 of Windows 10 has severe lockup issues with newer AMD and some of the newer Intel firmware updates.
That’s why you use utilities like Lutris or Steam. It gives it a simple point and click install.
That statement is completely false:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2_LlSaYNUo
Is that the LTS build? Have a Tiger Lake laptop coming in tomorrow and want to avoid these issues.
Guess I’m glad the last BIOS update that was available for my motherboard was from 2019 
Hah yeah, definitely something to be said about not-quite-cutting-edge systems that already have all the bugs worked out.
NOT false don’t care what some random video post shows it’s physically IMOSSIBLE to run non-native code through a non-standard OS on the same hardware… and get identical or better performance.
Also I have a bunch of people we have argued this to the nth degree over the years… I already posted earlier if you get Windows with NO software just bare and install Wow it will run Faster than Linux as it should. Linux needs 1 extra layer between WoW and the OS it’s not running native hardware calls… It’s just not.
Anyway I am not a Hardware Vendor nor can I speak for nVidia, A slew of motherboard manufactures and a host of Microsoft Devs that will debunk this ‘Linux is faster than Windows non-sense’ and they have…
But I don’t suppose you will be so inclined to get THOSE facts now will you… of course not. This is Trump is a liar all over again you just believe whatever crap they put in your face and take it for granted no investigation.
You believe whatever they post on YouTube and don’t bother to try and ACTUALLY see the truth.
I can post lots of links but it won’t matter anyway you will just believe whatever you want, despite the misinformation.
That build is no longer provided. You’ll probably get the 2004 build or newer without these issues.
That’s not some ‘random video’. It’s the project devs providing functional test. People have been running WoW on Linux and Mac since forever.
I’m already running WoW on Linux now. It runs faster than my Windows rig. The devs aren’t making fake youtube videos.
So far you seems to talk about issues that have been fixed for a long time. Are we going to see modern posts?
Ariebth and I have used Linux distros for a long time now, but Ariebth is way more advanced than I am with it.
Everything about linux is open sourced to where anyone can do whatever they want with it.
I use a Linux distro called Reborn OS, that runs on Arch Linux and the drivers that I use to get my hardware running is… People who do it for free and decided to share their knowledge with the rest of the Linux community
I have posted back in Legion being able to run WoW on reborn OS without a flaw as well.
But anyways you shouldn’t be questioning Aribeth about Linux because you’ll lose that debate.
You guys playing on Linux. You using dx11 or dx12
Also fsync or esync?
dx11 and fsync
DX12 for me. Don’t remember fsync or esync atm. I’ll try to check when I get back to my 2nd house.
What’s ur raid fps?
My raid info might not help. My 4K Gysnc monitor is at 60fps. I never notice anything below like 59fps the last time I was in a lfr raid. I’ll try to get some more useful info when I can get back in my 2nd house.
My Linux laptop in this house has 980M but it’s a meh machine these days.
I have a beefy RTX main system with windows. But I also have a Linux machine that I play wow on as well.
The Linux machine is AMD 1700x 32GB crucial ram, samsung evo 970 pro, and a EVGA GTX 1070 TI. it games WoW at 1080p ultra 120fps. with 32*c on gpu, zero fan speed. and at 10% utilized on card, CPU at 4% per core with spikes to 10% max. the threads seem to spread out much better in linux vs windows. making AMD cpu’s better on linux, and Intel’s high ghz cpu’s better on windows. since windows likes to load up only 2 physical cores.
I use wine 7.0 with DX12 to Vulkan api. as both are hardware level api’s. I literally can not see a difference. Not tested RTX, since I have a GTX card installed in linux box.
WoW classic+TBC run at upto 240fps easy in this setup.
well…. if you play other games stick with windows
Dicey but things have improved for nvidia of late most distros will give you an option to install nvidia drivers