Like, why Valve? I was so close to clearing out all the games I was partway through, now I need to add some demos to my backlog (not many, this Next Fest is kinda weak).
Probably could’ve made it but I haven’t picked a distro. I’m planning on turning my desktop into a dedicated gaming computer and not daily driver, because of the malware risk. I wanted something not finicky, something devs would test on as a known quantity, and preferably something Arch-based like SteamOS.
- Garuda (Arch-based)
- Bazzite (Known quantity, immutable, Fedora-based, I don’t trust it for some reason)
- Nobara (Proton-adjacent distro, Fedora-based)
- CachyOS (Super fast, Arch-based, presumably finicky?)
- Windows 7 (Based, unsupported by steam, insecure)
Bazzite for the past two days has not been as easy as everyone makes of sound, and I say this as a software engineer that works with Linux 5 days a week. Some of the UI choices are just weird and VR support with Nvidia is so horrible I may end up having to dual boot.
Made the switch a few days ago. A couple growing pains but I’m playing beat saber with mods again. Which is all I was doing on windows lately anyway lol.
Yeah apparently the current fix is to just get an AMD card or a wireless headset. I’m trying to get a steam vr alternative running which is non trivial on bazzite, but it just “avoids” the bugs in the nvidia wired drivers
Really interesting to hear a different story. I’m running Kubuntu, but have been trying to find an excuse to use Bazzite. Maybe I’ll keep searching for that excuse for a bit longer.
To be honest, a lot of my issues are probably just getting used to plasma over gnome. The atomic part so far hasn’t really been inconvenient
Running the version that boots into big picture with a Radeon card has been fantastic, however the Nvidia desktop version has left a sour taste in my mouth.
For VR apparently AMD is the way to go, but they don’t have HDR for hdmi 2.1 so no matter what there are tradeoffs currently, at least on my setup
Try Bazzite first. It really is the best beginner Linux distro, especially for gaming.
If you decide you want more control, switch to Fedora KDE.
Bazzite and Fedora, in my experience, are the two distros that “just work” best for new users on the widest variety of hardware.
Cachy is fantastic, but I wouldn’t recommend switching to it unless you need even more control and have become very comfortable on the command line. It’s not a distro I would recommend anyone start with.
You will also see Mint recommended often, but I’ve had problems with hardware support — usually on newer builds — and I absolutely hate Cinnamon, its default desktop environment. I would honestly only look at distros that include KDE Plasma out of the box, and Mint does not.
I tried mint and Ubuntu on a jail broken Chromebook and it had no audio, fedora worked out of the box
I’ve tried bazzite, nobara and cachyos
Bazzite is fantastic if all you care about is gaming. I have three devices that will do little more than just gaming that have it and it’s fantastic for HTPC gaming if you like controllers. (My partner uses it on desktop and finds it fine and never gets in the way of what she wants to do)
I tried nobara on a laptop that i planned to do a little bit of everything on but for some reason i had a difficult time with it. I landed on cachyos because I’ve had some experience with arch and felt much more comfortable with it.
Why Arch? I used it for a few years, but ended up getting tired of it due to random breakage.
I’ve been on Tumbleweed since, and the breakage is pretty much nonexistent.
Just run Mint.
Windows 10 EOL is a problem for future me, having just signed up for free extended support.
And I’ve got CachyOS in my back pocket. Initial experiments have been somewhat positive.
I didn’t. Made the switch a year ago. Only reason why I boot windows is to update a couple crypto wallets i need to transfer over.
I use ChimeraOS on my stepson’s computer. A few more thing integrated into it for other gaming and I rarely have to touch it. (Thankfully cause that place always needs cleaning)
It’s not arch based but it’s of the immutable variety.
I daily drive ubuntu cinnamon 24.04LTS. I rarely buy cutting edge hardware and I edit video as well. 4K 60 fps scuba diving footage for those wondering and gaming had been fine for the most part. Mainly standard fixes similar to those on steamos outside of that is been hardware related and minimal.
Arch is Arch-based, btw
I used Garuda, and garuda is cool, seriously the first time user experience is fancy, but it’s also a lot and if you need more than basic support you’re probably going to be headed over to the Arch community who is going to treat you different because you’re not really fully on Arch. You’re also definitely going to forcibly learn a lot picking anything arch based as your first Linux distro.
Skipping ahead, of the choices you’ve listed and for someone new to Linux who just wants an OS to use I’d go for Bazzite.
I went with Fedora 43 KDE Spin on the computer that doesn’t support Windows 11 and Workstation on the one that does. Next weekend I will be converting that one (my main rig) to Fedora KDE Spin as well.
I hope you like Indy games cuz that’s all that’s on there. Not a single thing looks good to me really.
Indie games rock! Just browsing, here are a few I found interesting:
- astro protocol - looks kind of like Masters of Orion or, if you really squint, Stellaris
- Aerial_Knight’s DropShot - ridiculous looking skydiving racing game using finger bullets
- Stellar Freight: Echoes of the Void - reminds me of ∆V: Rings of Saturn, but more approachable by casuals
That’s just a couple pages of games, there are more gems to find.
Why not Debian?
Debian based distros are good, but I always had problems with the slow releases. And no idea how well that works out for GPU drivers if you plan to play new games
I don’t have the newest GPU, but a rather new AMD one and I can play anything without problems. Love Debian for gaming, actually, no other distro has worked quite as well for that (for me) until now.
Not finicky and Arch-based don’t really go together well.
Just go with Bazzite or something, the exact distribution doesn’t matter (as long as it’s not Arch). The more important choice is the desktop environment, which is the user experience and looks of the distro. If you’re moving from Windows, I assume you’ll like KDE Plasma. It’s basically Windows 10 but modernized, with a more aesthetic and clean look. (It’s also paralyzingly hypercustomizable, so I would recommend using the default settings initially and slowly learning the settings, rather than diving into the settings headfirst the moment you install)
I personally use Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE Plasma), but it’s slightly more annoying to set up than something like Bazzite
You don’t want finicky but want an Arch based distro? Okie dokie.
Arch is finicky?
It is inherently more unstable than the others due to it being rolling release, but it hasn’t had very many hiccups in the last couple of years, so if something breaks, it is likely to be fixable by just waiting for a patch.
I’ve had almost no problems in Arch so far. I can’t say the same for Ubuntu, though my problem with Ubuntu was often having to wait for ages to get things to be updated.
I’ve been in a similar boat, but I had one system breaking issue when I started, I sorted it by chrooting, but anyone with average to low tech expertise would have no other option other than reinstalling
My only issue is that I use OBS, and the best OBS package is one in AUR and it causes some headaches when ffmpeg updates, still not nearly as bad as some of the dependency hells I’ve ended up in back in my Ubuntu and Debian days lol
Have you been having issues with the flatpak, I don’t use obs all too often, but I don’t have any complaints
I can double check it. I tend to avoid flatpaks and appimages at all cost if I can.
Does the flatpak have browser sources and custom docks, because none of the other packages I could find did.
You’re overthinking it. The hardest part is making sure you have a good backup. Get your files backed up, don’t forget about save games and whatnot that might be hiding in random folders. Take a disk image if you know how to do that.
Format the drive. Install an easy to use distro with gui stuff. Mint is great - feels windows-y. Ubuntu works - the drama is real but overblown for someone just starting out with Linux. Fedora desktop is the new Ubuntu. It just works. Gnome is different but many people like it a lot (myself included). It’s not hard to learn. Save the distro hopping and niche distros for later.
Install your nvidia drivers. (Look up Rpm fusion for fedora, mint has directions on their forums).
Install steam. Log in. Buy a game. Install game. See if everything behaves. It probably will. If it doesn’t - spend 15 minutes researching and trying the fix. If you can’t get it to work - just wipe the drive and try another distro. Generally newer distros will “fix” whatever issue you are having.
You can do all of this in an hour or two as a newbie and be playing games from the steam sale.
