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 think the best course would be to tell him something along the lines of “I’m sorry these games didn’t work out well for you and the experience didn’t turn out to be good for you, there’s still the option to dual-boot or try a different distro if you want but I understand if you don’t. Just know that these issues aren’t specifically because of Linux but rather poor support from the game’s devs, or more likely their publishers, games (about 90% of them) work fine through steam or Lutris unless the devs implement anti-cheats without linux compatibility so hopefully in the future if you happen to play more steam games you’d consider giving Linux another chance.” nonetheless I’d still say he should go on windows, find out that his games will likely still run like shit on there on his own and if he complains about it maybe bring up Linux again, gently and appropriately of course.
FIFA and Roblox, those gotta be one of the worst games to run on linux…
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.
Install Windows. He gave it a shot, and that’s better than most. Hopefully Linux will fit his needs soon, and he can try again.
What should I do?
Install Windows on his laptop, or better yet let him do it and sit besides him for guidance, so that he can learn to reinstall in case something breaks badly.
It’s nice to showcase your favourite OS and make people curious but don’t abuse your friends with your Linux preference by forcing it onto them.
(Also, if you fix everything for them all the time, how will they learn?)
I am trying to make him learn something by explaining what the commands do. For example, I say to them “run
cd Documentswhich changes your current directory to Documents.”. But I agree with you, I will tell him a little more about dual boot, and if he doesn’t want to dual boot, I will help them install Windows.
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.
Minecraft runs natively on Linux. What was the issue?
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.
I would never try to convince anyone to use Linux. If they’re happy with Windows, let them use Windows.
Sounds like your friend is absolutely not the target audience for a linux-based operating system. If he wants to play windows games and use software designed for windows, then he should be using a Windows OS. Anything else would be providing a suboptimal experience for him.
Personally, I’ve been using various Linux-based OS since 2004, as a software developer I use a lot of commandline tools, and many tools and applications designed for Linux. If I were using exclusively tools and applications designed for Windows, then I would be using Windows. No need to make life more difficult for yourself and others.
He’s too young. And you’re too young
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?
Minecraft runs fine for me, surely FIFA runs fine with proton (protondb says 2019 -2022 work)? I don’t even get why people use Roblox from what I’ve heard so I have no idea about that.
I have no idea what is going on with that laptop.
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.
Just tell him, “Give Linux another shot when you are bored.”.
t. Used to be a Windows tryhard w/ baby duck syndrome, told myself exactly this. Took me a while, but I became a penguin a couple years after.
I was ok with windows but frustrated with it’s ads and updates. Even back then I liked OSS which I later found out was mostly FOSS and I tried out Linux dual boot on my new computer, I’ve probably spent 60h on that windows installation and at this point I only have it to change the settings on a usb device that doesn’t seem to have Linux support, which I’m considering writing something small for if I figure out how those things work.
Most of those 60h were in the first year and then a couple of hours between Ubuntu and endeavouros, making sure I had my backups even if I couldn’t boot into Linux.
Laptops often have open slots for hard drives. With his permission open the back and see if he has one. Bonus points for replacing his win10 hd with a 1tb. He’d probably appreciate it enough to give Linux another go
First of all you should have asked what he wanted to do with the laptop, the moment he replied playing games that are not on Steam you should have let him use Windows. Secondly, a laptop with 256GB of disk is likely going to have very low amounts of RAM and an onboard GPU, performance is going to be shit on Windows as well, you should have let him use that before, I think it’s highly likely that Windows itself would run like shit on it, so after a year or two putting Linux on that laptop would have blown his socks off. But the problem is that he didn’t get to experience any of that before you touched the computer, now he will claim it’s your fault that games don’t run or Windows is slow. I’ve been there, a friend had issues with the laptop, I said I didn’t understand Windows and would only help if I could put Linux, at first everything worked great, but then the friend needed special software that wasn’t available so I had to reinstall Windows for them (and btw, you OBVIOUSLY should reinstall Windows for your friend), and then everything on that laptop was my fault, even the problems the person was having before were somewhat my fault because I had put Linux there.
It has an NVMe drive and after my friend upgraded it, 16 GB of RAM. Yes, it has an integrated Intel GPU, but I think it is pretty decent.
FIFA? Get a PlayStation. Use your computer for serious things.
Oh shut up. Honestly what a loser take.
“How dare you play games on your PC!!! I’m the arbiter of what people do on their PCs and I say games are banned!!”
Jesus Christ, get a life.
They aren’t banned, you’re just a stupid loser for using them like that
Ah yeah, losers are people who use their computers to run recreational software, as opposed to the people who come onto social media and cry about people using their hardware recreationally, who definitely aren’t losers in the slightest.
That was sarcasm, by the way. I’m calling you a loser.
The most Linux response. Linux doesn’t fit your use case? Clearly your use case is wrong! /s
What? Why?
