So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don’t wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don’t rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
Take Fedora, as you’re already used to it. Steam handles Windows games for you. In 99% of cases they just work. Only games that do not run nowadays are games with unsupported kernel level anti cheat. Look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/ to see if your games are supported. A VM won’t help you as that is usually blocked by such anti cheat as well.
If you do have a problem with a non-multiplayer game look at https://protondb.com/.
For games from GOG, Epic or Amazon use Heroic. For every other store you can add the launcher or just the game itself to Heroic.
I believe you meant to type protondb.com
Yes, thanks!
Is heroic overtaking lutris now?
For me it is. I’ve been using Lutris for years, but they’re just stagnating. The design is all over the place, they still don’t have a unified library, their native integrations break so often that I have to add my games manually anyways. And I cannot fathom why they don’t adopt the same library integrations for GOG, Amazon and especially Epic as Heroic. They are much faster and have much less hassle.
At the same time Heroic has been adding the same tools I originally missed from Lutris. Like the Wine handling and using external wrappers like Mangohud or Gamemode or your own wrappers and variables.
Lutris’ installation scripts are still often nice for figuring out a game’s dependencies. I just wish they were in a git repo where people could add comments because some of the scripts are needlessly complicated.
If someone made an itch.io command line client that Heroic could tap into it would have most of the things I could wish for.
heroic overall seems to work better for installing games from gog, but the odd issue I have is that I seem to be always online on gog’s service when I’m playing games. Do you happen to know if there’s any way to set myself invisible? I don’t want everyone to know how often or late I play games :P
I guess technically signing out of the storefront would do that, but then I’d have to re-login to install/update games, eh
edit: oh derr, it dawned on me that it might be the Cyberpunk launcher which I had to login as well, which shows me online
I still struggle to get Heroic to install pretty much anything, while Lutris usually works. I would want to use Heroic, but a prerequisite is that installed games actually launch and I have yet to understand why they don’t…
If you installed it from flatpak theres probably some permissions you need to set. Otherwise I dunno.
Luckily you can just skip the Cyberpunk launcher. Just configure Heroic to use the normal exe. That’s how I play the Steam version so that I can play when my son is playing on his PC as well.
Yea I have done that, but logging into the launcher (and it apparently keeps it logged in as well) unlocks in-game items - they are entirely non-essential, but… you know, hoarding.
I haven’t tested yet if that’s even the thing which is showing me in-game to my friends. I was kinda amazed to hear they saw me playing cyberpunk to the early morning hours :D
ProtonDB is a godsend. People will even post config tweaks for games
I just want a VM for my 10 year old cracked version of photoshop and some other apps. I never intended to game on a VM.
Any distro will do tbh. If youre missing something you just install it.
But since youre used to Fedora may as well stay on that tree. You can always play around with other Desktop Environments like Plasma if you want, its what I’ve been doing once I get an install going.
Of you’re going foss for your OS why not take a look at Krita and gimp for your image editing needs?
I’ve not tried either in years at this point hut can’t hurt to check them out if you haven’t already.
I tried GIMP but just cannot get used to it. Heard there are some ways to make the tools and shortcuts behave like PS though just never tried it.
Have you tried the newest release? It seems to be more PS leaning, at least that’s what I hear from PS experts.
I last tried it like a year ago.
Didn’t try it but FYI maybe PhotoGIMP could make GIMP usable for you!
Peobably what I heard of before. Thanks for the link, will take a look.
Just use Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Mint if you want a hassle free, secure, and stable Linux distro that supports everything and works out of the box.
Don’t use those gaming centric distros like Bazzite. It’s not worth it. Don’t use Arch or other bleeding edge distros unless you want to keep troubleshooting your system because of problems or vulnerabilities.
Take it from me. I’ve been using Linux since 2001 and Ubuntu based distros have always been the best choice for a secure stable OS.
100 percent agree - just waiting for the Canonical haters to arrive
I would actually recommend the nvidia image of bazzite since it takes the potential driver module and kernel mismatch problem out of the equation which IMO is one of the most annoying problems an nvidia user can face, and if it somehow bugs out anyway rollback is one or two keypresses away depending on if you hide grub or not.
Virtualization is possible with the boot flags and vfio if needed setup using the “ujust setup-virtualization” script. qemu/kvm, probably not virtualbox which also requires kernel modules iirc.
I have had ONLY NVidia cards since my first ever own PC in 2000 when I started college.
I’ve used Mandrake Linux for a while then switched to Ubuntu when it came out in 2004 and have used that ever since.
I’ve NEVER encountered any problems whatsoever. In fact, it made using an NVidia card easier because of its built-in third party driver installation tool that takes care of everything.
If something doesn’t work, it’s very probable that it’s because the user messed around with something and caused it to happen.
Yeah back then I was in elementary school. I chased single percent performance gains from bleeding edge because I couldn’t just buy better hardware. If you wanted the latest versions of anything ubuntu couldn’t do it without iffy unofficial repos and dependency hell. I did it anyway and it sucked.
If you compiled the kernel but forgot to rebuild the graphics modules you had to live cd in, because a 64mb usb stick was like 300 bucks back then and booting off usb wasn’t really a thing yet. Then next would be some janky terminal instructions off someones blog printed at the library because phones weren’t even moto razr and arch wiki didnt exist yet, then pray it worked and that there was enough time left in the day to do whatever stupid homework needed the computer.
I never liked the nvidia installer and it’s control panel that seemingly needed root then somehow fucked up the monitor config while not even applying the driver config, but it was all I knew as I never had a radeon until after the amd acquisition of ati. I also have no idea if the driver was always in kernel or if that was more recent but being able to compile a kernel with some silly buzzword feature that probably only situationally added 2fps to maybe one or two games and not risk graphics related boot failure was a game changer to my broke ass in the early days of working.
Anyway that was peak ubuntu era as I remember it. I mainly used ubuntu with spots of opensuse and some others here and there until whenever the r9 280 came out and then primarily used arch until the the early immutable distros showed up. Now even my dad and grandparents are on bazzite and my mom on aurora and its literally the best thing ever because they actually don’t fuck it up anymore and I don’t spend every waking hour on call for tech support.
Yeah back then I was in elementary school. I chased single percent performance gains from bleeding edge because I couldn’t just buy better hardware. If you wanted the latest versions of anything ubuntu couldn’t do it without iffy unofficial repos and dependency hell. I did it anyway and it sucked.
Wait wait… if you had an old ass computer, why did you need the bleeding edge stuff? That doesn’t make sense.
Also, I’m still skeptical about immutable distros. I like being in control of my PC. And I’m too old school I guess.
mostly cases like “experimental/preliminary support for xyz but only if you compile from source or use unofficial repos”, video codecs in that janky era, assorted functionality now taken for granted, etc. Nothing really needs bleeding edge any more hence why I don’t use arch on my desktop any more and my server computers are mostly debian.
Dunno how nvidia drivers are for manually installing these days, know there was som jank before.
Im running Nobara and they got ez driver setup for both Nvidia and AMD GPUs. Either way I think you’ll be fine no matter what distro you use.
Personally I like Nobara because it comes with a bunch of kernel patches, fixes and gaming utilities pre-installed.
I can’t think of any modern distro that doesn’t just have Nvidia drivers as a package in the repos.
Very true, they do ofc exist there. Nobara just gives you a first-time install-wizard which lets you one-click condigure it. I was more thinking of a use-case as OPs where you wont need to tinker too much after the initial installation.
But yes, basically all distros do have the drivers in their package repos, so any would work.
Also Nobara is built on fedora, so OP doesn’t have to adjust to something new
It’s more personal preference and use case than anything.
Gaming dedicated versions are nice if you really only plan to game. Bazzite, ChimeraOS, Garuda, along others are available. ChimeraOS is what I installed on my stepson’s pc and outside of a network issue it has worked pretty well. He is happy and since he mainly uses his android tablet for web browsing and whatnot, it’s perfect for me to not need to do a bunch of troubleshooting issues. I’ve tinkered with Garuda but I’m not convinced it’s for me and I dislike anything with a Mac feel.
I use an Ubuntu based system (Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04LTS) with a 5800X and GTX1080TI because I want stability and the ability to edit video, game, manage websites, manage our home services, along other things.
Instead of asking which one you should use go out and try some demos and look at your intended use case.
Yes, if you want. If you don’t, no.
What about Bazzite? It’s fedora based and made for gaming. I’ve only tried it on handheld like steamdeck and rog ally but it’s awesome, even better than steamdeck os.
I’ve used it on an old HP all in one and it made it useful again. The daughter tossed it because it lagged hella bad and her Roblox and Minecraft etc sucked, Runs Baldurs gate 1 and 2 just fine and all my older game emulators so I love to bust it out for Wii gaming night etc. The machine is pure crap with integrated graphics and a whooping 8gb ram. Thats gotta burn seeing all the stuff I’ve got going and knowing you threw it out. Then again I dont know if it’s noticed over TIk Tok
Give it a try and you most likely wont regret it. Linux has come a long way since the general statement what you want game on it. I purchased a Asus ROG laptop about a year ago and installed Manjaro Linux on it (spare the hate) and its been working flawlessly. With that said. I’m not a hard core gamer and been sticking to Steam and console emulation so others with more time to play games should flank in.
Benchmarks online tend to show very minimal performance difference between distros. The main difference with gaming distros will be ease of installation of gaming stuff like gamemode, etc. Some distros also have a Steam Picture like mode if you prefer that. Besides the “gaming” stuff, the distros are otherwise just a normal Linux experience so yes you can install a VM software like normal.
Bazzite and CachyOS are two popular suggestions. Bazzite is a Fedora atomic spin for gaming and has specific images setup for your hardware. CachyOS is arch based and has optimized packages for your specific hardware
nvidia shenanigans aside this should be fine for linux gaming.
I see bazzite mentioned a lot here, but wasn’t there a post here a while ago saying that it might stop existing if fedora pushes through with the decision to ditch 32bit support? Did they decide not to do it after all?
I think they decided not to, with some (IMO fairly) snarky comment on how that was just a proposal and people were getting needlesely outraged.
The proposal to ditch 32 bit support was withdrawn
Coming from a Steam Deck, I was really happy when I learned about Bazzite. I tried installing it and stuck with it for a few months now and I’m excited to have gotten rid of Windows. It’s fast and works well out of the box. Plus I have the SteamOS experience without fuss.
Bonus points for you, it’s Fedora based and easy to install on top if Fedora.
Notably I had tried Ubuntu before this and had issues with VRR and a couple of other things. Bazzite is built for this, and it works well.
I just went straight with a bazzite install since fedora literally did not want to work on my pc
i love bazzite, just got a new app store too
Does the rockstar launcher run? I’d like to move over but always wonder about losing access to quite a few games in the process
I think I got to install & launch GTAV without modifications or additional software. I’ll confirm and get back
From my experience on SteamOS, I’m launching RDR2 through the steam app but I own RDR2 on Rockstar game launcher. I used these steps to get it running: https://expertbeacon.com/can-steam-deck-run-red-dead-redemption-2/
I can only assume it’s similar on Bazzite but I haven’t tried.
You should go with Fedora.
Believe me I tried. It just will not let me finish the setup process
Oh you have Nvidia ? Try out PopOS, they have a special ISO file with Nvidia drivers
Of course you should - Do a dual boot as a test on whatever rig you’re currently using. Easy to undo and it costs you exactly zero.
I recently made the switch. Running intel ultra 5 and nvidia rtx 5060. Bazzite and Pop!_OS were advertised as working, out of the box. I couldn’t get either to work, following the wiki setup guides. I tried Ubuntu, couldn’t get that working, either.
I switched to Nobara, and learned that I was messing up gamemoderun in Steam. So I have no idea if Nobara fixed my issues, or if I was messing something up the whole time, or maybe a little of both. It was fun, though! Absolutely glad to be done with windows.
