Recommended linux variant for gaming.

BananaTrifleViolin, 5 months ago

That valve uses Arch is irrelevant in all honesty. Proton is not a Valve product, Valve is merely one of its users and contributors, and it is not wedded to one distro..Similarly Valves own Steam packages are not distro specifi, and there are other gaming platforms to consider which also benefit from Proton (for example you can get Gog windows games working in Linux too quite easily), as well as all the Retro gaming options.

Pick a distro you personally like. I use Mint as I like the cinnamon desktop interface and the distro is pretty much good to go from fresh install. I use Mint both as a dual install with Windows on my PC and also within VMs in Windows. I still spend a lot of time using Windows because of specific games compatibility and work related apps.

EndeavourOS seems a good choice if you do want to go the Arch route but it's only something I've played with in a VM.

If you want something gaming specific then Draugar seems like a good choice - it apparently uses Ubuntu LTS but with the mainline Kernel updates optimised for gaming. But I have no personal experience with the distro.

I also see a lot of people seem to like Pop!_OS, but again no personal experience.

I've had no issues with Mint on my setup.

3h5Hne7t1K, 5 months ago

Proton is most certainly a mission critical Valve product. But, yeah, use whatever. I swear by Fedora.

sugar_in_your_tea, 5 months ago

Exactly. Proton is Valve’s name for their WINE-based product. It’s basically WINE with some patches to work with the Valve ecosystem.

It’s also largely community driven, but that didn’t make it not a Valve product, Valve still controls what goes in and what doesn’t after all (which is why projects like Glorious Eggroll’s proton builds are so prevalent, sometimes you want to try stuff Valve hasn’t approved yet).

gingernate, 5 months ago

Proton is developed by valve, with help from the company behind wine.

JTskulk, 5 months ago

I moved from Kubuntu to Endeavor (Arch-based) and was also afraid of bleeding edge stuff breaking all the time. I gotta say I was pleasantly surprised by how stable it is. The only couple issues I had was 1 bad kernel version and vmware update. I learned how to roll back and avoid upgrading these 2 packages for a couple weeks until the new versions of both fixed everything. I was also reluctant to learn a new package manager since I already know apt, but yay is arguably easier to use than apt. My gaming has been great, no issues.

kariboka, 5 months ago

Garuda is amazing

chemicalwonka, 5 months ago

I think PopOS is the best option if u have Nvidia graphics card

mlg, 5 months ago

Fedora. Cutting edge but works out of box. Very little change in use compared to Ubuntu.

Debian is good but very stable so no guarantee for some package updates which is useful for gaming and maybe proton.

On a related note, this is pretty useful: davidotek.github.io/protonup-qt/

josefo, 5 months ago

Debian with KDE Plasma desktop, it’s unbeatable.

netchami, 5 months ago

Personally, I really like Garuda Linux and CachyOS for Gaming. You can also check out ChimeraOS or uBlue Bazzite if you want something closer to the Steam Deck.

Linux Mint Debian Edition and Fedora are some general recommendations of mine. Nobara is a fork of Fedora optimized for Gaming.

sugar_in_your_tea, 5 months ago

I always recommend Linux Mint Debian edition. I don’t use it, but I’ve had friends who’ve had good luck with it. Straight Debian is a great choice as well. If packages aren’t new enough, you can always use testing and keep a really stable experience.

It honestly doesn’t matter much which you pick unless you’re using the absolute latest hardware or something. I personally use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, which has worked really well for me. I don’t recommend it because there just isn’t as much help available online specific to the OS, so I tend to recommend more mainstream distros. I used Arch for a few years before I switched, and Tumbleweed feels pretty much the same, but with less fiddling.

Anyway, regardless of what you pick, feel free to come back and ask questions. Most problems have similar solutions regardless of distro because Linux is Linux, so please don’t hesitate to ask.

gnuplusmatt, 5 months ago

Fedora or Nobara if you’re lazy are a good option. If an immutable variant appeals, I have a good time on Kinoite. There is a gaming centric ublue version now too IIRC

DLSantini, 5 months ago

Garuda or Chimera, depending on what you want, exactly.

heleos, 5 months ago

I use tumbleweed, but I had a strange issue with the flatpak version of heroic launcher. I ran a benchmark of cyberpunk 2077 with the flatpak heroic, and was averaging 100 fps. I had nixos installed on a separate hard drive and that benchmark was 160 fps. I thought there was an issue with opensuse, but I installed the flatpak version of heroic on nixos and also got 100 fps. So I installed the regular version on tumbleweed and have 160 fps. I would keep that in mind when looking at programs to launch games, whether it’s wine, bottles, heroic, lutris, etc

hemko, 5 months ago

Debian is exactly pike Ubuntu, with all bullshit removed never added

Ibaudia, 5 months ago

Realistically just use what you prefer. The differences between distros, even when it comes to performance, are very small when it comes to gaming. The most important things IMO are good Wayland support, stability, and consistent updates.

brenno, 5 months ago

Anyone that has video drivers and flatpak should work in your case. If you dislike Ubuntu and don’t like the direction, usually poops and mint are the ones recommended.

iturnedintoanewt, 5 months ago

Nobara is specifically customized for gaming, created by Glorious Eggroll (from Proton-GE) himself, with specific packages which he tells you not to install as flatpak so you don’t lose the optimizations he made.

MrPoopbutt, 5 months ago

What kind of optimizations?

iturnedintoanewt, 5 months ago

Here it lists a bunch.