 You're gonna install Windows on that PC. I'm gonna install Linux on this one. So it's a race? First to a usable desktop wins. Ready? Okay, well, come on, you put obstacles in my way. Okay, fine. I'll wait. I'm going. Three, two, one. Go Windows. Gave yourself a head start? I did not. Video evidence, we pressed it at the same time. I pressed enter, I hit control, alt, delete. I reset the board. This is not a useful progress bar. It's what's called a throbber. It's called a throbber, is it? Mm-hmm. I got another throbber to show you. Should I'm just flexing my muscles? No, I don't wanna see what's new from Windows. Come on. Are you supporting remote workers? SmartDeploy can help you deploy Windows, apps, patches, and driver updates to remote PCs over the cloud. Grab your free subscription worth over $700 at the link below. All right. Though I lost, but in fairness to me, I didn't get to pick a side. I would have chosen Linux in an OS install race too. Yeah, I guess, but I needed a way to introduce one of the biggest improvements in Linux gaming since our last video a year ago. Thanks for the release of Ubuntu 20.1. It's a great game, but it's a little bit of a pain in the ass. Thanks for the release of Ubuntu 20.04 and distros based on it like PopOS and Mint, we finally got a truly pick up and play experience. It's at the point where I'd argue that it's even easier to do than Windows now. I mean, you saw for yourself, this is fully usable. This has a driver and everything. For real, if you give it a try, you'll be up and running with a grandma-proof and gaming capable OS in a few minutes like I was. What about the elephant in the room though? Support for your games and stuff. I mean, it's not like everything runs on Linux. Yeah, true, but significantly more stuff runs than doesn't. I've got a pretty big library at home, including popular titles like GTA V and lesser known ones like DCS and East Combat 7. Pretty much all of it works fine. Proton compatibility layer was super cool when we first looked at it, translating DirectX Windows only games to Vulkan on Linux. And between the official one and tweaked community versions like those from TK Glitch and Glorious Eggroll, 69% of the top 1000 games on Steam are actually rated gold or better on ProtonDB. And most of the ones that don't work at this point are DRM or anti-cheat related. Right, I mean, the problem is there's nothing that Valve or the Proton team can do about deliberately Linux-ing compatible DRM, like how De Nuvo Anti-Cheat may do maternal unplayable. But the good news is that they actually came out and said that going forward, De Nuvo Anti-Cheat will support Linux. One theory is that this change in stance could have to do with cloud gaming services using Linux as their platform of choice. Hopefully it won't have to matter too much why in the end, but for now, Linux users are getting a better experience than ever, despite the occasional sidelining. There are still some other ways that Linux lags behind. The community is so small that issues tend to be lower priorities for game developers and newer features can take longer to roll out. Nvidia's RTX ray tracing, for example, hasn't been enabled yet. Yeah, but to be fair to Nvidia, they have been rolling out additional ray tracing extensions here and there, which is a key step to enabling the functionality later on. And there's some other big news too. For some gamers, check this out, Linux actually meets their needs better than Windows does. And not just by a little bit. For 16-bit retro gamers, for example, Wine offers better compatibility and stability without having to resort to running games in a virtual machine. And get this, we've recorded runs with less old games running faster on Linux than on an identical Windows machine. That's not just some random game that no one plays, like whatever this is. Well, this is- Burn, sick burn. Go ahead. This is actually a game that Tim Sweeney published. Is it really? Well, it's an Epic MegaGames game. Okay, it's older than me. Yes, well 1993. So not quite, but I was seven. This was possible thanks to Valve's ACO shader compiler, which is designed to improve performance on GPUs that use Mesa, like AMD's Vega and Navi-based cards. And that's even with Proton overhead. Don't believe it? Let's take a look. Linux GTA 5, woo! Doesn't make you a better driver, that's for sure, dang. Oh, lucky my car tipped over. In all seriousness though, back when this game came out, I probably would have said, ha ha, AAA gaming on Linux, get real, please. And yet, here we are. It's worth pointing out that ACO doesn't work with every game yet, so it's not yet the default. But performance was already very good for the hardware thanks to AMD's open source drivers and Doetsujin's ongoing work with DXVK, which now supports DirectX 9 titles as well, thanks to a merger with the D9VK project. All of that's been rolled up into Proton and is supported out of the box in Ubuntu 2004 and anything based on it. Hey, got him. Boop. Did I die? Okay. So regardless of your graphics card, you just install the OS, install Steam, install games, and play games. If you're on AMD, enable ACO and Steam's launch options for titles that support it, and you're laughing. As for Nvidia users, don't stress out too much. Nvidia's drivers aren't as good as they could be if they were more open like AMD's, but they also aren't as bad as people make them out to be. And both AMD and Nvidia support their respective adaptive refresh technology on Linux now, with no additional installs required. If you want to quantify your Linux gaming performance, even that is getting easier. Windows tools like Fraps or FrameView won't run, but MangoHUD by FlightlessMango works absurdly well. It gives you a configurable rivet tuner-esque overlay, and you can upload logs to the website and have it automatically generate graphs for frame rates, frame times, 1% minimums, pretty much everything you need. Honestly, if it logged more information like CPU and GPU temperatures, we'd probably switch over to it instead of what we're using in Windows. It's really good. By the way, guys, you might take for granted the controller that Anthony is using over there, but look closer. Controller support is nothing special in Linux. DualShock 3, DualShock 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, 8-bit dough. None of those require any configuration or special drivers, even over Bluetooth. But now, look at this. Even the Xbox One wireless adapter has a driver for Linux, allowing low latency wireless operation for four controllers off a single dongle, just like it does on Windows. And the DualShock 4 touchpad even works as a mouse. Speaking of DualShock 4, we've actually got a video on the pipeline where we play around with gyro aiming for games. Get subscribed so you don't miss it. What is this? Nothing, get away. Nope. Ha, you have to social distance. So if I come over here, you have to move. OpenRGB. Is that RGB control on Linux? Yep. OpenRGB is available on both Windows and Linux, and it supports RGB RAM, motherboard lighting, GPUs, and even stuff like Corsair lighting notes. Despite all the work that's already gone into it though, it's a little bit basic right now, and it's a pain to get running on Ubuntu at the moment. But for simple lighting effects, it's quite enough. All right, Hotshot. How about VR? If I want to get in some Beat Saber action, Penguin edition. That's tricky. HTC Vive and Valve Index have both worked for a while now because Valve officially supports them in Steam. But the OpenHMD driver for Oculus and PSVR is currently missing some rather major features. And the virtual desktop experience and reprojection are cited as major issues by all Linux VR users. That's a real bummer, because I use virtual desktop a ton, even if it's just to like fix something about my stream while I'm playing or whatever the case may be. And if aside from gaming, you're a content creator, you might have a hard time switching to Linux full-time, even if all your games work. The Adobe Suite, which as we made a video about recently, we're pretty much stuck with for better or for worse, doesn't run in wine, and there's no native version from Adobe. Same deal with Microsoft Office. But for the second one, there's at least a web version if you really need it. And people like Tech Tangents make good work with Linux alternatives to Adobe. It's potentially a major change to your workflow, depending on what you're doing though. Some tools are great on their own, like Krita, Blender, and GIMP, while others, well, are promising, but need a little bit more work. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of alternatives out there, but for some people, it just won't be viable to run Linux full-time, and that's okay, really. Yeah, I mean, it's frustrating, but Linux on desktop has always been this chicken and egg scenario where because it's not popular on the desktop, developers don't care because there's not enough people to buy the software, yet because developers don't care and build that software, it's not popular on the desktop. Some developers... Oh, a cough. Ah, yeah, get back. Oh, boy, oh. I'm good, I'm fine. Some developers are kind of dicks about it, and I get the diehard Linux veterans' concerns. They think that leaning on Proton as a crutch might disincentivize game developers from creating native Linux games, but for me, I see Proton and Wine in general as more of a platform developers can support that requires little additional effort and allows for the user base to grow. And the more the user base grows, the more accessible everything becomes, so at this point, the call to action for you guys is really simple. Where'd it go? There it is. Pick up a USB stick and give it a try. You can run it right off the USB without installing it on your main drive, like I did in this recent video where Windows just straight up wouldn't run my weird Chinese motherboard that had a baked-on graphics card, but Linux would. Go check out that video and try it, and check out our sponsor, Micro Center. Micro Center is open to supply all your work from home or learn from home technology needs, whether you're a Windows or a Linux kinda character. They want you to check out the Li and Li Landcool 205 mid-tower tempered glass case. It supports ATX, MATX, and mini-ITX motherboards. It's got extra space behind the motherboard tray for cable management. It's got side ventilation for improved airflow, easy access to the power supply and hard drive bay from the side, rear removable SSD mounting brackets, high-performance magnetic dust filters at the top-end front, and two pre-installed 120 millimeter fans. So go check out Micro Center and this and other specials at the link in the video description. Thanks for watching, guys. If you'd like to get your feet wet, why not check out our previous Gaming on Linux video that's a bit more of a tutorial-style new intro. Anthony and James are gonna see you guys over there. Oh, and thanks again to the Linux gaming subreddit for providing input on the topics we discussed in today's video. The Penguin Army over there grew by more than 50% since last year. We'd love to see it.