&gt; it sucks for everything else (compared to Windows, for example)<p>This is very, very broad. I moved from Windows 8 about a year ago and I find it to be comparable and better for most of the stuff I do.<p>&gt; even the purpose-built PCs deliver significantly lower performance with Linux than Windows.<p>I agree that those numbers are significant, but frankly everything there looks acceptable to me. I have a custom build for gaming but am also a &quot;patient gamer&quot; so I&#x27;ve been doing just fine in Linux. I have been playing through Bioshock Infinite with no problem and enjoying the hell out of the recent Linux release of my current favorite FPS, Insurgency. In fact, I had a long standing stuttering issue in Insurgency under Windows 8 that ultimately led me to just give up on the game, sadly. Under Linux, no issue at all and equal performance. Anecdotal, of course, but just trying to illustrate that the recent increase of gaming availability is very nice for casual gamers like myself.<p>&gt; The NVidia side is much better, but still tends to crash more than on Windows or OSX<p>Any source on this? I have a 780 and can&#x27;t recall even a single issue with crashing because of the graphics driver.<p>&gt;  My quite standard desktop (Xeons, NVidia GPU, SATA SSDs)<p>Are Xeons really &quot;standard&quot; for desktop? This is is a legitimate question, I couldn&#x27;t find anything quickly. Just thinking about market share vs Core and how well this may be tested in Linux distros currently.