vv221: I’ve been using Linux only for more than ten years, including video games.

DRM-free games avoid a lot of issues, most compatibility issues with non-native games are actually due to DRM schemes, not the game engines themselves.

Sensenacai: Do you use anything to play Windows-based games?

Darvond: Sure. Wine. It's not an emulator. It's a framework to translate system calls. It isn't perfect, but boy, has it come a long way.

Sensenacai: Does Wine come pre-integrated with Lutris or does it need manual installation? I hope you will forgive my rather limited knowledge of Linux lol.

Darvond: You're going to have to install it, but that's really a simple dnf install wine away. (Or your local equivilant.)

rtcvb32: Well while drivers for video cards may be somewhat supported i wouldn't expect acceleration on them that much.

Otherwise i'd say get a liveCD and boot it up and see how it performs, if it works out of the box or needs special drivers to work (Generally anything 5+ years old will work).

Installing system/linux software can be a bit different, ranging from using a utility where you go through a list, to using the commandline of 'apt-get install gimp' and other tools.

Get to know the basic commands. Remember MS-DOS? Well you can use that. cd, rm, cp, mv, su, sudo, grep, a bit of regex and bash and you can do a lot stringing things together. While most gui/xwindows utilities won't have you touch that, getting your hands dirty can be the easier solution.

If you aren't sure about wiping your working windows machine, get an older laptop, a chromebook to modify, any of the Raspberry Pi's to play with and you can tinker away to see how you like it. The Pi4 is a fairly decent system running about the strength of a laptop, though modifying some chromebooks is easy to put full on linux on. Alternatively if you can run a VM, run one and install the OS to a virtual hard drive and use it in parallel to your system. Virtualbox tools had it where you could have 2 task bars, running linux and windows apps together. Which was very cool.

Arcadius-8606: Been using Linux for 20+ years now. DRM FREE games usually have less issue. Older games (15+ years ago) sometimes need older lib files but the community seems to have down, PCGameWiki has links and more modern install methods like flatpak and snap help out a lot.

A lot of people and companies are looking to migrate to Linux at this time. I've told those that ask to check their software/gaming library to see what's already supported from there use a LiveCD or dualboot to see if it's right for you.

Sensenacai:

Sensenacai: I am thinking of installing Pop OS on one of my emptier drives and trying that out as a dual boot. Do you only play natively supported games?

Sachys: POP OS is geared towards people looking to use their computer as a workstation in science or creative arts (though as a professional on the latter, linux is still really lacking in a few areas there). You'd be far better off with beginner friendly Mint or Zorin if moving over from windows.
Salient is directly geared towards gaming but its a very small OS (one man crew) and may not work well on a multitide of system setups.

Edit: I;m speaking from experience on all four distros I mention for what its worth.

Sensenacai: Pop OS has captured my interest as a Linux distro for a complete beginner such as myself. What's your opinion on that? I have an NVMe drive that i am using with only two games stored on it which i can move back to my other SSD so I could try a dual boot just to test it out.

Sachys: POP OS is geared towards people looking to use their computer as a workstation in science or creative arts (though as a professional on the latter, linux is still really lacking in a few areas there). You'd be far better off with beginner friendly Mint or Zorin if moving over from windows.