What's the best Linux alternative to Windows for gaming
I use Windows for my desktop PC but I'm also a fan of Linux for work and programming.
I'm not really liking the direction windows is taking so it would be nice to explore some other alternatives. I mostly use my desktop for gaming, so I'm interested in how people are gaming on Linux
It kind of doesn’t matter which distro you use. They should all work similarly with gaming, there’s no distro with some magic formula that makes it more compatible or with better performance than the alternatives. So pick one that strikes your fancy.
If you’re new, it’s probably better to stick with well known distros. I recommend Mint and Pop OS. Both are based on Ubuntu, so every time you run into an issue or have a questions, you can google solutions for Ubuntu which will also work on Mint/Pop OS. But both also have big communities, so you’ll always have help.
Word of advice that Nvidia and Linux don’t really work that well together. Some games will have issues. AMD GPUs work just fine though.
Well, if you're up for it then try anyway. I tried to use Pop OS in my gaming machine for some months, then Endeavour OS, despite also having an Nvidia GPU. It was a cool experience, but the small issues I faced started to pile up. The last straw was when I was going to play in a lan party and Company of Heroes just wouldn't start.
I came back to Windows and honestly... It's better for gaming. Things just work. Doesn't matter if it's niche or AAA or has some anti cheat software, it will work. Regardless of your GPU, or updates, etc. No need to check protondb, troubleshoot, waste hours to make a niche game work (Dragon Commander from GOG... I just gave up and bought it again on Steam to be able to play for example), etc etc
But I'm really happy to see how far Linux has come, and hopefully someday it will be as seamless as Windows. My Steam Deck works really well and it's only going to get better, but we're not there yet.
Personally I use Arch and it's never given me any issues. I've never used it but my understanding is Endeavor OS is basically just Arch but easy to install. Proton with steam makes running most windows games relatively easy, the main pain points are multiplayer games and their anti cheat.
Fedora used to be my go to years ago but I installed arch because people said it was hard and would teach you more about how Linux works which I wanted. Wasn't until after I spent the time installing it I learned about what rolling release really meant but it's great for gaming PCs lol
I'm pretty sure the Steam Deck is also Arch based, but I don't know what all they've done past that. I will say that if you're looking to just game and not really learn the ins and outs of Linux, doing something like Endeavor or some other sub flavor will probably give you a better experience. If you do go that route, don't ask for help on the official Arch forums, though, as they are not very kind and friendly if you aren't on pure Arch (the wiki is still fantastic and just generally a great resource, no matter which distribution you go with)
SteamOS (the version on the steam deck, not the older Ubuntu based one) is an immutable distro based on Arch. Being immutable means it's very stable and hard to break, but they still have all the bleeding edge arch packages available when making new system images for updates.
It's a good system, although I wish they were faster about releasing stable updates. As it is you have to be on the beta or main update channels to get updates close to desktop Arch.
Using openSUSE Tumbleweed and it works very well with gaming. Like others said, the distro doesn’t matter but check on the hardware compatibility. It really depends on what you have in there.
I use Linux Mint and running ProtonGE with Steam means everything works. Personally I would recommend Mint over Ubuntu at this point. I have seen others have good experiences with Nobara and Garuda as well.
There's two recent posts about this topic that might give you some answers:
https://lemmy.ml/post/1130762https://lemmy.ml/post/1171529
I'm also gaming on Linux with an Nvidia card and I know there used to be issues, but I didn't have a single problem so far.
The problem are only native linux games runned trought Steam. In hybrid mode they will not use the discrete graphic card. For the rest I have no problem
I recommend Fedora (I use the KDE Spin). I have an Nvidia Laptop, which is supposed to be the worst nightmare for Linux gaming, and Fedora handles it brilliantly. The packages are newer than you get on the Ubuntu-based distros like Mint and Pop, and it really makes a difference in performance, when it comes to graphics card drivers (plus you get Wayland and Pipewire which are great).
If trying them all sounds like fun, go ahead! I personally love downloading a bunch of isos and poking around the live usb (pre installation) version of different distros every once in a while.
Though honestly, if you just want to get started you can probably do anything you want on any distro. Distro choice seems to matter less and less these days.
Another recommendation for Linux Mint here. I've bounced between Manjaro, Ubuntu, Fedora, and I've found Linux Mint to just be fantastic for beginners, in that everything just works, and it does a great job of guiding the user through installation, updating drivers, updating packages (including choosing an appropriate package mirror), and setting up backups.
It's just really nice all around; the only thing I could complain about is lack of touchpad gesture support, but that's probably not an issue for desktop PC usage.
I used arch, cause the archinstaller makes the install easy, while getting a lightweight customizable system at the end.
But when it comes down to it, Ubuntu also worked for me. The major advantage of arch is it's aur, bleeding edge packages and the docs.
My biggest concerns with finally making the switch to gaming in a linux distro are
Will the biggest releases generally be guaranteed to (eventually) work in wine?
For game with multiplayer that use invasive anti-cheat third party systems, what's the hit/miss rate of people getting unfairly banned because they're running it on linux? I'm generally playing multiplayer in FFXIV and WoW these days so I'm sure that's fine, but I don't want to worry about being VAC banned down the line for playing some non-AAA game with a trigger happy cheat detection software.
Follow up for this last question - if that's just a reality of gaming on linux, what anti-cheat softwares do I have to be weary of?
I think a guarantee that they will eventually work would be difficult, but Proton has really changed the game. I'm using a Steam Deck (SteamOS, but there's Chimera.....more on that below) and there's a lot of things, including recent AAA games, that work really well with it.
Chimera supports FSR and seems to be the biggest alternative out of the box to SteamOS. A lot of game companies are making sure they can run with at least 30fps on Steam Deck because it's becoming a pretty good revenue stream for them which benefits everyone running Linux.
Protondb.com has a great list of what is currently working.
Spent a lot of the day thinking in the back of my mind what games on game pass ultimate I want to sit down and play at the computer, and what I came up with basically are games that would be perfectly playable via the ultimate cloud option on linux since the game pass games can't run without UWP so far on linux. Anything that would have such a degraded experience I could just play on the xbox one. Combine this with the results from running my library through prontonDB and this seems like a realistic possiblity!
I may be sold on finally ditching windows as the last great bastion of staying on windows for gaming falls, ironically, with the rise of microsoft introducing cloud gaming ^^
Now I need to see about using some vacation time to port everything over and tweak the new OS...
To your first point, in my experience, most single player games end up perfectly playable. For multiplayer it is entirely dependant on what sort of anti-cheat they use.
I’ve installed steam and wine on Gentoo and it works great… so any other distro will work too. Main concern might be 32-but library support out of the box, but generally any “established” distro will have it
I've heard good things about Nobara Linux for gaming. It's basically Fedora but with some patches to make it work better out of the box for gaming. Stuff like proprietary Nvidia drivers can be preinstalled. I have Fedora on my machine personally, but installing Nvidia drivers can be a pain if the open source drivers don't give you a working system with your card.
used it for a while, eventually things began to break. Switched back to fedora and installed everything manually and haven't had a problem since. Had to switch to windows though for software :(