Hey guys, I’m wondering if there exists a noob friendly Linux distro specifically for gaming? I’m curious to try out Linux, but have absolutely zero experience with the OS. Any tips, hints, advice would be super welcome! Thanks!
Garuda https://garudalinux.org/ Arch is the steam recommended base (which Garuda is) & wine is easier to manage. Bottles, Lutris yada yada lol Cautions might be btrfs & or understanding a rolling release and the Zen kernel. Garuda will push your hardware pretty hard with its tuning but for games that’s what you want.
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I guess it was too much to expect any linux distro to be noob friendly. Most of that apart from Wine I have no idea what are.
Linux isn’t noob unfriendly really. The days of things being cryptic are pretty long gone. Most any of the 1.3 million distros have EZ point and click installers and a lot of hand holding. Lots of projects like the GOG and Epic *nix launchers. Lutris is basically a “Wine” manager with presets for installing specific games. Honestly you will have far less BS than Windows. Fresh Windows install == hours of F*cking with finding drivers, fighting why various chipset like things drivers aren’t being seen bla bla. Linux you pretty much are good the second the machine turns on, including the installer since most are live and you want watch youtube or play a game WHILE you install.
Having said that if you run an nVidia GPU Garuda will also be a better choice but EndevourOS will also be good for “ez” no fuss proprietary drivers. GPU is about the only driver you will ever have to care about however if you’re running a Radeon the open source drivers are killer.
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I’ve a 3060TI so yeah Nvidia, I’ve been toying about in my mind with swapping over from windows, as I’ve been having a very persistent browser hijacker that seems to be made of titanium and is immune to everything I can throw at it. I’ve heard that Linux is more secure by it’s nature, so it intrigues me, but as a gamer who is used to Windows, I’m scared?
Scared of what? No really? Nothing to be scared of. What’s the worst that happens? You go back to Winblows? Back up your files on another drive, install, learn, explore. It would also be a good idea to figure out either way where you are getting this infection from.
While Linux is better ( and there are specific distros if you want INSANE security ) if you keep getting or can’t remove a virus or malware there are other things at play that you may want to address no matter what OS you run.
As a side note I play Arma 3, Escape From Tarkov and tons more just fine, as well as Audio Video production 
OP do yourself a favor and test your Linux distro of choice on a separate machine before you jump ships.
Also backup all your data before the switch.
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@NukeDukem You assume he has other machines “just laying around” much less ones with RTX 3XXX GPU’s to test with? Kinda an insane suggestion to make. It would be more reasonable to just buy a separate hard drive to install to. Even that is overkill when depending on his hard drive size he can just resize a partition and dual boot for testing. though dual booting can get real festive with Windows always trying to destroy everything. Hence a second drive, even a FLASH drive would be more feasible.
Don’t assume what I assume.
Never said about testing Linux on the same hardware. Installing Linux on bare metal is always more fun than in VM. And you can do it on a potato-class machine.
Main purpose of this is to familiarize yourself with the OS not to run AAA game benchmarks on your RTX.
That said your suggestion about separate drive might be enough.
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If you want to just try linux, I recommend keeping the install on a separate drive and not deleting your windows install.
“Gaming on Linux” is not the best experience and still isn’t something to recommend unless you’re prepared to tinker and/or pass up on new releases for months/years at a time.
I would encourage you to watch LTTs video series about switching to Linux for month as “noob” gamer
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yeah I saw that on release. That’s why I’m asking here, if a tech guru like Linus was having problems, I at least want to ask around first.
@aj0413 NOOOOO to the LTT that’s like Here watch misinformation. Sure his struggles are real but they are due to him not knowing. The focus should be on the OP going to sources to KNOW not watch others that don’t know haha.
Gaming on Linux is fine…depending on what you play. I have no issues for the games I play, but he’ll have to test to find out if the games he plays runs OK or are dumpster fires.
@NukeDukem you’re right on that. My first thought though is testing really needs to involve navigating the nVidia driver issues (if any). I mean hell he can learn to use a term on Windows given the Linux for windows dealie.
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Linus IS NOT a tech guru, he’s a marketing Guru. I mean he makes his living dropping expensive hardware ;p
This is why when stuff gets serious Linus has to call Wendell in…
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I assumed OP is complete noob, troubleshooting Nvidia drivers before you know how to use sudo apt install my-software might be lil daunting.
Also yeah. Linus is not a guru. More in ‘windows gaming pleb’ category.
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@NukeDukem Sure but when he fires up WSL first. Tool around with some commands, no OS change needed. Kinda sad to say that but that’s the reality now. Also why Garuda is my recommend. Lots of EZ panels to bulk install all the fancy gaming BS, drivers are installed and loaded by default, pretty install and go.
It really, really, really depends on what titles you want to play and how important your time is to you. I, personally, just like the ability of knowing I can click run and play a game; I have little spare time to tinker around in Linux whenever I want to try some random new AAA title. That’s also the philosophy I used in building my machine: 5950x, 3090, 64Gb RAM → zero caring about “optimal” settings; I just click run and default to high settings.
Also, the best way to clean up a windows machine is to completely wipe and re-format the partitions after backing up critical data. If you’re consistently seeing the same malware/virus, I’d also re-evaluate how you use the machine to better your computer use practices.
Windows security is fine; it’s just that the operating system basically puts you in charge of your safety by making you a default local admin and so on. It’s also the most widely targeted platform. You shouldn’t trust you cyber health to what OS/software you use, but in knowing how to use it appropriately.
The LTT videos were made to specifically showcase what the experience of an average windows gamer switching to Linux would be like, up to and including, the fact that he and Luke spent time on forums and wikis attempting to teach themselves by learning from others and documentation.
It’s pretty much a 1:1 with OP here
Best option you have it to get a cheap SSD and install it as secondary drive in your system…
Install a distro on it and try from there.
It’ll give you a playground where you can fuck up all the things and just reinstall if needed. But if you need to get things done, you can always switch back to your Windows drive.
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indeed I am a complete noob, the closest I’ve been to linux EVER is looking over an engineering major friend back in 2012?
This 10000000%
I do have a spare ADATA 120gb SSD. Maybe I’ll install on that. Gotta push it into the m.2 slot (didn’t have the little hold down screws, so I just let the sticky hold it in place.)