So this past weeekend I made the decision to re-install Linux, and see how it went playing WoW and other games…
Linux is something I’ve been wanting to use for years. I’ve always desired the ability to get away from Microsoft’s hold on the PC OS, especially for an OS that’s Open Source, secure, trusted and very customisable.
My distro (distribution) flavour of choice was Ubuntu. However this isn’t the vanilla Ubuntu distro, as given my love of aesthetics I had to go with a Desktop Environment (DE) that was at least as good looking as Windows 10.
So for this distro I went for Ubuntu built with the Budgie DE:
You have the choice of Light or Dark themes, so of course I chose the much easier on the eyes Dark Theme.
So getting it all set up for use was easy enough. The install took about 10 minutes (it’s really quick, especially on an SSD), then configuring it as per the above screenshot took another 5 minutes or so.
After that it was a case of getting things installed to allow me to play World of Warcraft in Linux…
I’ve been through this rodeo before, with the beta installation, so getting it all installed and up and running in WoW was actually relatively painless this time around, as I knew exactly what I had to install (Wine, Lutris & some libraries).
So WoW was easy enough to get running, but the biggest pain here is the initial play session is sluggish as it needs to compile shaders during play, but when it’s eventually done with that it plays as well as, if not better than Windows.
Discord is available in Linux as well, and the only gripe there is there’s no in-game Overlay of who’s speaking, but other than that it works exactly as it does in Windows. That meant I was able to actually raid last night using Linux, and there was literally no difference between my experience there and in Windows 🙂
Steam is another thing. There are plenty of SteamOS/Linux Native games to install & play, and they work fine, however getting Windows games to work, even with Proton (Steam’s method to get Windows only games to work in Linux) is tricky, and I haven’t managed to get any actually running yet.
Then again, for all I play of games that aren’t in the Blizzard launcher it’s not a huge issue. The games I’m likely to play in the near future are SteamOS native anyway (Axiom Verge, Pillars of Eternity 2, Stardew Valley).
I want to be able to get to the point where I’m using Linux now for the vast majority of my time at my computer. I’ll be keeping my Windows installation for the time being, at least until I can get 100% of my apps & games from Windows working to some degree in Linux, either natively or via Wine.
However at the very least I’ll be using it as my main environment for coding, as once my Java exam is put to bed, I’ll begin teaching myself Python, as programming is something I’d like to keep up with, and finally learn fully, after many years of unsuccessfully trying 🙂
