I use both Linux and Windows and more games come with support for Windows as we all know but sadly many Linux versions have problems (eg. the Linux versions of the Metro games are not sold here because problems). OK so others mentioned those things already. A FEW games work better in native Linux than Windows but this also depends on versions/distros of the operating systems.

On this laptop I have both Windows and Linux and have games installed on both depending on whichever worked (best). A slight annoyance to boot into the Windows side, that is really only used for gaming.

So to sum things up at this point.

If you are primarily a Windows user, then very little value to installing and using Linux for games. Though if a game is giving trouble, and you have a Linux version, it might be worth the trouble to try it in Linux, especially as Linux is free, and perhaps less hassle or penalty than using a VM or trying to get older Windows working on a newer PC.

If you are predominantly a Linux user, then as a Gamer you would certainly need to also have a Windows OS available, unless you choose to limit yourself to the compatible games only. You would also have the added option of Wine. So I guess you do regularly have a choice with a fair number of games, and can pick what seems best.

I have been on Linux for quite some time, right now i have it on my main PC for 3 weeks and kept using it full time.

When it comes to Windows, it tends to break the compatibility with older games and it is the most used system for AAA games. While there is a lot of games, most of em right now can be nothing more than a asset flip, which on Steam will cover the actual good ones.

On Linux however, the performance of the ports is mostly just a very small difference (Depending on GPU and driver. AMD on native OpenGL with open source driver can be on-par or even surperior than a Windows game on the same rendering API, it can even beat NVIDIA). With the Ext4 disk format, the games load faster as it generally handles larger files much better and faster (See Half Life 1, as an example. You can literally flick the finger and the map will immediately load). People keep saying that there are less games on Linux than on Windows natively, but i find it as a good thing.

As those asset flips and bad games that i have mentioned before are not present. It makes finding good games much easier. Then there is Wine application which lets you run Windows games and it has a much better compatibility with older Windows games than the Windows itself.

So far Steam leads in terms of Linux gaming as some of the games on GOG have a Linux version elsewhere, for AAA games, few publishers actually do make a Linux port through 3rd party devs, the most popular one being Feral Interactive who has a contract with SEGA, WB Games, Square Enix and more. Just now they've released Rise of the Tomb Raider using Vulkan as a wrapper and the performance difference is measly 10% (On 980 Ti). What about indie games? They do get released on Linux more often as most commonly used game engines already have a Linux support and can build that version with a click of a button (Unity, Unreal Engine 4, GameStudio etc.).

I have switched to Linux as i can't stand dealing with Microsoft's crap and i don't miss AAA games much since most of them just suck and if i wanna play one through Wine, i just use it with DXVK, an open source wrapper which translates DirectX 11 calls into Vulkan through Wine. Witcher 3 runs really well with it.

My main combo of gaming is basically Wine, Lutris, DXVK, GOG, Steam and i have no complaints. I don't even miss Windows much.

Literally all my games run better on Linux than on Windows since I don't have a lot of RAM and Windows is a giant memory leak.

Thanks for that info. Definitely food for thought. :)

I used to dual-boot as well.

My personal experience is that Linux versions tend to be better because they don't force me to reboot my machine :P.

Otherwise, I think most (all?) games are made and tested on Windows first. Not that it will make a difference if your computer exceeds the hardware requirements of the game by a large margin, but if you barely have the recommended settings or less, it might run noticeably better on Windows (not because of any inherent superiority of that platform, but because games are primarily developed on it).

However, with Windows, the open-source software ecosystem is poorer (try to find good software to tackle zip/tar archives in Windows, it is an exercise in frustration sorting through commercial offerings and malware for a basic piece of software you'd expect to just be there), you'll have to content with whatever choice Microsoft makes for you (and if they decide to spy on you or lock most of the software behind a store, well, tough luck), you'll have to give them ~100$ in a couple of years when the current version of your OS goes end of life and if you have several computers, you'll have to pay for several licenses.

And lets not forget to mention the benefits of an open OS that you can embed in hardware, customize and put in supercomputers, make derivative OSes like Android/SteamOS/ChromeOS from, all without having to get proprietary permission. This is not an obvious benefit from the perspective of most end-users but the social impact is huge. All that would not be possible with Windows.

Heck, look at the Raspberry Pi which is a cheap computer that you can purchase for 35$. The organization behind it just forked the Linux kernel and made some adjustments to it so that it runs on their machine, the end result being that most of the Linux software just works on a Raspberry Pi (compiled for the ARM processor architecture mind you). You think they could have done something like that with proprietary closed-off Windows?

The reason I prefer to game on Linux, despite what is often afterthought support from many hardware vendors and games (or very often in the former case, community driven support to catch up to the proprietary drivers), is not because it is the better gaming platform, it is because it is the better platform, period.

To answer OP's question as best as possible:

Installing games: Both in Linux and Windows is pretty much equally straightforward if using the provided GUI installer.

Running games: The only downside with Linux is that you may need to install additional dependancies for your OS for some games, it's a nuisance though as eventually you'll come to a point where you'll have already have all the libraries a game needs and running games becomes a matter of - Install Game > run the start.sh file.

I'm running Mint 18.1 since last year on my PC and I very rarely need to install additional libraries.

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Regarding Wine gaming:

Wine works very well for both old and new games, particularly older ones or games using popular engines such as Unity. Performance in more recent games tends to be slower in most cases (but still very much playable), however there's a chance they will run more stable, consider the fact that each game can run in its' own "installation of Windows".

Personally I'm an avid Guild Wars 2 player (popular MMO), where the official forums are literally littered with problems xyz with the game. In Wine I have less performance but none of the problems Windows users have.

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TLDR: Windows performs better and it's easier to use in general however prone to break things because it's closed source, on Linux however you have better control and consistency and Wine can be a very good alternative for those stubborn Windows-only devs ;)

I tried it at some point on someone's Windows machine and I was disappointed. I can't remember if it was installation difficulties or limited archive support or lack of support for password-protected archives, but it left me wanting.

But yeah, for a veteran Windows user, I'm sure there are workarounds. I just often find it difficult to get decent tooling on Windows for things that I take for granted on a Linux box.

It depends on the game and the underlying technology stack. If the developer wrote the game to directly use and rely on a Windows-specific feature, such as DirectX, porting to Linux may be too expensive to be worth doing. If the developer built the game on top of a platform independence layer, such as Unity, porting may be nearly free.

Generally, if a Linux version of the game is published, you should try that before you try running the Windows version of the game in Wine. If you have the choice of running on Windows or Linux, your first consideration should be overall convenience. If you use Linux for almost everything, but keep a Windows partition "just in case", playing in Linux may be a better choice, since you don't need to reboot over just for your game. On the other hand, if you use Windows for almost everything and keep Linux for special purposes, swapping into Linux for your game is probably not a good choice.

I have heard of several games that run better in Linux than Windows. In fact, since the 16 bit cutoff, Linux is going to be the only place to run them short of emulating a machine or dealing with actual hardware/software.

Windows 7 + Linux Mint 18.3 user here.

For the games I have tried, Linux works much better in every regard. Even on wine. For example, I installed NWN1 and NWN2 on windows 7 since they do not have a Linux installer. Now, all I need to do is go to installation folder in windows partition and run the exe (NWN.exe or NWN2.exe) via wine and they work much better than they do on windows. No sound or graphics glitches I had on windows.

That's also true for other software. For example, I am using MATLAB 2017b on Mint. My laptop is 11 years old (bought in 2007) and it runs much smoother and faster than my colleague's 3 year old laptop running on windows 10.

Also, there are some games like Fallout 3 which do not run flawlessly on windows systems beyond Windows Vista (7, 8, 8.1 or 10). Just check the steam forums to hear the angry mob :). They all work flawlessly on wine.

Also, as an MSCE who worked over 15 years as an IT manager, windows is a terrible operating system, especially since windows 7. I know most people believe that W7 is amazing, but that's when windows became unfixable. Unlike Linux, where there is almost always a way to fix things.

Windows 7 is the improved version of Vista and it supports a lot of things that XP never did. I think many compare W7 to early days Vista and then there is a clear winner.

win xp is the last windows i installed and used. running linux since then and never looked back.

That's the other mistake normal users make. Vista was superior to Win7 in every way. I used Vista for 8 years until I was forced to move to win7. And I am saying this having used windows 7 since 2007. Remember that Windows 7 was officially released in 2009. People love it because it worked for normal people most of the time. It was/is a complete disaster in every other aspect.

Yes, Vista and 7 use the same kernel but 7 is the modified version. Not the improved one.

EDIT: Think about why Windows 7 was called 7. There is absolutely no apparent reason for that ;)