Best linux distro for gaming in 2024?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
21

I think the distro is less important these days personally, as general Linux quality and compatibility improves over time.

And I would argue that if you do run into an issue on a particular distro, its likely fixable with a little tinkering. For example swap out a component or change a library that is incompatible or whatever.

Majaro is working well for me.

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23

For what itā€™s worth, Iā€™ve been running Pop_OS for about 18 months, and itā€™s been a wonderful experience. I donā€™t miss Windows at all. All the games I want to play are typically a click-install, click-play experience. Tweaking isnā€™t required, but an option if you want that.

Hardware Specs:

  • Ryzen 5900x
  • 64GB ram
  • Nvidia GA102 (RTX 3080)

Software:

  • Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
  • Gnome 42.9 / X11
  • Steam from the official Steam downloads (not the package version)

Problems:

  • The Pop! Shop (package manager thing) is garbage. It crashes constantly, canā€™t be trusted to actually do anything, makes it difficult to actually find anything. Forget about relying on it for updates.
    ā€“ I use the command line for all my software management, and thatā€™s been fine, but Iā€™m a sysadmin for Linux / Windows professionally, so the command line is more comfortable for me. YMMV.

Eventually Iā€™ll re-install my OS and hopefully thatā€™ll fix whatever gremlin is in the pop shopā€¦ Not that it matters much.

My next OS switch is likely going to be to Arch or Fedora with KDE Plasma 6 since that looks pretty awesome.

24

My greatest peeve is, that the Pop_shop does not list the progress at all while installing / uninstalling. But you can always install Synaptic if you want a GUI front end. :wink:

Now I only need a guide how to enable Wayland with an nvidia egpu. The GPU is detected but all GPU intensive applications / games are using the iGPU in wayland. Works fine in X11 though.

25

I stan Fedora at this point. Install, enable third party repos, Steam RPM, enable Steam Play for all titles, off to the races.

If you want the Windowslike DE experience, Iā€™d suggest waiting for 40 though. KDE 5 seems to cause me some headaches with certain games that Gnome doesnā€™t, nor did 6 while I had it functioning for about 5 days.

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26

I am using Pop!OS, but Iā€™m not really a gamer. I remember reading it is suitable for gaming when I installed it. I am using it as my daily driver and for work.

27

Iā€™ve had luck with Arch on my old i7-2600K machine. Most Steam games work well with some flavor of Proton (ProtonDB does a great job of showing compatibility across various flavors of Linux as well as user-reported feedback) or Lutris for most Blizzard games.

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28

Iā€™ve been finding that any deb or system install just seems to work better than the flat pack version of any app that you want to install.

Just my observation!

29

Just happened on to this thread from google search, so apologies for reviving what looks like a dead thread. I recently switched to Universal Blueā€™s Project Bluefin. Mainly I wanted to try a cloud-native focused OS that has a lot of development tools built-in. Itā€™s been great for me so far. Itā€™s also been a good gaming experience, even with Flatpak Steam. Thereā€™s been some weirdness, especially with Vulkan and Flatpak Steam on XOrg, but overall a great experience in my book. Probably wouldnā€™t recommend for a newbie, but anyone who has played around and likes to distro hop, itā€™s worth a look!

3 Likes
30

Iā€™ve been using Nobara on my gaming machine for a couple of years now. Nobara is essentially Fedora, but with several gaming related tweaks and enhancements. Itā€™s pretty much a dead simple turn key way to get started in Linux gaming and it works well with Steam/Proton and Proton-GE.

This machine dual boots W10 and some of my Steam/Widows games are more stable and have better performance on Nobara than on Windows.

If you are Linux curious, you could do a lot worse than Nobara.

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31

Fedora, easy. Silverblue or Bazzite for the cool kids.

Fedora hits the sweet spot for up-to-date packages but no janitoring like a rolling release distro, its very stable.

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32

Fedora never failed me, easy setup and no problems. No broken games so far.
Just a tip: Use a bigger distro, not a smaller derivate, you will thank yourself in the long run.

5800x3d
128GB RAM
7900 XTX

Fedora 39 Swaywm spin.

3 Likes
33

This thread is very timely for me; Iā€™m glad I somehow randomly googled into it. :slight_smile:

Iā€™d like to set up a VM powered by an NVIDIA Tesla P4 (GRID drivers) for gaming. As I just had to set up a Windows 11 VM and felt the life draining from my body as I tried to find all the toggles to stop the Edge browser from spying on me, Iā€™d love to try gaming in Linux.

Whatā€™s the most turnkey solution for NVIDIA (non-RTX) and Sunshine in Linux, where itā€™s most likely to just work out of the box and keep working when I do an update to get security patches? Iā€™d like to be able to install and use Windows games, including those from Steam, with a minimum of fuss. (I assume Iā€™d need to install Sunshine.)

Iā€™m running on an AMD Ryzen 3700X with at least 16 GB of RAM. Maybe more if I need it.

Iā€™d like to learn to use Fedora (Iā€™ve been a Debian/Ubuntu user for a while now, but got started in Manjaro on ARM years ago) was going to try Nobara, unless thereā€™s something else I should be looking at.

ETA: If base Fedora is the way to go, is there a guide I can study to get it into shape for the type of gaming use Iā€™ve described?

34

Bazzite has been gaining ground there.

Iā€™ve been gaming on Fedora for over a decade so itā€™s a no brainer for me.

35

Main difference between Debian/Ubuntu, Manjaro, and Fedora is going to be package management.

Hereā€™s the lowdown on Fedora -

1 Like
36

Well I just switched back to arch and now I have zero issues with gaming.