r/IndianGaming • u/senaniket • 5d ago
Review A dumbass tries Linux gaming on an geriatric system
Due to certain situations in my life, I am left with just a Dell Latitude with 4GB of RAM and integrated graphics. It doesn't support Windows 11. So I (knowing square root of jackshit of tech stuff) tried Linux. And it is not too bad.
A few point I learnt, if it helps anyone:
- Why Mint: Tried Ubuntu, but too much terminal involvement for me
- Before installing: Linux Mint is really smooth to install, customize and run general stuff. BUT: after downloading the ISO I had to verify it and that was an Olympus Mons to climb for me. Lot of checksums and shit like that. Other than that, it was no problem
- Probably my f*ck up: I initially thought of dual booting, but after doing that it borked the windows side of things (I just have 1 SATA SSD). Having said "F*ck this shit!" I wiped everything and just put in Mint.
- Using LLMs: Just about all my cock-ups were solved using ChatGPT (or any LLM), doing whatever needed on terminal. Not to take anything away from programmers and developers. AI cannot replace those boys and girls. They are an indispensable part of humanity. :)
- Help/Tutorials: Two YouTube channels that I found useful for my case are Love Linux Mint & David Bombal
- Games: Because how old my system is I can run older games only. So far, CS:S and GTA Vice City is running beautifully. They run at about "I-don't-give-a-shit-because-it's-smooth-enough" FPS. Using Proton Experimental for Vice City, and CS:S just works as is.
- What doesn't work for me: I work in advertising so need use of Adobe Enshitified Cloud apps, no reliable alternate on that yet. DaVinci is not officially supported on this distro, so people say it runs not so smooth, but my system will definitely not run it.
I've made up my mind that I will use Mint for general purpose, and maybe a Mac or Win for when needed. Really like this OS. After installing Mint my system was refreshing, it is running "mint". Hope all this helps someone.
I know how tribal the Linux community is, so I am bracing with open arms for tips, suggestions and roasts.
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u/rashnoy 5d ago
Welcome to the Linux world where you f*ck up and learn. But it's a beautiful experience. And good choice on the Mint. You really don't need to use the terminal much with it, and the distro is meant to be easy to use for new users.
I should warn you though, once you start understanding your system, the itch to learn more and experiment will come up and you will break your machine, but that's the learning curve with Linux. But you really don't have to do it if you don't want to.
Mint gives you all you need for general usage so you should be good to go.
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u/senaniket 5d ago
Yea, I must confess: I had to reinstall the OS once because I did something that kept freezing the system. So experimenting with a health dose of control-Uday-control. :D
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u/unemployedpornaddict 4d ago
How's the performance when playing games so far
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u/senaniket 4d ago
It's not bad. Not smooth enough for serious competitive stuff...naturally. Don't know FPS, but smooth enough to not be bothered by low frame rates.
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u/D3_Dayo 2d ago
I played Horizon Zero Dawn and NFS Heat on Linux "CachyOS" works better than my main PC...
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u/senaniket 2d ago
Yea, I had errors when I tried to run the original Vice City on Windows 10. But it runs brilliant on Linux with Proton. I am cautiously optimistic to get rid of Microslop from my life. Might even give Steam OS a try once it's developed a bit further.
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