I used linux in the past, both privately and work-related, but the last time was over 10 years ago, so I’m a bit out of touch. I am in need of a new PC, but it’ll be a good year before I have the funds, so for now I am making due with an i5 7500 and a gtx 1660. I do have 32 GB so there’s that. I finally feel confident enough to make the permanent switch to linux from windows as all of the programs I use are either available on linux or have a good/better equivalent. The only thing I fear will hold me back is games. I know Steam has Proton now which will run most games, but how does it compare? The games I play most are Skyrim (heavily modded) , RDR2, Witcher 3, Transport fever, Civilization, Crusader kings 3 and Cities Skylines (uninstalled atm waiting for 2). I’m on the fence to either wait until I can afford a new PC and dual boot or make the switch now and deal with a few gaming problems. Thing is, what kind of problems may I expect? Anyone able and knowledgeable to give me some advice?
EDIT: Wow, those are a lot of replies; thank you everyone! You really helped me. I will make the switch sooner rather than later.
Skyrim with proton GE will work just fine. Modding will be trickier. Vortex can be setup, with lutris. But I’ve ran into issues when it comes to external programs like resaver, loot, nemesis/fnis.
You could slap in a cheap second drive and see what happens. Compared to 10 years ago, it’s so much better.
Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Sims 4, Minecraft (not a shocker, just need Java for modded), it’s been great.
steamtinkerlaunch makes running Skyrim with ModOrganizer2 very simple. Other external programs will probably still be tricky though
If you use lutris you can simply download portable MO2 version and unpack it to your wine prefix with installed skyrim and it’s work perfectly.
Can you elaborate on the modding? I’m also interested in using Linux for gaming but Skyrim utterly demands mods and particularly I quite like mods like Skyrim script extender (I think that was the name) and I also really liked ENBs for the graphical improvement. And Nemesis was also sooooo much better than the alternative for managing all those mods.
I know multiple people that do Skyrim on linux, at least one heavily modded. Outside of DyndoLOD not working right I can’t really remember any issues they had.