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Playing in an underpowered Laptop (with Linux)

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popocho

Seeing that Windows 10 support is reaching its end soon, and not wanting to "update" to Windows 11, I thought that finally switching to Linux could be a good option.

I have a laptop that was running W10. It became awfully slow with the latest updates, so I decided to use it as a guinea pig for the experiment, and then do the same with my main rig.

Laptop specifications:

Dell Inc. Vostro 3480 - 8gb RAM - CPU: Intel® Core™ i3-8145U CPU @ 2.10GHz × 4 - Graphics: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 620 - 1tb Mechanical drive.

I'm an educator so I installed Linux Zorin OS 17.1 Education, that came bundled with a bunch of apps like Geogebra, Scratch, Stellarium, Kolibri, etc. But I'm also a (mostly single player) gamer, so I wanted to see what's possible in this setup, and I must say I'm pleasantly surprised. This are the games, and some other random stuff I tried (office alternatives, and other productivity software are covered ad nauseaum everywhere else so I will not be talking about that)

This are my results:

PLAYABLE GAMES:

  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens
  • Yakuza 0
  • Gigabash (tried the demo, I expect the full game to work)
  • Saints Row IV (Legacy edition)
  • Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remastered
  • Subsurface Circular
  • Superhot
  • Superhot Mind Control Delete
  • Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
  • Almost ANY 2D pixel-art indie game. Tried Celeste, Webbed and others. Worked flawlessly.
  • Almost ANY DOSBox based old game. Tried a couple, not expecting having any trouble here.

BORDERLINE UNPLAYABLE GAMES (depending on your tolerance, this is less than 20fps in low settings)

  • DOOM (2016)
  • Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Elder's Scrolls V Skyrim - Special Edition

Didn't started:

  • Saints Row IV: Re-elected
  • Elder's Scrolls V Skyrim (Original)
  • Universe Sandbox Legacy
  • Road 96 (up to main menu, then crashed)

Other random stuff (it requires some -very little- tinkering):

  • Old portable windows games. (Tried Outrun 2006, worked fine with Lutris)
  • Emulators up to PS2-era worked very good.
  • Universe Sandbox -(some mouse issues, press f11 to regain mouse control in some versions)
  • Visible Body: Human Anatomy Atlas V3.0.1
  • Photoshop CS6 (!)

This was really fun, I might try other distros, and keep learning...

4 months ago*

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You think you'll switch to Linux in the future?

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10 Comments
philipdick

I have nobara linux for non-demanding 2d games on celeron mini pc, and bazzite Linux on amd with rdna3 graphics. everything runs quite well and if there any problem it's possible to find a solution on protondb most of the time. for super old games there is a runtime for steam with dosbox and scummvm https://github.com/luxtorpeda-dev/luxtorpeda

4 months ago*
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popocho

Bazzite looks really good.

4 months ago
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Channel28

Saints Row IV (Legacy edition)

DAMN STRAIGHT!

Didn't started: Saints Row IV: Re-elected

... oh you were forced into Legacy

I don't think I can ever leave Windows ... I'm a creature of habit.

Any how, good luck on your venture away from MS.

"Unrelated" ... LibreOffice as a alt for MS Office and GIMP as alt for Photoshop (and Da Vinci Resolve film stuff)

4 months ago
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popocho

I only play the legacy edition, but reelected installs by default, that's why I started that one first.

4 months ago
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MouseWithBeer

In case you were not aware of it somehow already ProtonDB is great for checking compatibility and finding solutions if something doesn't work correctly, not gonna help you if the issue is that the hardware is underpowered sadly tho.

I have been gaming on Linux since 2015ish and since 2019 I use it as my main OS and its still kinda mindblowing to me just how well it works nowadays compared to what we had back in 2015. Universe Sandbox Legacy was actually the last thing I tried that wouldn't run for me as well I think.

4 months ago
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Yamaraus

I'm on a Steam Deck for gaming the last year and I think I can count the number of games that haven't worked for me so far on one hand. That said, I'm not specifically going out and testing, and I have a fairly broad but aging collection mostly from the heyday of Humble Bundles giant cheap bundles.

[Aside] At work we mostly use Google apps for office stuff anyway.

4 months ago
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Hellohalo

Linux sounds better than windows.

4 months ago
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Zlia

I can't answer the question because I already switched to Linux. (Well, dual-booting Linux Mint; I still have the option of temporary switching to the Windows 12 this laptop came chained with at any time... I just don't wanna because it's shiiiiiiit.)

Linux is... well, it's ok. Random stuff keep randomly breaking from time to time, but, hey, it's not like Windows is any better nowadays.

4 months ago
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Romaki96

I'm surprised Yakuza 0 worked but Road 96 didn't. I guess it's all about optimization.

4 months ago
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Mitsukuni

Using Windows 10 without an SSD is a torment on itself. However your bottleneck is the Intel GPU. I assume most of the 3D stuff won't run well or not run at all. Kinda surprised for Saints Row IV. I would expect it to run Skyrim on lower settings though, since Skyrim is older. I think you should be able run Skyrim with cutting edge stuff, something like Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed etc.

Though that GPU could run Wayland and it could improve the performance of the games (that might require an SSD though, for better performance).

4 months ago
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