How I Ended Up Going Full Linux

The Great Windows 11 Disaster

I was stuck with Windows for years. Gaming, productivity, all that stuff. Let me just say that I did enjoy Windows 7, back when I was a little kid, I remember using Windows XP and that was probably the best heh and now present day, Windows 10 wasn't the worse. But then Windows 11 happened. Yeah, that Windows 11. The one that decided to completely bork itself on my system about two months ago. Blue screens, random crashes, weird permission issues - the whole nightmare package.

After the fifth reinstall (I've had countless issues with Windows 11, like corrupting itself during updates etc), I was just done. Done. so I figured "screw it" and just sent it on to Linux. Now, again I've used linux for a good long while before that.

I've used it a ton for servers and I've had daily drove it before, but I've ran into countless issues and game issues as well. (I used Linux Mint) and some other distros in the past. Keep in mind this was 3 years ago, so it was time to see how linux has improved and also see how proton and other emulation systems have improved.

My Current Setup

I'm running Bazzite 42 (based on Fedora Kinoite) with a pretty decent hardware setup, you would think it would work fine on Windows 11!:

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (12 cores) running at 5.45 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

62.53 GiB RAM

KDE Plasma 6.3.4 as my desktop environment

Running on a 2560x1440 @ 480Hz external display and 1920x1080 @ 100Hz secondary

For a bit of a spoiler, running on Fedora, This is actually the most stable my PC has ever been? Like, Windows would randomly decide to update and break half my stuff, but my Bazzite install has been pretty much mostly soild, now sure just like every system or so, there's always some sort of bugs. But I expect that.

I think a lot of people who want to migrate over to Linux, might expect that you aren't to tinker at all, but that isn't true. I have no issues with tinkering, part of the fun is learning how to use the system and such.

The Gaming Situation

The big question everyone asks me when I mention Linux: "But can you actually game on it?"

Yes, you definitely can. Gaming on Linux in 2025 is surprisingly good - with a good large set of games working at comparable or sometimes better performance than Windows. The progress over the last few years has been impressive. Majority of my steam library now runs perfectly fine on linux and really the games I do play, I have little to no issues.

What Works Well

• Steam + Proton: This combination is really solid now. Valve has invested heavily in Proton compatibility, and it shows. Games like Wreckfest, Payday 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator and again, most of my Steam library runs without issues. For games that need a little help, the Proton-GE custom builds often fix any remaining problems like fixing my issue with Just Cause 4 not launching or fixing some issues in Hitman 3.
• Native Ports: Ever so slowly, more developers are releasing native Linux versions of their games (BeamNG many months ago released a linux native build running on Vulkan). These typically perform great, but we do have some buggy holdouts, where it's sometimes better to run Proton/Windows then the linux build.
• Anti-Cheat Progress: One of the biggest barriers used to be anti-cheat software (don't get me wrong, we still have a long ways to go and lots of games are still borked or the developers flat out refuse to support it.. but). It's slowly improved. - like some games with Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye now work through Proton.

Performance

With my RTX 3060, I'm getting good performance across most games. The system feels responsive, and I've noticed that having fewer background processes in Linux sometimes gives me better framerates than I had in Windows.

The Setup Reality

As mentioned in the spoiler above, there is occasional tinkering that is of course still needed, I won't lie. ProtonDB has always been a useful resource for checking compatibility and finding solutions. The good news is that most tweaks are just simple launch options or quick settings changes in Lutris or Steam.

I was pleasantly surprised when most of my Steam library worked immediately without any adjustments. Even games from Epic and GOG run well through Heroic Launcher. The "Linux can't game" statement definitely isn't true anymore - the ecosystem has matured significantly over the last few years.

Daily Driver Experience

It's wild how quickly I got used to it. KDE Plasma feels like a more customizable Windows anyway, but without all the garbage Microsoft forces on you. Package management is a billion times better than searching for random .exe files online. The terminal is legit just faster for getting stuff done once you learn some basic commands. And Flatpaks mean I don't have to worry about dependency mayhem anymore.

Now sure, I am using Fedora with the gaming image Bazzite, which also means it's an atomic build. This basically means that in a way you are locked a bit down, but not in the way like Windows.

It does at least help keep me in check with installing stuff more from appimages, using distrobox, flatpaks and such. You can still install packages, but you must layer them onto the image, on the plus side, if a package causes issues, you can easily fix this.

The final verdict? I'm not going back to Windows at least for a long while so far. They had their chance. My gaming rig is now a Linux machine, and honestly? It's just better this way. Anyway, that's my Linux journey so far. If you've been thinking about making the switch, just do it. The water's fine!