From the C: to the /Mnt/s, Linux is better than ever for PC gaming – and easier to switch to from Windows
Publish Date: 2026-04-08 12:17:00
Source Domain: www.rockpapershotgun.com
A few months ago, I did something radical. For radical, picture me skateboarding ungainly while installing Linux – or, to be more precise CachyOS – on my PC.
Windows 11 had just been bugging me too much. On top of Microsoft’s forced AI implementation growing ever more obscene, I was starting to get unexplained slowdown; something that would usually just prompt a Windows reinstall, as I’ve done countless times all the way back to Windows Vista. However, prompted by my good friend (and writer at cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer) Joshua Wolens deciding to boldly try out Linux, this time, I would not-so-boldly join him. What I’ve found is a genuinely fantastic OS: a real, viable alternative to Windows, and one that’s far more accessible than it was just a few years ago.
On that note, let’s roll the clock back to 2020. Apologies to anyone that’s just retraumatised, but it’s the last time I tried Linux. I had an ailing and frankly crap old Windows 10 laptop that audibly chunked its way through games like a steam engine. I therefore installed Linux Mint, the Linux distribution that, by its reputation, is one of the friendliest to newcomers. Sadly, while my laptop ran far better on Linux than it ever could under Windows, my Steam account was no longer a bounteous land of games: it’d been picked clean by compatibility issues hovering like vultures. Scouring the store for games that could run natively on Linux was grim, and setting up the Wine compatibility layer for each game was something I couldn’t get to grips with.
The gaming side of Linux has changed much since then, not least thanks to the popularity of the Steam Deck. SteamOS’s Proton, a nascent tool way back in 2020, has become very, very good at running Windows games, with less of the jank that Wine (on which Proton is built) struggled with back in the day. It’s not limited to SteamOS handhelds, either: a fully matured Proton will, as I’ve since learned, help a Linux desktop run almost anything.
If…
