> Lastly, Gaming: On Linux, gaming was a constant struggle.
I dont game much anymore but I do love BeamNG, Kenshi and the occasional GTA5 slaughter-fest. All of this is ran through Steam under Flatpak on Void Linux Musl running XFCE with the Chicago 95 (Windows 95) theme. Hardware is a 12 core Threadripper, 1920, 1st gen, and a goofy AMD Radeon Pro 5700 I got for the 5 mini DP ports I never used...
However, summer of 2023 was when I nearly gave up gaming on Linux. Everything was running just fine then one day late June, sudden instability. Just running the Steam UI would crash the machine within seconds to minutes after starting. And by instability I mean hard lock up - audio skips and machine is dead to the world. At first I thought it was Steam as running as other programs seemed fine. Then I had lock ups using browsers or randomly sitting at the desktop. I started to suspect thermal issues from summer heat and did everything I could including rebuilding the PC to redo thermal paste and re-seat components. No change. Left my AC running 24/7 for a few days to see if that helped. Nothing. I was at a loss and everyone I talked to had the same line of "I dont know why you are messing with that Linux shit. Just buy a windows machine for gaming and use WSL." Sigh. I was about to give up and seriously considered selling the machine and stating over with a new Windows machine.
Of course what I did not pay attention to was updates as I updated rather regularly, at least one a week, sometimes twice. Around the middle of September 2023 the crashing suddenly stopped and gaming resumed as if nothing happened. Same hardware, same install. I could run Kenshi for hours on end, leave Steam running and music playing from a browser. WTF! Then it occurred to me: kernel bugs. Then again this year I had a similar issue after updates so I rolled back the kernel and everything worked. So I now have updating PTSD and defer updates because I lost trust.
So yeah. I can see why people give up. I just happen to be too stubborn (stupid?) to give up.
I've been thinking that as well but it hasn't given me any major issues in a year. At this point the machine is getting long in the tooth and power efficiency is crap and I'm planning to replace it this coming year.
I game similarly to you but prefer Alpine over Void.
The way I see it, you learned something useful by realizing kernel bus could cause issues, and you retain the control, efficiency and stability by not running Windows.
Having to give up an extra 30gb of space just because, losing control over new features being forced no you, privacy concerns, none of it is worth it anymore.
I dont game much anymore but I do love BeamNG, Kenshi and the occasional GTA5 slaughter-fest. All of this is ran through Steam under Flatpak on Void Linux Musl running XFCE with the Chicago 95 (Windows 95) theme. Hardware is a 12 core Threadripper, 1920, 1st gen, and a goofy AMD Radeon Pro 5700 I got for the 5 mini DP ports I never used...
However, summer of 2023 was when I nearly gave up gaming on Linux. Everything was running just fine then one day late June, sudden instability. Just running the Steam UI would crash the machine within seconds to minutes after starting. And by instability I mean hard lock up - audio skips and machine is dead to the world. At first I thought it was Steam as running as other programs seemed fine. Then I had lock ups using browsers or randomly sitting at the desktop. I started to suspect thermal issues from summer heat and did everything I could including rebuilding the PC to redo thermal paste and re-seat components. No change. Left my AC running 24/7 for a few days to see if that helped. Nothing. I was at a loss and everyone I talked to had the same line of "I dont know why you are messing with that Linux shit. Just buy a windows machine for gaming and use WSL." Sigh. I was about to give up and seriously considered selling the machine and stating over with a new Windows machine.
Of course what I did not pay attention to was updates as I updated rather regularly, at least one a week, sometimes twice. Around the middle of September 2023 the crashing suddenly stopped and gaming resumed as if nothing happened. Same hardware, same install. I could run Kenshi for hours on end, leave Steam running and music playing from a browser. WTF! Then it occurred to me: kernel bugs. Then again this year I had a similar issue after updates so I rolled back the kernel and everything worked. So I now have updating PTSD and defer updates because I lost trust.
So yeah. I can see why people give up. I just happen to be too stubborn (stupid?) to give up.