Keep noticing that when taking about Linux distro recommendations (on Reddit) users recommend Mint and Ubuntu for gaming.
Now don’t get me wrong, they’re great distros and with a bit of work are great for games, but I feel like theres better recommendations for new users looking into getting into gaming on linux.
I’m still surprised how little attention Nobara gets when it comes to this. It’s such a wonderful just works out of the box distro.
That’s sorta what I’m getting at. For PC gaming, I’d recommend Fedora and Nobara over Ubuntu,
When it comes to gaming I’ve found them to be mid at best, but I think that’s exactly why they get recommended a lot. Stability (as in using old but not too old drivers) and a broad and easily accessible knowledge base in term of tutorials and answered newbie questions.
What are the better recommendations in your opinion?
I keep seeing Pop!_OS brought up for gaming.
I’ve been using Pop for a few months as my daily driver to replace Windows. It had been a few years since I’d used Linux and I wanted something stable for Nvidia drivers. I’ve had next to no issues with it.
Mint lets you install Nvidia drivers pretty easily nowadays. My surfacebook 2 has a 1050 mobile built in and it couldn’t have been easier to get the drivers installed.
Ubuntu I don’t recommend, nor Pop_OS simply due to Snaps. Where as flatpak is the standard built into Mint.
I tried Pop!_OS 3 times, and all 3 times, my computer crashed irrecoverably at some point.
I ended up replacing it.
I like Bazzite
I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. Up to date packages but with relatively good stability due to how they’re tested. Rolling release distros are always more risky, but for gaming you probably do want up to date packages to ensure graphics drivers and bleeding edge versions of Proton, Vulkan and even Wine work as expected. I think that’s most true for newer games and those where you may need to use Proton Experimental. Its also a good broad distro for other uses, rather than solely focused on one element like gaming.
Steam Deck is based on Arch; it’s not quite rolling release but they do relatively frequent updates to their version of Linux so a rolling release distro is probably going to be closer to it than most annual release and certainly LTS released linuxes.
Nobara is also a good distro to consider. It’s made by the guy who game up with Proton-GE and is gaming focused. It’s also rolling released and optimised more for gaming including the kernel. I use it on a living room PC for the past 5-6 months and like it so far.
Pop or Fedora unless there’s a reason not to.
Pop is basically Ubuntu minus snap, plus flatpak, plus their PPA, no?
Yes. With a custom gnome shell fork.
Their summer release will have the new desktop environment they have been working on (Cosmic) which will be a big point of differentiation
Heavily customized desktop, one day to be fully custom.
There are better “gaming” distros, but unless someone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, when it comes time to install other kinds of software for school or work or whatever, they’re going to get thrown in the deep ends of Linux.
But guess what does have two decades of software and tutorials to set up just about everything in existence? Ubuntu, and by extension Mint.
Sure you can squeeze more out of your games with something like Bazzite, but the general platform that anything Linux-native targets is usually Ubuntu. Sure there’s distrobox and stuff that’s like telling the average gamer to go set up WSL. It’s not hard per-se but the amount of things to learn increases very quickly.
Thus, even though Ubuntu is very average these days, it’s still a safe bet for new users.
I just want to point out that even bazzite comes with the productivity basics: full libreoffice, Thunderbird, gimp and other graphics software available on installation. VSC has an official (and inofficial) app available as well.
Not saying you’re wrong of course, but as someone who uses his computer to game, consume music and media, and dabble in coding and game modding I haven’t missed anything so far (am very new to Linux myself). Though I’m sure that a more discerning user may find those essentials insufficient.
Probably not the best example in retrospect, since its only gotcha is that it’s Fedora Atomic.
Mainly my point is if you Google “how do I install X” you’ll get plenty of Ubuntu results out of the box, which when you’re an overwhelmed newbie is very helpful. Like, if you start with nothing, you just kissed goodbye to your Windows 11 install, you dive head first into Bazzite and you’ve got Firefox, Discord and Steam going, everything feels good. Then you start looking up “how to install X on Linux”, first you get a bunch of Ubuntu results, then you swap Linux for “bazzite”, nothing because it’s fairly new, but it’s Fedora so you look into Fedora but you realize Bazzite is actually Fedora Atomic and it’s a whole other way of installing things, maybe you just try running a .run or .sh file, or you give up and try to just
make installfrom source but t̶h̴e̸ ̵f̸i̸l̸e̷s̸y̶s̷t̸e̶m̴ ̴i̶s̸ ̷r̷e̴a̴d̴o̷n̶l̷y̷ a̴n̵d̸w̷̪͊h̵̟̏y̴̻͛ ̸͉̒i̶͖͆s̸̪̎ ̸̗̏Ḷ̴͌i̶̞͑n̶̫͂u̵̯͋x̴͓͋ ̵͈̀ŝ̴̗o̴̱̒ ̴̭̎d̸̨͊a̷͙̽m̵̘̈ṇ̸̐ c̷͓͝ò̵̙m̵̲͛p̷̖̓ĺ̴̰ĭ̵̥c̵̰̽ă̸̩t̷͗ͅe̵͈̍d̵̻̃.I would argue Ubuntu kinda sucks, but it sucks in a familiar windows-y kind of way where pretty much everyone knows how to fix it or make it work usually by blindly executing stuff. Not great, but it works, and it doesn’t require much thinking. Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro you can find your way without caring what a distro is just by the pile of tutorials for Ubuntu or assuming Ubuntu. Case in point: Linus from LTT when he tried to
apt install steamon Manjaro, after nuking his entire DE on Pop_OS using the same command. It’s entirely his fault, but that’s still a common and frustrating experience and they add up.Same reason sometimes I just tell people honestly, just stick with Windows. Linux would be a good fit, it would be way better, but they’re not willing or accepting of the learning curve. Sometimes you’re just better sticking with what most people use, so everyone knows how to fix your problems.
I’m fairly tech-savvy and have double-booted Arch in the past, but I’m still having headaches trying to understand how my new Atomic Fedora (Aurora) install works. I love the idea but a little documentation wouldn’t hurt.
Debian. Same base, no extra bs. Rock solid and reliable. Outdated packages are a non-issue for a casual user. Gaming needs a bit of configuration but it perfectly doable. Installation is apparently difficult but… I don’t know where that comes from. It may not be Calameres-smooth but it’s perfectly understandable even to a novice.
I’m using Tuxedo OS. Based off Ubuntu, but without snaps, and using a up-to-date KDE desktop environment. I don’t like Cinnamon.
As always the correct answer is … “it depends “
Ubuntu and mint are fine for new users…
If you hand a new driver a car, you’d want them to have a more simple reliable car. Key in , start, drive turn brakes… etc.
But if you want to: tune the fuel air mix; lower the rear tire pressure for grip; or adjust gear ratios… then you can give them Arch or Gentoo
Similarly to windows or mac; Ubuntu and mint mostly just work, and kinda just do what it says on the tin.
Mint is a straight swap. Knowing everything about your PC is so much work. I would rather just game and not have to be a programmer to not see ads every 5 seconds.
Ubuntu is the most popular and common distro
OEM vendors primarily use it as their reference distro when testing and supporting drivers, hardware, applications, games, etc.
It’s the path of least resistance.
The reason for Ubuntu is that it’s the distro corporations (like Valve and AMD) are most likely to officially support.
“support” being a vague term. Steam runs everywhere, they don’t even use Ubuntu for SteamOS. And it’s actually easier to install AMDs rocm on other distros and ofc Ubuntus drivers are outdated.
I’ve used Mint for close to 6 years on various desktops and laptops and it’s rock solid reliable. My main computer runs LMDE 6 without any issues.
Mint and Ubuntu are easy to setup, and will generally work well out of the box, so great recommendations for people who have to ask.
Personally I use Manjaro, which also works out of the box, and I like the rolling release scheme, my wife uses Debian and both work great for games.My wife had some initial problems with Debian and PipeWire sound system but it works fine now, and in fairness she is a musician and uses some weird audiosystem that can record 8/16 channels. So I bet “normal” systems wouldn’t have noticed any problems.
I still use pulse audio because I’m lazy, and if it works don’t fix it.
I’ve been usung mint for about a month now.
I want to get rid of Windows, but I don’t want to spend my day sudo-ing my ass off.
Give me a gui for everything and doubleclick installers, and a release that is stable above all else.
I’m open to suggestions though! So shoot away which distro I should be using :)
My nephew uses arch btw.
I made the switch to Linux just some days ago, and landed on bazzite. It is fairly idiot proof with an option to roll back the entire system and is generally focused on gaming and ease of use.
So far i am having a blast, almost everything works right out of the box, and the things that didn’t were very minor and fixable with a bit of web search or asking on a relevant discord. I didn’t have to use the dreaded CLI much either - maybe 4-5 times - and when I did, I just followed a step by step guide to do something.
My personal recommendation would be choosing gnome as the DE, going with plasma seems more logical coming from windows, but I find it a lot simpler getting used to the differences by using an entirely different ui than windows. Forming new mental pathways is easier than adjusting something practiced a particular way for years.
For reference:
That’s fair, although personally I would still recommend KDE. KDE is only superficially windows like - it’s highly customisable so you can switch the GUI up. The windows GUI is also successful for a reason so it’s good to have it as one option - you don’t have to sacrifice a basically good GUI when you leave windows. (Microsoft constantly seems to want to tinker with it but then has to reintroduce the basics as that’s what people like - such as the latest nonsense with Windows 11). But with KDE you can also recreate other GUIs with relative ease (even most of Gnome).
Personally I find GNOME too rigid and inflexible - it has a clear design philosophy which is good, but if you’re not on board with that philosophy then it can be frustrating to use as they’re so focused on that design philosophy. It’s a take it or leave it DE in many ways, while KDE (and many other DEs) offers more choice and flexibility.
They’re simple to get into for anyone with an introductory interest in Linux, although I haven’t liked Ubuntu in ages. My Mint setup took a bit of effort but it does game pretty well. Fedora could be a good recommendation too, I liked that when I tried it out. There’s some gaming focused distros like Bazzite or Nobara, but I feel like I can get a “normal” distro working to a similar state for games, and I don’t have to hope that a small team doesn’t fold and my distro loses updates support.
I’m trying out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed this week, wanna see if it’s a good alternative to Fedora.
I don’t dare try Arch yet, and thus I also wouldn’t recommend it to any new user.
