Linux Gaming
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
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Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam?
No reason to avoid Debian unless you have hardware so very new that it requires the very latest kernel to operate.
If you go with Debian Stable, you can enable Backports for a fairly recent kernel, currently 6.5.10. You could go with Testing or even Unstable if you're addicted to upgrading as often as possible, but chances are you won't need to.
I'm gaming on Debian Stable with Steam in a flatpak. It works great, and is blissfully low maintenance.
At some point, you'll probably run into people claiming that Debian is bad for gaming performance because of "outdated" packages. In most cases, those people don't know what they're talking about. I suggest ignoring them unless they identify a specific performance issue that actually affects you.
Technically it is possible that outdated packages can decrease your performance. Some games may not work because of outdated libraries, but in most cases you should be fine.
Debian is usually very stable, which means drivers and kernel versions will be outdated in comparison with other distros, which can make you lose possible performance. To be fair I wouldn't worry too much about this though since I don't expect the performance to be significantly different, but it's something to take into consideration.
Don't be afraid of trying a different distro, RedHat or Arch based for example, just make / and /home different partitions and you should be able to install over your root without affecting your home so it makes it easier to switch system if you want to.
I haven't chosen cutting edge hardware (AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT) so I don't think drivers should be an issue in my particular case.
I think separating /home is a good idea so I can try some different distros and compare.
A separate /home is a good idea in general. Same with /var
Oh yeah, everything will work, but if next week AMD pushes a driver update that improves performance you'll only get it in a few months. Other than that Debian is a really nice distro, I used it for a while and that's the only complaint I had.
From your other comments you seem to have a system simmilar to mine. I use mint, and i'm very happy with it, feature rich and ubuntu based, without the features you dislike like snap.
Only real step requirs for gaming has been installing some overclocking and heat management stuff like corecntrl, as well as some 32 bit archetecture stuff to run steam.
I'll second Mint as well. I play mostly small indie games but have played Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 5, and Terminator: Resistance with no problems. The worst I've experienced is having to tell Steam to use a different version of Proton for some games (I recently had trouble launching Cyberpunk on Proton Experimental so I downgraded to the next most recent and it worked fine). I also have an AMD GPU so no driver mess.
I'll second Mint, though I haven't done much gaming on it. Before switching all my stuff over to Mint, I did have xubuntu/steam running pretty well for most games I tried up through Doom 2016 (can't remember if I tried eternal) so I can't imagine mint being much worse. As far as gaming specific stuff goes it's got a pretty decent driver manager and time shift preinstalled for when said driver manager breaks things.
If you're interested in using Debian directly, @[email protected] put out a great post on this! It worked absolutely flawlessly for me, it goes over getting things like a newer version of Mesa, newer (or alternative) kernels if that is your thing, along with some extra firmware for AMD cards that aren't present in Debian's packaging yet.
Even just regular Debian is fine, and you can easily install the Flatpak version of Steam if all you want is a newer version of Mesa.
Thank you so much for the link, it's just the kind of information I was after. Very clearly written!
Thanks! I’m the author. If you have any comments or suggestions feel free to let me know. :)
No comments except thank you, and please continue to write similar articles!
Apt pinning is such a nice way to pull in some new packages without affecting the whole system. It's interesting in this specific case and also more generally! I have used it before once or twice but this is the best example I've seen for multiple packages.
I'm using the flatpak version of Steam, if you go down the road - I've read that what few VR games that work on Linux will not work with the flatpak version. I'm sure that could be fixed/worked through. Just something to keep in mind.
debian is good as is, without flat/snap/fart things. If you are used to it then stick with it and you'll be happy and productive in everything you do, backed by a solid maintained os release process.
debians probably fine, but +1 for Nobara. been using it for a few months, not a single complaint. they're even switching to KDE by default in nobara 39, which just released a few days ago
Nobara is at the top of Linux gaming. I used it for half a year or so. But I want to use the aur and hyprland so I will stay on arch
I doubt you'll miss out on anything from using Debian Linux is Linux but I will shill fedora. Love that distro
The thing with Linux is you shouldn't be afraid of distro hopping. Just try any distro you want for a few days, and if you don't like it, move on to another one. Repeat until you find the distro you like the most. You can grab a new SSD and swap your system partition to try the new distro of you don't want to format your current system partition.
Nobara personally is just right for me it's kernel and drivers are alway up to date configured asnd patched for gaming. Even if there is bugs with some package for example they ship with patches applied it is just so convenient. I think learning dnf is well worth it and even if there is some debian only app that you want to install there is alwayd distrobox
DNF as a package manager isn't that hard either, and it's never given me any troubles.
yep with fedora 39/Nobara 39's dnf 5 it is pretty fast too
I would recommend fedora. It has more recent packages than debian and it's also quite stable and easy to maintain
Honestly, I don't think you are going to take that much time to get used to fedora based distros since in my experience the only thing that ended up changing was the name of the package manager and the faster updates.
I would recommend that you use more up to date distros since gaming in Linux has been having fast-paced performance updates and with the new proton stuff which is relatively new and is only to get more patches because valve is investing on it. So picking up fedora might be a good choice since its more up to date and it isn't that different to debian compared to more minimal/advanced distros such as arch and void (but being more advanced as a lot of percs that simpler distros don't have).
I would second up to date distros for the same reasons. I think the WINE guys suggested as much. I'd personally go OpenSuse as it's rolling, up to date, solid and great for KDE.
Nothing wrong with Debian but if this is a gaming PC, why not use a gaming OS?
I use Chimera
It's a gaming PC but I will use it for other things as well. I don't want to complicate other tasks because I've chosen a really specific OS for gaming, if that makes sense.
It shouldn't. A gaming focused OS will just come with all the necessary software and configurations for gaming, and not much else.
Chimera also adds a lot of the cool functionality from SteamOS like the in-game configuration options, Gamescope, and launching directly into the Steam Big Picture mode on boot so you don't need a keyboard or mouse.
This makes it sound like Big Picture is preferred.
Surely I'm not alone in my dislike for it, right?
Right???
I've been happiest with arch, then later manjaro since I didn't have to build it but it's still arch.
There's a lot more software for it with access to AUR. Personally I find it works well for me and I've been using arch and arch-based since 2015.
In case it wasn't clear, I use arch btw.
I use Debian, KDE and steam and it works fine. My only limitation was the hardware itself , the os stays out of the way and proton does its thing.
I mainly play on the deck nowadays as I can lounge around with it.
One word for you... NOBARA. ✌️
Pick what you're comfortable with. In the end, you can get anything running in any distro. Linux is Linux. Worst case you may need to enable unstable repos or cherry pick packages from there.
Some of the "gaming" distros do include patches so if you want an out of the box experience it might make sense to pick one of those. But if you know your way around Linux, it stops mattering because your skills on your preferred distro outweighs the convenience of having it all readily available out of the box.
If you use Flatpaks, some include updated mesa/GPU drivers so the Debian base won't even matter all that much as long as the kernel is new enough. Installing a bleeding edge kernel on Debian is usually fine if you have to as the kernel tries its best to never break userspace.
It'll probably be fine, although I'd personally pick some rolling-release distro for better performance.
In any case, besides the release model I'm pretty sure a distribution you use doesn't matter that much. Usually every somewhat popular distro has the same few packages you need for games to work (32-bit libs, wine, steam, whatever).