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Thinking of switching my gaming desktop to linux. Should I? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).

Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.

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[-] Psythik@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I can't believe that no one has asked you this question yet (fucking fanboys...):

Do you mind losing access to most features on your GPU, including (but not limited to): RTX HDR, Shadowplay, the Nvidia App, a Nvidia Control Panel end everything it offers, including the 3D Settings page?

If any of this matters to you, you may want to consider switching to an AMD GPU first before you consider Linux. Nvidia does not support it nearly as well as they support Windows. You get a driver that lets you run games, and that's about it.

[-] ipitco@lemmybefree.net 0 points 4 months ago

Afaik AMD isn't fully supported either

And you lose the ability to run tensorflow if you like to do AI

[-] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

DO IT.

[-] somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago

JUST DO IT.

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Take Fedora, as you're already used to it. Steam handles Windows games for you. In 99% of cases they just work. Only games that do not run nowadays are games with unsupported kernel level anti cheat. Look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/ to see if your games are supported. A VM won't help you as that is usually blocked by such anti cheat as well.

If you do have a problem with a non-multiplayer game look at https://protondb.com/.

For games from GOG, Epic or Amazon use Heroic. For every other store you can add the launcher or just the game itself to Heroic.

[-] Quik@infosec.pub 1 points 4 months ago

Bazzite is a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro focused on gaming, this means...

  • out of the box support for Nvidia cards
  • ships with a lot of useful gaming utilities
  • very hard to break as you should primarily be installing Flatpaks and can do rollbacks

Basically all modern Linux distros have virtualization support, so does Bazzite, of course. Actual performance differences between distros is also negligible, so feel free to choose whatever you like.

https://bazzite.gg/ if you're interested.

[-] Quik@infosec.pub 2 points 4 months ago

As other people noted, Bazzite/Fedora Silverblue can absolutely bite you in the foot if you leave the "normal use cases" — and if you're not just gaming on the device, you sooner or later will. All of this is solvable and IMO worth it, but probably not great for a beginner trying to become more knowledgeable.

Tldr good for absolute beginners, good for "experts" (in both cases because it very rarely gets in your way/breaks)

[-] Whostosay@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

I loved bazzite, it was my first out of the box success with Linux gaming, but if you plan to do anything outside of gaming installing stuff can get a little difficult. It was invaluable for teaching moments, but I've moved on to cachyOS and it has been just as seamless and less difficulty installing things after installing yay

My 2c

[-] MoogMuskie@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago

This is why I personally think Bazzite should only be installed on devices you intend to only game on, especially if you have any intention of learning any more about Linux than the absolute basics. It'll be fine for a while for beginners, but you're bound to bump into some things that are a hassle to install and/or keep updated. Perfect examples being for consolafying a PC for playing on a living room TV, or installing it on a handheld PC (Steam Deck etc.)

[-] Crabhands@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago

Always seeing the Bazzite recommendation. Just converted my kid over, 2 weeks ago. 0 complaints which is pretty amazing.

[-] HakunaHafada@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 months ago

Linux Mint Cinnamon was is my first Linux distro coming away from Win10, and I have no issues with it. Mint uses Ubuntu as its codebase, so it's essentially Ubuntu with a different desktop presentation/look/feel.

[-] Pumasuedeblue@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

Agreed. Mint is a very 'new Linux user' friendly distro, and has everything you really need. I've got some recent converts from Windows and even the gamers I've set up are happy with it.

[-] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 months ago

The only thing that kept me booting windows for gaming was destiny 2, which choses not to support running on linux.

The current expansion "edge of fate" is terrible though, so it's full time linux gaming for me.

[-] brandon@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago

I really hope Bungie changes their stance at some point. The new portal in Edge of Fate seems perfect for quick sessions on a Steam Deck, if nothing else.

[-] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 months ago

the portal is a good idea, but how they tied (or rather didn't) it to the rest of the game is currently terrible.
the whole game feels like a broken plate that someone glued together again.. So, i would not expect great things from them currently...

[-] MITM0@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Oh you have Nvidia ? Try out PopOS, they have a special ISO file with Nvidia drivers

[-] beegnyoshi@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago

I see bazzite mentioned a lot here, but wasn't there a post here a while ago saying that it might stop existing if fedora pushes through with the decision to ditch 32bit support? Did they decide not to do it after all?

[-] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 months ago

I think they decided not to, with some (IMO fairly) snarky comment on how that was just a proposal and people were getting needlesely outraged.

[-] usernameunnecessary@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago

The proposal to ditch 32 bit support was withdrawn

[-] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 4 months ago

The amount of these posts make me happy.

[-] rah@hilariouschaos.com 0 points 4 months ago

If you have to ask someone else whether you should switch then you should not switch.

[-] MoogMuskie@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago

They're asking based on their specs whether Linux will run fine for them. Not whether they should switch based on usability. Having to ask if your specs can run Linux fine is not a reason not to switch.

[-] rah@hilariouschaos.com 0 points 4 months ago

They're asking based on their specs whether Linux will run fine for them.

The post does not ask that.

[-] MoogMuskie@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago

Fine, I'll add to my sentence for clarification, but (no offense) it should be obvious I'm referring to gaming since the whole topic is about... gaming on Linux.

They’re asking based on their specs whether Linux will run fine for them, with Gaming.

The title was "Thinking of switching my gaming desktop to Linux. Should I?" In the post, they said:

My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs).

So therefore they're asking whether they should switch to Linux (for gaming) based on their specs. OP even told you that's what they were saying, but you said "I disagree"...

You can't with any sound reasoning disagree that OP asked something, when not only is there the OG post as proof, but they also told you (in implication) that you misunderstood. OP knows what they meant by what they said - you can't tell them they don't know what they meant, when they're literally the person who said it. I get it that you're having a hard time understanding how what they said, means what they said it does, but you're allowed to accept that you misunderstood. You're allowed to be wrong.

[-] Malix@sopuli.xyz 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

IMO, basically any distro with fairly modern (fairly often updated) packages should do. Apart from some build/packaging differences it's all same software anyway. The gaming side of software gets updated fairly often, so that's why you'd probably want frequently updated packages.

"Gaming" distros are basically just selection of gaming specific packages installed as default, instead of lets say productivity apps. You can run VM's in gaming/studio/whatever distros

FWIW, I got 5800x3D, RTX3090 - so, "close enough" same system as you. At least same series cpu/gpu. Running Arch, and gaming has been pretty easy, haven't yet found a game which didn't work - that said, some occasional game has had odd stutters (Darktide, for one. But I haven't tested in months).

Getting things to run did get a bit more involved than "just click it". Some extra compatibility stuff (proton-ge-custom), launchers (lutris, heroic, because GoG Galaxy just refuses to work). Steam & steam-games tend to "just work", although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.

But overall, stuff works, and in case of issues it now just seems to be either disabling ntsync and/or wayland for specific games and gaming away.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

I already installed fedora but games just don't get stable framerates. might have to do a clean install and try again.

[-] Malix@sopuli.xyz 0 points 4 months ago

make sure first that it isn't issue with specific games, some may require some proton flags to be set for them to behave properly. Or just newer/older proton/wine.

in general worth a try to switch the compatibility thingy (technical term),

steam, in game's properties:

but similar option is in lutris/heroic too.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

God damn I literally just did a clean install of fedora 42 and I cannot even get past the stupid setup stage. They changed it so now you choose everything after installing and I cannot get past the timezone select screen. It just freezes

[-] not3ottersinacoat@lemmy.ca 0 points 4 months ago

I seem to recall a bug (but maybe it's only Fedora Silverblue) but anyways try not selecting the option to install 3rd party software, and see if the set up lets you continue. You can then make the selection to enable 3rd party software the first time you open the Software app.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

I don't recall that option being available in the setup

[-] not3ottersinacoat@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

It is, I was playing around with it in a VM just the other day.

[-] cyborganism@piefed.ca 0 points 4 months ago

Just use Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Mint if you want a hassle free, secure, and stable Linux distro that supports everything and works out of the box.

Don't use those gaming centric distros like Bazzite. It's not worth it. Don't use Arch or other bleeding edge distros unless you want to keep troubleshooting your system because of problems or vulnerabilities.

Take it from me. I've been using Linux since 2001 and Ubuntu based distros have always been the best choice for a secure stable OS.

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

I would actually recommend the nvidia image of bazzite since it takes the potential driver module and kernel mismatch problem out of the equation which IMO is one of the most annoying problems an nvidia user can face, and if it somehow bugs out anyway rollback is one or two keypresses away depending on if you hide grub or not.

Virtualization is possible with the boot flags and vfio if needed setup using the "ujust setup-virtualization" script. qemu/kvm, probably not virtualbox which also requires kernel modules iirc.

[-] cyborganism@piefed.ca 0 points 4 months ago

I have had ONLY NVidia cards since my first ever own PC in 2000 when I started college.

I've used Mandrake Linux for a while then switched to Ubuntu when it came out in 2004 and have used that ever since.

I've NEVER encountered any problems whatsoever. In fact, it made using an NVidia card easier because of its built-in third party driver installation tool that takes care of everything.

If something doesn't work, it's very probable that it's because the user messed around with something and caused it to happen.

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 months ago

Yeah back then I was in elementary school. I chased single percent performance gains from bleeding edge because I couldn't just buy better hardware. If you wanted the latest versions of anything ubuntu couldn't do it without iffy unofficial repos and dependency hell. I did it anyway and it sucked.

If you compiled the kernel but forgot to rebuild the graphics modules you had to live cd in, because a 64mb usb stick was like 300 bucks back then and booting off usb wasn't really a thing yet. Then next would be some janky terminal instructions off someones blog printed at the library because phones weren't even moto razr and arch wiki didnt exist yet, then pray it worked and that there was enough time left in the day to do whatever stupid homework needed the computer.

I never liked the nvidia installer and it's control panel that seemingly needed root then somehow fucked up the monitor config while not even applying the driver config, but it was all I knew as I never had a radeon until after the amd acquisition of ati. I also have no idea if the driver was always in kernel or if that was more recent but being able to compile a kernel with some silly buzzword feature that probably only situationally added 2fps to maybe one or two games and not risk graphics related boot failure was a game changer to my broke ass in the early days of working.

Anyway that was peak ubuntu era as I remember it. I mainly used ubuntu with spots of opensuse and some others here and there until whenever the r9 280 came out and then primarily used arch until the the early immutable distros showed up. Now even my dad and grandparents are on bazzite and my mom on aurora and its literally the best thing ever because they actually don't fuck it up anymore and I don't spend every waking hour on call for tech support.

[-] cyborganism@piefed.ca 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah back then I was in elementary school. I chased single percent performance gains from bleeding edge because I couldn't just buy better hardware. If you wanted the latest versions of anything ubuntu couldn't do it without iffy unofficial repos and dependency hell. I did it anyway and it sucked.

Wait wait... if you had an old ass computer, why did you need the bleeding edge stuff? That doesn't make sense.

Also, I'm still skeptical about immutable distros. I like being in control of my PC. And I'm too old school I guess.

[-] usernameunnecessary@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago

Coming from a Steam Deck, I was really happy when I learned about Bazzite. I tried installing it and stuck with it for a few months now and I'm excited to have gotten rid of Windows. It's fast and works well out of the box. Plus I have the SteamOS experience without fuss.

Bonus points for you, it's Fedora based and easy to install on top if Fedora.

Notably I had tried Ubuntu before this and had issues with VRR and a couple of other things. Bazzite is built for this, and it works well.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

I just went straight with a bazzite install since fedora literally did not want to work on my pc

[-] ordinarylove@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 months ago

i love bazzite, just got a new app store too

[-] LSNLDN@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 months ago

Does the rockstar launcher run? I’d like to move over but always wonder about losing access to quite a few games in the process

[-] usernameunnecessary@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago

I think I got to install & launch GTAV without modifications or additional software. I'll confirm and get back

[-] luckyeddy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

From my experience on SteamOS, I’m launching RDR2 through the steam app but I own RDR2 on Rockstar game launcher. I used these steps to get it running: https://expertbeacon.com/can-steam-deck-run-red-dead-redemption-2/

I can only assume it’s similar on Bazzite but I haven’t tried.

this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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