this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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Linux Gaming
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Is there really much of a difference in game performance between "game focused" distros and other ones like mint?
Depends what "much" is but there can be a measurable difference if the distro comes with it's own kernel, like cachyos.
Between different distros on the same kernel the difference in performance is negligible.
Not really. Nobara comes prepackaged with a plethora of game related utilities and tons of kernel tweaks and packages to optimize it for gaming, but I highly doubt any gamer could tell the difference, between it and mint in the middle of a game. Use the distribution you like that works well for you.
That's kinda what I was figuring. I've been using mint for several months now and I really like it and I've gotten it all adjusted to my preferences. I've checked out pop os, but I'm not a fan of the OS layout. It reminds me of android lol.
The layout is just gnome, pretty sure you can change the DE if you want to, and yeah it does look like android which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering desktop usage is getting replaced by mobile.
I'd argue it's more about having all the things preinstalled rather than the tweaks. Having steam ready with all the proton versions available in the compatibility drop-down (including GE) plus heroic, gamescope, mangohud, etc. waiting to be discovered, that all reduces friction for newcomers.
Agreed. Long time Linux user here. The distro is just supposed to get you near what you want or need. There are science distros for different science labs. Because there is a certain set of tools and software that all the researchers would be using. And likely, the distro is not useful for anybody else. I think there is only the big gaming distro issue because, gaming hasn't really been a huge thing on Linux. Now it is, and new people to Linux have no clue what all is needed or what all is possible. Most don't even realize they could install and switch DE's without having to "distro hop". But, 100% agree with you.
Oh I see, that is pretty handy. It was kinda annoying and unintuitive to get mangohud running.
Steam and the other loaders (lutris, bottles...) take care of all the compatibility stuff just fine; the tweaks are actually the ones that can be bothersome to get, not that the performance difference matters much anyways...
Performance? No. But some of the new distros include Gamescope, which is kind of a big deal.
Isn't gamescope more used with handhelds?
Gamescope is great to use even on desktops, it runs the games in its own little shell which is particularly good for compatibility with old games where you can change stuff like resolution, fullscreen, keyboard layout... without impacting your distro.
Oh I see. That is pretty cool. Can you launch that with steam in the desktop version?
You can use gamescope with anything, it's a micro compositor. You can add it to the launch parameters in steam, lutris has an option to start games with gamescope, or you can simply open the game with gamescope and wine from the terminal.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Gamescope
Thanks for the info.
Desktop version of what?
Uhhhh I mean only because Valve put it on Steam Deck and then sold millions of them. I use it on my desktop.
But is there any difference between installing a distro that includes Gamescope, vs. installing it yourself afterward?
Not sure. I don't even know if that's possible.
It is, it's just a command you type in. Similar to most other software.
Yeah I've spent far too many hours "just typing a command in" so I'll stick with the ones that come pre-installed.