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!

thayer,

All of my workstations are now running Fedora Silverblue. Steam is installed via flatpak, and GPU is a Radeon 6800 XT. I also have a Steam Link for couch co-op. All is well on the gaming front!

Debian Sid and Arch have run equally well with this setup. Your choice of distro matters much less now compared to a few years ago, especially if you favour a flatpak workflow.

Edit: typos!

ostrosco,

I’ve been using Fedora for the past few years and have been pretty happy with it. It updates at just the right cadence for me where I get new stuff pretty quickly but I’m not on a rolling release.

sadreality,

Win11 is worse than a phone vis a vis spying. Finally made a switch. could not install popOS, so ended up with mint.

baggins,

Debian

DracEULA,

Not at all an expert, but I’m doing fine with most games on Manjaro. Most things worked out of the box with Proton on Steam. I also liked Arch before I got old and lazy, and Manjaro seems to be a good way to get most of the benefits of Arch with lazier upkeep.

Kuujaku,
@Kuujaku@kbin.social avatar

Currently on Artix, but planning on changing to Gentoo soon.

suddenlythequietrose,

I’ve been on pop os for at least 2 years now, been loving it. Most of my gaming is through steam so compatibility issues are the exception, not the rule. It’s a bit of a dream come true to play God of War on Linux, it feels like all the stars aligned.

Even when I bork the install by fucking around in the kernel I wind up getting back on pop rather than finally taking the dive into arch.

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.

hobbsc,

Mint Cinnamon. Things generally work put of the box. There’s the occasional weird config mess to get into but it’s Linux.

BananaTrifleViolin,

Yeah I use Cinnamon too. It's fairly polished and can delve into Ubuntu or Debian when missing something you really want. I find the Nvidia drivers are easy to set up and maintain, and Steam works reasonably well (I have had a few quirks but nothing that I couldn't resolve).

Bucket_of_Truth,

The standalone Nvidia driver install panel makes installing the right gpu drivers a breeze.

The only problem I ran into is that it won't boot with my main monitor (1440p 165hz) plugged in. I have to use my secondary monitor (4k 60hz) to install the OS and Nvidia drivers first, then shutdown and plug in the main monitor and everything works on the next boot.

nadiaraven,

I use Arch with XFCE. Yes, it took a while to get running properly, and just the other day I went to print something and realized cups hadn’t even been installed yet, so I spent 15 minutes getting my printer up and running, so I totally get that it’s not for everyone. I like it because of the detailed wiki with great tutorials and instructions on getting things working, like the one I used to get a nextcloud installation working on my computer. And I like it because of the extensive Arch User Repository, so I know I can install whatever I like. I mostly just play Stardew Valley and trackmania on it. I’ve used Manjaro before and enjoyed that too, and it comes with all the benefits of arch.

I installed Mint on my friends computer, which works totally fine, but I don’t know how it is for gaming; she definitely doesn’t game.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Arch really is a documentation project rather than a distro, their wiki tops most everything out there :)

Mummelpuffin,
@Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org avatar

Seriously, ArchWiki has taught me most of what I know about Linux.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, that’s basically where you go if you ever have some obscure problem, it’s incredibly useful really.

Nicbudd,

Pop!_OS. It just works, it’s easy, and it makes me enjoy using my computer.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

I’m starting to want to try Pop… they seem to have quite a few fans around here!

bilboswaggings,

It is one of the simplest ones to play games on

Xenanthropy,

SourceMage! It’s a source based distro like Gentoo. I’ve been using it as my main distro for a solid 10 months now, I’m very happy with it! We have flatpak so steam works great, as well as lutris and everything else. Definitely wouldn’t recommend it to someone looking for simplicity though!

Malgas,

Definitely wouldn’t recommend it to someone looking for simplicity though!

Or short install times. Compiling KDE takes forever. Or at least it did back when I used SourceMage, years and years ago.

Xenanthropy,

Honestly, the times aren’t too bad as long as you have a recent CPU! It definitely varies though - on my main PC, compiling glibc takes about 15 minutes, on my netbook that I had a smgl install on, it took about 20 hours lol

russjr08,
@russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net avatar

Arch Linux at the moment, though I distro hop quite a bit!

When it comes to gaming, I can’t really say I’ve found a distro that “felt” better for gaming, and I’ve been on a fair amount of them - Fedora (and Nobara), Arch, NixOS, Endeavour, pop!_OS - I haven’t noticed a difference. I didn’t measure benchmarks because at the end of the day its about what I can perceive, not what I can read from a spreadsheet.

Realistically I think the only difference I ever noticed was with pop there’s a Nvidia ISO that has the drivers already included in the live environment, so I get to skip a step post-install.

I find myself just using Flatpaks for gaming stuff (Steam, Bottles, Heroic, etc) these days since I know that I can take those on just about any distro. I’ve heard that there is some FPS loss from running games through Flatpak, but again I haven’t done any benchmarks so I can’t confirm nor deny this.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

These days Ubuntu can install the nvidia drivers for you during the install as well if you just click the “install proprietary blabla” so you get a pretty game ready system there as well tbh so I’m starting to feel like a more gaming tweaked version of Ubuntu is a bit redundant?

That’s a surprisingly pleasing font by the way!

russjr08,
@russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.net avatar

Grr Lemmy just ate my comment, I guess I have a chance to refine my response a bit now!

Ah, thank you - it’s been a while since I used Ubuntu on my main system (Ubuntu was my foray into Linux back in the Hardy Heron days!) but now that you mention it, I do remember seeing that option when I briefly had Ubuntu installed on my old MacBook (which I then moved to Fedora to play around with before using it on my main PC). Having that option was quite nice for the broadcom wireless drivers that those Macs need for WiFi.

That’s a surprisingly pleasing font by the way!

Thanks! I came across it a couple of years ago, and I joked about it at first but it grew on me over time so I purchased (it is a paid font but there is a very similar one called Comic Mono) the font and have been using it in my IDEs and terminals since then! I wouldn’t use it everywhere of course, but for a monospace environment its really good and I can’t quite put my finger on the “why”.

Funnily enough, I’ve tried to use Comic Code on both Windows and macOS as well and there is something about the FreeType system on Linux that makes the font really excel for me. On Windows the font feels too “thin” and on macOS the font feels too “thick”. 10 years ago if you had tried to tell me that I’d enjoy the way fonts look on Linux better than the other two major platforms I would’ve fell to the floor laughing for a few minutes - I imagine its due to a combination of improvements over FreeType and displays over the years, along with me actually branching out and not just sticking with the default font that happens to be picked for me by whatever I’m using 😅

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

I stumbled upon Comic Mono myself a while ago and have been meaning to set it up in my IDE’s but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Might just have to though. It looks strangely easy on the eyes. Almoat relaxing somehow? Cant really putn my finger on why however.

I can agree with the fact that fonts feel different depending on your OS. I usually use Source Code Pro and I never got the feeling that it looked quite as good when I went from Linux to Windows after getting a new job.

jakepi,

I would take a look at pop_os. It’s Ubuntu, but without Snap and a closer to mainline kernel version. They have a lot of great usability tweaks too.

I run Arch BTW. I just like to make things difficult :)

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

I installed Kubuntu… I couldn’t be assed to resize my efi partition to a gig and disrupt windows… Done that in the past with varying results. Wish they didn’t require it to be that big tbh.

I do miss Arch… wouldn’t surprise me if I’ll install it again soon.

Kubuntu works. But where’s the fun in that? :)

It’s like… I installed it, messed with lutris a bit (needed a newer version) and installed Diablo 4, everything works… and now I feel like I’m missing out somehow. :)

jakepi,

You’re missing out on chasing the dragon for the latest and greatest. :)

Arch is fine once you get it setup, but I feel like the nerd in us can never just leave it be. I’ll probably go back to pop_os next major release they have.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Sometimes I wish I had a machine dedicated to nothing but reinstalling different distros. :)

It can get a bit disrupting to do it on your main rig too often.

Bene7rddso,

VMs are great for that

trash,
@trash@lemm.ee avatar

Use a VM?

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

I know, I do that too but it’s just not quite the same for some reason.

ladydascalie,

A very simple, almost stock setup of Arch + KDE.

YerbaYerba,

X11 or Wayland? I find games like csgo stutter on Wayland.

communist,
@communist@beehaw.org avatar

Make sure you’re running the sdl environment variable that makes them native on Wayland, in my experience when that’s on it makes my games that are native significantly more performant.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • operating_systems@beehaw.org
  • random
  • meta
  • Macbeth
  • All magazines
    •