I found out the hard way that Linux is not a dad-friendly gaming OS, and maybe neither is the PC

I've been out of the office this week on dad-duty, hanging out with my boy while school's out for the Easter holidays. And honestly, it's a pleasure, because he's a little legend anyways, but also because he's now at the point where it's genuinely fun playing co-op games with him. Mostly.

I'm using that Newt-inspired caveat purely because of platform issues. Platform issues with Linux and the PC. Well. Microsoft specifically, but not exclusively.

I have been excitedly diving deep in the Linux waters over the past few months, having been a far more casual swimmer over my long PC gaming history. I have wholeheartedly flipped my main laptop, a prepper-themed Blade 14 machine, over to PopOS, and it's been a genuine joy. I've enjoyed the extra control I have over full-stack customisation, the ease of use now that I can simply shut the lid and be sure that it will go to sleep and not just randomly suck the battery dry for no discernible reason (why Windows, why?), and the fact that gaming is now super easy on Linux, thanks to solid GPU drivers—even on Nvidia—and all the work Valve has put into Proton, building on those Wine foundations.

I've even now switched my main gaming rig with its high-end hardware—something I'd always found an issue with many a Linux distribution—over to Nobara. And that's been largely a fantastic experience, too. Though, given this is where I do most of my serious PC gaming, I have hit some definite Linux-based stumbling blocks. Late to the party as ever, I've been jamming through The Last of Us Part 1, having bounced off it hard on PlayStation many years back. But as good as the PC port now is, after a lot of updates, it still is not a happy camper on Linux.

But that's not really an issue for playing games with my little boy. He's not really at an age where zombies can be anything other than a funny cartoon character on the TV, or the disguise of some disgruntled arcade owner in Scooby Doo. So, The Last of Us Part 1 has not been something we've been playing together.

I did, however, want to introduce him to the Lego Star Wars franchise, and with the Skywalker Saga installed on my laptop, with every character DLC going, I was excited for us to snuggle down on the sofa and stick it up on the big-screen projector in my front room. He's thoroughly resistant to movies, and so has rejected every attempt to indoctrinate him with the actual Lucasfilms, so I was hoping the games might be a worthy entry point for us.

Y'know, dad goals. Except…

"What's wrong, dad?" he asks for the fifth time as I sit there, crosslegged on the floor, quietly cursing the little laptop at my feet.

"I honestly don't know," I say, exasperated, looking at yet another forum post suggesting commands to enter into the terminal to try and get PopOS to give me access to the Bluetooth-enabled Xbox wireless controller in my hand.

"It's okay, dad, we don't have to play," the disappointment in his voice is cutting real deep into my heart after I'd foolishly hyped up the Star Wars experience without first making sure both the game and hardware would actually play ball with the setup I was trying out.

The flashing Xbox logo indicates we're still in pairing mode, while the PC says we're connected, and yet neither is really talking to the other. I know deep down it's a fixable issue. Nearly all of the gaming issues I've come across in the time I've been maining Linux have been, you just need a little patience, the right answer on the right forum, or a smart LLM having done the digging for you. In short, it's a time game.

(For a quick post script to that, I got the controllers fully set up in the half-time period of a Champions League match that night. I just needed 15 minutes and an Xbox console to sort out the firmware and get them to a state where the low latency Bluetooth handshake of PopOS was now being recognised.)

But one thing you do not have as the father of a small boy is the luxury of time. I cannot sit there troubleshooting the controller connection issue (and I am wilfully ignoring the fact the game itself is stuck 'synchronising cloud' despite there not being any cloud saves to speak of) when he's sat there getting increasingly fidgety about not being personally entertained and concerned about his dad's obvious growing frustration at technology just being a total *&%t.

So I turn my back on Linux and local gaming and turn to the tried and true gaming platform we've enjoyed together in the past—GeForce Now. Cloud gaming has been a super simple way for the two of us to play games together on the shared family big-screens. With the app running on the Nvidia Shield, and controllers easily connected to the li'l Android cylinder, he's had a blast on games from BeamNG, Forza Horizon 5, and Goat Simulator 3 to Moving Out and Overcooked. And this year we started Minecraft Dungeons because my brother and I were obsessed with Gauntlet on the Spectrum when we were kids, and he is already obsessed with Minecraft.

And we've had a great time, so I wasn't really that bothered in the end if we were just going to spend a few hours bouncing between that and San Angora. I was not, however, expecting to find my blood pressure spiking to dangerous levels again with Microsoft login issues keeping us away from our blocky goal.

With GeForce Now the constant need to login into your Microsoft account every time we want to play an Xbox Studios games has been a definite irritant, especially having to navigate the login screens with a controller and on-screen keyboard. But it's been surmountable, and forgotten once you're past it and actually into the game proper.

Not so this time, as despite logging in with my 100% correct credentials, which are accepted on my PC and email logins for my phone, Minecraft Dungeons tells me instantly I've logged in too many times with an incorrect username or password. There's no other way in, because it also won't send a code to my phone, either, and no amount of digging around online is coming up with a quick solution.

He sidles up close and puts his little arms around me as I ignore the futility of my actions and once more enter the password I know is correct. "It's okay, dad."

It's an uncomfortable reminder that PC gaming still has accessibility issues, and Linux doubly so. And that no matter how much we might think we own our games, we are still very much only playing them while the good graces of the controlling platform owners allow.

So many of our games, even if you've not picked them up on Steam—and often especially because you have—rely on separate launchers and validation layers and hoops to jump through just to play a game. And if something fails in that chain of store platform and publisher launchers and separate publisher accounts, well, then you're poop out of luck.

Squeezing him tightly, I shut off the TV and, smiling, I suggest we do something far more wholesome and go bake some cakes instead. Now, neither of us are natural bakers, and we learn some hard lessons about ingredient suitability that afternoon, too. But we at least end up with something to show for our efforts, even if the Yoda atop our Victoria Sponge does look a lot like it was made with pesto.