I just run Arch, I've been an Arch guy for years and never saw any reason to switch
Slackware current.
This isn't a troll. I use it to game on my dual core pentium lovingly dubbed 'the craptop'. And I use it to game on my mid-tier gaming PC.
Eh, I don't find dnf very limiting nor do I frequently get stymied by a missing package.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Meets all my requirements 😀
I don't think the hard part of linux is getting proprietary GPU drivers. They all have package managers that will grab them for you, after quick google search anyway. Mint will have the most specific google support for more esoteric problems/goals. Pika OS includes gpu driver bundles and is similarly debian based. But it wasn't good at waking from sleep on my old hardware with 1650super. Too hard to fix.
I started with Bazzite but wanted a system that wasn't immutable, so I switched to Garuda. Both have been easy and reliable.
Fedora and steamOS
Endeavour OS! So far it's been smooth for the past 4 years. I've enjoyed it.
Currently Pop!_OS
Bazzite and Mint
Bazzite runs great on my main gaming PC in desktop mode and on my HTPC in gaming mode. Maintenance is minimal and it just works (on AMD hardware), while packages are pretty recent and it's absolutely stable.
I'm on Mint with an RTX 3060ti and Ryzen 5. Pretty much everything "just worked" except for the proprietary software for rebinding my mouse and gaming controller. I found alternative software for the mouse (Logitech g300s) but I'm still having difficulty with the controller (8bitdo Ultimate 2).
You can game on just about any distro -- I'm using NixOS and it's great for many reasons, but also can be a real pain to learn and to solve new problems.
But if you're looking for the easiest to set up that will be most likely to just work and gaming is a priority, go for Bazzite.
I will second Fedora and Debian as extremely solid, well-supported distros, though both will require some initial setup (mostly enabling nonfree repos, especially for Nvidia gpus)
I use stock Arch with i3wm. My girlfriend uses Nobara with KDE.
Just rolling with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Cachy OS on personal PC and Bazzite on steam console (htpc) and a onexplayer handheld. Then just good old steamos on the steam deck.
Another vote for Bazzite. It's been such a smooth experience for a year or so.
Fedora KDE works great for me, but I'm quite comfortable with Linux already
Debian. It wont win any awards for fastest release cycles but it's rock stable with great support for my Ryzen 2700 and 6700xt.
Debain gamer here as well!
There seem to be dozens of us
As a FreeBSD user just trying to game on Unix, I've blown up my Debian machine so many times. A couple of years ago, trying to get CUDA in Blender working AND have a recent enough driver for the Windows games I was playing on Proton was killing me. I don't remember what exactly but it seemed like every time I tried to change something, the whole fragile mess would bork itself.
yeah, back when I used nvidia I had to run their driver installer or nothing would work right, and of course any little system update would bork everything until I ran the installer again. Thankfully everything with AMD just works now.
Thank you for validating my pain.
Mint for two years. Then Arch for a decade. This year I have been trying out CachyOS.
CachyOS KDE + Windows 11 debloated dualboot with games on shared BTRFS drive and WinBtrfs driver
SteamOS on a Steam Deck.
When I want to game, I want to game, not be stuck playing a round of "tech support simulator"
Nobara (Fedora)
Tried Bazzite for a year. Was fun but now back to a normal distro.
Bazzite. Literally built for gaming.
NixOS. Works great. I'm a bit of a masochist.
Arch Linux. I wanted to try Hyprland with something and I felt like it was the easiest with Arch.
Hyprland isn't officially supported on that nvidia card
Well, I just gave my reason for using Arch. Pre-Turing cards are already problematic on Linux, not just with Hyprland.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed here, both on my desktop and Steam Deck. i like the stable rolling release model. Allows me to get shiny new things that have at least gone through automated tests.
And in case anything goes wrong it comes with snapper configured by default for easy rollbacks.
Comes with a bunch of warnings for Steam, is there some postinstall setup needed before gaming is convenient on opensuse? Or am I out of loop, I was under the impression that it's not that good for that https://en.opensuse.org/Steam
Luckily I did not read those warnings so they did not apply to me.
So far no problems.
Yes! Tumbleweed squad.....rise up.
This got me started with Linux. Such a great first distro.
Fedora on my desktop, bazzite (rebadged fedora) on my steam deck.
I'm always a lil surprised how few fedoras I see on these posts. Fedora is chill. Considering the difference between distros is basically a package manager, seems weird the second most bleeding edge distro doesn't get much love.
I've been using Nobara for about 2 years and it's been very good.
Fedora
Bazzite and Mint
Pretty much any distro will work for gaming these days. Really up to personal preference. I use Arch but have heard good things about Pop!_OS.
I was on pop for a while! It was cool.
Why does the pop shop suck though? Why?? Why is it so slow, why does it crash so much? Why is this such a problem with so many users? It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, it was more like an unnecessary brick the camel had to carry.
Bazzite on the living room PC.
I game on Fedora because it was just the OS I installed on my gaming PC when I moved to Linux. Everything is fine between Steam, Heroic, and Lutris. The NVIDIA drivers were easy to install from the App Store and the only game that doesn’t run well is Death Loop but there’s been some updates and I haven’t tried it in six months so it may be better now. There was a memory leak apparently but I think there were more problems.
Rocking Garuda here!
Me too!
Manjaro (Arch) with hyprland for my window manager.
Void with X11 (fvwm3). The fussier games tend to be online live-service titles; every new release Genshin Impact does a new weird.
Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
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