Hello all,
At around the mid Nov this year I had enough with Windows especially the latest 23H2 pack that forced a lot of what I call malware back on my system when I had put several blockers from being re-installed.
A bit of a background. I have been using Windows since 3.1 with MSDOS 6.2 since forever and I have seen everything from Microsoft. At the same time I'm a senior Microsoft engineer and have been for more than a decade.
Back in 2018 I decided to maximise my hosting game server and installed Ubuntu. I didn't have the greatest of times but I always enjoy the tinkering process of solving something, so I stuck with it.
Fast-forward to Nov this year, by chance I stumble upon a YouTube video show-casing Garuda Dragonized edition and how it performed in gaming. I was very skeptical as I tried gaming on Linux back in my college days and it was unworkable and unplayable.
Having had enough with Windows, I took the plunge. Now something about me, when I take the plunge on something, I'm going in both hands and legs. There isn't a compromise.
Created the boot drive, backed up my data to my NAS and purged the system from Windows. Within 30 mins of installing the OS and updating (slow internet, the OS installed everything from drivers to tools that I needed for gaming. I was surprised to be honest and I actually spend the rest of the afternoon making sure that everything was working by running benchmarks and low and behold, everything was. The CPU (5800X3D) was boosting at default values, the GPU (6800XT) was stable with the built in OC profile and was actually pushing better maximums than I had in Windows.
After my satisfaction that everything was good, it was time to test out and real gaming. I installed Satisfactory as that was the game that I was playing just before the purged. I didn't have hopes as it is still really access, but to my surprise, worked first try (to add, I did follow the Proton instructions on how to setup Steam prior).
I tried several other games such as Borderlands 3, Hunt Showdown, Assetto Corsa and Planetside 2 and all worked. The only issue I have is that Forged Alliance Forever is currently bugged on Arch and I'm unable to launch custom games but weirdly enough, I can play the game no probs without FAF.
I know this is a Linux forum but to anyone that is browsing, thinking of taking the plunge. Do it! But make sure that you prep before doing so as without prep, you are not going to be smooth sailing.
awesome!
fyi: i used garuda for a few months and while i loved it, i did have some stability problems and couldn't solve it and also found some garuda team on their forums to be fairly rude in some cases so i switched to endeavourOS. it's very very similar to garuda, also arch based, except i've had no stability issues and found their website faq and articles and forum much more helpful and kind to noobs than most distros and i liked that a lot.
this isn't to say don't use garuda or anything but that if you do have issues then endeavourOS is an easy sidestep with also great gaming performance and similarly solid theming.
also if you need to use EA app i recommend installing through heroic games launcher; the lutris script seems fucked for now.
also also look up setting up a single gpu passthrough windows vm and how to hide hypervisor for any games that flat out don't work on proton like fortnite or in my weird case sniper elite v2, and i think also pubg is borked still. some anticheat games are working but sadly some are still being stubborn. this solves that without dual booting or windows getting it's own partition.
I only have a stability issue with a single game and it is one I gave an example on my op, Satisfactory but that is since the latest update so I'll eat and see before I say it's something to do with the OS.