What is the best distro for gaming?
What is the best distro for gaming?
I know gaming has gotten a lot better on Linux and I'm working on a new PC and I'm wondering which distro to try.
Nobara is based on Fedora and maintained by GloriousEggroll. It has a lot of kernel-level tweaks and pre-installed software that aims to make it easier to start gaming right out of the gate
This is my recommended gaming distro, its actually works from my experience unlike the 3 different arch based distros I tried.
I'm not a fan of the cult-like community. I'd rather not my distro hang on to the good will of one single person.
It's probably the best option for gaming though if you're not willing to dip into the AUR.
Nobara is a great suggestion by @[email protected], but I'd also throw out a suggestion for Bazzite if you want the "SteamOS"/Steam Deck experience.
It does have the KDE desktop environment underneath to do all the non-gaming stuff as well, but if gaming is your number one focus, it's a pretty cool setup.
It just boots to desktop unless you have AMD GPU and install the deck edition to a regular PC. Seconding the rec though. It has become my main.
IMO, the best distro is going to be whatever you're most comfortable with (given it's still getting updates blah blah blah). Some might be easier in the get go but if they do wonky things (compared to what you're used to) an update might really screw you up and leave you in a situation where you're doing a lot of research.
For the most part, you can make any distro do whatever you want, but if you understand one much better than the rest, use that.
Unpopular opinion but ubuntu.
You will eventually run into an error you have never seen before and and someone using ubuntu has already solved it and posted it online somewhere.
And they solved it by reading the ArchWiki 99% sure.
Arch, btw 🙄
Counter point, Ubuntu specifically has so many old posts and answers that aren't necessary in modern systems, deprecated, or straight up no longer correct. Also a lot of recommendations that can screw up a system in strange ways. I feel like many issues (ie. Bluetooth, USB, Wifi) are due to people stumbling on old posts with configs and tools that have changed and blindly applying them
One that is relatively up to date with their graphics drivers. Then just install steam/lutris flatpaks and go crazy. Performance difference is pretty much negligible once it's set up.
As others have stated, as long as you are using a distribution with reasonably modern (and maybe frequent) updates of the kernel and mesa stack, it doesn't matter much. The updates of these two packages are what will provide updated hardware support and performance improvements.
Steer clear of Nvidia. It can work on linux, but is a pain due to Nvidia not providing proper open-source driver support. I also highly recommend ensuring you have an intel chip if you need wifi, as realtek and broadcom can be a bit variable in terms of support and stability for wifi.
Wayland is also preferable in my view, due to its significant benefits over X11 - it is more secure, makes your computer much smoother, and supports modern niceties like better multi-monitor support, gestures, lack of tearing, HDR (in the future), etc.
This segues into my next point. It makes more difference what DE you use when gaming - GNOME currently doesn't support VRR on Wayland (appears to be coming in next release at least experimentally), while KDE does. So that is something to think about. I would stick to either of these two DEs as these are the only two that are both user friendly for beginners, and have excellent wayland support. Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE all do not yet support Wayland.
I would steer clear of distributions that are not established, and/or only have very small or single person teams (as this has potential security, stability and support implications) and would recommend Fedora. Fedora has a bleeding edge mesa and kernel (that roll between releases), but stability elsewhere with a solid community behind it and a dedicated security team, built on cutting edge technologies throughout. If you need VRR I would use the Fedora KDE spin. OpenSUSE tumbleweed is also a great choice.
Many users will recommend Arch Linux systems, as this is the hotness, particularly as this is what SteamOS is based on. I wouldn't recommend this even as a very happy Gentoo user, however, as relatively "pure" Arch Linux distributions (and Gentoo), will require you to follow notices on the website, and will require your knowledge and intervention at some point based on this notice; without your intervention, it will likely break your system. So as a beginner I would avoid Arch Linux and Endeavour OS.
Manjaro has had many too issues with the security and stability of their distribution to allow me to comfortably recommend it, and the Nobara and Garuda Linux teams are both too small for me to be comfortable recommending them. Zorin OS, Pop_OS and Linux Mint are all excellent workstation distributions, but their outdated kernels and software (they are based on a long-term support base) mean you may be either giving up some performance or hardware compatibility.
Having tried many, I found that the desktop environments matter more than the actual OS, especially on older machines.
Going for something really light, like openbox, lxde, or xfce, caused less frame rate drop and stuttering. At least on my lower powered mini pc.
I have got an old shit laptop and I don't see this. Can you verify this using mangohud¿?
I had a beelink ser5, and without giving you the bench marks, I can tell you that many games that were unplayable on cinnamon or kde, did work in openbox. I would log out and back into that DE just to play games.
Just my observation. I have upgraded my PC so I haven't needed to repeat that with my new one.
There is no* such thing as "best" -- all distros are Linux/GNU at heart.
“all distros are Linux/GNU at heart” – Alpine has entered the chat
Well having personally dealt with the Redhat and Ubuntu fiascos there are some that are clearly better than others 🤣
I would say that some are better dealing with certain hardware better than others. But you are right, it’s all Linux so any distro could be made to work.
Buy a steam deck
About to order an oled one. But still going to build a new PC.
Pop!_OS has been great for me.
It's Garuda Linux shilling time. Seriously tho the distro does not matter when it comes to gaming (at least not much)
@Holzkohlen @stephfinitely
Exactly! I've tried many distros. No deference except the driver version in your distro. for example if you need nvidia 500 series drivers they are not in debian 11 repo.
But i never saw a deference in the performance.
Whatever you know best. My personal choice of distro is Gentoo, my gaming pc and my carry laptop both run it. My games run great in gentoo, and because I understand it best, I deal with few issues. For a long time it was Arch, and before that Ubuntu. I used Ubuntu for only maybe 2 months before moving onto Arch then Gentoo. My games always worked, but once I really understood Linux, they ran great.
I wondered the same thing a couple months back and settled on EndeavourOS. No complains so far :)
To anyone wondering why, it is because it is Arch linux with pre-configured drivers and also it is one of the few distros that are on the bleeding edge of updates and features. Bleeding edge because one update might cut you and break everything for no reason. That being said, I've used Arch for almost a decade for my gaming PC and never had huge issues that reverting to the previous kernel at reboot did not fix.
Personally if it were me and gaming was my primary focus, I’d go to the place that’s doing the most with gaming and Linux, SteamOS.
There are lots of sites that go through the process of building a Linux gaming machine using SteamOS.
Here’s just one random video I found (not affiliated with this at all) about using an old optiplex from eBay, some ram upgrades, and a RX580 GPU. Apparently they did this for $150 but take that with a grain of salt. Hope this helps.
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Probably steamOS but I've never used it
Arch has been perfect for me but I wanna try void
Skip void, try NixOS :P (my colleague switched from void too)
Valve haven't released Steam OS for use on non-Deck hardware yet. So you can use it on a Deck, but not on a gaming PC.
Any distro that ships relatively recent libraries and kernels.
With the exception of Debian, RHEL, SLES and the like, pretty much everything.
Just plain ol Fedora. Lots of recommends for Nobara but I doubt the performance increase from the tweaks will make much of a difference with modern hardware. I went down the “gaming distro” path years ago and it’s just not worth it imo. You do you though because whatever distro you’ll still be in go ol’ Linux.
Probably Manjaro KDE.
Even Valve recommends it.
Manjaro is one of the few distros I'll actively campaign against. They've made countless mistakes and questionable decisions in the past, and their repo/packaging lifecycle is known to cause a lot of issues: One, Two, Three, Four. Go for EndeavourOS or Garuda Linux if you want the idea of Manjaro but managed by competent people.
"Countless" mistakes meaning two which were easily fixed.
There's nothing wrong with Manjaro, in fact it's probably the most user-friendly Arch distro. I've been using it for years and I chose it after trying several various distros and this was the one where everything worked out of the box: graphics, audio, peripherals (including controllers and exotic mice), and of course Steam and gaming.
They package drivers and stable kernels out of the box. They provide an easy to use tool for switching and installing drivers and kernels. They attempt to add extra stability to the distro (not all of us like or need to stay on the very bleeding edge all the time). Delaying the packages has zero relevance for AUR and anybody who believes otherwise should probably stop using AUR because it's obvious they don't understand how it works.
People who keep on linking those outdated hate lists about it are actively doing themselves and everybody else a disservice. Promoting hate against an Arch derivative for no good reason will not help Arch's cause, on the contrary, it makes newcomers to shy away from the whole can of worms and drives them to Ubuntu.
I disagree with this post being downvoted. Manjaro has had a number of issues, including forgetting to renew a cert a few times, accidentlly Ddosing Arch, holding back repo updates but not AUR updates breaking systems, and some allegations of missused funds.
If you're searching for something, I would also personally reccomend against Manjaro, simpy for the reason that you are less likely to wind up with something broken on most other distros. I do know some people who swear by Manjaro though, and if you're using it or set on it then that's fine too (the best OS is the one that brings you the most value).
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To acutally answer the question above, though, the best distro is the one that you prefer. Platforms like Steam manages it's own updates and software so the stable/rolling debate doesn't really apply here. Same with anything installed with distro agnostic package managers (Flatpak, Snap, Appimages). As far as most gaming setups drivers are the only real difference between distros (and you can always change that yourself manually).
That's nice. Have fun on your campaign.
Do you have an source ?
Its surprising because steamsos is build on Debian/Ubuntu so.
SteamOS has been built on Arch since version 3.
I thought SteamOS was built on Arch. It uses pacman as the package manager like Arch does instead of apt like Debian/Ubuntu does.
Edit: Wikipedia answered it for me. SteamOS 1.0 and 2.0 were Debian-based. Starting with SteamOS 3.0, it is Arch-based.
SteamOS 3+ is built on Arch.
no and no
Also what is it with Manjaro users always specifying the DE? And why is it always KDE?
I have an NVIDIA and I dont understand why everyone says its buggy. What kind of problems are people having? I use Nobara for AV work + gaming, it installs the propritary drivers automatically. The few games I've tried worked flawless, better then on Windows on the same machine. There's one game I've tried were I had to switch to X11 but all the others works on Wayland.
It's far better than it used to be. They didn't get the reputation for no reason. There were lots of Nvidia-specific bugs that have been slowly sorted out over the years. I'm told Wayland is even in a roughly usable state now. But it takes a lot of time to regain the lost trust. Let's see how long it takes them to support HDR, and what that support looks like.
Well up until the last driver version I was scared of putting my lappy to suspend cuz it wouldn't wake up sometimes and I'd have to directly power off sometimes causing a kernel panic. 545 was a blessing.
It depends on your card & if you're using Nouveau or the proprietary driver. NVIDIA has always been far behind in terms of Wayland compatibility when compared to AMD or Intel. Recently they seem to be putting in a lot more effort and now after Fedora officially announced that they will be dropping X11 by default in the KDE Plasma 6 Fedora Spin 18 months from now, they're likely going to be trying much harder as Fedora sets the precedent. Even if it works on your hardware rn, that doesn't mean it's yet feature complete or bug-less.
Nowerdays Nvidia starts to care about Linux an Nobara is doing a great job to care too. There was a long, rocky road to get to this point 😎
Linux Mint
If you care about VRR or HDR, you need a distro with KDE Plasma and use a Wayland session. Plus, you'll need the latest drivers, so... a rolling release.
Arch based like Manjaro, or OpenSUSE.
If you don't like that, or you have an NVIDIA GPU then I suggest you try Nobara, made by Glorious Eggroll, big contributor to Proton (Valve's fork of Wine, what makes Windows games run on Linux).
Bazzite ?
@stephfinitely If you want a GNU/Linux distro that is set up for gaming out of the box, you could try out Nobara (Fedora based), it comes with a lot of tweaks out of the box (the Linux Zen kernel for example).
Garuda or endeavourOS