cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37914772
In a not-so-scientific benchmark conducted by YouTuber Cyber Dopamine, the Rog Xbox Ally managed to perform better without Windows, the operating system it ships with out of the box. Cyber installed Bazzite, a popular Linux distro for handhelds built specifically to offer that console-esque, seamless experience. Visually, Bazzite looks identical to SteamOS because it uses Steam’s Big Picture Mode as its main launcher. It also behaves similarly, but has its own custom menus and settings for customizing things like power profiles (which override Asus’ built-in ones).
When testing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Cyber noticed a shockingly significant jump in FPS, with Linux generating ~32% more FPS compared to Windows. This trend follows at lower wattages, albeit with less noticeable differences, and the delta actually plateaus in Hogwarts Legacy to the point that both Bazzite and the Xbox FSE offer the same FPS at 13W. That being said, those frame rates are much more consistent on Linux, according to Cyber, who shows that the FPS graph on Windows fluctuates regularly, while staying mostly flat on Bazzite.
It’s the first test bed for every developer, which means something like a headset utility is more reliably going to work on Windows. But it’s impressive even that margin is falling.
Imagine seeing Nvidia drop Shadowplay features to push their own beta app improvements, while the Linux imitator for Shadowplay still works simply and fine, and doesn’t even drop for “DRM detected” issues.
Or trying to install/update Epic/Ubisoft games needing to go through another terrible UI upgrade while Heroic and Lutris still look the same.
A year ago, I tried Linux and felt frustrated about some minor UI inconsistencies and fiddling. Recently, I tried again, and it still had stuff to work through, but I was patient for it because now I’m dealing with all that same shit on Windows.
Oh yeah, though to hotkey audio switching I ended up writing my own bash script which was clunky. Curious if anyone better than myself might take charge there.