I have a home built PC that I want to get off Windows 11.
Specs:
- Ryzen 3700X, upgrading to a 5800X3D soon
- RTX 2080 Super
- 500GB NVME for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for files, programs, etc.
- 1440p Ultrawide monitor
- an 8bitdo Ultimate controller
Usage:
- I usually play indie games, emulators, and occasional AAA games. Most of my library is on Steam, with some games on GOG, e.g. Cyberpunk.
- I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
- I also write game mods, so I need a distro that is a good fit for software development (C++, Python, and Lisp).
- Random miscellany: I use mullvad VPN, stream movies from a friend’s plex server, and use an SFTP client to back up photos and videos from my phone.
I’ve been an on/off Linux user in the past, so I know my way around basic/intermediate terminal usage and configuration. Buuuut every previous attempt to move to Linux ended in disaster, so I have little patience for asterisks, strings attached, etc. If you’re offering a distro I’ve never heard of before, you’re probably gonna be hard pressed to convince me.
Thanks for the help!
I’m currently on Linux Mint, works pretty well out of the box. Steam games and indie games and even old windows game work (with lutris and/or bottles).
However I should warn, I also have a Steam Link. It does stream, but depending on the game the framerate can get very laggy. I’m running on a RTX 2070 tho. Not sure I can recommend steam link on Linux yet.
Everything else works great.
Try Nobara, MX linux.
Recommending MX Linux to a beginner is insane
Whats wrong with recommending MX Linux to newcomers?
Relatively niche distro, relatively barebones installation, and it’s mostly aimed at low end PCs. There’s no point in someone new using that instead of any other popular distro.
Never heard of either one. What makes them better than Ubuntu or Mint?
Nobara is a gaming distro Fedora based. Made by proton-ge dev. MX is a Debian distro that almost don’t rely on monstrous systemd.
The average user will not notice any difference between systemd or any other init, nor will they interact with it, know what it is, or likely form a strong opinion about it (and honestly, good for them).
I heard CachyOS is quite popular these days. Other dedicated gaming distros are Bazzite, Nobara, Garuda Linux …
I’ve been running Garuda with KDE (dr4g0nized gaming spin) for over a year and have had a great experience. Arch gets a bad rep for breaking updates, but I’ve never experienced any. My Steam Link in the living room has mostly functioned fine, but it has been a bit finicky lately. As for the AUR, I think I have maybe a dozen packages from there in my machine, partially because Garuda ships with Chaotic-AUR, which has a more robust (read: existant) review process for submissions. I have used both Nvidia and AMD GPUs and both have worked flawlessly. I don’t game as much as I used to, but I’ve been nothing but happy with my Arch gaming experience.
+1 for CachyOS
My PC has an AMD CPU / Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU which was fine when I originally set it up with Kubuntu but had some unrelated issues. So I took the opportunity to try it with Arch and had an absolute bastard of a time getting the Nvidia drivers to work. Cut my losses and tried CachyOS instead and pretty much everything just worked from the off.
That was adorably fun.
Narrowed down to the one I chose, and now I have my next choice if to test run.
First time I’ve seen this! Tried it out and it was entertaining to root for my favorites, and a lot of fun reading the various jabs they make at each other!
My winners were exactly the ones I use, so I’m happy (Fedora + KDE Plasma)I just learned about it from Brodies channel (a Linux YouTuber). As you say, its entertaining. It may or may not get a good recommendation. Some questions aren’t really suited to ask beiginners, but that’s okay. And some questions like what the use case is, would need 3 answers to me: Gaming, Development and the regular Daily stuff. But I love the idea how its presented and the audiovisual style. Pretty cool.
I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
Answer: Yes.
Is your PC going to be a gaming-centric PC? Or are you planning on doing other things like work or other stuff?
There’s plenty of gaming-focused distros out there. Some easier and some harder to understand.
From your hardware You’d probably be good with something like Linux Mint or Zorin OS. They’re Ubuntu based and are pretty solid and easy to use. They support your hardware out of the box. Kubuntu might be a good choice too if you want a more windows-y experience with more customization options. I personally have Kubuntu and my 8bitdo controllers work without a hitch via bluetooth. I play mostly indie games and a few AAA titles from Steam, GOG and Epic via the Heroic launcher as well and have had zero issues.
If you REALLY want a gaming-focused distro, you’ll have to go with a Fedora based distro then. Something like Nobara.
But you want to avoid less stable distros like Arch-based ones. Like Cachy OS. Those might end up being more of a headache than anything with problems occurring after updates and a malware-infested 3rd party software repo.
If you like to mod games you’ll probably want arch linux as it’s heavily modular - you choose everything. You can use the archinstall script to get you setup or follow the installation guide.
Not sure the modularity of Arch would really be relevant to modding (modifying, not modular) games.
It speaks to your willingness and eagerness to tinker with your systems, that’s pretty much arch’s core audience.
What steers me away from Arch is that I don’t want an OS that is a project in and of itself. The OS should be simple and stable to help me do my actual projects.
Linux Mint!
It’s based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.
Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.
Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.
Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It’s a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.
However. I might not be as ‘cool’ as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.
Mint is not something that I use myself, but it’s what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.
I use Mint for gaming (Steam), some light development and AI work and all everyday computing tasks. It works really well and with minimal hassle. The cool kids will scoff, but for people who just want to get stuff done it’s great.
Ubuntu based distros are going to have a very easy Nvidia driver experience (just open the driver tool from the start menu and select the version you want, and bam, done). However, one downside of Ubuntu itself is their pushing of snap packaged apps, which are considered a bit crap, and can cause weirdness (I think Valve officially don’t recommend the Snap version of Steam).
You can avoid the snap stuff with Linux Mint, as they totally strip that out. Only downside of Mint is that it’s still on an older LTS version of Ubuntu, 24.04 (the latest is now 26.04, two years newer). You will need to add an additional PPA (a third party repository) to access the latest 610 Nvidia drivers on it, which some of the very latest games like the James bond require to launch in Proton. That may or may not be an issue for you. Mint also has the best built in app store, IMO.
Fedora is nice, but the Nvidia driver isn’t quite as easy to install, and it doesn’t come with some needed video codecs out of the box, though this script maker can make those pretty easy to get. I’d recommend it if you want more up to date apps in the repos and don’t want to encounter Ubuntu’s snaps.
Nobara is a spin of Fedora with all that stuff included (and has an installer with the Nvidia driver pre-installed, I think), made by the Glorious Eggroll who makes improved versions of Proton.
I personally would suggest choosing between those options, since both Ubuntu and Fedora based distros have a lot of 3rd party support, such as Mullvad, which only supports those two officially, and they have large communities with lots of help.
I always recommend Fedora or Debian these days. Eventually you get anything running with those.
But yeah, Ubuntu makes it easy for nvidia, but is also has snaps.
Anyway, I would always go with a main distro instead of something that is based on them. You’re just a bit closer to upstream. That’s at least my opinion. So far, it did not fail me.
Standard Debian would be hard for me to recommend to someone new or not interested in tinkering with Linux, of for someone with an Nvidia GPU. I do think Mint’s Debian Edition is a very good Debian option for those without an Nvidia GPU, though, and is what I use myself. It’s basically just standard Debian but preconfigured with sane defaults to minimize tinkering.
My go-to advise for people new to linux or just wanting something that works is Linux Mint (Or Ubuntu if you don’t mind the commercial aftertaste). End of discussion.
It is based on Ubuntu packages which are well maintained (things just work), it has been around and popular for a very long time, has a big and active community, and it prioritises ease of use.
The only downsides are support for brand new hardware (<6-12 months) which takes a while to be supported. But that doesn’t seem to apply to you.
If you want bleeding edge, extensive customizations, or a cool unconventional desktop you can check out any kind of desktop.
I like discussing distros as much as the next person. But in my long distrohopping career I realised that with new or novice linux users it’s best to stick to the easiest, most out of the box experience. I would argue this is linux mint.
I’ve seen too many times that people send new linux users to the most wild distro’s and then be suprised that the user gives up on linux completely after a week.
If you want to get some terminal/technical experience or like to make your hands dirty feel free to experiment.
But make your feet wet in the shallow well known puddles.Thank you for understanding where I’m coming from lol. Mint supposedly, with enough tinkering, can handle all my use cases?
Don’t end up in the Ubuntu train, just avoid from the start. If you want Mint, go with the debian based Mint. Ubuntu was good 15 years ago. Don’t get yourself involved if you’re starting out. Mint DE is good. I think Fedora with KDE is honestly the best place to start. Then just turn on Flatpaks in Discover settings if they are not on by default.
Can second this - My PC is Arch BTW but my partner, on my recommendation, installed Mint. Smooth af install and I almost never taught them a terminal command because it has this easy enough repo library app, and prompts for updates. Things just work.
I can recommend my experience - EndeavourOS. Based on Arch, it was built to come prepackaged with everything you need for gaming. Once install is complete it offers great choices for gaming and privacy programs. Almost everything on Steam is a Windows .exe so they are all run in a mini Windows filesystem through a top notch compatibility layer (called Proton, based on Wine) and to answer your question - yes, Steam Link is perfect on Linux. Lower latency than Sunshine/Moonlight.
One thing I owned that you’ll have to sacrifice, unless you use the Gnome DE iirc - Wallpaper Engine. I exported every .mp4 from the files and run with Hidamari instead, but it’s not the same.
And one caveat if you choose EndeavourOS - Budgie DE is borked a little bit so I switched to Cinnamon
Pick one, that is the one
Yeah I feel like you can game on anything these days. I’m on Arch, which is what SteamOS is based on afaik. Works great. Gaming on Steam and Heroic launcher for Epic games. No complaints.
CachyOS. Hands down the best for you.
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Gets updates as soon as they come out which is important for gaming and software development
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Really good performance, has access to a huge amount of software
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Beginner friendly, automatically creates snapshots (backups) in case you mess up
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Has a simple to follow wiki with lots of useful info. Also it lets you install all the gaming packages you need with one button click.
No offense to people on this site but every time this thread pops up there are a lot of terrible recommendations being thrown around. Don’t bother using base Arch linux if you’re new to Linux. Don’t use random niche distros like MX Linux. Debian is very barebones and requires you to manually set up a lot of things that come by default in other modern distros. And finally IMO don’t use an immutable OS unless you know what you’re getting into, as many people get burned by how hard it is to install applications on them.
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I love how there are already 38 replies. Linux distro questions are like Lemmy catnip, heh.
Fort what its worth:
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I have very similar hardware: 7800, 3090, 1440p ultrawide, NVMe+SATA
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Similar needs (GoG, game modding, python, Plex, photo backup)
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Problems with linux before.
CachyOS has been my “end boss” distro.
Ive had the same stable partition for like ~3 years now, which Ive never had on linux so long. Its just perfect in so many ways, like development libs being optimized, and every gaming/optimization package you could ever want being packaged by the distro. It saved me from getting hacked or screwing up my own system in a few ways.
THAT BEING SAID,
I still dual boot to (heavily neutered) Windows. Some games, like Cyberpunk, just seem to perform slightly (but measurably) better on Windows when I A/B benchmark them, even when I try to make linux the best case scenario.
And some things I do (like HDR content wheb hooked up to a TV, or rendering HEIF files) still have some quirks on linux.
You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.
You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.
How is support for NTFS these days? Any degradation in performance or stability if I run games off a separate NTFS drive?
I haven’t benchmarked NTFS vs Linux partitions in games, but it’s fine. No stability issues. You can absolutely install GoG games there, and run the same files in Linux or Windows.
I have run benchmarks for more extreme workloads (like writing tens of thousands of image files for a dataset), and Linux F2FS and XFS tends to handle it waaay better than NTFS. But this isn’t really applicable to gaming.
The issue, as always, is the classic Linux thing if “you have to configure it right.”
It’s best to edit the NTFS drive’s mounting options, in /etc/fstab, and put it in a special “compatibility” mode to work better with Windows. I am away from my PC, but I can find the documentation later if you wish.
Reading Bazzite’s website, it seems very strict that NTFS is unsupported and outright catastrophic.
NTF
If you are coming from Windows and plan to game on a secondary drive with games already installed on it, then we regret to inform you that the NTFS filesystem is unsupported for PC gaming on Bazzite.
Playing games off of NTFS causes various issues, including but not limited to games not launching at all, and will eventually result in data corruption and permanent data loss!
I’d appreciate that thank you
Another plus of CachyOS: the Arch wiki, suppemented by their own.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NTFS#Prevent_creation_of_names_not_allowed_by_Windows
(linked from there): https://man.archlinux.org/man/mount.8
https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/automount_with_fstab/
Here’s how my /etc/fstab file (which controls how drive partitions are mounted at boot) looks:
UUID=30F6DF29F6DEEDDA /home/alpha/Windows ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,ro,iocharset=utf8 0 0 UUID=1496470F9646F132 /home/alpha/Storage ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0-
lazytimeanddiscardare performance things for SSDs. -
sys_immutablemarks files with the “system file” attribute in Windows (like stuff in the Windows folder) as unchangable on linux, as you don’t want to mess with these. -
uuid/gid explicity sets the owner as me, as Windows does not handle granular file ownership like linux does, hence its best to default to a user explicitly.
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iocharset=utf8andexecare probably redundant, but makes sure it doesn’t use an ancient linux defaut. -
I will quote the
windows_namesdescription from the link above:
Prevents the creation of files and directories with a name not allowed by Windows, either because it contains some not allowed character (which are the characters “ * / : < > ? \ | and those whose code is less than 0x20), because the name (with or without extension) is a reserved file name (CON, AUX, NUL, PRN, LPT1-9, COM1-9) or because the last character is a space or a dot. Existing such files can still be read and renamed.
Note I have the Windows partition set as
ro. Read-only. So linux can read files of the windows partition, but can’t write or change anything, just in case./Storage is my SATA drive, which I have set as
rwso linux can write files too.
And FYI, I have my linux partition (and a secondary NVMe drive) set as f2fs. I’ve been happy with that filesystem for a long time:
UUID=787e85c8-5a65-4265-ad91-de756ac2a8d3 / f2fs defaults,gc_merge,lazytime 0 1
A lot of issues you see surrounding NTFS (like games not working or reported corruption) are because people and distros don’t set these options.
But CachyOS may default to some of this by now. I set this up explicitly a long time ago.
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In my experience it works with some games but doesn’t with others. And if it breaks, the game just stops without any error message/information (you can get some info on the terminal). I would avoid it if at all possible. NTFS supporz is also overall still rather poor (e.g. my Mint install recently stopped working with NTFS drive until I ran chkdsk on Windows).
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If you do have some experience with Linux, I think perhaps Garuda Linux might be worth a shot. It’s based on Arch and makes it pretty easy to install Arch and configure it. I find their ChaoticAUR is probably one of the best repos. The Garuda team polices it and keeps bad malicious builds from being born on that repo. I’ve gotten a lot of great software from that place and never touched the actual AUR. In my experience of running Garuda Dr460nized KDE on my gaming PC, it’s been one of the best that I’ve ever had. Surprisingly, I haven’t jumped to another distro (notorious distrohopper here). My system is pretty stable and I’ve not had any problems with my installation of 2 months so far…
I chose Dr460nized because it is colorful and bold, but also customizable, it gives you a strong base to build off of. I also like Garuda Mokka, which has a chill, smoky, gray vibe to it!
Also, Mullvad VPN is in the Arch Extra Repo, you would just have to set it up by installing the application and the daemon which would run in the background. It’s not particularly difficult, and only takes barely 2 minutes.
I use Bazzite. The Mullvad VPN gui app works on it, but you will have to either add the Mullvad repo and layer the package, or install the local .rpm file (using rpm-ostree), and manually update it whenever there is an update.
Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.
If you want to use the aur, all you need to do is create an Arch distrobox (everything you need to do it is pre-installed, including a gui app for distrobox if you don’t want to do CLI). You can then “export” anything you install on the box to your host OS to be opened with one click with no noticeable overhead.
And yes, you will be able to play your Steam games on the TV with Linux. Probably better and more easily than with Windows nowadays.
Steam Link has never been able to figure out that my ultrawide monitor and TV don’t have the same aspect ratio, so I have to go into Windows settings to change the resolution. Don’t suppose that’s easier on Linux?
Edit: Fun fact: Bazzite’s Live USB doesn’t have Steam installed on it so I can’t test out that functionality, and Steam only offers a deb package that you can’t install because Bazzite is immutable. Bazzite says they’re not going to change that so I think I’m crossing Bazzite off my list.
Mullvad vpn is the vpn for an intellectual
Well, their founder was recently discovered to be funding far right groups in Sweden. The rest of the company is apparently very unhappy with this. My subscription lasts until next year so I’m holding off on renewing until the dust settles there.
The party they funded is literally lead by a leftist extremist…
The company is only sad about it because people got mad, but lets be real. People would get mad regardless of what party he donated to.
They are nationalist racists trying to cloak themselves with populist leftist ideas. This is the leader of that party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
Remember; the Nazi’s did the same thing by strategically calling their party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, despite them not being socialist nor a working class party. This was chosen because Socialism was gaining popularity, and thus the Nazi’s thought it would help their chances of getting votes and public support.
No they are definitely left-wing.
Yes I have seen that article, but if you look at the video that is attached to the article it is very clear that he is talking about…
- Migrants that commit crimes
- Migrants that does not want and actively avoid, being part of Swedish society
There is nothing right or left wing about throwing out people who commit murder och rape. That is pretty standard in most parts om the world even, because a nation has no obligation to let non-citizen criminals stay in the country.
ÖP is vert much on the workers side, and have pretty vocally advocated for a smaller but stronger state and shorter work week.
Migrants that does not want and actively avoid, being part of Swedish society
You’re not going to find many leftists that aren’t vehemently against deporting people for not integrating, especially leftists who believe in abolishing borders.
There is nothing right or left wing about throwing out people who commit murder och rape. That is pretty standard in most parts om the world even, because a nation has no obligation to let non-citizen criminals stay in the country.
You… you do realize Trump got elected on that exact rhetoric? People voted for him because “He would only get rid of the bad ones”.
Yes, not all leftist thinks the same after all.
No he got elected on “illegal immigration”. We are talking about people convicted, in Swedish courts for violent crimes and yet are still not deported.
That’s just veiled racism, dude. Racists always couch it like that. Don’t fall for it.
So you mean ignore what they’re actually saying and believe random leftists online? xD
