I am switching to Linux for the first time.
I heard Mint is really good but am not sure exactly which distro is best to use with Steam, as well as with newer games, as I primarily use my computer for gaming.
I generally play games like Final Fantasy XIV, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Elder Scrolls Online, and Total War: Warhammer 3.
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Technically speaking it is not a distribution.
“Bazzite is a custom image of Fedora Atomic Linux 40, utilizing Universal Blue’s custom image framework designed to bring users the best in Linux gaming for their PCs, including the Steam Deck and other handhelds.”
Bazzite 3.0 Installer is here!
I’m too busy playing games and having no issues, to write why it’s amazing.
I am at 237 days with no issues, and that issue was Valves anyway.
Newsletter:
I used to write personal GitHub gists in the 6 years I’ve been using Linux/Fedora. To share with others to tweak their Fedora installs for gaming. Don’t have to do that anymore!
Bazzite has been wonderful. I went in skeptical about immutable distris for gaming but Bazzite has been such a great experience.
Using NVidia GPU? Use Pop OS. Managing drivers is really easier on it.
Anything else and whatever looks good to your eye.
I’m using Steam without any issues on Linux Mint. If you consider that, people prefer installing the .deb from the website over flatpak or the version of the Software Manager in Mint.
flatpak borks VR, per steam. For the Linux compatible non VR games Ubuntu worked great under Gnome. I am most of the way to having VR working but I had to switch from Gnome on Ubuntu to Kubuntu. Now to figure out how to get the room setup to run, some other file is running and setup cannot launch. 1 step at a time.
Most distros are going to run games just fine, but if you want something specifically tuned for games I recommend Nobara Linux. It comes with everything you need out of the box.
I would check the linux gaming wiki’s distro recommendations: https://linux-gaming.kwindu.eu/index.php?title=Getting_started_with_Linux#Recommendations
Mint is fine for daily use type stuff, but there are some odd gaming bugs. IIRC Cinnamon (Mint’s default desktop environment) specifically has higher input lag than Gnome or KDE, and Lutris dropped official Mint support due to issues from Mint’s tweaks.
I personally use Pop!_OS and it’s been pretty good, although I have been a little frustrated about the 22.04 base, as I’ve noticed some packages (like Mangohud and GOverlay) are very out of date. But aside from that, I have no complaints.
I will say, personally, I’ve noticed some odd behaviors that seem to be related to Cinnamon… Overall very good experience but definitely considering changing because of those issues.
Which makes me sad since I’m really liking it otherwise
To Cinnamon? What did you experience, please?
The two I can think of offhand:
Trying to get Rocksmith 2014 to work with my Real Tone Cable, which I did have working for a while. Using Pulse Audio, the audio works perfectly except the game doesn’t see the cable, I suspect because Pulse is processing it like a microphone. The fix is to set Proton to use Alsa for audio and set Pulse to disable that device so it is available to the game. Now, when I launch it, the audio is horribly corrupted and the input from the cable is all over the place. This isn’t caused by Cinnamon because it happens in KDE too.
The part I suspect is a Cinnamon issue is the graphics flash in and out when I do that, and not just the game. I have 3 monitors and it happens on all three of them. KDE does not do this.
The second issue may be related to the first: sometimes when a program exits from a bad state, the icon in the task bar remains and the only way to get rid of it is to relog. This happens every time I exit Rocksmith if I click the button to close while the screen is blanked or partially blanked, but it’s not the only program I’ve had this happen with. I’ve also had it happen on two different taskbar panel apps, the default one and one I’ll have to go hop on my computer to give you the name of, though when I switched the default taskbar had a couple dead icons and they didn’t appear on the new one until the next time.
I’m not on the LTS kernel that ships with Mint, I had to upgrade to the current branch to get my video working.
I’ve not done much troubleshooting on the second, and my troubleshooting on the first is focused on solving the audio problem as I think the graphical problem will at least not be triggered once that’s working right.
I’ve also had other issues I’m not sure if they’re Cinnamon related, Mint related, general Linux related, or hardware/driver related, but I’ve had issues with the screens not sleeping while the screen is locked, and on a laptop the system not sleeping while on battery. I know suspend is buggy, but I’ve had it work properly on the same system with MX Linux (dual booting).
Thank you for elaborating!
Anyone have advice for someone on Nvidia that heavily uses discord screen sharing?
I use Pop! OS Linux. Seems to work pretty well for me.
EndeavourOS
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I found that Steam ran flawlessly on both Fedora and openSuse. I’ve played Age of Empires II, Half Life, Half Life 2 etc, Skyrim, Firewatch; all with no problems.
nobaru
Fedora/KDE (on all AMD hardware).
No brainer, everything just works.
And for those games that aren’t Steam based, I use Bottles, and then use the feature inside a Bottles that adds the game to my Steam library, so they can be launched directly from Steam.
Fedora seems to have the best support for hardware, of all the distros that I’ve tried.
