Look. I am the biggest, most shameless CachyOS fanboy you will find. It’s like 90% of my desktop time, has been for years.
But I’ve benchmarked a few games on Windows and Linux, Proton and native, sparsely, and Windows still has an advantage, sometimes. Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest outlier for Proton (eg faster on Windows, enough to visibly affect settings I can manage on my 3090).
And many native ports are still truly awful. Often where performance equates to simulation time, like modded Stellaris or Rimworld.
Mind you, that’s not always the case. Proton is faster in many games, and (for example) anything Java like Minecraft or Starsector are just hilariously faster on Linux.
The caveats:
My Windows 11 is neutered to hell. It’s a barren wasteland. Even Defender is disabled.
I’m running Nvidia.
Some of my testing is aging now.
Still, I am a Linux shill, and think the headline is a bit dramatic. Stripped Windows is still faster in plenty of realistic scenarios.
Since they’re referencing SteamOS, they’re probably talking about stock mobile systems, where the overhead from that mountain of background junk in Windows is much more painful.
Nvidea might be making a big difference there, I’m on AMD and didn’t lose any frames, even in AAA games, when I switched from Windows 10 to Bazzite 42. Haven’t gained any either, but there’s a lot less stutter in menus and faster loading times that still make it feel smoother anyway.
Good point. My laptop is dualbooting Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 22) and its faster to:
start Linux, login, start quemu, start Windows VM in quemu, login in windows in the VM, shutdown windows in the VM gracefully, exit quemu, shutdown Linux gracefully
than
boot windows natively, login and wait till it is responsive enough to do anything with it.
See, my Windows partition starts instantly. TBH its faster than linux, which takes an extra second to initialize SDDM, and then network connectivity.
…Perhaps because its so neutered. It’s not really a fair comparison, as Windows is a narrow-focus OS for me, a tool for running things, to the point I don’t trust it for anything security sensitive.
Perhaps they are talking handhelds, specifically?
Look. I am the biggest, most shameless CachyOS fanboy you will find. It’s like 90% of my desktop time, has been for years.
But I’ve benchmarked a few games on Windows and Linux, Proton and native, sparsely, and Windows still has an advantage, sometimes. Cyberpunk 2077 was the biggest outlier for Proton (eg faster on Windows, enough to visibly affect settings I can manage on my 3090).
And many native ports are still truly awful. Often where performance equates to simulation time, like modded Stellaris or Rimworld.
Mind you, that’s not always the case. Proton is faster in many games, and (for example) anything Java like Minecraft or Starsector are just hilariously faster on Linux.
The caveats:
My Windows 11 is neutered to hell. It’s a barren wasteland. Even Defender is disabled.
I’m running Nvidia.
Some of my testing is aging now.
Still, I am a Linux shill, and think the headline is a bit dramatic. Stripped Windows is still faster in plenty of realistic scenarios.
Since they’re referencing SteamOS, they’re probably talking about stock mobile systems, where the overhead from that mountain of background junk in Windows is much more painful.
Nvidea might be making a big difference there, I’m on AMD and didn’t lose any frames, even in AAA games, when I switched from Windows 10 to Bazzite 42. Haven’t gained any either, but there’s a lot less stutter in menus and faster loading times that still make it feel smoother anyway.
Yes but … Windows is not stripped Windows. The real Windows is a spyware hell installed by your laptop vendor. Barely usable.
Good point. My laptop is dualbooting Windows and Linux (Ubuntu 22) and its faster to:
start Linux, login, start quemu, start Windows VM in quemu, login in windows in the VM, shutdown windows in the VM gracefully, exit quemu, shutdown Linux gracefully
than
boot windows natively, login and wait till it is responsive enough to do anything with it.
See, my Windows partition starts instantly. TBH its faster than linux, which takes an extra second to initialize SDDM, and then network connectivity.
…Perhaps because its so neutered. It’s not really a fair comparison, as Windows is a narrow-focus OS for me, a tool for running things, to the point I don’t trust it for anything security sensitive.