NOTE: This review was originally posted to Tumblr on October 12, 2018, and has been reposted here for archival purposes. It may not reflect recent events or my current opinions.
Last year, I posted a write-up on my thoughts on (GNU/)Linux, and talked about how I was interested in the future of Linux and was hoping that it would take off. Of course, I had some issues with switching completely, particularly due to playing games, but I did want to explore it more and planned to dualboot Linux Mint once I got a bigger SSD for my computer. Sure enough, I got one for Christmas and it wasn’t long before I decided to dualboot Linux Mint and Windows 10. That said, for a while I had trouble getting into Linux Mint, and didn’t really use it as much as I wanted to because, well, games. I found it kind of tedious to keep booting between Linux Mint and Windows 10 just because I wanted to play some Overwatch, so for a while I just ended up using Windows 10.
That was, until Steam announced Steam Play for Linux.
In case you’re wondering, Steam provided a way to play Windows-only games on Linux by releasing it with a “Proton” wrapper that allowed for installation of games using WINE, providing an easy way to install Windows-only games through Linux. While by default you’re limited to the “whitelisted” games, but you can set the option in Steam settings to let it install for all Windows-only games. This sort of got me interested in Linux again, and for the past couple weeks, I have been experimenting with this to see which games I can enjoy under Linux Mint and to see if it can fully replace Windows 10 for me.
I originally wanted to write about this a while ago, but I never got around to it, but now that I’m finally getting fully into the Linux system, I think it is a good time to ask the question: Can Linux Mint 19 replace Windows 10 for me?
For this write-up, I’m going to go over a few different use cases:
-Internet browsing
-Word processing
-Picture editing
-Drawing
-Gaming
This provides an idea pretty much all of the general use cases that I use my computer for, from more basic stuff to stuff that is may be more complicated. I will be categorizing each of these and make conclusions by putting them into three basic categories: Yes, Maybe or No. It’s pretty self explanatory, Yes means that it can easily replace Windows for this use case, Maybe means that it can be done but may have some issues, and No means that it can’t quite replace this use case for me yet. So, without further adieu, let’s see if we can answer the question of whether or not Linux Mint 19 can replace Windows 10 for my use.
Internet Browsing:
Let’s start off with pretty much the most basic use for my computer. Obviously, I’m going to want some time retweet shitposts on Twitter, spend time on r/socialism and r/FULLCOMMUNISM, watch Youtube videos and so on. On Windows, I typically use the Vivaldi browser, a browser that builds upon Chromium and continues off of the legacy of Opera 12. And… it’s available on Linux, so nothing to worry about there. Though Linux comes by default with Firefox and you can also install Chrome/Chromium if that’s more of your thing. Everything works fine, and the only issue that I run into is my internet going out, which obviously isn’t a Linux issue and is more due to Comcast/Xfinity being crappy. But other than that, it works just fine as it does on Windows.
Unless you’re one of the few people out there that uses Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer for anything other than downloading other browsers, Linux works well for basic internet browsing. Which shouldn’t come off as a surprise, because if I had anything less than “Yes” on here, there would be many, many problems.
Conclusion: Yes
Word processing:
Another extremely basic task with an unsurprising result. Linux Mint, as well as many of the more “casual” Linux distros, comes by default with the LibreOffice Suite, an open source alternative to Microsoft Office. So, yeah, Word Processing in Linux is an easy task and can easily replace Windows 10 for this use. Granted, if you want to install Microsoft Office, I’ve heard there is a bit of trouble with that but it has gotten better with improvements for WINE. Though unless there’s some specific feature in Microsoft Word or any of the other Office suites that LibreOffice doesn’t have, I would just recommend using LibreOffice since it’s free and just as easy to use.
Conclusion: Yes
Image Editing:
So here we finally get to the more interesting stuff. I do a lot of basic image editing on Windows 10 (mostly memes) using Paint.net. Unfortunately, unlike Vivaldi, Paint.net is not currently available on Linux and according to WineHQ doesn’t play well with WINE. So, I have to look for an alternative. By default, Linux Mint comes with GIMP, but this does have a learning curve compared to Paint.net and is more closer to Photoshop-esque image editing than more basic image editing. If you’re more into that, then it’s definitely a good substitute, but for more basic use, I at first couldn’t find any programs that managed to have Paint.net’s abilities while having it’s level of simplicity. There was a site I find called “Pixlr,” which served as an online image editor that resembles Paint.net well enough, although it had some issues. The issue in particular I had was that it wouldn’t directly copy and paste, and I had to download images and open them from within Pixlr to put them in. And the fact that it’s online only means that if ever my internet goes out, I’m… pretty much screwed if I want to edit any images. Then I found out about Pinta, an image editing program pretty much directly modeled after Paint.net. I was definitely happy to find out about it, and installing it, it worked pretty well… until I ran into a problem that ended up killing it completely for me.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to resize selections.
The only options I found for resizing were resizing the canvas and resizing the whole images, but no matter how much I looked in the options, I could not find an option for resizing selections. Which frankly is a massive issue when it comes to pasting in large images that I need to shrink down to fit into my image. I even looked online to see if anyone had a solution, but… to no avail. So I’m stuck with three options - try to learn GIMP, have an online-only program that can’t copy and paste images directly, or have a program that can’t resize selections. I’m probably just end up using Pixlr for basic editing, and maybe some day I’ll figure out how to resize selections in Pinta, but for now, I unfortunately have to put this as…
Conclusion: Maybe
Drawing:
So I definitely do a lot of digital art on my computer, which replaced the “pencil and paper” approach and allowed me to make more high quality images that I can post online. I’m still kind of learning and my drawings are relatively mediocre, but currently I use a Wacom Intuos Art pen tablet for all my drawings. On Windows 10, I use a program called FireAlpaca, which, like Paint.net, isn’t natively available on Linux, but according to WineHQ, at least serves better for what it is. Although, I didn’t use FireAlpaca either way and instead used a program I installed a while ago called Krita. Linux Mint natively comes with support for Graphics tablets, although proprietary drivers for Wacom tablets as far as I know aren’t available on Linux if you want those. But otherwise, after configuring a few things, using my Wacom Intuos Art in Krita worked just fine. The lack of proprietary drivers may not quite give doing art with tablets the same “feel” as in Windows, but it’s a minor thing that I can easily get over, and I can of course draw just fine in Linux Mint. I even decided to go ahead and made a mediocre furry Halloween drawing while I was at it.
Conclusion: Yes
Gaming:
And we finally conclude with the big one. Gaming, for many, has always been more or less the achilles’ heel of Linux. Because of its low market share, software developers typically don’t consider Linux when making games. Linux on its own has gotten more support in recent years, but with the lack of AAA developers like Rockstar and Blizzard, it’s kind of what puts a lot of people, especially in the PC gaming community, off of Linux. That said, more and more software developers continue to recognize the Linux user base and the desire for Linux games, which especially started with Valve’s decision in 2013 to port Steam and most of the first party Valve games to Linux. It did end up getting more developers to support Linux, and for what it is there is a good selection of games that you can get natively on Linux, and I’ll list a few of mine.
-Undertale: Probably my favorite RPG and one of my favorite games of all time due to it’s interesting story, fun combat mechanics. This was actually one of the first games I played on WINE in late 2015 since I was on a Thinkpad with Linux Mint installed when I got this game and ended up playing it through the PlayOnLinux program, but of course it would later on get a native Linux port.
-Night in the Woods: My personal GOTY of 2017, an interesting indie game that while isn’t too focused on gameplay, has a story that I could “dive” in with good characters, a nice looking art style and one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time.
-Freedom Planet: One of the indie games that actually got me into PC gaming, due to it’s Sonic-like gameplay and fun characters.
-Team Fortress 2: One of Valve’s flagship games, and a fun multiplayer FPS title with fun characters and maps, and still manages to have a healthy playbase even despite being over a decade old at this point.
-Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: Another one of Valve’s flagship games and pretty much the FPS game that gets the most focus from them these days. A game with a pretty steep learning curve, but I’m always a sucker for a round of Deathmatch.
-Portal 2: Another Valve game, but still a great one that’s easily in my Top 10 games of all time.
-Minecraft: Arguably the most popular game of this decade, having tons of sales and in general being one of the most iconic games of this generation. I will admit that out the games I mentioned, this is probably the one that least applies to being one of my favorites, but it is still fun and worth mentioning as it’s a popular title that can be played natively on Linux.
Of course, these aren’t all the games that are available natively on Linux, and there are tons of native Linux games that can be found in the Steam store or whatever else there is that supports Linux. But even putting this aside, I mentioned at the beginning of this that Steam came out with “Proton,” a WINE wrapper that allows you to install Windows-only games in Linux. Since I’ve been using Linux a lot lately, I figured I would experiment with this and see what games work well with WINE and what games don’t. I’m not going to install all my Windows-only games in Linux because that would require tons of dedication and this would probably double the length of this editorial, but I’m mostly going to focus on a handful of particular titles. In case you want to know, my PC runs off of an FX 6300 CPU with a Radeon RX 560 for a video card, as well as 8GB of DDR3 RAM. Depending on your specifications and distro, these results could vary, but these are all my experiences with the games I’ve tried. I should also mention that some of these Steam games are “whitelisted” for Steam Play (meaning able to install by default) and some aren’t, but if you’re running Linux and want to try and test all of your Windows-only games, Go to Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play and Check ‘Enable Steam Play for all titles’ But all that aside, it’s time to go through my experiences with the games I’ve tried
-Blockland: Worked just fine.
-Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: Punkbuster doesn’t seem to install, which may lead to some issues with multiplayer. Otherwise, works just fine.
-Call of Duty: World at War: The game at least managed to install and load, but from what I played only managed to run at 20FPS, which, especially for an FPS game, is rather unplayable.
-Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: Did not start at all.
-Cuphead: Unfortunately, I could not seem to get Cuphead to work no matter what. Even after looking through fixes, setting launch options, reinstalling the game, the game just ended up crashing for me, and while it would show me playing it on Steam, it just didn’t load or do anything.
-Doki Doki Literature Club: Worked just fine.
-Ultimate Doom: The standard version on Steam loaded, but played at a crappy framerate. But once I replaced files with the GZDoom files (like basically everyone does at this point), the game ran perfectly fine.
-Doom (2016): Worked just fine, just remember to change the API to Vulkan for the best results
-DuckTales Remastered: Worked just fine
-My Summer Car: Worked fine, although game seemed to run in the 40’s in terms of framerate. I’m not sure if that’s just a WINE thing or the game itself.
-OneShot: Worked just fine.
-Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter: Doesn’t start up. Although right after I tested this I realized that Serious Sam Fusion was a thing which could natively play this game on Linux, making this pretty much entirely pointless.
-Snake Pass: Worked, but maintained a framerate between the 40’s and 50’s on Low settings, anything higher than that bumped the game down to 30 FPS or less.
-Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed: The game’s playable, albeit the config tool doesn’t seem to work and for me races tended to run somewhere between the 30’s and 40’s in terms of framerate. If you don’t mind it, it’s still a tolerable experience.
-Sonic Adventure DX: The framerate is a bit inconsistent, but otherwise the game seems to run fine.
-Sonic Adventure 2: The game didn’t load up by default, however after deleting the old launcher, changing the name of sonic2app.exe to Launcher.exe, and bring in the config files from my Windows partition, the game worked just fine, although didn’t seem to recognize my Xbox 360 controller.
-Sonic CD: By default, the game does not start. However, after reconfiguring the Launch Options to “WINEPREFIX=~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/200940/pfx winetricks d3dcompiler_43”, the game worked just fine, although the Config tool doesn’t seem to work.
-Sonic Forces: Didn’t start up.
-Sonic Generations: When first installing this game, the framerate was a bit inconsistent and the audio was completely messed up. Adding “PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command% -popupwindow” did solve the audio issue, but the framerate is still inconsistent, albeit still playable.
-Sonic Mania: Worked just fine.
-Sonic 4: Episode I - Didn’t start up, all that happened was that I got an error saying that it needed .NET framework
-Wolfenstein: The New Order: Worked, however framerate tended to stay in the 40’s.
So, that’s a good list of Steam games that give an idea of the kinds of games I play. I’ll probably continue installing and trying out games to play, like Grand Theft Auto V for example, but there is one game that’s not available on Steam that I really enjoy playing. One of my very favorite games of all time. You may not know what it is, it’s a fairly small multiplayer FPS game by a small indie company called “Blizzard.”
…
Yes, I’m talking about Overwatch.
Now, I’m not going to lie, Overwatch is a game that I’ve continued to have fun with ever since I got it for Christmas 2016. And initially, it was the one game that was preventing me from fully switching to Linux due to, at the time, it having major issues with WINE. Over the years, it has gotten better, and I decided to give it a go with a program called Lutris, which in case you’re wondering is an open source platform that different types of games to be put into one launcher and is very useful when it comes to installing games through WINE. Admittedly, there was a bit of hassle getting it to work. After installing it the first time, the Battle.net launcher didn’t start up and just crashed on start up, but after installing some dependencies, I finally got the game to work. At first, the game played really slowly for whatever reason, but this was due to a shader cache issue and after playing some matches, the issue kind of just ironed itself out. And trust me, I could not be anymore happy that I finally can play one of my favorite games on my favorite OS.
Now, all this aside, if you’re considering switching to Linux yet have games to play, I would refer to the WineHQ and https://spcr.netlify.com to see how well your games may run under WINE. From this list, there’s a lot of different stuff with different results. Some games were pretty much perfect, some games required some reconfiguration, some games still have issues running, and some games just refused to work at all. But, I will say that right now, most of my very favorite games on the PC can be played on Linux, whether it be natively or through WINE. Most of the games that don’t work are single player games that I’ll probably play through once and be done with, and you also have to consider how much time I put into Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 these days, I think I can say that I’ve at least switched to Linux Mint as my “main OS.” I still won’t delete my Windows 10 partition just yet, as there are still games that I enjoy that either don’t run well or don’t run at all even with WINE, but considering what game support was like on Linux even just a year ago, it’s definitely gotten a lot better and is definitely almost there in terms of support. I could definitely see myself finally moving away from Windows by next year, so hopefully things continue to improve.
But this comes back to the question, would gaming be classified under a “Yes, Maybe or No.” Honestly, when I was first considering doing this write up, I was definitely thinking that gaming would be a complete “Maybe.” And while I wouldn’t recommend switching to Linux just yet if you’re a hardcore PC gamer, you have to remember that the title still says “Can Linux Mint 19 replace Windows 10 (for me).” And if the question was just “Can Linux (in general) replace Windows 10,” I would still probably put it as a “Maybe.” But, in my perspective, I’m able to play a ton of games I enjoy through Linux, and while there are still some that don’t work, I feel pretty satisfied with the direction of game support in Linux, and there’s a lot of good games that I can happily enjoy on Linux Mint without booting into my Windows partition. So, believe it or not, I’m going to conclude this with…
Conclusion: Yes
Final Thoughts:
There were definitely some interesting results while writing this editorial, where even when factoring gaming into this, the worst result with Linux I had was finding a good, easy to use photo editor. Otherwise, I could honestly say that Linux Mint 19 could very well replace Windows 10 for me. Pretty much everything I can do in Windows 10 on a day to day basis I can do in Linux Mint 19, and really the only reason I have for keeping my Windows 10 partition really is just for the games that don’t quite work so well under WINE or Steam Play. In a year or so, I will probably have moved on from Windows completely and embraced open source glory with how things are improving now. And that’ll definitely be a very fine day indeed.
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