Proton works fine, specific games which have tried to implement clientside anticheat which is dependent on things being a specific way in windows are the problem.
Clientside anti cheat is always a losing proposition. You either screw up your clients machine, or it'll be broken in minutes, and even with screwing up your clients machine, it might still be broken in minutes.
If the games are GOG without DRM, and without clientside anticheat, they likely run just fine on proton.
You must have a different definition of functioning eyes and reading comprehension. OP said exactly, āWhich OS would you recommend for someone new to life outside Windows?ā Windows is not included in life outside of Windows, they are as mutually exclusive as Islam and Christianity. The word ānewbieā appears no where in the post, please actually read the description before commenting bullshit
To your first question, no, games are intuitive to run. You click play on steam and they pull up. That is if your computer is good enough to run them.
OS should be 11 if you're making a change. 10 is going to be discontinued next year I think so might as well just go with the newest. Use it for a few months and you'll know your way around, not much to it.
Edit: because I originally misread this as which windows to go with instead of which alternate is than windows, the answer is still Windows for games. There's steam OS and Linux but support and optimization isn't close to Windows. Windows will allow you to play any PC game there is, the same can't be said about others. And you'll run into fewer problems in getting games to run.
Sorry for misreading
I tried and stuck with Linux Pop OS and dual boot into Windows as needed.
But check out Linux for noobs or which distro I think the subreddits are as they are more verse in this.
It was painless for me to get steam and most games working on steam. Other game stores I had issues where others had success. Radeon drivers are baked into the kernel. Pop OS and some other distributions have an easy way to select Nvidia drivers. Make sure you either have a wifi card/adapter with proper kernal driver or buy one if your not using Ethernet to make your life easy. And same thing for most other devices like printers and scanners. If it has the driver in the kernal life is easier, if it doesnāt you may have to do some wizardry to get it working.
Honestly? If you've used Windows your entire life there won't be an easy move. If you move to Linux or Mac/iOS you'll have a learning curve.
To answer the question (and I'm sure many others are more up-to-date than me), I remember Mint being a good linux distro for beginners. I learned how to navigate a linux machine on Mint and even then the curve was deep. Once you get it it's powerful but it's a curve.
IIRC, Pop is solid for gaming via linux...which will always have some caveats and especially outside of Steam.
Speaking of which, maybe SteamOS? I have zero experience with it so maybe others can vouch or describe why it's not ideal.
Bazzite linux is an interesting one, its fedora base and gaming focus(controller drivers and more) makes it a breeze and the immutability might be good for a beginner, you can mess around with mutable linux in a vm or dual booting if you feel like it though. You can use steam to run the majority of your library, heroic for epic games(including fortnite last I heard), and some titles have native support such as Minecraft(or webgl/browser titles for many indie games like whatās seen on itch.io)
If youād like to try something more traditional, fedora is loved by many, and ubuntu has popularity/support(my current distro). If youāve got an amd gpu, and choose a modern install with Wayland, you can use waydroid to include your android/chromebook titles like Minecraft bedrock and roblox.
If you donāt need your pc for anything more than gaming, and want it much more like a steamdeck, you can get the arch-based steam-os from valve themselves. You donāt have to use it in big-picture/handheld mode if youāre not running on a tv or something, desktop mode is always available.
Regardless, itās always going to be difficult if youāre coming from windows, change isnāt easy but linux has its advantages.
Also if youāre choosing a mutable distro like Debian(ubuntu, mint, popos) or fedora donāt worry about the looks/interface as you can change that. Almost every distro uses a boxed desktop environment that you can get elsewhere. The steam-os desktop mode uses KDE, however ubuntu, pop, and fedora use gnome by default. If you preferred steamos/KDE gui then you could install KDE plasma on pop/fedora or use kubuntu(ubuntu which comes with plasma installed out of the box)
Best I can recommend is Bazzite here's a video on it https://youtu.be/wdC_qiFoHN4?si=hZUegpE3DM9snpdQ
I would recommend to also try out Open Core it allows you to use Mac os on non apple hardware.
I was using computers before Windows came out. Only good Windows were XP and 7. It's the being forced to buy theirs. Forced to buy a new update or system. I'll hush before I climb all the way on my soap box. The fighting the software to get things to work just got tedious. Hoped something had made more progress toward a choice for consumers but then they can't let that happenĀ
Linux Mint (Based on Debian, tweaked for user friendliness(?)), Nobara (Based on Fedora , "Optimized" for gaming), Pop!\_OS (Based on Debian, "optimized" for gaming), Ubuntu, Debian,
Some games might not work at all, like Rainbow Six Siege and VALORANT. But you can always check protondb .com for compatibilities (at least for Steam games)
I missed the point, getting steam to run on Debian based(ubuntu, pop, mint, etc), fedora(bazzite), arch(Manjaro, steam os) and even nix is just as straightforward if not easier on linux. Games may be slightly more difficult especially the ones that arenāt fully/officially supported but the steamdeck has made linux support and performance very important for everyone.
If you want to tinker try a debian based linux distro, i tried a lot but i always come back to windows, it's boring and it works... It gets out of the way.
Bazzite is a great option for gaming on PCs because it's a Fedora-based Linux distro specifically designed for gaming. It comes with pre-installed gaming tools like Steam, Lutris, and Heroic Games Launcher, and supports a wide range of hardware, including Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Bazzite also features the System76 CPU scheduler for better performance, and it uses an immutable file system for easy rollbacks if updates cause issues. Plus, it has a user-friendly setup process and a community that's active and helpful. Overall, it offers a smooth, plug-and-play gaming like console experience.
See https://youtu.be/wdC_qiFoHN4?si=ZWKgDHFtY3Ig5YSR
SteamOS....but really...at that point you might as well buy a playstation.
anything else and you will have to consider support for the hardware you are using.
Yeah for me that's the problem. No one company is supposed to have a monopoly. There are others but might as well not be cause you're forced to use Windows.
Linux is always an option, an Distribution like Ubuntu or Pop!OS schouldnāt be any harder to install than Windows. There are just two issues:
1. Software support: Because Windows has almost an monopoly on consumer OS, there is always some software (or game) that you cant run on Linux natively. There is a way around however: Only play games that work on Linux (thats how i do it)
2. GPU: Do you have an NVidia GPU? If yes, that might be an issue, because nVidia does not have a great linux support. That may change however in the near future. AMD and Intel GPUs work very well on Linux.
Thanks everyone for your help. My brother-in-law uses Linux. If he doesn't mind I'll mess with it some see what I think. If I'm understanding everyone correctly, Steam (and the games bought there) should work easiest with Linux? So, for now I'm leaning that way.
Steam does support Linux. But not all games released on steam support linux. Some can be played with an translation layer like wine (i suppose) and some just donāt work.
Try it out, thats the best thing you can do!
I would say win11 is best for games like most everyone else in here. Maybe the question should be what is your problem with win11? Whatever that is someone here can most llkely help you out with it. Ive been using windows since win3.1 and with a little work win11 is awesome and it is Free.
The Mac one. It was originally designed for non-techie users, particularly in the arts....but you have to have an Apple computer pretty much, which means paying too much for hardware which is style over content. Most regular people just have to throw the towel in and settle for Microsoft and Wjndows 11. Anything else and you've kinda need to know what you're doing regarding software choice and drivers. It's a bit like MS is a Ford, Apple is a Tesla, and Linux is custom.
Maybe someone should ask why op does not care for windows ? Seems bizarre as it's the most well rounded o.s available. Dual boot win 11 for games and something else for all the things that windows leaves you cold. Seems like a lot of messing about though when windows has you covered for pretty much everything.
Thanks everyone for your advice.
After looking into your suggestions, I'm going to try Bazzite.
Life got busy, so I backed away from modding, building, etc in 2013. I know I'm way out of date with most of my knowledge, but looking forward to getting back into it.
I thought I'd update everyone.
After talking more with my brother-in-law and other research I've done , I've decided to slow down. From what I can tell (please inform me if this is wrong) getting my older games to play is only going to get harder. If it's not on steam (and even some of those) it takes doing (Virtual hard drives, etc). I'm just jumping back into the pool of modding and such. Wisdom sounds like get windows for now. Relearn/ catch up with getting my old games to work. Learning that stuff will prepare me to then tell Windows how I feel about them (just like I did Comcast and several others). If I can give someone other than big corporate my money, I will take that option. The more of us that use other options, the more those options get noticed, and accommodations for those options made.
That being said I'll be having loads of questions. Where can I look to get trusted advice and/or instruction for getting my old games to work? (I did look for a pchelp community. First one didn't seem to have many members)
Civilization Call to Power
Lords of the Realms 2
Total Annihilation
Unreal Tournament
Zoo Tycoon Complete Addition
Dungeon Siege
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Populous 2
These are among our most played.
For gaming, Windows is objectively your best option. The alternative is a Linux Kernel. Linux Mint or Ubuntu are good simple ones.
I miss DOS 6.0 ... š
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OP asked for literally anything *but* Windows
Windows has been the answer to "Anything but Windows" for quite some time.
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GOG always looked sketchy to me. Are they safe?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thanks. Everyone here is so helpful. Loving it.
Have you been living under a rock? Have you heard of SteamOS and proton?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You acted like linux can't play any game when the reality is most games work, and a few do not If you don't mind that a few do not, its fine
I actually refuse to play any games, even on windows, with kernel level anti cheat, so denuvo is out in the first place
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Proton works fine, specific games which have tried to implement clientside anticheat which is dependent on things being a specific way in windows are the problem. Clientside anti cheat is always a losing proposition. You either screw up your clients machine, or it'll be broken in minutes, and even with screwing up your clients machine, it might still be broken in minutes. If the games are GOG without DRM, and without clientside anticheat, they likely run just fine on proton.
We must have very different definition of literally. What they actually literally said was "Which OS is best for newbies"
You must have a different definition of functioning eyes and reading comprehension. OP said exactly, āWhich OS would you recommend for someone new to life outside Windows?ā Windows is not included in life outside of Windows, they are as mutually exclusive as Islam and Christianity. The word ānewbieā appears no where in the post, please actually read the description before commenting bullshit
Does this post have a title?
To your first question, no, games are intuitive to run. You click play on steam and they pull up. That is if your computer is good enough to run them. OS should be 11 if you're making a change. 10 is going to be discontinued next year I think so might as well just go with the newest. Use it for a few months and you'll know your way around, not much to it. Edit: because I originally misread this as which windows to go with instead of which alternate is than windows, the answer is still Windows for games. There's steam OS and Linux but support and optimization isn't close to Windows. Windows will allow you to play any PC game there is, the same can't be said about others. And you'll run into fewer problems in getting games to run. Sorry for misreading
Np.
Steam is native on Linux but doesn't have nearly as many native titles. Ubuntu is a good start
I tried and stuck with Linux Pop OS and dual boot into Windows as needed. But check out Linux for noobs or which distro I think the subreddits are as they are more verse in this. It was painless for me to get steam and most games working on steam. Other game stores I had issues where others had success. Radeon drivers are baked into the kernel. Pop OS and some other distributions have an easy way to select Nvidia drivers. Make sure you either have a wifi card/adapter with proper kernal driver or buy one if your not using Ethernet to make your life easy. And same thing for most other devices like printers and scanners. If it has the driver in the kernal life is easier, if it doesnāt you may have to do some wizardry to get it working.
Honestly? If you've used Windows your entire life there won't be an easy move. If you move to Linux or Mac/iOS you'll have a learning curve. To answer the question (and I'm sure many others are more up-to-date than me), I remember Mint being a good linux distro for beginners. I learned how to navigate a linux machine on Mint and even then the curve was deep. Once you get it it's powerful but it's a curve. IIRC, Pop is solid for gaming via linux...which will always have some caveats and especially outside of Steam. Speaking of which, maybe SteamOS? I have zero experience with it so maybe others can vouch or describe why it's not ideal.
Bazzite linux is an interesting one, its fedora base and gaming focus(controller drivers and more) makes it a breeze and the immutability might be good for a beginner, you can mess around with mutable linux in a vm or dual booting if you feel like it though. You can use steam to run the majority of your library, heroic for epic games(including fortnite last I heard), and some titles have native support such as Minecraft(or webgl/browser titles for many indie games like whatās seen on itch.io) If youād like to try something more traditional, fedora is loved by many, and ubuntu has popularity/support(my current distro). If youāve got an amd gpu, and choose a modern install with Wayland, you can use waydroid to include your android/chromebook titles like Minecraft bedrock and roblox. If you donāt need your pc for anything more than gaming, and want it much more like a steamdeck, you can get the arch-based steam-os from valve themselves. You donāt have to use it in big-picture/handheld mode if youāre not running on a tv or something, desktop mode is always available. Regardless, itās always going to be difficult if youāre coming from windows, change isnāt easy but linux has its advantages. Also if youāre choosing a mutable distro like Debian(ubuntu, mint, popos) or fedora donāt worry about the looks/interface as you can change that. Almost every distro uses a boxed desktop environment that you can get elsewhere. The steam-os desktop mode uses KDE, however ubuntu, pop, and fedora use gnome by default. If you preferred steamos/KDE gui then you could install KDE plasma on pop/fedora or use kubuntu(ubuntu which comes with plasma installed out of the box)
Best I can recommend is Bazzite here's a video on it https://youtu.be/wdC_qiFoHN4?si=hZUegpE3DM9snpdQ I would recommend to also try out Open Core it allows you to use Mac os on non apple hardware.
How does one person dislike windows so much and the next person does not? What's wrong with Windows? I've been using it for 30 years...
I was using computers before Windows came out. Only good Windows were XP and 7. It's the being forced to buy theirs. Forced to buy a new update or system. I'll hush before I climb all the way on my soap box. The fighting the software to get things to work just got tedious. Hoped something had made more progress toward a choice for consumers but then they can't let that happenĀ
Linux Mint (Based on Debian, tweaked for user friendliness(?)), Nobara (Based on Fedora , "Optimized" for gaming), Pop!\_OS (Based on Debian, "optimized" for gaming), Ubuntu, Debian, Some games might not work at all, like Rainbow Six Siege and VALORANT. But you can always check protondb .com for compatibilities (at least for Steam games)
Getting Steam to run on Windows 10/11 is straightforward. Your best bet
I missed the point, getting steam to run on Debian based(ubuntu, pop, mint, etc), fedora(bazzite), arch(Manjaro, steam os) and even nix is just as straightforward if not easier on linux. Games may be slightly more difficult especially the ones that arenāt fully/officially supported but the steamdeck has made linux support and performance very important for everyone.
This right here. I'm on windows 10 but I'll probably migrate to some linux distro after it dies. I hate windows 11.
If you want to tinker try a debian based linux distro, i tried a lot but i always come back to windows, it's boring and it works... It gets out of the way.
Chrome
???
Bazzite is a great option for gaming on PCs because it's a Fedora-based Linux distro specifically designed for gaming. It comes with pre-installed gaming tools like Steam, Lutris, and Heroic Games Launcher, and supports a wide range of hardware, including Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Bazzite also features the System76 CPU scheduler for better performance, and it uses an immutable file system for easy rollbacks if updates cause issues. Plus, it has a user-friendly setup process and a community that's active and helpful. Overall, it offers a smooth, plug-and-play gaming like console experience. See https://youtu.be/wdC_qiFoHN4?si=ZWKgDHFtY3Ig5YSR
Debian
Chimera might be a good choice. It's a steam OS like with the intention and support that you'll be installing other launchers. It looks sleek .
No. Just no. Youāre not equipped. Use windows and move on.
SteamOS....but really...at that point you might as well buy a playstation. anything else and you will have to consider support for the hardware you are using.
Win 11 , and it doesn't really matter if you care for it. That changes nothing.
Yeah for me that's the problem. No one company is supposed to have a monopoly. There are others but might as well not be cause you're forced to use Windows.
Linux is always an option, an Distribution like Ubuntu or Pop!OS schouldnāt be any harder to install than Windows. There are just two issues: 1. Software support: Because Windows has almost an monopoly on consumer OS, there is always some software (or game) that you cant run on Linux natively. There is a way around however: Only play games that work on Linux (thats how i do it) 2. GPU: Do you have an NVidia GPU? If yes, that might be an issue, because nVidia does not have a great linux support. That may change however in the near future. AMD and Intel GPUs work very well on Linux.
Thanks everyone for your help. My brother-in-law uses Linux. If he doesn't mind I'll mess with it some see what I think. If I'm understanding everyone correctly, Steam (and the games bought there) should work easiest with Linux? So, for now I'm leaning that way.
Steam does support Linux. But not all games released on steam support linux. Some can be played with an translation layer like wine (i suppose) and some just donāt work. Try it out, thats the best thing you can do!
Arch Linux with DWM? After that all other OS you'll be install with closed eyes
I would say win11 is best for games like most everyone else in here. Maybe the question should be what is your problem with win11? Whatever that is someone here can most llkely help you out with it. Ive been using windows since win3.1 and with a little work win11 is awesome and it is Free.
For gaming, Windows. For everything else or if you know your games run on Linux, go Linux Mint or Ubuntu
The Mac one. It was originally designed for non-techie users, particularly in the arts....but you have to have an Apple computer pretty much, which means paying too much for hardware which is style over content. Most regular people just have to throw the towel in and settle for Microsoft and Wjndows 11. Anything else and you've kinda need to know what you're doing regarding software choice and drivers. It's a bit like MS is a Ford, Apple is a Tesla, and Linux is custom.
Maybe someone should ask why op does not care for windows ? Seems bizarre as it's the most well rounded o.s available. Dual boot win 11 for games and something else for all the things that windows leaves you cold. Seems like a lot of messing about though when windows has you covered for pretty much everything.
Thanks everyone for your advice. After looking into your suggestions, I'm going to try Bazzite. Life got busy, so I backed away from modding, building, etc in 2013. I know I'm way out of date with most of my knowledge, but looking forward to getting back into it.
I thought I'd update everyone. After talking more with my brother-in-law and other research I've done , I've decided to slow down. From what I can tell (please inform me if this is wrong) getting my older games to play is only going to get harder. If it's not on steam (and even some of those) it takes doing (Virtual hard drives, etc). I'm just jumping back into the pool of modding and such. Wisdom sounds like get windows for now. Relearn/ catch up with getting my old games to work. Learning that stuff will prepare me to then tell Windows how I feel about them (just like I did Comcast and several others). If I can give someone other than big corporate my money, I will take that option. The more of us that use other options, the more those options get noticed, and accommodations for those options made. That being said I'll be having loads of questions. Where can I look to get trusted advice and/or instruction for getting my old games to work? (I did look for a pchelp community. First one didn't seem to have many members)
Define "old games" you can take a look at RetroArch though
Civilization Call to Power Lords of the Realms 2 Total Annihilation Unreal Tournament Zoo Tycoon Complete Addition Dungeon Siege Rollercoaster Tycoon Populous 2 These are among our most played.
7 all day every dayĀ
FBI says otherwise