Admittedly, the last time I tried it was maybe 5 years ago. I used ubuntu (can’t remember which distro) but I recall having to fiddle a lot with drivers and WINE. Is the scenario still the same today?
With the horrors of Win11 widely talked about, I’m thinking of flirting with linux once more. Is it a good idea at this time? Or is gaming on linux still niche as it once was?
What is your distro and what tips and tricks/perspectives you can share with a newbie like me :)
Manjaro user here, it works fine for me Using it for years now
Any popular distro will work fine for gaming. The difference between distros are becoming less and less significant with de advancement of sandbox packaging like Flatpak. Pick which ever distro is exiting to yourself!
If you want a subjective opinion: Fedora is my personal favorite for few years now; otherwise Debian is a very strong and stable distro that I daily-drove for ~10 years.
There’s a lot of back and forth on this question constantly in the community. IMO you should just choose a Linux distro that’s beginner friendly with sane defaults. Any of them can game, basically.
- Nobara Linux is made specifically for gaming, you might want to start here.
- ZorinOS is made for people who aren’t used to Linux. It’s got a great UI and good features. I used to play Elden Ring on it, it’s very reliable.
- Pop_OS is another great general distro. Lots of people gaming use this. They’re also making their own desktop environment which they’ll use here when it’s ready.
- Arch Linux only if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, avoid an arch linux based distro.
I guess it depends on what your use case might be. I have heard that Manjaro is decent for a desktop Arch experience, but I have yet to try it.
My use case recently was for a living-room PC that works like a console version of the Steam Deck. For that purpose, ChimeraOS works really well. It’s an Arch-based distro that uses the Steam Deck controller-first interface and so far is handling almost everything I’ve thrown at it. It even has a remote admin app where you can install games from GOG or Epic (although GOG support only installs the base game at the moment, no DLC or updates) or upload console ROMs for emulation.
I would say if you go this route, get a PS4/PS5 controller. The touch space is recognized as a mouse, which removes the need to attach a mouse for those moments when you need to get into the desktop (such as formatting a secondary drive for use in Steam).
Garuda Linux if you are lazy.
Any distro if you are not.
Tips and tricks
As much douchey as this may sound… but yeah, RTFM works 100%.
What manual? cause everytime I look for solutions to a problem with regards to linux, I dont find a manual. I find random posts with a bunch of esoteric commands to copy and paste into terminal with minimal/no explanation of what they do, and a 50/50 chance that it’ll either fix the issue, or do nothing because the commands are now depreciated and the post is 12 years old. And when I finally spend 1-3 days of trying to solve it myself with no success, I sigh and tend to make a post about it somewhere, knowing there is a 1/3rd chance I either get a reply like yours, which does nothing helpful. 1/3rd chance of outright hostility, and if i’m lucky… the 1/3rd chance someone helpful will reply and provide help in a way I can understand.
Maybe if a manual existed that someone with no linux knowledge could understand and use as a guide to solve their problems, RTFM would be a valid stance, but now it just makes you sound like an ass.
If it’s a terminal command you need help with, type “man [command]” in the terminal and it will give you the literal manual page for the command. For example, to get the manual for tmux, type “man tmux”
If it’s something else, check the Arch Wiki. Yes, even if you aren’t running Arch. It’s some of the most comprehensive Linux documentation all on one site and most of it can be generalized to any distro.
But to be honest, your attitude here makes me think you will never have a good time on Linux. It does require a certain curiosity and willingness to learn – maybe even some patience while you get the experience to intuit solutions as you likely already do on Windows without thinking about it.
The manuals really do contain exact information on how to engage with pretty much everything, but if someone suggesting that you use the resources designed to help you makes them “an ass,” then I suspect you will simply fail to become familiar with the environment. I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just telling you that when you’re new, you need a different mindset than what you’re showing with this comment.
“I cant be the problem, YOU must be the problem with YOUR attitude”
Great comeback dude. Thanks for proving my entire point. New people arent the problem. People who havent learned everything arent the problem.
People like you are the problem.
I use fedora without issue
My gaming PC is Ubuntu 23.04. Steam/proton works for every game I wanted to play.
You can check ProtonDB website to get an idea if your games will run with Proton/steam.
