Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

aetris, 10 months ago

Don't see it mentioned here - Nobara. Fedora tweaked by Glorious Eggroll to be as compatible as possible with games ootb. Worth looking at.
I used to use Arch but Nobara works too well for me to go back.
A big thing for me too is the custom version of OBS that the welcome GUI installs is excellent and allows for application specific/exclusionary audio sinks so I can screen record games without having audio from discord/music.

CorInABox, 10 months ago

Seconded for Nobara, gaming is a smooth experience with it

Nyanix, 10 months ago

I've been on Manjaro for 3 years, honestly love it, it's treated me great for gaming and given me so little to have to fix that my wife has also been running it for 2 years.

nlm, 10 months ago

Got to love the wife rating :D

But yeah, I had manjaro on an old chromebook at University, it was pretty nice!

Nyanix, 10 months ago

It's funny, she's become more of a Linux evangelist than me, she really went all in.

nlm, 10 months ago

Sounds like a keeper! :)

Nyanix, 10 months ago

She certainly is <3 celebrating 10 years this year

nlm, 10 months ago

Good for you guys!

Nyanix, 10 months ago

Thank you!

hobbsc, 10 months ago

Mint Cinnamon. Things generally work put of the box. There's the occasional weird config mess to get into but it's Linux.

Bucket_of_Truth, 10 months ago

The standalone Nvidia driver install panel makes installing the right gpu drivers a breeze.

The only problem I ran into is that it won't boot with my main monitor (1440p 165hz) plugged in. I have to use my secondary monitor (4k 60hz) to install the OS and Nvidia drivers first, then shutdown and plug in the main monitor and everything works on the next boot.

BananaTrifleViolin, 10 months ago

Yeah I use Cinnamon too. It's fairly polished and can delve into Ubuntu or Debian when missing something you really want. I find the Nvidia drivers are easy to set up and maintain, and Steam works reasonably well (I have had a few quirks but nothing that I couldn't resolve).

t3rmit3, 10 months ago

I tend to gravitate towards Ubuntu simply because it’s so big and well supported by most things. I’ve run Arch in the past but I’ve gotten too old and lazy for that if I’d be completely honest. I have played with manjaro and endeavour though… and opensuse tumbleweed, rolling is kind of nice.

Are you me? Did you also use BlackArch for a while, and still use Rainmeter? :P

nlm, 10 months ago

Ubuntu does make things easier.

I had everything set up the way I wanted it in Ubuntu the other day… but something still itched a bit so now I’m on Tumbleweed and feeling better. :D

Though Diablo 4 tends to crash after playing it for a while… not sure if I’d have the same issue in Ubuntu or not, might have to triple boot for a bit just to try it out. I really do want to stay here in chameleon land though so it would probably be better to just try to find the cause of the crashing.

I do think this is a pretty common thing among us linux geeks though, never really feeling content and just wanting to try everything. :)

Never did try BlackArch or Rainmeter though!

I’ve played around with plenty of distros though… Slackware, Redhat, Gentoo, Arch, *buntu, SuSE (before they split into openSUSE), openSUSE, Manjaro, Endeavour OS and probably a bunch more that I can’t even remember but those are probably the ones I’ve played around with the most.

ctrl, 10 months ago

gentoo!

i love the versatility it offers, but it’s very much so DIY. it has great documentation. anyone who considers themselves a “linux enthusiast” should try an install in a VM at some point or another, if nothing else it’s a great learning experience.

for gaming in particular: flatpak steam / lutris / bottles. it’s great because it’s completely distro agnostic. i can take the $USER/.var directory and put it on any distro with flatpak installed and it’ll just work.

danct12, 10 months ago

Arch Linux. Been using it since long ago and play most of my games on it.

SlamDrag, 10 months ago

Nobara, Gnome version. I had tons of problems with PopOS on Nvidia GPU with a HiDPI monitor. X11 for whatever reason was completely borked when it came to gaming - I am 100% positive it was a niche issue with my machine, but it happened - and switching to Wayland also caused a bunch of issues.

Nobara worked out of the box with no struggles.

circuitfarmer, 10 months ago

Arch on my laptop but Pop on my gaming rig. At the time I installed it, I wanted the extra relative ease of Pop’s handling on video drivers. I have since switched to AMD, so no driver woes at all since they’re in the kernel, but I have stuck with Pop for that system. If it ain’t broke… who am I kidding, I’ll probably switch to Arch soon.

nlm, 10 months ago

If it aint broke, poke it until it breaks then try something new!

thesanewriter, 10 months ago

As my main I’m currently running EndeavorOS. I’d say it’s pretty good. It does all of the legwork of installing Arch, but comes with minimal bloat and really lets you make it your own.

nlm, 10 months ago

I have tried it but it was a while ago.

When it's installed, what's different than pure Arch?

Tsuki, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

I am currently using Pop!_OS, which is based on Ubuntu and comes with GNOME but because I don't really like GNOME's interfaces, so I swapped it with Sway and i3bar.

I never played modern games on this thing, so I don't really know how well it does, but I heard it's pretty good for gaming.

OmnipotentEntity, 10 months ago

NixOS, not going to lie to you and say it's always easy to get games running on it though. Sometimes it's a complete pain in the ass.

Pixelologist, 10 months ago

Have you tried using a windows VM? If I can figure that out I'm so ready to leave windows completely

OmnipotentEntity, 10 months ago

I haven't had particularly good luck with a Windows VM. Wine and similar frameworks tend to work better. There's no one size fits all solution though.

dewritoninja, 10 months ago

Im running good old Ubuntu with gnome. I mostly play terraria, minecraft I and Bethesda rpgs these days so it does everything I need.

noyesster, 10 months ago

On my gaming desktop, I am using Fedora currently with the Awesome WM. That might change though with all the RH stuff going on. On my gaming laptop I switch between Arch and Void with Qtile on both.

1993_toyota_camry, 10 months ago

I’m using Gentoo.

If I wanted a smooth no-tinkering experience, I’d use Ubuntu. Or hell, steamos.

Sneptaur, 10 months ago

I use Arch with KDE. I don’t recommend Manjaro because it has historically had some serious problems, so for people who want Arch without as much hassle, I’m recommending EndeavourOS. It’s what Manjaro should be like.