Switching Back to Linux Fulltime

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few months now. I’ve started it a few times but always get distracted. Gotta love ADHD. Well, that and the fact that I have yet to stop messing with my configs. Idk why I do it, it’s like as soon as I have it set up the way I like it… I don’t like it anymore. Whatever, it’s good to be back. It’s definitely taken me too long. The reason that I wanted to switch back was pretty simple. I like using Linux. I don’t like Windows, and up until a few years ago, gaming on Linux wasn’t really a thing. There were some games that would run out of the box. But most games required some janky Wine work around or just flat out didn’t work, and it wasn’t really worth the time too much. I’ve always liked to have Linux on my lap tops but not always on my main gaming PC. But with the success of Proton and the Steam Deck, gaming on Linux became a whole lot easier.

Honestly, buying a Steam Deck was the final push that I needed to really try to daily Linux again. Gaming was just so dead simple on the Deck. Now, I tend to play a lot of competitive shooters. I have thousands of hours in Rainbow 6 Siege¹. The problem there is anti-cheat. A lot of modern games’ anti-cheat just doesn’t work on Linux. Which has helped with my anger towards gaming if I’m being honest. But also has made me play more single player games. Also the fact that I accidentally nuked my Windows install doesn’t help.

My Current Setup

My favorite thing about Linux is the control you have over the system. The freedom to make it yours. Make it look exactly how you want. Make it act exactly how you want. It doesn’t come bundled with bloat and spyware. Any spyware on my computer was put there by me. And that’s the way it should be. But enough about that. What does my system look like? Well I’m so glad you asked! I decided to try out Wayland this time around instead of Xorg and i3wm. I’m currently running Hyprland as my desktop². I like the simplicity of a tiling window manager. It keeps everything clean and organized. Here’s a fake dirty desktop so you can actually see the tiling. 😄 I’ve had a few problems with my system here and there but it’s pretty much always been my own fault. Not reading documentation or just a simple typo. Nothing too catastrophic. Other than when my SSD decided it wanted to pretend it was completely full and break everything and I had to reinstall and rsync everything over, but I’m blaming that on the relatively cheap SSD I was using at the time. But enough about that.

So what have I been playing?

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R Trilogy

I while back I decided I wanted to play these games. My brother is a big fan so I’ve always been interested but never gave them a shot until S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 2 came out. I played a little bit of that when it came out but pretty quickly stopped since the game was a buggy, laggy mess³. Luckily for me all three of the original games run great on Linux. Even better is that a lot of the mods for these games run great too.

I played the first game, Shadow of Chernobyl, using the updated OGSR Enginewhich admittedly isn’t really a vanilla experience in that it adds new and cut content, adds artifact scanners, and some other QOL changes. But the main story is intact and I don’t feel that I ruined anything by playing this version. Plus it looked better. Now, it’s not perfect, and it’s still a little bit dated looking, but man did I really enjoy this game. The setting of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (or The Zone for short) is so cool. I don’t know what it is about it. But it can be so beautiful and so depressing at the same time. The idea of Artifacts and the different effects the each have was a fun game play mechanic. I definitely missed out on not playing these games back when they came out but I’m really glad I discovered them. I spent a lot of time in the Zone in the first game and I enjoyed every second of it. From the terrifying Bloodsuckers to the equally terrifying Emissions, I had a blast in the world of Shadow of Chernobyl.

After I completed SoC and getting the true ending on my first run, I jumped right into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Again I played using an updated engine. This time I opted for the [ABR] mod. I always want to try and keep the main story as vanilla as possible. I want to experience the game the way the devs intended, but I also want it to look better than in did in 2008. I definitely feel like I kind of flew through this game. I beat it in 11 hours, where I think I spent around 60 hours in Shadow of Chernobyl. But I didn’t really do any of the faction war stuff and I feel like I missed out on that especially since the ABR mod actually lets you finish it. I also didn’t do much artifact hunting like I did in the first game. I’ll probably go back and play Clear Sky again, but for now it was time to move on.

I’m currently playing through S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, though it’s been a few weeks since I played. I opted for CIP which is another quality of life mod with some added gameplay. It runs on the OpenXRay engine. I haven’t played a whole lot of this because there is a co-op mod⁴ for Call of Pripyat and I want to play that with my brother so I’ve only put a few hours into this one so far. But I’m enjoying it so far. I’d definitely recommend the series to anyone looking for a unique FPS RPG. The Zone is ever changing and there are always cool things to discover. Artifact hunting is a fun and sometime challenging experience. And with the help of some of the mods, and even bigger projects like Anomaly and GAMMA exist to make completely different S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. Seriously, Anomaly and GAMMA are absolutely insane. Anomaly is more of a framework or sandbox S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game but GAMMA is an insanely hardcore game. It’s got a new story. New weapons. New artifacts (I think). New health system that is more similar to Escape from Tarkov than anything else. Seriously, it’s nuts. I haven’t played much GAMMA, but the little bit I did play was SO MUCH HARDER than any of the other games. I have to give GAMMA another shot after I finish the official games but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intimidated. I mean, just look at the limb health, that’s Tarkov, but somehow even more annoying to deal with. I am looking forward to it though. I’ll probably return to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 2 at some point but I’ve been having a lot of fun with these lately.

Battlefield 4

That’s right, another old game from the 2010s. But I’ve been having a PvP itch lately and since I’ve been trying to stay away from Windows, that doesn’t really give me a lot of options. Battlefield 4 (2013) is the most recent Battlefield game that runs on Linux under Proton and it runs perfectly. I had to update Punk Buster using Protontricks but that’s really it. I’ve had no real problems since that. This game also still looks incredible. Like, seriously, look at this screenshot. Look at that lighting. The textures aren’t bad either. With Battlefield 6 around the corner, a lot of people have been playing 4 to try and get back into the swing of things so it hasn’t been to hard to find a server. Most of the time the popular servers have a short queue to get into the game but it never takes too long to get into the action. Battlefield 4 is still a ton of fun to play in 2025. It’s just a bummer that we wont be able to play Battlefield 6 on Linux. But if you want to play some games of BF4, you can usually find me on the TBG servers later in the day.

I Am Your Beast

Now this one I just recently heard of and kind of went into it blind. I mostly was interested in the art style. I’m a sucker for cell shaded graphics. Another thing that stood out to me immediately was the voice acting. It’s just really really good. Which feels like a breath of fresh air compared to most of the voice acting you get from small indie studios. I was really impressed. I don’t really know how to describe I Am Your Beast other than it’s a speedrunning FPS…? You really have to play it to understand.

Welp, that’s about it

I’ll probably make some sort of .dotfiles post at some point. But they aren’t really in a place to share them yet. Gotta be better with my personal keys and stuff so I don’t actually leak a secret. That’ll be some time in the future.