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.
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.
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.
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.
100 percent agree - just waiting for the Canonical haters to arrive