Can i use arch linux for gaming?

Just asking, im curious to know.

I really like arch and their AUR-packages etc.

I have nvidia card, so propietary drivers need to work, im taking other users experience on this topic

Also i have intel i5-9500 proccessor and z370 asus motherboard.

Delete this if this isn’t right place for this.

Sure, the usual linux limitations apply of course but in general… yeah, that should work. If you want to make things a little easier maybe take a look at manjaro. It is arch based, so has access to AUR but is not quite on the bleeding edge.

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Manjaro tends to just break on my system for some reason, and i really wan’t learn arch, manjaro breaks when i install nvidia driver…

I mean, don’t get me wrong but if something like that is a showstopper for you, are you sure you’re ready for arch? I’ve never used arch but as far as I understand it that is a lot more involved.

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what makes you want to use arch? what cant you do with your current distro?

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I’m currently using windows because of my school isn’t linux compatible, i wanna build my own distro and learn linux/arch ingeneral. Just wondering if it has lutris and steam support.

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Its not a showstopper, like i have installed arch on 2 physical machines now and it seems to work better than manjaro.

The showstopper in manjaro are the preinstalled packages, needing to debug all of them/finding the specific one that breaks the driver.

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Arch would be completely different from something like LFS or Gentoo if you wanted to really ‘make your own’. Gaming on linux isnt something I generally recommend linux for but it can be done. Hell I’ve even done VR on it. I usually go with Fedora or something *buntu based for that but really my gaming machine runs windows. It just plain makes more sense if you want something to game on. I got tired of complicating my setup for no real advantage (for me). If theres something on linux you actually need or some moral reason you have to use linux, thats fine, but if windows doesnt bug you that much I wouldnt mess with that.

My linux use is basically all server related these days. I have 3 linux VMs I run from a headless linux based NAS that does the bulk of my heavy linux lifting.

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Doing something and doing something well are 2 different things
For Linux it depends on the user

Arch takes time to learn, and if you feel frustrated by Manjaro, with the recent changes to arch install, I don’t think you will have a good time even with just installing Arch. It has been made even more fiddly to install. Just because.

My suggestion, get comfortable with easier distributions for now,(Pop_OS or Mint comes to mind) learn linux there. Then move on to Arch if you really want to. Another alternative is to install Endeavor OS or maybe even ArcoLinux.

Yes you can.

But no you should not.

There is realy no reason you can’t tool your arch installation towards linux gaming. Just keep in mind arch requires a lot more hands on work with maintaining it, and also you will have to do a lot of the configuring yourself since there is no installer for pure arch.

Personally I use Manjaro, you get the best from the way arch linux is built up and the massive repositories, in a package that 6 months in hasn’t broken a single time and is working realy well.

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Gaming on Linux works fine, as well or as badly as doing anything on linux, For Games Native To Linux

If you want to play windows games, and don’t want to worry abount conflicts and stuff, Dual boot.

Do office work/browsing/irc/farcebook/email and stuff with the linux install, and boot into the windows install to play the games.

I don’t mind the occasional break or bug, so play some non-native games on linux, and have a VM for the few Windows games that are really troublesome.

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The answer your question directly:

I’ve found that Arch (and Arch-based distros that support the AUR) are some of the best at support for gaming.

The Arch Wiki is fantastic, and has tons of helpful info on the subject. Many distros have absolutely none on gaming, or rely on untested community suggestions.

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How dare you not try to turn him on to my distro and answer his question instead.

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Just on gaming on linux, depending on the Windows games you play, some of them (older titles, mostly) actually work better via Wine/proton these days than they do via Windows itself.

Sure that’s rare, but to say that Linux sucks at gaming these days isn’t quite as true as it used to be. It sucks at running modern AAA stuff, and anything multiplayer is a crapshoot. BUT… older software sometimes runs better than on windows :smiley:

Please don’t

Great idea

“Support” in linux terms is a bit much said. Both work on Arch. Steam official only support debian stable afaik.

If you feel like arch is calling you, by all means, go with it. It’s not that hard. Just follow the beginners guide and it will all work out fine. The Arch wiki is great. Look up the questions that come up and feel free to ask.

If all you want is more “choice” in what tools you want to use, i’d highly recommend going with the debian netinstall and choosing the basic option. It also gets you to a “blank” system without Desktop Environment and most of the software preinstalled, but is plain faster than arch. Plus most software and games get evaluated against Ubuntu/Debian in some form. Arch is more or less expected to do the evaluation themselves.

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I’d second that.

Whilst rolling your own distro is a neat learning experience… and great if you’re genuinely curious, these days it is akin to building fire using sticks. Or re-inventing the wheel.

Sure, you can do it, and its a cool demonstration for how friction can be used to start fire, but outside of that largely pointless. Eventually after hacking away to add software every time you run into something that doesn’t work because it needs a dependency you don’t have - you end up with something close to a mainstream distro. Except you’ve got one single source of support - yourself :smiley:

There’s more useful stuff to spend your time learning - stuff like docker, kubernetes, etc. That’s what will get you employed these days. Spend time solving new problems, not wheel re-invention :slight_smile:

Yes you can. Yes you should. The Arch wiki makes it so easy to solve any of the problems and pitfalls associated with Linux gaming. Also the Arch wiki has the best VFIO setup guide if you want to go that route. Arch Linux is the best desktop / gaming / workstation distro period.

If I weren’t using Arch I would have given up on trying to get Elite Dangerous to work in proton. If I had been using some other distro I would have had a nightmare of a time finding all the right pieces to the puzzle and putting it together. I’ve been using this distro for well over a year now and I run updates every day several times a day. I’ve never had any kind of major breakage and I use a ton of different tools + games. It’s wonderfully stable. I’m fairly certain that the people on these forums whose main criticism is the stability/rolling release aspect have either A. Not used it or B. Used it a long time ago when it was less polished. I could go on for days about this.

You can use any distro for gaming it doesn’t really matter anymore with flatpak and snap installs of steam.

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