Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.
WWW:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/27451562
Seemingly for the first time, the Bazzite gaming-focused Linux distro has appeared on the Steam Hardware Survey. Well done to the Bazzite team for making such an amazing distro for gaming (and now just general usage as a while too)! Been my main choice for going on a year now for my general use distro, and I haven't looked back.
I’m really happy to see Bazzite climbing the chart. It’s by far the best gaming-centric Linux distro.
I’m not sure I will ever understand the appeal of Linux Mint. Not because it’s bad, but because there are better distros for every use-case I can think up, especially gaming.
Mint is very plain and simple, which makes it the most non-threatening transition from Windows for casual users. It's also one of the most well rounded distros. Sure, other distros can do specific things better, but Mint deserves its flowers for its polish.
Yeah, bazzite, or any atomic distro, is not something I would recommend to someone coming from windows. It's just too different in some ways.
Been running bazzite myself as a fairly experienced linux user and love it though.
I found it easy to transition to as a new linux user. I'm curious what you think makes it too different.
I think it would actually be better for beginners, were it not for issue solving: any web search for a solution is bound to give you mostly answers written for traditional distros, which would potentially be incompatible with Bazzite.
Mint feels a little sloppy, though.
I would much rather suggest Bluefin, which is from the same group as Bazzite. And if you are a fan of KDE (or a more Windows-like UI), then Aurora is an excellent one, too.
They are all atomic, so users can't really mess them up.
Bazzite > Bluefin > Aurora in usership from what I've seen. I started on Bazzite KDE but ended up staying with Aurora.
Yes, Bazzite and Bluefin are more popular for sure. But I like Aurora as a daily driver (more for power users), and have Bluefin installed in other laptops and our TV's miniPC for its "Chrome OS" feel and simplicity.
But any option is better than Mint, IMO. Mint feels unfinished and was not very stable. Aurora and Bluefin are the only linux distros that I haven't broken in 24h. LOL
What would be better for desktop use? It’s simple, with wizards and help for setting up almost everything, has support for all the ubuntu stuff like ppas and deb packages so if there is a linux package for some software you are usually covered, and it also doesn’t restrict you from doing whatever you want, so you can change it to your liking (and at least there is a stable base that you start changes from)
Kubuntu minimal (no snaps) or Pop!_OS would be great picks for those use-cases.
If you don't mind me asking, why exactly is bazzite a gaming centric Linux distro? What does it do different from other distro. I know it's an atomised fedora based distro, aside from the drivers and software that's pre installed, what does it offer that it gets recommended as distro for gaming user?
... Thats about it. Bazzite comes with everything you need to play games without much hassle pre installed. All the drivers, software to run windows games, various utilities such as key remapping, steam, and if desired you can even get emulators pre installed to play console games.
It also works with next to zero cli knowledge required which is great for anyone who may be coming from windows and is intimidated by that Linux facet. You can just slap it on a machine and generally things just work and you can start playing.
What else do you need?
You install, log into steam and play games. The age of modpatching custom kernels for low latency or hardware hacks is gone. The kernel already das what it takes to outperform windows on gaming. It's all on the user space now to bring convenience and ease of use.
The package distribution model was never popular with users. It was perfect for sys admins. But people don't want to manage a system, they want to use their device. Image based containerized OS and software distribution makes more sense for end users who have no interest on troubleshooting a pacbage dependency conflict.
Ohh okay, when people pushed it as distro for gaming my mind did think about custom kernel optimised for gaming. I was really hoping it was something like that but yeah you are right I have seen and heard about diferent distros running some games better on Linux so the kernel is already there. Anyway the good news from all this is people who used windows primarily for gaming is now shifting to Linux whatever the flavour it may be.
I'm pretty pleasantly surprised at how well Arch and its derivatives are doing.
I’m (also pleasantly) surprised most of those arch derivatives are listed separately.
Nice to see CachyOs!
im honestly surprised my OS is lumped into Other. i would have assumed there were more people on Fedora
Fedora is great but installing nvidia drivers is just enough of a hassle for most people to skip over it and choose a derivative like Bazzite
Also codecs.. even with the right repositories enabled, you'll tend to install a media application that manages to be utterly incapable of actually processing most media.
They've made strides on this front but it's still messed up.
Also sometimes they are too aggressive on one front. Some of the applications you can install from their repository that have some python based features are broken because they can't handle python 3.13. There's some ability to install python 3.12 but without much beyond the core making it less useful.
I tried Bazzite and found the hassle of installing anything that needed to be in a container to be greater than installing Nvidia drivers on Fedora.
Why anyone uses manjaro is beyond me
I'm perfectly happy with Manjaro.
They won me over since Sunshine on Fedora was a hassle to install and gave me corrupted graphics. Wouldn't be surprised if Fedora's codec-hell had something to do with it. On Bazzite everything I needed was preinstalled and worked out of the box.
No bara?
Here I am thinking how can we bully GOG into making their platform linux-ready
I think the Flatpak runtime is the real king here. It is easy to install and sandboxes your closed source games.
Strange that it was previously at 0.00%, isn't it?
I believe it was lumped into "Other" and not tracked previously.
Of it's not tracked then how do they know which ones are in the top?
It is tracked, but valve probably has a threshold around 1-2% for when they start listing the os as a separe entry outside the 'other'.
It was tracked. Bazzite went up by 2.37% (from nothing). Other went down by 2.40%. They just finally recognized Bazzite as an "actual" Linux distro instead of the "IDK" category.
Pop_OS really gets less love than it deserves. imo it should replace Mint as the standard go-to recc.
Hard to recommend a distro that hasn't seen a new release in over 3 years.
It's basically a rolling release so that's false
Tried the iso in a VM, gnome is still very much on version 42. They obviously abandoned shop to focus all their resources on their shiny new DE.
They also stay pretty current with the kernel and many other packages. Their new DE is hopefully going to be good. They are trying to make a better gnomish experience. We'll see.
They also stay pretty current with the kernel and many other packages.
I guess that's better than nothing, that doesn't make it a rolling release though. It's an unstable point release that got half-stuck in the past until they get their cosmic shit together.
I used to run Pop, but then updates stopped working. I reinstalled, but the problem was still there. With no fix in weeks, I switched to Mint and no problems so far.
That's interesting. I have run Pop_OS! since around 2021 and I've had very few issues.
I saw an interview on Youtube with the guy heading the Bazzite development. Apparently, he's a "Microsoft Linux Community Manager". What exactly is Microsoft's involvement with Bazzite?
Uh that just might be his full time job? Plenty of Linux is used in the business world with Azure and WSL
I see. I just started using Bazzite and Mint, and I find myself liking Bazzite more. I'd be bummed to find out they were corporate all along, like Android.
I don’t think you need to worry about that. My understanding is Bazzite was basically created because steamOS is/was really focused on the steam deck where Bazzite was more general PC support
I don't know if there is any, but I just came across this talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfWjhEWyblo&t=15868s
This language is a bit concerning
Psyop ?😅
