I did it. For a few years now I’ve wanted to make the jump but lazyness and a bit of worry that my main game wouldn’t work very well kept me from it.
Then some effing windows update caused ridiculous stuttering on games (or maybe it was a auto-update of some other hidden thing, I couldn’t figure it out) so I decided that if I needed a system wipe, might as well as try gaming on linux.
Honestly? Much easier than I expected. Install Steam, turn two options on and 90% of your library is ready to go. I had to tinker with getting freesync to work (ended up just switching to wayland, which just worked) but other than the plugins I use for my main game requiring a bit of more work, smooth as butter really.
So yeah, if you are a lazy gamer like I am, next time you do a system wipe or get a new computer, try installing linux first. Don’t even bother Dual booting it, if you don’t like it just reinstall (setup your usb drive with ventoy and the images you want to try out.)
Same thing happened to me recently, like literally 2 days ago. I’ve been wanting to switch for good for years, but always ended up having some problem pop up that I would try to deal with, and eventually go back to windows.
Well, 2 nights ago, I’m playing a game on steam. Middle of a boss fight, my computer just shuts down to start installing windows updates. When it finally finished, not only did I lose my progress, but because the game was not shut down correctly, it corrupted several files and needed a reinstall.
I literally used Chris Titus Techs Win10 tool to disable windows updates until I choose to run them, as well as ShutUp10 to disable ALL M$’s bullshit.
Update happened anyway, and sure enough, all their spyware had been re-enabled. At that point, I started asking around online for recommendations on what would work best for my use cases, with a few specific tools I needed. In the past, I had used several distros that really didn’t do what I needed, or would get me 90% of the way there. Problem was, that other 10% was a pretty important 10%. Someone told me to try just regular old vanilla Fedora. I did, actually learned how to setup, configure, and use Gnome extensions to get it to look and feel the way I want it to. Been having the best experience ever; EVERYTHING just works out of the box. At this point, I have successfully and fully converted!
Edit: grammar and typos
Are you me? It pissed me off that the system was obviously designed to disregard my wishes one too many times. Luckily, gaming support has been very good.
I’m a pretty tech savvy guy but not a “coder” by any stretch. Pretty comfortable using terminal commands so long as the instructions are clear.
I’m considering building a gaming PC within the next 6 to 12 months, and I pretty much want it to be strictly a Linux machine for gaming. I want my hardware to work out of the box as much as possible and maximum compatibility with my games with minimal tinkering. Again I can handle getting some things to work, installing drivers, tinkering with game settings. But a lot of what has kept me from going whole hog into PC gaming is I am a dad with a full-time job and sometimes I just want to fire up and start playing. Steam deck has been nice but obviously very underpowered compared to a dedicated tower I’d build.
Which Linux OS would folks recommend? OP asking you as well haha.
GET AMD INSTEAD OF NVIDIA. While everyone talks about how Nvidia is better than it used to be and stuff, AMD basically has zero problems on Linux.
Yeah I think AMD is the route I want to go for several reasons tbh.
As much as I want to agree to this, a part of me screams “STOP FANBOYING CORPORATIONS”
Lemme tell you a short story about bait and switch
We all know that android is a collaboration of companies to have an open handset ecosystem (which is weird, because these are companies driven for profit)
one of these companies is quallcomm, they were so nice that they released an open source “bridge” for devs to thier hardware called codeauroraforums
Thier marketshare grew and the performance of thier hardware were miles ahead the competition
Then it came when these “subpar” and cheaper semicons caught up on thier performance and also…covid happened
it shrank quallcomms earnings, made them to make some “decisions” and one of them is killing codeauroraforums, switched thier “opensource” stuff to codelinaro in which, all of the hardware supported are devkits of thier struggling snapdragon x
In addition to these decisions to increase earnings, they also made a deal with microsoft to make laptop chipsets (just like what apple did. Unfortunately, barebone windows on arm is different from windows on snapdragon unlike apple with thier walled garden wherein they’ve designed thier chips inhouse)
now they’re finger pointing who’ll support that thing, lmao
So…uhm…yea, stop fanboying corporations and thank you for listening to my ted talk
btw AMD is cool with linux…for now
I agree with not overly fanboying, but “they might stop support” can literally happen with any platform. If AMD stops open source support, they’re in the same boat as NVIDIA but with a leg up from having all the history an experience from the time with support.
Your favorite distro could go out of support and have the project closed tomorrow, just like Windows 10 reaching EoL. Except someone else can fork that distro and pick up the mantle to continue the project.
That game that you really want to play on Linux might suddenly choose to implement an anti-cheat or DRM that isn’t compatible with Linux, or a different game might choose to remove that block and it suddenly opens up for the Linux community.
If you think recommending someone a GPU brand with drivers that are easier to install when they said they wanted something that just works is “fanboying” then I don’t know how to respond.
I recommend endeavouros - it’s on arch (personally my favorite, btw), has a bunch of desktop environments you can pick from that come configured nicely out of the box, nice presets and well commented configs, etc. Install and setup are super easy, they also include installing your driver’s and such.
For getting games to work, most games work out of the box on steam (just make sure to enable proton for all titles and you’re set). Some games will require some changes to the launch command which you can super easily find with just searching {game title} Linux. There are some that straight up don’t work, and most likely no tinkering will fix that - but it’s primarily fps and competitive games with kernal level anticheat. It’s getting better with fewer and fewer games using it though. Since you already have a steak deck you already know the process most likely so you should be able to hit the ground running
You’ll get plenty of answers with different suggestions, so I’ll suggest checking in that community for plenty of previous answers. I would say to stick with “main” known distribution and to ditch specialized ones. https://linux-myths.pages.dev/Single-Maintainer https://linux-myths.pages.dev/Distros
I’m on Nobara but despite the fantastic work of GloriousEggRoll, it did had it’s lot of breakage which made me want to switch to the suggested uBlue Fedora atomic builds, per those criterias.
I’ve said this before around here, but y’all REALLY need to stop recommending immutable distros to people who are new and just trying to figure stuff out. It’s confusing as hell for them, and counterproductive overall. Why don’t you just say “Use Fedora” if you have a suggestion.
Thank you! I messed with Mint once and it was easy enough to get up but wifi didn’t work out the box which was irritating. Is that common in your experience?
Full disclosure it was an intel MBpro lol
Mint is a good choice ! They have a decent help forum where you could ask for such help. Like this one for example. https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=228884 Feel free to give more details here too, maybe i, or someone else here could help you with your specific Mac problem.
Unfortunately when I mentioned I had a Mac everyone got really nasty and told me to buy a PC/“you should’ve done your homework.” 😅
I have a 2017 MBPro that can still handle 4K video rendering. It’s already in my possession! Why would I go buy something else? But everyone was too angry at the idea of my using a Mac to care sadly.
You’ve basically described my situation exactly. I built a PC 6 months ago for Linux. I distro-hopped for a good while and settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Now I’ve put OpenSUSE on my laptop too. I would highly recommend it.
I went for an AMD GPU and have never had any problems with it. Linux is not as painless as Lemmy would have you believe though. Be prepared to learn some hard lessons and keep your data physically disconnected from the PC while you do it.
You’ve asked about WiFi drivers further down…on my PC, the only distros that had the correct WiFi drivers out of the box were EndeavourOS and ZorinOS. The rest all needed wired LAN to get them going.
I’ve been bouncing around Linux distros since 2007.
I’ve been a big Ubuntu fan but Bazzite has absolutely blown me away, especially for gaming. Everything just works out of the box. No tweaking, no driver installations, no troubleshooting.
My multi monitor display and dock with peripherals (including webcam and wireless headset) just works with a single USB connection on the dock.
Call me a shill for bazzite but if you are just using the pc like a windows user would to play games, you won’t go wrong with it. I could basically say the same for any Ubuntu or Fedora distro but from my experience, those require some tweaking for everything to work nice.
This was me a few months ago when I started seeing ads in start menu. I love Linux and use it for work but was worried about things like VRR, scaling, HDR support, periperhal support etc. While a lot of those things are still a WIP I have had no major issues (except occasional anticheat borked but even then rarely).
I ended up going bazzite and I’m really liking it. What distro you go with OP?
Welcome to the club! We have punch and pie.
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
@lorty Did the same (and discovered Ventoy) just recently myself too. So far, on a “secondary PC” but it’s going so well that I will probably do it on the primary one as soon as something bad happens to it.
Depending on the distro, look that Vulkan is set up.
Nice! I left Windows behind a few months ago as well. Had been dual booting Ubuntu and Windows since Windows 7.
Tried to primarily game on Ubuntu about a decade ago but it just didn’t work out well at the time so I had to keep Windows around. Fast forward to this past year with Windows 10 quickly approaching EoL and (me personally) not being a fan of the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu I started looking at other options.
Ended up learning about Bazzite and haven’t looked back. Was able to play almost my entire game’s library without much effort. I had planned on dual booting two Linux operating systems so I could separate work from play, but decided to stick with one.
I always knew there was still good in you.
Some tips for lazy Linux gaming setup:
Install flatpak and flatpak steam
Install the ProtonPlus flatpak if you need custom proton versions for some games, I usually just add the latest proton-ge and don’t have to bother with anything else
Fedora, Arch, EndeavourOS, Nobara and Bazzite are all pretty good bases for a gaming setup. They all have their pain points so I’d boot a couple and see how you like them before making a decision.
@seaQueue @lorty I always have controller problems with flatpak steam. Some games will work with a controller and some won’t Even if steam says control is compatible. I have the same problem with Debian and steam too. That’s why I always game on arch Linux and Fedora Linux. I have no problem with controller support but those two.
My steam install isn’t with flatpack, I just did an apt install to get it. My Dualshock 4 worked in Elden ring without any changes from my side.
Is it every game? Or only specific ones? Is your controller bluetooth or does it have a specific dongle?
@lorty only on certain games. Some games will work on my wired controller in some games won’t. I was using an original Xbox controller and Xbox One controller.
I’ve used linux on the side for years. In my experience, people talking about it usually forget to mention issues that might be fatal flaws for someone. Like audio sources not being saved between reboots or monitor resolution seeming a bit off. You have to go in expecting problems and being comfortable with that. If you’re the kind of person that’s going to blame linux when the first thing goes wrong, it will and you’ll want to go back to windows. And then windows will also have problems but more people will be able to help you.
I don’t think you’re lazy if one tiny inconvenience was enough for you to overhaul your system to get a different OS.
You know, I can think of more reasons to jump to a different OS than just a brief bit of stuttering. But you do you.
Maybe it sounds overdramatic but if the point of a computer is to play games (and I did spend a lot of money for it) and it stutters consistently to the point that the “80” FPS I’m getting looks worse than a consistent 30, then yeah, I’m going to do something about it. And since the simplest way was wiping the system and reinstalling, then going for linux at least at first makes sense.
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