Ubuntu is such a bottle of ball sweat of a distro though...
I don't get it. How come so many people choosing Ubuntu, when practically everyone (on Lemmy and even that other site, etc) will tell you to stay away from it? Where exactly are all these people getting their Ubuntu recommendations from?
Probably old self proclaimed tech news sites because goog doesn't give good search results any more, or at all in the past decade or so.
Well, I know for a while Steam only officially supported Ubuntu, and on their developer page It still mentions that they only support Ubuntu, though I don't know if they've just forgotten to update the page:
Steam only officially supports Ubuntu running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or newer and SteamOS, but the Steam for Linux community is extremely resourceful and has managed to run Steam on a large variety of distros. Valve approves of these efforts but does not officially endorse or provide support for them.
Perhaps being one of the first major Distros in the sense of being easy enough for many less tech inclined to switch from windows and not need to know as much command line.
I had tried older and other versions of Linux but back then Ubuntu mostly just worked. Being a leader in that sense has held them in the place where its safe to dive into Linux despite the various other flavors that can do it better. The PR is a lot to overcome for newbies that are overwhelmed on it. It's only later after getting a footing you will be brave enough to try over flavours.
For me Linux Mint is a no brainer place to start with my older hardware than Ubuntu now but I don't think they have the word of mouth like Ubuntu. At least with Ubuntu if they are even aware of something more than Mac or Windows they have probably heard of the name not really knowing what it is. Many aren't Googling Arch for first time installs I suspect.
Would you care to elaborate?
To add to what @Grass wrote:
- Ubuntu has never been a good distro for gaming. The main reason being their outdated packages in their default repos. As a result, you're always missing out on all the latest developments and advancements in Linux gaming - the Linux world moves really, really fast, and each month you get new versions of Wine, your graphics drivers, kernel advancements etc that improves system performance and game compatibility - but you won't get to enjoy any of these features until the next major release of Ubuntu. Also, for some folks, having the newest kernel/mesa (graphics) etc is a necessity if they've got recent hardware and they want to make the most of it. To address these limitations, people have created their own repositories (ppas) containing up-to-date packages, such as the Oibaf repo, but the problem is that these repos tend to break your system, especially when the time comes to do an OS update/upgrade, which is why we do not recommend anyone to use these repos. But as a result, you'll be stuck with an outdated system, and sometimes that means you won't be able to enjoy playing some games because you're stuck on some old version of something where your favorite game doesn't work.
- Ubuntu hasn't been a good distro in general for a long time now - this goes back to more than a decade ago when they made the controversial decision to switch their default DE to their in-house developed Unity, instead of continuing to use Gnome. Unity was, at the time, bloated and clunky, and many people felt it was a wasted effort. Eventually Ubuntu abandoned Unity and adopted Gnome, and the whole community laughed at them like "lol, we told you so". This sort of pattern continued pretty much constantly, where Ubuntu would choose to go for their own, often inferior, in-house solutions - such as Mir instead of Wayland, Upstart instead of systemd, Snap instead of Flatpak etc. The most recent anger from the public comes from their decision to force Snap packages as the default over native packages (when most people prefer either native or Flatpak packages), and the taking over of LXD. In addition to such unpopular decisions, they've been criticized for including bloatware such as Amazon search, unwanted telemetry, or just the general bloat of unwanted apps and services that come by default, compared to stock Debian. Basically, Ubuntu has become the Windows Visa/8/11 of the Linux world.
- There are plenty of gaming oriented distros these days that are a much, much, better choice. These distros come with a gaming-optimised kernel, plus the newest mesa/wine/codecs/drivers out-of-the-box, and they include configs to make things like the newest game controllers and other gaming hardware work properly. Examples of such distros include Nobara, Bazzite, ChimeraOS etc. Or even a general distro such as Fedora, Pop!_OS, EndeavourOS, CachyOS etc would still be a much, much better choice than Ubuntu.
To be absolutely fair: your assessment is most probably true for the people who fit the profile you just described.
But from a „I come from windows and want my steam games to run“ it works fine. Proton runs like 50 games in my library (from 51 so to speak)
I‘d rather say the downsides of ubuntu (from a windows perspective) is that it’s very finicky at times. I couldn’t get xrdp to run on 22.10 back then and had to switch back from pulse to pipewire to get it to run which led to more problems down the road.
And the reason you mentioned Ubuntu is "finicky" was explained above. It is not a good "just works" distro, there's much better options than Ubuntu.
It used to be (one of) the best "just works" distros, but is somehow one of the worst now. Outdated blogposts still recommend it, and Canonical still calls themselves the "most used" desktop distro. The alternatives are just better.
Interesting perspective. I might check out a couple distros just to see what you mean. :)
(Tbf I use ubuntu server for years and that is not finicky at all. Just the desktop somehow is)
I'm not an Ubuntu doomer like most of the internet (I don't hate snap like everyone else), but I did recently switch to OpenSUSE on my gaming laptop and I'm loving it. I switched because I wanted a rolling release distro so I didn't need to worry about waiting for new features. I also wanted to switch to KDE Plasma after using it on my Steam Deck and loving it, but I could have done that while staying on Ubuntu. It was just another excuse for me to try something new.
That said, I will likely never move my server off of Ubuntu. I am totally fine with my packages being old and not getting new features right away because my server must be functioning all the time. Even updating to new LTS releases makes me nervous.
Anyway, if you're happy with Ubuntu, don't let anyone bully you off of it. It's really not bad. It's stable. That's its best feature. Unless there's something specific you want from another distro, stick with what you like.
Thank you very much. There are quite a few people on here who feel very strongly about otherwise inconsequential topics.
I feel like we should open a "touchedgrass" community where everyone can post pics of landscape with their username and the current date to prove they have touched grass recently. This is obviously mostly a joke but I kinda like the idea. :) Would you like to mod that with me?
But from a "I come from windows and want my steam games to run" it works fine
... until it doesn't. You're not going to keep playing the same games forever, right? What if a new game comes out that you really want to play, and it doesn't work in Ubuntu but it works everywhere else? This is actually a fairly common issue, because Ubuntu tends to be so far behind in package versions.
Also, as you mentioned, Ubuntu can be very finicky at times, so there's no guarantee your games will continue to work.
It's best to switch now while your install is still fresh and you don't have much data and customisations, because later on, it'll be a bit of a pain to migrate everything.
I wouldn’t call it „fresh“. I‘m running this machine for over a month daily and for work purposes. I can’t afford to change now. Also, ununtu being finicky and it stopping to work for some undisclosed reason is not in the same ballpark. Also, I just said that 95% of my games run on ubuntu. Who cares if a game comes out that doesnt support it? I sure don’t. I‘ll maybe check out a couple distros in vms and then switch over if they’re insanely good and I need to change something major.
Honestly not really, but on top of recent hate due to snap and etc, I have deeper rooted frustrations from the pre-proton era and having to suffer through dependency hell with ppa and such when trying to use bleeding edge packages to get things working and squeeze out individual frames per second, plain debian not being much better at the time, and just getting old and not even having the patience to slamy keyboard any more.
Well, your frustration is a bit dated but quite understandable. I have not checked mint yet but for someone migrating from windows, ubuntu does work and given the recent changes, it works for everything including games.
FWIW, I have an old steam link. I can't remember what video settings I was getting. But I know they weren't 4K/60hz. I ran one additional cat 6A Ethernet wire to a dedicated KVM from my desktop to my living room OLED TV. I've been very impressed by the result. I've mostly played a lot of my old favorites on various emulators. It's been very nice playing through the metal gear solid series in upscaled 4K and avoiding that crap collection that was just released by Konami.
The steam link is cool and I'm glad to see Valve still supporting it all these years later. But the flexibility of a KVM is really nice. I watched a Steelers stream today just using my TV as another monitor basically. And KDE big screen is very nice for navigating things with a controller and not trying to read tiny text in 4K resolution lol
I think there's a Steam Link app now which doesn't use the physical device, or they might be using Steam Remote Play.
I have the old steam link to. 1080p 60Hz is the max rate specs.
KVM is indeed a good idea!
Sounds awesome! How exactly does this kvm thing work? I‘m using standard steam->steamlink app connnection but also big picture mode.
Best way to describe it:
PC (HDMI & USB) -> transmitter -> Ethernet -> receiver -> TV (HDMI & USB)
I use the receiver's USB connections for connecting controllers and wireless mouse & keyboard. I don't notice any latency whatsoever.
This is the particular one I got:
Basicolor HDMI KVM USB Extender 4K@60Hz KVM Extender Over Cat5e/Cat6 Up to 60m (196Ft), 4 Ports USB,Lossless or Zero Latency, Plug&Play(Point to Point KVM Extender) https://a.co/d/8Ki2lzw
Thats very cool! Thank you for elaborating! :) Would this also work with remote accessing the pc over the web? Then maybe not 4k but I could imagine opening my vpn when away from home and accessing my pc.
No, this only really serves one purpose which is utilizing your TV or other distant monitor as another screen for your laptop or desktop.
The Ethernet wire does not connect to the rest of your network. It only goes from the transmitter to the receiver.
What you're describing is possible however, via some self-hosted services on a server for instance.
Ok! Thanks for clarifying! :)
For gaming like that (remote over the network), I'd recommend sunshine and moonlight. They work great if your network can handle the upload
Thanks for letting me know. Might check it out.
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