this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Linux

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Yes this has been asked and answered a million times I’m sure. There is a plethora of ‘top ten distros for Linux gaming’ lists out there and the majority of posts I can find on That Other Site seem to devolve into “every distro can do games”.

I’m interested in what you are using and your experience doing so. Any gotchas you wished you knew? Anything you tried that didn’t work, or anything that worked unexpectedly well? What would you say if your friend asked this over a few pints down the pub?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm using Pop OS and it worls flawlessly!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've been using PopOS and Steam installed in Flatpak, as well as native and both have worked really well. Lutris i have installed through flatpak, as otherwise it sometimes gave me issues. This is running really well on my AMD 5950x and 6800XT

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

same here and lutris was giving me shit with ea app, I could not get controller to work. I ended buying BF on steam and it works flawlessly.

not even going to bother anymore. steam 100% for gaming, idiot proof implementation is about ready for the normie stream.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mint for my desktop, SteamOS on Deck. Both do what I need, and the only issues I've run into since switching have been random things like GOG not having an updated Planescape Torment build that works out of the box. I don't play many online competitive games with like invasive anti-cheat stuff, so I haven't run into a ton of compatibility issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I forgot about the anti cheat stuff. That may well be an issue - some VM toe-dipping appears to be in order for me

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, YaST is the deity I pray to

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Fedora, apart from the latest nvidia driver rendering Plasma a slide show I've had no real issues.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

i'm just using manjaro right now, works pretty well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Same. Never had a problem with Manjaro. But also never play AAA online games

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Using Manjaro KDE here, as well. Granted, I mostly play Counter-Strike, Risk of Rain 2, Stellaris, and various indie games, but pretty much everything has been very smooth. Very glad to be free of Windows on my main machine, and it hasn't really affected how I use my PC day-to-day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

update: i have now had an issue with manjaro (audio issue, low quality, fixed pretty easy, but still)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Arch linux, minimal install. Feels really nice to have control over my whole distro and to not be clogged by third-party annoyances.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Got annoyed with Red Hat so moved to OpenSUSE. Easy transition, no issues so far woth Steam, Heroic, or Lutris

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Using Linux Mint Cinnamon for most things currently, gaming included. I've been dabbling with the gnome DE so I can use Wayland, and it's been nice. However, I'm not as big of the DE and don't have time to tweak things to my preferences so I use it sparingly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean...Steam OS on Steam Deck...and probably on PC when they release that. If you mean on PC now, Kubuntu. Because I like KDE and Ubuntu is well-supported.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I was using Debian, but I now daily drive openSUSE Tumbleweed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I run Arch BTW. Even with a Nvidia GPU and never have issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Been using arch, don't have issues. Sometimes it doesn't play nice with dwm, but if I switch to xfce then games run without issue. My current computer has an nvidia gpu, next one will be entirely amd based.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have issues? I run a 12th gen I7 and a 2070 Super and everything just works

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not really. If I do it's usually because of my weak components. Dwm causes issues sometimes but it's just cause whatever I'm playing doesn't know what to do with a tiling window.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm using Nobara. It's a gaming tweaked Fedora with a bunch of gaming and steaming related software preinstalled and configured. Works well in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Same, started using it on a pc connected to my tv (for a console like experience, boots straight into gamescope/steam).
Now I also use it on my desktop (replacing Ubuntu).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've also been using Nobara and it's been near flawless for me since I started using it months ago

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Currently using Debian 12.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@gruedragon

@jakwithoutac

I haven’t gotten Lutron’s to install anything on debian 12. Was run into some wine error while installing games.

Do you have any guides you used?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I very recently (like last week!) stuck a new drive in my PC to run Pop!_OS, with the aim of switching over from Windows entirely if it pans out. So far I've only tested Steam for games, but it's worked flawlessly for the games I've tried using Proton.

I've had a Steam Deck for some time which convinced me to make the jump. My desktop was my only Windows machine and I'd love to properly switch it to Linux.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fedora without any question. There is no other distro this polished.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Worried about the Red Hat nonsense at all? I’m not super plugged into the news on it all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The way it was explained to me was Fedora = RHEL Alpha, CentOS Stream = RHEL Beta, RHEL is Stable, then there are downstreams who build against RHEL. Only those who are downstream of REHL are effected by the changes. Both Fedora and Cent are necessary development platforms to support everything that eventually makes it down to RHEL in stable condition. They both depend on RHEL for funding, but RHEL depends on them for testing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Debian Stable + Backports, with a few customized flatpaks. I don't care that my desktop apps are not bleeding edge. My system always works, and games run great.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I wouldn't make any specific recommendation. Because when you do, you instantly become most peoples personal support technician, when they can't sort something out.

I'd probably make the general suggestions of Fedora/Silverblue/Kinoite, openSUSE Tumbleweed/Aeon/Kalpa, and maybe Pop!_OS if somebody put a gun to my head. But no recommendations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@jakwithoutac CachyOS, cos it supported RDNA3 on launch. It's since been easily the best I've ever used

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ubuntu 20.04lts
Probably going to update to 22.04lts soon

I do use kisak-mesa ppa to use an up to date mesa driver. Pretty much the only thing I've had to do for gaming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I installed Garuda on my main desktop PC and have been absolutely loving it. I'm not a linux expert, this is the first time I've dived in with my main pc on linux only (but I have been "trying" linux every so often for as long as I can remember basically). It is amazing how far Linux has come in just the last few years. It is very close to what I would consider a full replacement mainstream OS. I am on a fully AMD system though, so I can't speak for nvidia issues (but honestly I've been sick of them even under windows for a few years now...).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I used Arch for a while but am currently back on Windows unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Debian Bookworm

I run AMD kit (not the latest) and install the KDE desktop, Steam and Crossover.

I choose Debian because its packaged extremely well and I want an OS/Applications to be things that just work.

The only bugs I suffer are Proton issues playing Windows games and the recent steam ui update doesn't seem to work with steam link from a wayland desktop (has to be x11).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm using Debian 12 with KNOME (basically Plasma that has a gnome-like feel to it.)

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