I have a home built PC that I want to get off Windows 11.
Specs:
- Ryzen 3700X, upgrading to a 5800X3D soon
- RTX 2080 Super
- 500GB NVME for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for files, programs, etc.
- 1440p Ultrawide monitor
- an 8bitdo Ultimate controller
Usage:
- I usually play indie games, emulators, and occasional AAA games. Most of my library is on Steam, with some games on GOG, e.g. Cyberpunk.
- I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
- I also write game mods, so I need a distro that is a good fit for software development (C++, Python, and Lisp).
- Random miscellany: I use mullvad VPN, stream movies from a friend’s plex server, and use an SFTP client to back up photos and videos from my phone.
I’ve been an on/off Linux user in the past, so I know my way around basic/intermediate terminal usage and configuration. Buuuut every previous attempt to move to Linux ended in disaster, so I have little patience for asterisks, strings attached, etc. If you’re offering a distro I’ve never heard of before, you’re probably gonna be hard pressed to convince me.
Thanks for the help!
I’m currently on Linux Mint, works pretty well out of the box. Steam games and indie games and even old windows game work (with lutris and/or bottles).
However I should warn, I also have a Steam Link. It does stream, but depending on the game the framerate can get very laggy. I’m running on a RTX 2070 tho. Not sure I can recommend steam link on Linux yet.
Everything else works great.
Having read through some of the comments I just wanted to add one thing. If you find that one distro doesn’t quite do what you need, don’t be afraid to wipe it again and install a different distro. I migrated from windows 10 to Linux mint, I found it frustrating for gaming, and then from mint I switched to cachyOS, which is built from the same OS that the steam deck uses. I haven’t had any similar issues since. Find what works for you, and don’t be afraid to try something else
Fedora KDE.
upvoting the bazzite. if you want to play steam games its the obvious go to. I went to it from zorin and enjoying it.
Bazzite. Fedora based, “atomic”, has nvidia drivers and windows compatibility utilities preinstalled. Atomic means easy rollback after update in case if something breaks, and it probably doesn’t expect you to use command line much. It is expecting users to install apps with flatpak so make sure flathub has the software you need (I think it does).
I have never personally used Bazzite, but atomic distros and namely Bazzite are known to be very user friendly and breakproof.
Steam Link is available for Linux. I suppose that most Steam-things are.
I’ll say this one thing: bazzite is super great if you’re keeping it simple. If you want something “weird”, you’ll need to be ok following directions and editing config files.
The immutability means some things are a few steps harder to setup. For example, today I was installing a service that will let my bazzite machine always be available as a Spotify Connect target so anyone in the house can play music through the living room speakers. The Spotify connect server will be always running in the background, even after reboot. Installing it took 3 extra steps than doing it on Ubuntu, Arch, or Fedora. Not impossible, just a few extra steps to make a distrobox and connect into it, and then connect that into a service on the bazzite side.
I will say though, Kagi Assistant has been a lifesaver for me for getting all my Linux machines setup. I’ve done more in the last year with Linux than the 20 years before of using it as my home OS.
It’s so easy now just to ask a chat prompt how to do something and then get help if it doesn’t work perfectly on the first try. Taters gonna tate, but I absolutely love AI tools for learning how Linux works, especially the trickey immutable ones like bazzite. Even though I’ve been using Linux for twenty years, I’d have dropped bazzite in the first week if it wasn’t for AI chat tools helping me bend it to my designs. I just can’t be bothered spending a lot of time learning an immutable OS when I’m happy with Arch and Ubuntu. However, now with chat tools, I’m loving bazzite and have no plans to switch off it as my daily driver.
editing config files
I’ve got no aversion to it, but this isn’t something you really need to do in Bazzite.
I wouldn’t say things are harder with immutable, per se, just different. If you don’t already have years of Linux workflow programmed into your brain, then it’s just as easy as learning a regular distro.
And no, you don’t need to use ChatGPT, just search google. If you’re not finding help for your question, replace “Bazzite” in your query with “Universal Blue” or “Silverblue” as they will almost always have identical solutions.
Not sure why you got downvoted. Bazzite is great.
Plot twist: it was I, OP, all along! Let me explain why.
Whenever I see these distro recommendation threads, all kinds of people come out to make a comment. Many if not most are well-intentioned, but the kind of person that bothers me the most is the evangelist. The kind of person who’s blind to the limitations and drawbacks of the thing they are espousing.
If you’re gonna recommend a distro, I sure hope you’d have some personal experience with it. Otherwise, how do you know what it’s limitations are? So to admit you’ve never used Bazzite even though you’re recommending it, it just seems irresponsible. “You have a peanut allergy? Try this Pad Thai restaurant! I’ve never been there but I hear it’s great!”
After discussing with a few more developer friends of mine, they advised me not to use an atomic/immutable distro, because setting it up for development is a chore. I’d apparently have to learn how to use distrobox, set up containers, and learn an entire other flavor of linux to set up a development environment. As a reminder, I did say in the OP that I needed something I could program on as well, and Bazzite sounds like a poor fit for that use case.
Maybe some haters of atomic distros. Never imagined people hating them more than me. But what if not this…
What is there to hate? I understand if you don’t prefer how it works, or if you’re used to doing things a certain way which doesn’t work on atomic… But hate seems a little extreme
Atomic distros are not my cup of tea. They are perfect for certain cases, but, you know, I kind of feel irritated by how often I see people overpraising them. It’s like, this is just an option, that is useful in some cases, and useless in other. Why am I sometimes seeing people making a holy grail out of atomics?
I suspect it’s the recommendation from someone who hasn’t used the product.
I can understand people not being comfortable with the idea of running a constant cutting-edge distro.
I’m a very old-school Linux user (the very first distro I tried was Red Hat back in 1996), and I’ve had the chance to try most distributions over the years from Debian to SuSE, Slackware to Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Arch Linux, and various derivatives in between. I can say I know most of them.
Debian and all its derivative distros like Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, etc., are a bit too dated for nowadays’ desktop PC needs. Yes, I know some of them have some new fancy desktop stuff now (like COSMIC on Pop!_OS), but it’s like having a BMW X1 body with a Toyota 86 engine. Very fancy to look at, but not very powerful for modern hardware.
I would never recommend Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS for a modern desktop PC.
While it’s not my current distro, I’ve tried it and found it to be an excellent compromise between stability and modern tweaks (including some optimizations similar to what CachyOS does), so I strongly suggest looking into Nobara (https://nobaraproject.org/). It’s Fedora-based, it’s not immutable like Bazzite, and it comes out of the box with a lot of tweaks for gaming (see https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/#modifications).
Give it a try!
On other comments and what you’ve said in your other comment, I think you’d be just interested in Nobara or CachyOS. At least, if you want an out of box working experience but still have the ability to tinker and develop relatively easy.
You might prefer Nobara because it’s Fedora based rather than Arch, and your hardware specs aren’t bleeding edge anyway. If you want a bit more stability than that though, and don’t mind doing the set up yourself, plan vanilla Fedora could also work and you just add what you want / need.
I’d avoid any recommendations for immutable distros like Bazzite because they’re best for beginners that aren’t too tech savvy, or people very familiar with Linux and have no issues mucking about with OS-tree or running a distrobox. Really no in-between.
I also have 8 bitdo controllers and I do recommend updating them on Windows before you get rid of it, depending which you have - some can be updated via a Chrome based browser but others only through Windows really.
I’ve switched to Fedora recently and it feels like a well-balanced everyday distro. The software is fresh enough, you get regular updates, but the system is stable and super easy to install.
Pick one, that is the one
Yeah I feel like you can game on anything these days. I’m on Arch, which is what SteamOS is based on afaik. Works great. Gaming on Steam and Heroic launcher for Epic games. No complaints.
I love how there are already 38 replies. Linux distro questions are like Lemmy catnip, heh.
Fort what its worth:
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I have very similar hardware: 7800, 3090, 1440p ultrawide, NVMe+SATA
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Similar needs (GoG, game modding, python, Plex, photo backup)
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Problems with linux before.
CachyOS has been my “end boss” distro.
Ive had the same stable partition for like ~3 years now, which Ive never had on linux so long. Its just perfect in so many ways, like development libs being optimized, and every gaming/optimization package you could ever want being packaged by the distro. It saved me from getting hacked or screwing up my own system in a few ways.
THAT BEING SAID,
I still dual boot to (heavily neutered) Windows. Some games, like Cyberpunk, just seem to perform slightly (but measurably) better on Windows when I A/B benchmark them, even when I try to make linux the best case scenario.
And some things I do (like HDR content wheb hooked up to a TV, or rendering HEIF files) still have some quirks on linux.
You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.
You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.
How is support for NTFS these days? Any degradation in performance or stability if I run games off a separate NTFS drive?
In my experience it works with some games but doesn’t with others. And if it breaks, the game just stops without any error message/information (you can get some info on the terminal). I would avoid it if at all possible. NTFS supporz is also overall still rather poor (e.g. my Mint install recently stopped working with NTFS drive until I ran chkdsk on Windows).
I haven’t benchmarked NTFS vs Linux partitions in games, but it’s fine. No stability issues. You can absolutely install GoG games there, and run the same files in Linux or Windows.
I have run benchmarks for more extreme workloads (like writing tens of thousands of image files for a dataset), and Linux F2FS and XFS tends to handle it waaay better than NTFS. But this isn’t really applicable to gaming.
The issue, as always, is the classic Linux thing if “you have to configure it right.”
It’s best to edit the NTFS drive’s mounting options, in /etc/fstab, and put it in a special “compatibility” mode to work better with Windows. I am away from my PC, but I can find the documentation later if you wish.
Reading Bazzite’s website, it seems very strict that NTFS is unsupported and outright catastrophic.
NTF
If you are coming from Windows and plan to game on a secondary drive with games already installed on it, then we regret to inform you that the NTFS filesystem is unsupported for PC gaming on Bazzite.
Playing games off of NTFS causes various issues, including but not limited to games not launching at all, and will eventually result in data corruption and permanent data loss!
I’d appreciate that thank you
Another plus of CachyOS: the Arch wiki, suppemented by their own.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NTFS#Prevent_creation_of_names_not_allowed_by_Windows
(linked from there): https://man.archlinux.org/man/mount.8
https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/automount_with_fstab/
Here’s how my /etc/fstab file (which controls how drive partitions are mounted at boot) looks:
UUID=30F6DF29F6DEEDDA /home/alpha/Windows ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,ro,iocharset=utf8 0 0 UUID=1496470F9646F132 /home/alpha/Storage ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0-
lazytimeanddiscardare performance things for SSDs. -
sys_immutablemarks files with the “system file” attribute in Windows (like stuff in the Windows folder) as unchangable on linux, as you don’t want to mess with these. -
uuid/gid explicity sets the owner as me, as Windows does not handle granular file ownership like linux does, hence its best to default to a user explicitly.
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iocharset=utf8andexecare probably redundant, but makes sure it doesn’t use an ancient linux defaut. -
I will quote the
windows_namesdescription from the link above:
Prevents the creation of files and directories with a name not allowed by Windows, either because it contains some not allowed character (which are the characters “ * / : < > ? \ | and those whose code is less than 0x20), because the name (with or without extension) is a reserved file name (CON, AUX, NUL, PRN, LPT1-9, COM1-9) or because the last character is a space or a dot. Existing such files can still be read and renamed.
Note I have the Windows partition set as
ro. Read-only. So linux can read files of the windows partition, but can’t write or change anything, just in case./Storage is my SATA drive, which I have set as
rwso linux can write files too.
And FYI, I have my linux partition (and a secondary NVMe drive) set as f2fs. I’ve been happy with that filesystem for a long time:
UUID=787e85c8-5a65-4265-ad91-de756ac2a8d3 / f2fs defaults,gc_merge,lazytime 0 1
A lot of issues you see surrounding NTFS (like games not working or reported corruption) are because people and distros don’t set these options.
But CachyOS may default to some of this by now. I set this up explicitly a long time ago.
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I use Bazzite. The Mullvad VPN gui app works on it, but you will have to either add the Mullvad repo and layer the package, or install the local .rpm file (using rpm-ostree), and manually update it whenever there is an update.
Sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.
If you want to use the aur, all you need to do is create an Arch distrobox (everything you need to do it is pre-installed, including a gui app for distrobox if you don’t want to do CLI). You can then “export” anything you install on the box to your host OS to be opened with one click with no noticeable overhead.
And yes, you will be able to play your Steam games on the TV with Linux. Probably better and more easily than with Windows nowadays.
Steam Link has never been able to figure out that my ultrawide monitor and TV don’t have the same aspect ratio, so I have to go into Windows settings to change the resolution. Don’t suppose that’s easier on Linux?
Edit: Fun fact: Bazzite’s Live USB doesn’t have Steam installed on it so I can’t test out that functionality, and Steam only offers a deb package that you can’t install because Bazzite is immutable. Bazzite says they’re not going to change that so I think I’m crossing Bazzite off my list.
Mullvad vpn is the vpn for an intellectual
Well, their founder was recently discovered to be funding far right groups in Sweden. The rest of the company is apparently very unhappy with this. My subscription lasts until next year so I’m holding off on renewing until the dust settles there.
The party they funded is literally lead by a leftist extremist…
The company is only sad about it because people got mad, but lets be real. People would get mad regardless of what party he donated to.
They are nationalist racists trying to cloak themselves with populist leftist ideas. This is the leader of that party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
Remember; the Nazi’s did the same thing by strategically calling their party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, despite them not being socialist nor a working class party. This was chosen because Socialism was gaining popularity, and thus the Nazi’s thought it would help their chances of getting votes and public support.
No they are definitely left-wing.
Yes I have seen that article, but if you look at the video that is attached to the article it is very clear that he is talking about…
- Migrants that commit crimes
- Migrants that does not want and actively avoid, being part of Swedish society
There is nothing right or left wing about throwing out people who commit murder och rape. That is pretty standard in most parts om the world even, because a nation has no obligation to let non-citizen criminals stay in the country.
ÖP is vert much on the workers side, and have pretty vocally advocated for a smaller but stronger state and shorter work week.
Migrants that does not want and actively avoid, being part of Swedish society
You’re not going to find many leftists that aren’t vehemently against deporting people for not integrating, especially leftists who believe in abolishing borders.
There is nothing right or left wing about throwing out people who commit murder och rape. That is pretty standard in most parts om the world even, because a nation has no obligation to let non-citizen criminals stay in the country.
You… you do realize Trump got elected on that exact rhetoric? People voted for him because “He would only get rid of the bad ones”.
Yes, not all leftist thinks the same after all.
No he got elected on “illegal immigration”. We are talking about people convicted, in Swedish courts for violent crimes and yet are still not deported.
That’s just veiled racism, dude. Racists always couch it like that. Don’t fall for it.
So you mean ignore what they’re actually saying and believe random leftists online? xD
I can recommend my experience - EndeavourOS. Based on Arch, it was built to come prepackaged with everything you need for gaming. Once install is complete it offers great choices for gaming and privacy programs. Almost everything on Steam is a Windows .exe so they are all run in a mini Windows filesystem through a top notch compatibility layer (called Proton, based on Wine) and to answer your question - yes, Steam Link is perfect on Linux. Lower latency than Sunshine/Moonlight.
One thing I owned that you’ll have to sacrifice, unless you use the Gnome DE iirc - Wallpaper Engine. I exported every .mp4 from the files and run with Hidamari instead, but it’s not the same.
And one caveat if you choose EndeavourOS - Budgie DE is borked a little bit so I switched to Cinnamon
My go-to advise for people new to linux or just wanting something that works is Linux Mint (Or Ubuntu if you don’t mind the commercial aftertaste). End of discussion.
It is based on Ubuntu packages which are well maintained (things just work), it has been around and popular for a very long time, has a big and active community, and it prioritises ease of use.
The only downsides are support for brand new hardware (<6-12 months) which takes a while to be supported. But that doesn’t seem to apply to you.
If you want bleeding edge, extensive customizations, or a cool unconventional desktop you can check out any kind of desktop.
I like discussing distros as much as the next person. But in my long distrohopping career I realised that with new or novice linux users it’s best to stick to the easiest, most out of the box experience. I would argue this is linux mint.
I’ve seen too many times that people send new linux users to the most wild distro’s and then be suprised that the user gives up on linux completely after a week.
If you want to get some terminal/technical experience or like to make your hands dirty feel free to experiment.
But make your feet wet in the shallow well known puddles.Thank you for understanding where I’m coming from lol. Mint supposedly, with enough tinkering, can handle all my use cases?
Don’t end up in the Ubuntu train, just avoid from the start. If you want Mint, go with the debian based Mint. Ubuntu was good 15 years ago. Don’t get yourself involved if you’re starting out. Mint DE is good. I think Fedora with KDE is honestly the best place to start. Then just turn on Flatpaks in Discover settings if they are not on by default.
Can second this - My PC is Arch BTW but my partner, on my recommendation, installed Mint. Smooth af install and I almost never taught them a terminal command because it has this easy enough repo library app, and prompts for updates. Things just work.
My recommendation for new Linux users is to keep it vanilla: Mint (Debian), Fedora, or Arch. Flavor of the month distros are going to come with a lot of baked in opinions from the parent distro that may make troubleshooting more difficult if you try to treat it like that. Sure CachyOS is Arch based, but it has a custom kernel and other things. People will argue the point, but I think vanilla is just better. I also worry about distros that have yet to sufficiently establish themselves and the kind of support you can expect from them going into the future. Nothing is a bigger Linux deterrent than getting dragged into distro drama as maintainers fight, argue, fork, and drop support.
Mint: Beginner friendly. Some might recommend Debian, but I’ve always found setup to be a bit tedious. Mint has been around long enough to prove itself and has a well-established community.
Arch: Don’t let the reputation get to you, this is a perfectly fine distro to start with if you are a person of moderate to advanced skill level, especially since the archinstall script makes actual installation much easier. If you like the idea of the Arch wiki acting as a kind of instruction manual for an OS that you haven’t seen in years and hand-picking a lot of your software while making small adjustments in config files to get most things working (clearly documented in the wiki!), this is a good choice. I avoided it for years based on reputation while I fought with Ubuntu and I’m angry at how much I let community opinion deter me when this was the correct choice for me all along.
Fedora: Less to comment here as I don’t have a lot of personal experience, but from what I understand it’s a good compromise between Debian and Arch. A bit faster to update but not bleeding edge. Considered a bit more stable than Arch.
The most important advice I can offer is twofold,
- Just make the switch. Once you get a better idea of what you need and what works and doesn’t for you, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision on if a more specific distro would suit you better.
- Linux is not Windows. You’ll never be able to replicate your workflow and feel 1:1 and you can’t/shouldn’t consider that a failure. Be prepared to make small adjustments but I do think you’ll find the effort worth it overall.
CachyOS. Hands down the best for you.
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Gets updates as soon as they come out which is important for gaming and software development
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Really good performance, has access to a huge amount of software
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Beginner friendly, automatically creates snapshots (backups) in case you mess up
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Has a simple to follow wiki with lots of useful info. Also it lets you install all the gaming packages you need with one button click.
No offense to people on this site but every time this thread pops up there are a lot of terrible recommendations being thrown around. Don’t bother using base Arch linux if you’re new to Linux. Don’t use random niche distros like MX Linux. Debian is very barebones and requires you to manually set up a lot of things that come by default in other modern distros. And finally IMO don’t use an immutable OS unless you know what you’re getting into, as many people get burned by how hard it is to install applications on them.
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