Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

I’m currently on Win11 but I’m getting that familiar Linux itch and want to dual boot a while again. I tend to gravitate towards Ubuntu simply because it’s so big and well supported by most things.

I’ve run Arch in the past but I’ve gotten too old and lazy for that if I’d be completely honest. I have played with manjaro and endeavour though… and opensuse tumbleweed, rolling is kind of nice.

Not sure what I’d try out first this time so I figured I’d get some inspiration from you guys!

ctrl,

gentoo!

i love the versatility it offers, but it’s very much so DIY. it has great documentation. anyone who considers themselves a “linux enthusiast” should try an install in a VM at some point or another, if nothing else it’s a great learning experience.

for gaming in particular: flatpak steam / lutris / bottles. it’s great because it’s completely distro agnostic. i can take the $USER/.var directory and put it on any distro with flatpak installed and it’ll just work.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

I am starting to realize how handy flatpaks can be!

I’ve been distro hopping like a madman these last couple of days and it’s gotten so much easier to get going with my games now!

20gramsWrench,

garuda, it’s just a fancy arch install with the ugliest, bloatiest, default theming you can imagine, but once you get rid of it it’s pretty solid.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

You’re really selling it :D

…I looked it up. You’re correct. That… was flashy.

TrontheTechie,

I’ve been using Garuda as well. It’s solid, and I like the fact they have a gaming variant that takes a lot of the nitpick presetup out of the picture.

ivereadalltheory,
@ivereadalltheory@beehaw.org avatar

Fedora but I’m about to move to NixOS Unstable or VanillaOS if it gets better NVIDIA integration.

kirstierthanthou,

I am on Vanilla OS with a NVIDIA gpu and its running pretty well.

ivereadalltheory,
@ivereadalltheory@beehaw.org avatar

Awesome. I’ve heard there are some problems with hardware acceleration.

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

Im really surprised that I don't see zorin os on these types of threads. Its main stick is to be chock full of out of the box software especially around windows compatibility. wine and play on linux are ready right away and I can run most windows programs right after install.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

It looks pretty nice straight out of the box too. You used it long?

HubertManne,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

yes. years now. I keep on trying something else but I don't have much patience now and take the easy way out.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

It’s pretty nice that linux has gotten far enough that we can have that luxury these days. :)

boonhet,

Been gaming on Gentoo for over a year, even if I haven’t found much time for gaming in the last few months.

Don’t do it if you’ve gotten too lazy for Arch though. Try Pop!_OS or Linux Mint or something. Enjoy an easy distro for a bit, till you get the itch for Arch back.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Oh I’ve tinkered with Gentoo plenty in the past (I still miss OTW if that rings any bells) and no, I really don’t have the patience for it these days. :)

And yeah, I’ll probably end up installing something a bit more fancy soon-ish… for now I plopped Kubuntu 20.04 on there and Diablo IV is downloading as we speak!

eyecreate,

I have my gaming computer hooked to my TV and running Chimera OS. Makes it easy to use with just a controller.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Sounds like a sweet setup for controller based gaming!

LoafyLemon,

Pop!_OS ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

Icarus,

My last two laptops have been System76 models. The first time I didn’t really love Pop!_OS but the most recent laptop I gave it another shot and it’s come a long way. Really enjoying it overall (still prefer KDE over gnomey stuff tho, lol)

wet_lettuce,

Pop!_OS for life!

Xeelee,
@Xeelee@kbin.social avatar

I've been using Mint without any issues for a while now. I only play Steam games, though.

green_witch,
@green_witch@beehaw.org avatar

Also on the latest Mint. I really like it. I was previously on PopOS and enjoyed that, too.

elehayyme,
@elehayyme@kbin.social avatar

I've been running Pop for a bit over a year now and am (mostly) satisfied with it. The only issues I had were due to kernel updates, it would cause flickering on my screen and (like someone else mentioned) had to revert to an older kernel until the situation was resolved.

MT_Book_Wyrm,

Pop here also. I tried several different distro's, pop worked out of the box. Only issue was my cheap little Bluetooth USB wart, but five minutes of searching showed me how to get it working. That's it. I like it. Familiar enough for a windows refugee, plays enough steam games without issues to keep me happy. No crashes, no freezes, unlike windows 10/11.

hallettj,
@hallettj@beehaw.org avatar

I’ve been evaluating NixOS to make sure I can run games on it. I’ve only tried a machine with Intel graphics so far, but I see that AMD and Nvidia drivers are packaged. It seems convenient now that I’ve figured out the setup.

Vulkan is set up out of the box.

It’s necessary to enable 32-bit DRI support by adding this line to /etc/nix/configuration.nix:


<span style="color:#323232;">hardware.opengl.driSupport32Bit = true;
</span>

To use Lutris install the package and use its UI to install runners. I didn’t have to configure any extra libraries to get Battle.net running. You can configure the “system wine” that Lutris sees, and extra libraries your games might need like this:


<span style="color:#323232;">home.packages = with pkgs; [
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  (lutris.override {
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    extraLibraries =  pkgs: [
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      # List library dependencies here
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    ];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    extraPkgs = pkgs: [
</span><span style="color:#323232;">      wine-staging
</span><span style="color:#323232;">    ];
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  })
</span><span style="color:#323232;">];
</span>

Those lines go in a Home Manager config file, like ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix. That installs Lutris, and any listed dependencies at the same time.

NixOS does not put dependencies in the file paths where programs usually look for them. That traditional directory structure is called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, or FHS. But Nix packages can create a virtual FHS where needed, and that is what the Lutris package does. That lets software that isn’t built for Nix work, like Lutris’ Wine runners. That means that for games to access libraries those libraries must be listed in that extraLibraries option so that they are included in the FHS.

32-bit libraries are in pkgs.pkgsi686Linux.* if you need them.

I haven’t tried Steam yet, but I think it has an option similar to the extraLibraries one for Lutris.

A nice feature of NixOS is that if you add a bunch of libraries to your config trying to get a game to work, those libraries are automatically unlinked when you remove them from your config so your system stays nice and tidy.

Chobbes,

I’ve been having a great time with games on NixOS. Steam just works when you enable it. I believe you can specify extra libraries for the filesystem hierarchy hackery, but I haven’t needed to yet. One thing you should know about (if you don’t already) is steam-run which is a simple command line tool that automatically wraps things in a normal FHS. Super convenient for the occasional binary :).

hallettj,
@hallettj@beehaw.org avatar

Good to know, thanks! Do you find steam-run to be helpful even for non-steam binaries that need an FHS? Or do you use it mainly for games?

Chobbes,

Yeah, exactly! For steam itself on NixOS you don’t have to manually use steam-run, but steam-run is a handy little tool to wrap / run other commands with the FHS that NixOS sets up for steam. I’ve mostly used it to run a few Linux games that I have binaries for, but don’t have on steam… I’m pretty sure I used it for another Linux program too, but I can’t remember what right now.

Joker,

Which packages do you add to extraLibraries? How do you find the dependencies? I’m struggling with this at the moment.

hallettj,
@hallettj@beehaw.org avatar

It depends on what your games need. I haven’t added any libraries yet, but I haven’t tested many games yet either. If something isn’t working you might be able to determine a missing library from the log output. In Lutris the Play button has an arrow on it that you can click on to find the “Show log output” button.

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

32-bit libraries are in pkgs.pkgsi686Linux.* if you need them.

Put the libraries into extraLibraries; it’ll add them for both µarches. No need to explicitly use pkgsi686Linux yourself.

hallettj,
@hallettj@beehaw.org avatar

Oh good tip, thanks!

sailsperson,
@sailsperson@kbin.social avatar

Here's my config (no hardware):

  • OS: Arch
  • Kernel: linux-zen
  • Window Manager: i3-gaps
  • Compositor: picom

I've been running this for several years now across multiple PCs, all with different hardware, including Nvidia and AMD for graphics, and Intel and AMD for CPU - and it's been working really well for me right up until recently.

After this paragraph, I will talk about the issues I've exeprienced as a gamer using my particular config. Please note that it's just a couple of minor issues, and the rest of the experience has been more than wonderful, convenient, functional, and beloved, and I do recommed Arch as a gaming setup as someone who's been running it to play games for several years in a row.

The most recent Steam Next Fest (June 2023) has revealed several demos that behaved like they launched, i.e. Steam changed my status to "in-game", changed the Start button in library, updated the playtime properly, etc., yet the game did not, in fact launch at all. I managed to play the affected demos when I switched to the KDE Plasma desktop environment on the same PC... and back on the same config after that as well.

I would consider that a one-time error that was gone by, essentially, reloading the X server, but there's been another consistent issue that I have only managed to observe in this i3+picom config. Ever since Steam's most recent UI beta, the floating elements, such as the buttons that let you install the game's demo, wishlist it, or navigate the store by the tags applied to the same game, all of which appear when you're hovering your mouse pointer over the game's thumbnail in Steam, are basically ignored; when clicking any of them, the click registers on the element that is supposed to be underneath the element you're actually trying to click: for example, if you're hovering your mouse pointer over a game and want to click the green wide "Install Demo" button, which is floating over another game's thumbnail, you'll click that thumbnail instead and open its Steam page. This particular issue persists between full PC reboots, X server restarts, i3/picom restarts, etc., and never occured in XFCE or KDE Plasma.

As I haven't been using any of the store features in Steam prior to the June's Steam Next Fest, I failed to notice any of the above, but now, I can't deny that it's been annoying. I really like my current configuration for everything I'm doing at my PCs: it's great for my work, it's even great for my gaming, it's great for my leasure, and I don't want to ditch it, because I have already tried many other tiling window managers, and i3-gaps is the one that stuck with me the most.

Now, I know there's sway, which is supposed to be a drop-in alternative, i.e. I can use my i3 config with it no problem, but sway uses the Wayland compositor, so I can't run it as easily: I'll have to set up the SDDM display manager instead of the dead-simple lightdm in order to keep the convenient multi-user setup I have, and probably sacrifice some of the performance my GTX 1080 has been giving with the proprietary drivers (I know, disgusting, but it has worked the best for my hardware as compared to the nouveau, unfortunately). I guess it's just time for me to tinker again.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

You know… at least for me, I think I’m past the stage of being horrified over having to use proprietary drivers. I know it’s not as nice as a pure open source system, but still… it gets my system to run better, it’s free and it’s still Linux. So in my opinion it’s a good tradeoff still.

I do get why purists would hate it though and I wish you’d get the same performance with a completely free system.

sailsperson,
@sailsperson@kbin.social avatar

As far as I know, it's not entirely about some purism ideal they have in mind - the difference between the two nvidia camps on Linux is the functionality you gain with both drivers, and the proprietary driver is simply more restrictive, so, yeah, I agree that they have a point.

This is the reason I know very well that my next GPU is going to be an AMD one (given that their hardware has proper open source source by that time, that is). I bought by GPU back in 2017 or 2018, I think, a couple of years before using Linux and even considering it - had I known that today's me was going to run LInux, I would've gone for an AMD GPU right away.

Even skipping the Nvidia driver debates, the AMD hardware has been a much more consistent and pleasant experience for me on Linux overall across several AMD-based laptops that I have installed Linux on. While I did manage to get things going on my desktop that has an Nvidia GPU, it definitely caused me more headache than I expected.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Good points all around. I suppose AMD would be a better choice when the time comes to upgrade. There’s no real down sides to them either compared to Nvidia except maybe not supporting the same ray traving tech?

I’m a bit out of the loop there though.

lertsenem,
@lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com avatar

I weirdly did not see anyone mentioning SteamOS? Formerly based on Ubuntu, now based on Arch, I believe.

It's the distribution that the is packaged with, and so it's become my main gaming distrib now. :]

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Are they providing the arch based version for download now? I was under the impression they’ve only set it up for steam decks but not for general use?

EmpiricalFlock,
@EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

According to the website the public release is based off of Debian still.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, thought so. Hope they’ll publish their newer versions as well soon.

lertsenem,
@lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com avatar

@nlm You're right, but there is an unofficial version (with some tweaks to work on standards PC) available here.

It works as intended, but I would only recommend it if you intend to use your PC in a console-like setup (ie, plugged to a big screen, with a game controller).

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Ah cool!

Not something I’d use now then but still neat that you can get it :)

jakepi,

I tried HoloISO and had pretty mixed results. I’ve had much better luck with ChimeraOS.

The devs on ChimeraOS are excellent too, they take in community feedback and are very helpful.

noodlejetski,

EndeavourOS with Plasma. migrated from Manjaro after one too many questionable decision on their side.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

What bugged you about Manjaro?

noodlejetski,

basically every thing on https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/, one by one. I just reached the point when I decided to hop to another distro at the next reformat.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Sure, there are some bad mistakes in there but that site feels like a personal vendetta though.

TrinitronX,
@TrinitronX@kbin.social avatar

In the past, I had been using Ubuntu LTS releases for my main HTPC. That original install had been upgraded many times, but actually started out as an Ubuntu spin-off called Mythbuntu. Of course since Steam on Linux was first released, Ubuntu was the most well-supported distro at the time, and still technically is (Look in Steam's .local install directory and you'll still find ubuntu12_32, ubuntu12_64 folders which are pre-packaged dependencies & libraries for steam-runtime built against Ubuntu's core libs for each architecture). It ran many games fine, and the added bonus of a distro focused on being an HTPC meant that I could use mythgame as a frontend for emulators, steam, or whatever else needed a launcher. Meanwhile, the main focus of MythTV was being an OSS DVR that supported TV capture cards, commercial skip, and transcoding.

It ran all those things well, except trancoding (no VAAPI, only VDPAU & not many codecs), up to a point when my original Nvidia GT240 card became deprecated by Nvidia's binary blob drivers. Thanks to the version-pinned 340 proprietary drivers not being well supported on newer kernels, I have been forced into a hardware upgrade cycle. Decided to go with AMD this time around, but the first card has some kind of hardware issue (9 times out of 10 after a reboot, the amdgpu driver says the SMU won't init properly... same on windows but no helpful error messages, just doesn't work at all). The card arrived without an OEM box, and seemed suspiciously in used condition although it wasn't sold to me as a used model. Thanks to testing in a rolling-release distro based on Arch, I was able to prove that it wasn't due to software, but instead was a hardware issue. I'm going to send that GPU back and get another one to replace it once prices get less insane.

I tested out various Manjaro LiveCDs to check if it was a software or driver problem, and did get the GPU working about once every 10 reboots. I decided to go with a full install of Manjaro Sway edition to try and test out wayland & a more minimal window manager. I didn't think I'd like it at first, as I'd always avoided using i3wm in the past... but actually it's starting to grow on me and I think I'll try this out as a daily driver for a while. After following some instructions on the Arch wiki to identify missing steam-runtime dependencies and installing them via pacman, everything works, including Proton-based games. Technically Steam is still running under Xwayland, as evidenced by xlsclients output, but it works and seems much snappier than running on Ubuntu with X11.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Geez… you guys are making this hard… now I’m bouncing between ubuntu, pop, endeavour and manjaro…

Nicely formatted post by the way :)

thegreenguy,
@thegreenguy@kbin.social avatar

NixOS. If you played around with Arch you'll be fine. My only gripe (although it's kind of important) is NVIDIA doesn't work. Call me lazy but I haven't felt like switching to an other distro, plus I'm not much of a hardcore gamer.

Bucket_of_Truth,

That's a huuuuuge problem seeing that Nvidia has like an 80% gpu market share.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, that’d be a no for me.

Especially problematic since I’m on a laptop so I can’t really switch out the GPU either.

icydefiance,

Unfortunately it's pretty much impossible to support Nvidia on Linux unless you have a large enough team to test each of their GPUs individually and find workarounds for all of the bugs. Their Linux drivers are really bad.

The bigger projects have been able do that, but if it's a relatively new project with only a handful of people working on it, and it's not used on the steam deck, there's basically no chance it'll support Nvidia.

Atemu,
@Atemu@lemmy.ml avatar

Nvidia drivers works just fine. Well, as “fine” as they work on any other distro.

Only thing you need to do is add “nvidia” to https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=23.05&show=services.xserver.videoDrivers&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=nvidia. You might also need to accept unfree packages but you’ll need to do that anyways for Steam.

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