Hey folks. I’m a new dad which means my gaming time is at a premium, but I am going through a big cleanse of the enshittification era of the internet right now, and Windows 11 is kinda giving me bad vibes.
Last time I tried to run Linux it was ok and worked the majority of the time, but ray tracing and a few games caused some issues. I was also using game pass which of course doesn’t work on Linux, so I dropped back to windows.
How is Nvidia life these days? I’ve got a 3080 and an AMD 9800X3D so it should be fine for most games I imagine.
I’d also recommend considering a more gaming-focused distro, they are increasingly popular, easy to use and tuned for gaming with everything you’re going to need. SteamOS, Bazzite, PikaOS are all strong choices with rapidly ongoing development at this point (and there are others).
Gaming distros may not be as inherently “stable” as more productivity-focused distros like Mint, but for gaming you don’t really want to be. Gaming is pretty cutting-edge, even on Windows you need to get your updates promptly and keep your drivers up-to-date etc if you want many games to work properly. And that situation is doubly true on Linux since it is still a bit less mature for gaming and some parts of the ecosystem are a bit “experimental”. A gaming distro balances the need for stability with the need for the latest and greatest games to run properly and with good performance.
For gaming, pop os has always been good for me on amd
Same here. I’ve never run into any of the edge cases that need the bleeding edge updates, and I’ve been running the same install for a while without any stability issues.
Yeah, I literally tested my whole steam library. Around 100 games. Only like 3 wouldn’t work at all, and those were old somewhat wonky games. I even got most non steams working too. In steam, a minute looking at proton db and making minor adjustments to the config was needed maybe 5-10% of the time.
Important to note that most of my games are 10+ years old
I’m amazed by how well it works, Proton is literally a game changer! Most of my games are older too, but I purchased the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Farming Simulator 25 on launch day or soon after with zero Linux associated issues. Not being very interested in multiplayer games helps a lot. My only multiplayer game is Elder Scrolls Online, and they’ve made Steam Deck specific tweaks, so I’m lucky there!
I’ll second bazzite, works amazingly well for what it’s intended!