Weather is changing and I went do so something most people take for granted, play Zwift. After more than 20 hours of research and different approaches my entire streaming community and I cannot do one simple thing. Play Zwift on a Linux machine.
I convinced myself that wasn’t that big a deal. I purchased a capture card and got that working. Then I got my Android phone in dev mode to display on the screen.
Then I woke up from my cognitive dissonance.
Linux is absolutely horrible for most things that matter to regular desktop users, yes, like me. I don’t like saying that. But it would be dishonest not to.
Here’s a list of things that I regularly require that no Linux desktop distro on planet Earth can currently provide. Many of these things are absolutely essential to modern content creators.
Zwift is the most played game of any I have ever played. While there are difference hacks to try and get it to run (the most successful of which was VMware Workstation) it is horribly laggy and doesn’t talk well with the required devices that make racing in Zwift so fun in the first place.
This 3D tool has long been an industry standard. It will never be supported on anything but Windows.
I’m not going to bicker with Linux apologists about how completely stupid it is to attempt to be a professional digital media content creator who is not using the industry standard. You don’t have to like proprietary software to accept this reality. Try getting a job in that industry without knowing Adobe.
Yes, I did get Overwatch to run using both Bottles and the other stuff. But it was so laggy and eventually crashed my Linux machine, several times in a row. Now you can say that was “user error” all you want and call me a pleeb all you want (which is just silly given my professional Linux experience). It won’t change the simple fact that installing and playing Overwatch on a Windows machine is ridiculously easy for anyone to do and always outperforms any alternative. I know people hate admitting it, but DirectX will always be faster than OpenGL. Hell, Microsoft practically invented the 3D personal computer platform. You don’t have to like Microsoft to admit this reality.
Queue whiny Linux noob complaining about how Streamlabs “stole” OBS.
StreamLabs definitely could have been better about disclosing the software they ripped off from OBS, but StreamLabs studio is light-years ahead of raw OBS for serious live streamers. Oh my god, it turns out that a company out to make actual money produces higher quality products than a bunch of random FOSS folk. It’s almost like some part of the free-market and (dare I say) capitalism actually work when there is a customer who won’t pay for stuff that doesn’t work. OBS on Linux didn’t even have browser sources (a key part of streaming content) until 2021, several years after they had been in the Windows version.
Just learning a single operating system makes you a noob. Pros know to use the right tool for the job, and the right tool for gaming, streaming, and general digital content creation is most definitely Windows.