I have been daily driving Linux for over two years now and I have switched distros many times. So, when my friend bought a new laptop, I convinced him to install Linux Mint on it. I asked him if he wanted to dual boot, he said no because it would fill up all his storage. We installed Linux Mint. The other day, he wanted to play FIFA 17 on his computer. After 5 whole hours of troubleshooting we were able to get FIFA running smoothly with some issues. Next, he wanted to play Roblox. I guided him through the process of installing Waydroid and libhoudini, only to discover that Roblox would run at 10 FPS. With Minecraft, it wasn't any better. It took us 1 hour to get it working (not skill issue, he wanted to play cracked through Prism Launcher). Now, he wants to go back to Windows 10. I have already told him about dual boot, but he has only 256GB of storage and he wants to play a lot of games. What should I do? Install Windows to his laptop, install some other Linux distro, or try to convince him more about dual boot? Thanks in advance and sorry for the essay.
UPDATE: Of course I will help him install Windows on his computer if he wants so, I don't want to force him to use Linux after all. I just wanted him to give it a try, and maybe daily drive it, if he can.
EDIT: Because for some reason it was misunderstood, let me clarify it here. Roblox ran with poor performance on Waydroid, not Minecraft. I just said that the installation of Prism Launcher cracked was difficult. After that, Minecraft ran smoothly without any problems.
I have been using Linux for years, but I don't insist anyone to use it, because when they encounter a problem, they blame you.
Let them drown in their filth.
My friend doesn't blame me. He blames Linux, which also isn't nice. Of course, it isn't Linux's fault that the Roblox developers patched their game so it cannot be ran with wine, but in his eyes, and the eyes of the non tech-savvy people, if it runs on Windows and not on Linux, Linux is doing something wrong.
You skipped a few steps. Before you install Linux for your friend, you should first ask him what he uses the PC for, and if he plays games, what games does he play.
Maybe you should have considered the stuff he wanted to do before convincing him to use linux. I could have told you he'd have problems with that stuff. If he said he mainly plays steam games then sure, but not literally the most finicky, cumbersome games to get going in existence. Also out of curiosity because I haven't even thought about Roblox in like 8 years. I thought that was a browser game?
I had checked and saw that FIFA 17 ran on Linux, so I told him that, and was not prepared for the troubleshooting nightmare that followed.
Well you get an a for effort. But if your friend wants to play windows games it’s better for them to just have windows on the machine. I give it to you and your friend for going all out on a new laptop and putting Linux on it right away.
A more convenient way for a new user to experience Linux is to do a live usb for them. That way they can boot into Linux easily but boot into windows just by removing the usb drive.
I'm really sad to see this “If he wants to play Windows games, let him use Windows” being repeated a hundred times in these comments. Mostly because it's an echo chamber, but also because Windows games have been better and better under Proton so 80-90% of Windows games on Steam run without a problem on Linux.
I understand your frustration but if you were in this guys shoes and this was your friend calling you all day to do troubleshooting, what would you do? Spend hours of your time helping him become a Linux addict or tell them just to put his computer back to windows and be done with it?
I’m a huge Linux fan but even my main pc and laptop are windows. I use WSL (amazing btw) on the laptop with a kali install. And I’ll use powershell (also really good) on the pc for any ssh needs for my Linux servers.
Just bail out, it wasn't meant to be. I tried a similar thing with family a few times and they always went back to Windows.
Linux is unfortunately not for people that aren't at least a bit tech savvy. If you insist on them using Linux you're gonna be on call to fix their shit all the time.
For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person. I cannot expect much from system where even installing stuff is stuck at pre 2000 era.
For what I see as a helpdesk guy, most problems that are encountered origin from Windows being Windows, not tech knowleadge of some person.
Yeah but things just work by default more often on Windows than on Linux. "Linux being Linux" is also the most common cause of Linux problems.
Linux usually does give you the tools to fix problems more easily than Windows but that's where the tech savviness comes in.
If they want to game, can't commit to only playing steam games, and can't learn how to use lutris, have them stay on windows. Linux will never live up to their expectations.
Why were you trying to install the Android version of Roblox instead of using Vinegar?
Roblox removed wine support for linux so its either emulating the android version or running a vm with gpu passthru
When did they do that? There was a short time where Wine wasn't supported recently but that was fixed.
Around the end of febraury i believe tho there was a temporary fix by forcing roblox player to use a old version tho it would come up with the update roblox error since it was too old
I just looked up Vinegar again and yes, it says that it's been unsupported since the 22nd of February. That's such a shame, it worked perfectly fine and there was actually one game that I liked to play. Makes me a little mad but I guess I just won't play anything on Roblox anymore.
I actually gave up getting Roblox to work on Linux. It had more issues than most games.
If anything, being blocked from Roblox is probably better for you.
I finally quit LoL by committing to GNU∧Linux during a time when the Linux solutions were primitive & broke constantly each patch so it was never worth the effort. By the time support was good enough, the habit was luckily already broken. With the new kernel measures kicking folks off of Linux support, maybe it is time to reassess the kinds of games you interact with.
With Minecraft, it wasn't any better.
Minecraft runs natively on Linux, though. It's not FOSS so it's not available through
apt, but you can install it from a .deb from their websiteDownload page
The installation fileI've had better performance with Minecraft on Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 (albeit with kernel 6.1) than on Windows 10 personally.
Sadly, I can't easily fix FIFA or Roblox for you
There's a drm-free version of prism launcher called PollyMC (note the two l's)
So why you convinced anyone to install a linux distro in the first place. But not asking him about whatever thing he will need later. Just install Windows.
(His SSD might be slightly damaged (by some unnecessary writings) because of you.) temporary removed without due date
You cannot kill windows and any other proprietary operating system by just switching their users to any currently "free" (as in no price to use and restrictive in modifications) linux distros. Don't try it again. Take off the tenses.
Slap the bottoms of his bare feet with reeds until he complies. /s
If you want to persuade your friend down the road to give it another shot, try asking what things he'd like to do and see if you can configure everything in advance. It's impossible to predict all future desires, but knocking out some of the bigger ones could help. Honestly, I'd be surprised if he tries again any time soon. Can't blame him. We all have different levels of tolerance for drudgery vs wanting things to just work.
I've been using Mint for about two years and it games okay and also feels outdated. I built a gaming computer for a friend recently and put Bazzite on it and it runs games great and just works great as a whole
