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.
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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.
Bazzite is a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro focused on gaming, this means...
Basically all modern Linux distros have virtualization support, so does Bazzite, of course. Actual performance differences between distros is also negligible, so feel free to choose whatever you like.
https://bazzite.gg/ if you're interested.
As other people noted, Bazzite/Fedora Silverblue can absolutely bite you in the foot if you leave the "normal use cases" — and if you're not just gaming on the device, you sooner or later will. All of this is solvable and IMO worth it, but probably not great for a beginner trying to become more knowledgeable.
Tldr good for absolute beginners, good for "experts" (in both cases because it very rarely gets in your way/breaks)
I loved bazzite, it was my first out of the box success with Linux gaming, but if you plan to do anything outside of gaming installing stuff can get a little difficult. It was invaluable for teaching moments, but I've moved on to cachyOS and it has been just as seamless and less difficulty installing things after installing yay
My 2c
This is why I personally think Bazzite should only be installed on devices you intend to only game on, especially if you have any intention of learning any more about Linux than the absolute basics. It'll be fine for a while for beginners, but you're bound to bump into some things that are a hassle to install and/or keep updated. Perfect examples being for consolafying a PC for playing on a living room TV, or installing it on a handheld PC (Steam Deck etc.)
Take Fedora, as you're already used to it. Steam handles Windows games for you. In 99% of cases they just work. Only games that do not run nowadays are games with unsupported kernel level anti cheat. Look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/ to see if your games are supported. A VM won't help you as that is usually blocked by such anti cheat as well.
If you do have a problem with a non-multiplayer game look at https://protondb.com/.
For games from GOG, Epic or Amazon use Heroic. For every other store you can add the launcher or just the game itself to Heroic.
ProtonDB is a godsend. People will even post config tweaks for games
Is heroic overtaking lutris now?
For me it is. I've been using Lutris for years, but they're just stagnating. The design is all over the place, they still don't have a unified library, their native integrations break so often that I have to add my games manually anyways. And I cannot fathom why they don't adopt the same library integrations for GOG, Amazon and especially Epic as Heroic. They are much faster and have much less hassle.
At the same time Heroic has been adding the same tools I originally missed from Lutris. Like the Wine handling and using external wrappers like Mangohud or Gamemode or your own wrappers and variables.
Lutris' installation scripts are still often nice for figuring out a game's dependencies. I just wish they were in a git repo where people could add comments because some of the scripts are needlessly complicated.
If someone made an itch.io command line client that Heroic could tap into it would have most of the things I could wish for.
heroic overall seems to work better for installing games from gog, but the odd issue I have is that I seem to be always online on gog's service when I'm playing games. Do you happen to know if there's any way to set myself invisible? I don't want everyone to know how often or late I play games :P
I guess technically signing out of the storefront would do that, but then I'd have to re-login to install/update games, eh
edit: oh derr, it dawned on me that it might be the Cyberpunk launcher which I had to login as well, which shows me online
I just want a VM for my 10 year old cracked version of photoshop and some other apps. I never intended to game on a VM.
IMO, basically any distro with fairly modern (fairly often updated) packages should do. Apart from some build/packaging differences it's all same software anyway. The gaming side of software gets updated fairly often, so that's why you'd probably want frequently updated packages.
"Gaming" distros are basically just selection of gaming specific packages installed as default, instead of lets say productivity apps. You can run VM's in gaming/studio/whatever distros
FWIW, I got 5800x3D, RTX3090 - so, "close enough" same system as you. At least same series cpu/gpu. Running Arch, and gaming has been pretty easy, haven't yet found a game which didn't work - that said, some occasional game has had odd stutters (Darktide, for one. But I haven't tested in months).
Getting things to run did get a bit more involved than "just click it". Some extra compatibility stuff (proton-ge-custom), launchers (lutris, heroic, because GoG Galaxy just refuses to work). Steam & steam-games tend to "just work", although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.
But overall, stuff works, and in case of issues it now just seems to be either disabling ntsync and/or wayland for specific games and gaming away.
Some things work, some do not. Check proton compatibility DB for your games of choice.
If you like fortnite, GTA, rdr, or games with really strong anti cheating features, expect to be launching Windows..
Everything this.
Personally nonissue since I don't play any of those online/pvp games
It's not all the same. A key thing you want is to get the latest graphics drivers (mesa or proprietary) as soon as possible after release. Same day or at least week. For that you probably want a rolling release like Tumbleweed, or something based on Arch, like CachyOS. I'm running Pop OS, and I still don't have the drivers needed for Doom: The Dark Ages. Seems to take like a month or so for Pop OS to update Mesa. Seriously considering trying CachyOS for this reason.
Do you mind losing access to most features on your GPU, including (but not limited to): RTX HDR, Shadowplay, the Nvidia App, the Nvidia Control Panel and everything it offers, including the 3D Settings page?
If any of this matters to you, you may want to consider switching to an AMD GPU first before you consider Linux. Nvidia does not support it nearly as well as they support Windows. You get a driver that lets you run games, and that's about it.
Surprised I haven't seen Bazzite or Nobara recommended here, those are full desktop experiences with built in features for gaming. I use nobara because it has a version with pre-packaged Nvidia drivers.
You don't need a gaming specific distro. Those just mean some apps are pre-intalled, like Steam and Heroic (for GOG, Epic, Amazon games). If you like Fedora, keep using Fedora, it games just as well as any other distro.
Coming from a Steam Deck, I was really happy when I learned about Bazzite. I tried installing it and stuck with it for a few months now and I'm excited to have gotten rid of Windows. It's fast and works well out of the box. Plus I have the SteamOS experience without fuss.
Bonus points for you, it's Fedora based and easy to install on top if Fedora.
Notably I had tried Ubuntu before this and had issues with VRR and a couple of other things. Bazzite is built for this, and it works well.
i love bazzite, just got a new app store too
Does the rockstar launcher run? I’d like to move over but always wonder about losing access to quite a few games in the process
From my experience on SteamOS, I’m launching RDR2 through the steam app but I own RDR2 on Rockstar game launcher. I used these steps to get it running: https://expertbeacon.com/can-steam-deck-run-red-dead-redemption-2/
I can only assume it’s similar on Bazzite but I haven’t tried.
There are a ton of distros that work well for gaming. I am currently running CachyOS. It was easy to get set up, runs smoothly, and I've been happy with it so far.
The only thing that kept me booting windows for gaming was destiny 2, which choses not to support running on linux.
The current expansion "edge of fate" is terrible though, so it's full time linux gaming for me.
DO IT.
JUST DO IT.
What about Bazzite? It's fedora based and made for gaming. I've only tried it on handheld like steamdeck and rog ally but it's awesome, even better than steamdeck os.
Hi I recommend against using an Arch based distro like manjaro or cachyOS ( arch by nature demands active maintenance ) also depsite the brand name ubuntu is a very bad place to start ( due to them forcing snap packages ). Go for something like fedora kde or bazzite, most of the app you need can come from flathub.
For games you got Steam, Heroic ( for epic games ), lutris ( for everything else ). You will have to quit the habit of hunting .exe file online, most of your apps will come from your store ( discover in your case ).
Vms will not let you bypass anti-cheat stuff so keep that in mind. Check for game compatibility on protondb if needed. Don't be afraid to ask question ( even dumbs one ).
Thanks for the first part.
I know how apps and that works I have been using fedora for 3 years on my laptop.
VM is meant for apps that do not work with wine like photoshop.
FYI: I have a rig similar to yours. I’m currently running Mint and have had no issues. I used to run Pop OS, but even after a fresh reinstall of their LTS, updates stopped working, so I recommend avoiding Pop OS.
Benchmarks online tend to show very minimal performance difference between distros. The main difference with gaming distros will be ease of installation of gaming stuff like gamemode, etc. Some distros also have a Steam Picture like mode if you prefer that. Besides the "gaming" stuff, the distros are otherwise just a normal Linux experience so yes you can install a VM software like normal.
Bazzite and CachyOS are two popular suggestions. Bazzite is a Fedora atomic spin for gaming and has specific images setup for your hardware. CachyOS is arch based and has optimized packages for your specific hardware
since you already have experience with fedora, you might wanna look at nobara, which has an nvidia-specific installer available. i'm running it a bit longer than 7 months now, and don't have any issues with it, and i have a pretty similar hardware config to you (a ryzen 5 instead of a 7, and a 3070 Ti instead of the normal one)
I also run a windows 10 VM, mainly for stubborn installers from cracked games that won't run correctly under wine and for my mouse/keyboard software (they have onboard profiles, so i pass them through to the vm to configure)
Currently installing bazzite. If that turns out bad I will try nobara.
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.
Linux Mint Cinnamon was is my first Linux distro coming away from Win10, and I have no issues with it. Mint uses Ubuntu as its codebase, so it's essentially Ubuntu with a different desktop presentation/look/feel.
Agreed. Mint is a very 'new Linux user' friendly distro, and has everything you really need. I've got some recent converts from Windows and even the gamers I've set up are happy with it.
Bazzite (immuatable) or Nobara (mutable) if you want something Fedora based. Both are great.
You absolutely can use VMs, but you don't need a VM to run windows software and you won't have a good experience if you try. Steam/Proton or Heroic/Proton handle basically all non-native games (sometimes better than the native version, sometimes better than Windows itself honestly). Wine/Bottles handles Windows applications. They just work. A VM is an additional layer of complexity and slowdown and missing features that will mess everything up.
Honestly the biggest headache is with the "linux native" stuff. It remains and exhausting and unclear figuring out whether I should use a system repository package (when available), flatpak, AppImage, snap, manually download a system package designed for the upstream distro, run it as a docker, or just unzip a raw tar.gz and build it myself. Because they're all subtly different, provide access to different versions, behave in different ways, update in different ways (or not at all) and each method has certain applications where it makes the most sense. It ends up being a huge cognitive burden of inconsistency. Some work is done to streamline it but it's far from transparent to the user. Maybe I've overthinking it but in my opinion it's a quick way to turn your system into a mess where you don't know what is installed where and how and why, having things installed in multiple ways and different places.
Garuda dragonized gaming will get you everything out of the box and you can change the theme after. It will walk you through a lot with assistants, which is nice to learn things on an arch based distro. Its an easy switch from windows, plus, now I can use fish konsole htop and paru alright.
Bazzite is made for gaming and it's worked for me pretty flawlessly for about 6 months BUT I had a lot of issues getting it to run a VM. I'm certainly not a Linux expert but I eventually gave up trying.
There's a ujust script to set up virtualisation on Bazzite. ujust setup-virtualization in the terminal should get you going. Alongside the background stuff it sets up, it installs a GUI virtual machine manager.
I think there's some hidden complexity with immutable distros that most people ignore, I also had issues getting podman/docker to run properly there IIRC but dunno if its the same thing
I saw "gaming focused distro" and immediately jumped into it without any research but that's just the way I do things. Sometimes I work my way backwards and develop at least some understanding. I believe it's commonly referred to as a learning disorder. Don't regret it though.
I recently made the switch. Running intel ultra 5 and nvidia rtx 5060. Bazzite and Pop!_OS were advertised as working, out of the box. I couldn't get either to work, following the wiki setup guides. I tried Ubuntu, couldn't get that working, either.
I switched to Nobara, and learned that I was messing up gamemoderun in Steam. So I have no idea if Nobara fixed my issues, or if I was messing something up the whole time, or maybe a little of both. It was fun, though! Absolutely glad to be done with windows.
It actually doesn't really matter.
I see bazzite mentioned a lot here, but wasn't there a post here a while ago saying that it might stop existing if fedora pushes through with the decision to ditch 32bit support? Did they decide not to do it after all?
I think they decided not to, with some (IMO fairly) snarky comment on how that was just a proposal and people were getting needlesely outraged.