Since MS decided to make my old PC e-waste, I decided to switch to linux instead for my gaming PC. I’m not unfamilliar with it, I run Debian (no desktop) on my home server, used Ubuntu a lot in work etc, but I am no expert either. I use my PC mainly for hosting Jellyfin server, singleplayer gaming (90% steam rest is gog, epic games sometimes), local streaming games to my Nvidia Shied (xbox series X remotes), web browsing and coding in VS Code and IntelliJ.
I installed Bazzite which was strange.
At first, the installer could not format my SSD, I had to create yet another USB with GParted to reformat it first.
I cannot seem to set the refresh rate to 165Hz, only 144Hz.
Upon booting, 2 partitions show up in grub for some reason, only one of them works.
Then I also went to install Jellyfin which took me hours to figure out since you cannot install docker. Apparently you cannot use Fedoras package manager, and things are difficult to install in general on Bazzite? I had to use something they callled quadlets, it uses podman syntax or whatever.
Now I’m considering switching distro but I’m not sure to what. Perhaps Kubuntu because I’m just more familiar with the apt package manager and such. More tutorials and posts online on how to do stuff in general. I guess my main question is, how much work is it to get it up to speed regarding gaming? Installing Steam is easy of course, but what more is needed? Proton? Lutris? Sunshine streaming? Or should I stick with a gaming focused distro? My hardware is very old, 2500K and GTX 1060.
I found out that bazzite (&atomic desktops by fedora) it’s either click-to-point install or the deepest dive into the rabbit hole to install your wanted program. Just like you found out with docker
I suggest Fedora KDE. I do not agree with what ubuntu is cooking up - replacing programs from repos to snaps. But that’s just my 2c
I guess my main question is, how much work is it to get it up to speed regarding gaming?
It’s easy with any* distro. Search for the packets you want & install them. If your chosen distributions repos don’t have them, try flatpak & snap. (*YMMV)
Archwiki has a great comparison table of packagemanagers and their commands archwiki:pacman/Rosetta
Just alias your commands and you won’t have to think about them. E.G
alias install="sudo dnf install"
alias flatinstall="sudo flatpak install"
and so on. Put them into .bashrc (or your chosen shell config, I highly suggest fish)
Thanks, I will switch to a “regular” dist then, this locked down Bazzite thing is too awkward for me. I agree about snap for Ubuntu. Didnt they also sell some data to amazon a while back?
Gonna see what I will try, perhaps Debian, I like stability. Good idea about using alias for package manager commands.
If you wanna use this for gaming I would not recommend Debian at all.
I think you’re missing the point of “stability” here. What “stability” means is that they don’t change versions, they have packages with a stable ABI, it has nothing to do with system stability.
With ancient packages you’re not gonna be having fun gaming, that’s not what Debian is for. You can make it work by bastardising it and installing a shitload of packages from backports or whatever, but why bother when you can just install something not ancient in the first place? This is one of many reasons Valve abandoned their Debian-based SteamOS.
The same goes for Mint and *buntu LTS by the way.
If Arch is too dicey for you, and you were looking at Bazzite anyway, why not take a look at what it’s based on and test out Fedora?
Up to date but still tested packages seems like a good middleground.
I would recommend Manjaro. I’ve tried about 10 distros that always sent me back to Windows before finally landing on it. Its the only distro that could get me to stick with Linux.
For me its the only distro I tried that just worked and doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing something versus Windows. In the 2 years I’m using it, I’ve only had one issue (sound delayed when starting a video but its easily fixed with a config - It was a power management thing where the OS puts the audio device to sleep) .
Even over the last few days I tried Garuda (This was awful), CachyOs (Felt like a less polished Manjaro) and Nobara (I liked this but it required more thinkering than Manjaro) on my basement pc’s.
There are thousands of people using any number of distros for gaming. I have used Mint, Debian, Arch, Manjaro, Endeavour, Garuda, Fedora, OpenSUSE, OpenMandriva, and probably a few others that I am forgetting. Whatever you choose, just go to their forums for any issues you run into. Most of the time you will need to install multimedia codecs to get everything running well, and there are probably multiple forum posts explaining exactly how to do it.
I’m currently running linux mint which is a fork of ubuntu and a fork of debian. With that being said it should be a relatively easy switch from debian. Add steam and heroic game launcher native game clients and now you have access to steam / epic / gog games.
I tried out CachyOS with KDE Plasma and everythign just worked.
I’m very much a linux noob and it was quite easy and painless.
I dont miss google/ms apps at all.
9950x3d/3090ti
Linux focused Content creation software and libreoffice are direct replacements for lots of things that you would need.
My 2nd monitor(4k tv) needed me to manually adjust the refresh in the tv settings, for it to appear above 30hz in the display settings, but after that i had no issues switching.
Unstable (sid) is basically a rolling distro with almost no QA.
Testing is a rolling distro with some QA gates to stop major problems from unstable flowing in. Except when a new stable release is being prepared - then it’s frozen and QA steps up.
Stable is the official Debian release which happens periodically, versions are largely frozen until the next stable release - bug fixes aside.
Stable is for servers and desktops. Some users might pick testing or sid - in the case of sid the community support contract offered to end users amounts to “if it breaks you get to keep both pieces”.
The attraction of testing and unstable is largely newer versions of software, but the official back ports significantly help stable there, not to mention stable is relatively fresh - have only been released in August this year. IMHO new users should default to stable, and venture into back ports and testing as needed.
(Debian stable is my current Wayland/AMD/steam/pipewire based gaming PC
Yup, and I ran Sid as a daily desktop OS for years. Back in the early 2000s, we were running large parts of a small ISP off it (main admin was a debian contributor).
Does it occasionally break? Sure. Normally temporary dependency problem during apt-get that resolves itself in a few hours.
I agree about snap for Ubuntu. Didnt they also sell some data to amazon a while back?