This again: What distro are you using for gaming?

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?

technologicalcaveman ,

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.

8565 ,

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

technologicalcaveman ,

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.

gruedragon ,

Currently using Debian 12.

nartimus ,

@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?

ono ,

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.

Mogster ,
@Mogster@kbin.social avatar

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.

Yutopianist ,

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

Crozekiel ,

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...).

Montagge ,
@Montagge@kbin.social avatar

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.

VasyaSovari ,
@VasyaSovari@kbin.social avatar

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

SFaulken ,
@SFaulken@kbin.social avatar

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.

Alexmitter ,
@Alexmitter@kbin.social avatar

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

jakwithoutac OP ,

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

Alexmitter ,
@Alexmitter@kbin.social avatar

No.

polygon ,
@polygon@kbin.social avatar

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.

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