I don't know what I expected but Linux gaming just works at this point. I'm on a fresh install of Fedora 44 on an NVIDIA GPU and everything just works. What's going on? Is 2026 really the year of Linux?

Yes! this year is definitely it!!

You're quickly going to find out that not all games work. The Steam library on Linux is quite "limited", maybe 10-20% of the library are available on Steam. You can check it out for yourself using the filters in Steam. Not saying it's bad. But just FYI. I love Linux but to me it's unusable at this point. Way too many software have no viable alternative.

I have 256GB dedicated to W11 on my computer for the games that just don't work on Linux.

@ericjeker if you get sick of switching back and forth, I used to have a lot of luck with a windows virtual machine doing GPU pass-through and using looking glass (software) to open it on the host. it's NOT plug and play or simple.. but great if you're sick of switching back and forth

@ericjeker Now that I think about it, if we could use the full power of our machine with a VM, the discussion wouldn't even exist, Linux would be a no brainer.

@ahrotahntee I use WSL on Windows, so I have both Windows and a Linux CLI on the same machine. This comes with issues too but so far it's the best of both worlds for my tasks. Last year I tried Omarchy during 1-2 months but couldn't work with it. Too many pieces are missing for my workflow.

Steams native Proton works for 95% of things. It's the 5% of things it doesn't that's the problem.

That's why I made a teeny tiny windows partition.

CachyOS, AMD card. Everything works one click, no issue. The only thing I cant play is games with kernel anticheat, fortnite and such but oh well. Also @valvesoftware fix counter strike source case folding issue:

Without anti cheat support, it ain't our year.

Are there any negatives about it? Strongly considering it but letting go of Adobe might be a lil too much at the moment

Some software will only run on windows and also some competitive games. I have a 256GB windows partition just in case but I really want to try and make Fedore my main OS.

it's been pretty good for a couple years, probably since steam deck got popular. in terms of gaming, i don't even recall the last issue i had on linux/proton (aside from anti-cheat, but that's not a bug)

I tested some games on the new Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on a Lenovo laptop with an RTX 5050 graphics card, and they ran perfectly – better than on Windows. Today I’ll be testing Fedora 44.

It doesn't though. That's why Linux is never going to gain much popularity, because stuff doesn't "just work".

Not until productive software also work this smoothly Otherwise "year of Linux" is a misnomer. Should've called it "Year of Linux Gaming"

I may have to try Fedora for gaming then!

Уже который пост вижу, что Fedora отлично работает. Мы может какие-то разные Fedora ставили? На рабочий ноут ставил, что только не сломалось. Bluetooth умер, dnf еле-еле грузит пакеты, Gnome вылетает по приколу в рандомные моменты. Самый сломанный дистрибутив, которой я пробовал

Maybe is a different one because this came out yesterday.

no issues with selinux? had one small access issue when migrating to iwd from wpa_supplicant

Unfortuantely gaming is the easiest part of switching to linux nowadays😅

I just saw you made a video about this a couple of months ago, I'm going to check it out!

Yeah and I have a followup article on my patreon. Since the video I switched to fedora on my laptop and cachyOS on my desktop both with KDE

It’s a really a good year for Linux. That’s for sure.

I keep hearing differing accounts. I've heard that most games run fine on Linux now, albeit with a performance hit, but that there are some major titles that do not work on account of things like kernel-level anti-cheat, etc etc Has this been your experience?

Some games run even better on Linux! But yeah, you can't escape kernel-level anti-cheat.

Fedora 44 is the only distro Crimson Desert will run on with Rayteacing enabled.

Fedora promised last year than F44 would be geared towards gaming with new compatibility layers that increase performance of Wine and Proton.

im shocked too, that I can play of arch which I use for work earlier I had different computer with windows for gaming purposes, now I can do it all on 1

Been doing it for years, works great except for one thing, and its nvidia's fault: their drivers are always a few versions behind. RE9 literally didn't work at launch on linux.

Valve be doing magic lately

100%

ikr? i have been telling this since ages now, i love gaming on linux. and all my games have first class support for linux, mostly because i am on linux. so linux gets way deeper levels of optimizations

For me personally, 1996 was. But I guess this year is also

it's incredible isn't it? I fought it for a long time before it was this nice, and it was worth it imo, but gradually it just got easier and easier and easier.. until one day I installed my os on a new system and realized it just works out of the box!

linux game play is beautiful, smooth, better than some other OS i used to know !

Steamos

It means Gabe is truly the apostle. In Proton we trust. nohup sudo rm -rf /mnt/windows > /dev/null

Welcome to Linux!

It's a year of linux for me, yes

Eventually all games will work because there is no reason why not.

I’m on popOS 24.04 and I can’t complain i5 13th + rtx 4090 and games are just working

I've got my pc ready to wipe for a couple weeks now. But I was going to go Bazzite. But fedora is looking more and more promising.

Few tips for you! If you have dual-monitor, there will be some issue sometimes in the future. Fedora at some point will break. I recommend Bazzite OS, because is read-only system. Hard to break it. Also out-of-the-box in gaming category.

It's actually been like this for a few years now. I have been nearly flawlessly gaming and developing on linux since 2017 or so... There have been hiccups, but in general..it's been smooth sailing, MS will do anything to make people believe a different narrative.