Which is the best Linux for gaming?

[PHNOM]

Hi, I'm a small content creator who makes exe videos on YouTube. Say that I managed to put together a system like this:

I5 2500k 

8gb ram

500gb hdd

120gb SSD(for os)

And a GT 1030 or Quadro p400

 

I just wanna know which Linux OS will be more suitable for gaming as im seriously thinking about switching from windows...

 

Please let me make my intention clear before you give me the answers:

 

My priorities:

-Average desktop experience (Gmail, YouTube, similar things etc etc)

-Maximum optimization for obs and video editing software like after effects and premiere pro(since I'm runnin a potato pc)

-maximum games supported with good optimisations

PS: there are some games that I'm sure to intent to play in this, those are Fortnite, overwatch, valorant, Minecraft, csgo, fifa 22 (idk if it works or not), Apex legends (i heard Apex legends ain't ideal on linux) and pubg maybe(emulator)

 

Please let me know which Linux is best for the above needs...

Thanks for stickin around..

Edited March 8, 2022 by PHNOM
Some more requirements 😸

[RONOTHAN##]

Pop_OS! is probably the best option, but do know that Linux gaming is still not ideal and you will likely run into issues doing this. 

[Dat Guy]

If you are into gaming, there is no advantage in moving away from Windows. Why would you even do that?

[Ultraforce]

4 hours ago, PHNOM said:

My priorities:

-Average desktop experience (Gmail, YouTube, similar things etc etc)

-Maximum optimization for obs and video editing software like after effects and premiere pro(since I'm runnin a potato pc)

-maximum games supported with good optimisations

PS: there are some games that I'm sure to intent to play in this, those are Fortnite, overwatch, valorant, Minecraft, csgo, fifa 22 (idk if it works or not), Apex legends (i heard Apex legends ain't ideal on linux) and pubg maybe(emulator)

For the games you want to play, Valorant is pretty much impossible to run on Linux, because the special anti-cheat that they made is kernel-level and will only ever work on Windows so highly specialized virtual machines or dualbooting is basically the only way to get Valorant on a physical machine that also has Linux. This system means that Valorant also doesn't work on macOS and can't be played on video game consoles because it's anti-cheat vanguard which is needed to connect to servers is like a small parasite that can only live on Windows 10 and maybe windows 11.

[Sauron]

There is barely any difference in this sense between the major distributions.

13 hours ago, PHNOM said:

after effects and premiere pro

neither work on Linux

[cretsiah]

Game wise

- Minecraft java edition works fine (once you get over the microsoft /xbox gaming account nonsense.

 

 

obs probably need to be optimized yourself.....

video editing likely need to learn a new program

[10leej]

95% of the time distro doesn't matter and I will stick to that. As for gaming specifically, use whatever distro you want. Dont be afraid to distro hop a bit till you find one you like.

 

If you want an easy experience with nvidia your best off with Pop_OS, but manjaro, mint, and even Fedora off post install driver instalation procedures.

[Wild Penquin]

You didn't tell why you want / need to change to Linux - and as such @Dat Guyposed an important question! For your priorities it seems like the best option is to stick with Windows. However, that doesn't mean you don't have a reason you didn't tell us (it's your choice after all, you don't need to tell us =) ). If your mind is set, be aware there might be things you will need to give up.

 

Any distro will do, but as you are new to Linux distributions, choose a mainstream one, like some flavor of Ubuntu. As long as you don't choose a server or stability oriented distribution (which means, lagging behind in gaming, multimedia and desktop-oriented updates in favor of server-grade stability), your gaming experience will be as good as it gets. Indeed anti-cheat will cause problems along with some other incompatibilities with windows games. Sometimes you still need to choose to play games which work on Linux, and have a good reason to use Linux - if you can not change the games you play, stick to Windows.

 

PopOS! is often recommended here, and as such I suppose it is good (I haven't tried it myself). I'm not sure why PopOS is considered the easiest - from a quick glance it seems the only thing separating it from other desktop-oriented is that it enables proprietary NVidia drivers per default (which is almost mandatory for gaming). But installing the proprietary drivers is a matter of a few mouse clicks via the GUI in most mainstream distributions, and with an AMD gpu this is not an issue (the drivers - for gaming/desktop users - are already in the Kernel).

 

For general desktop experience, the most important thing is the choice of DE (not the distribution per se!). Many distributions use Gnome, which I really dislike (it is too basic and dumbed-down, if you will, for my taste), but the choice of DE really boils down to user preference. I encourage to try out several ones! You can install several desktop environments in practically any distribution out there and change the one you use quite easily. I'm really set to using KDE Plasma (more suitable for a power user IMO, more Windows-like than Gnome), but I have tried several DEs over the years. I also like i3 for it's simplicity, but remember you will really need to change your orientation towards the UI as there will be some paradigm shifts if going to some less-mainstream DEs.

 

As for video editing: I don't do any video editing, but last time I checked, video editing applications are much fever in Linux than on Windows. Some proprietary editors do have a Linux version IIRC, while some don't; Sauron claimed your editors don't work in Linux. As a result, there are very few people doing any serious video editing on Linux AFAIK (it's an egg-or-chicken problem - there will be no good editors as long as there are no users). Some FOSS solutions exists but they are often buggy (community driven where development has often stalled) and / or have a sub-optimal user experience because of a badly designed UI. The FOSS solutions might not be up to any professional work (but ok for some every now-and-then, say a few times a year home video editing etc.). Blender is often cited as the best FOSS editor, despite being a 3D computer graphics software suite!

 

In general it absolutely makes sense to check before switching if the applications you absolutely need work in Linux, and if they don't, if you can find an alternative which does. WineAppdb is handy if you want to check wine compatibility, and for games, add protondb to the list. If it seems bad, then you might consider not switching or dual-booting.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Wild Penquin
EDIT: mentioned blender; rephrased video editing paragraph

[PHNOM]

3 hours ago, Wild Penquin said:

You didn't tell why you want / need to change to Linux - and as such @Dat Guyposed an important question! For your priorities it seems like the best option is to stick with Windows. However, that doesn't mean you don't have a reason you didn't tell us (it's your choice after all, you don't need to tell us =) ). If your mind is set, be aware there might be things you will need to give up.

 

Any distro will do, but as you are new to Linux distributions, choose a mainstream one, like some flavor of Ubuntu. As long as you don't choose a server or stability oriented distribution (which means, lagging behind in gaming, multimedia and desktop-oriented updates in favor of server-grade stability), your gaming experience will be as good as it gets. Indeed anti-cheat will cause problems along with some other incompatibilities with windows games. Sometimes you still need to choose to play games which work on Linux, and have a good reason to use Linux - if you can not change the games you play, stick to Windows.

 

PopOS! is often recommended here, and as such I suppose it is good (I haven't tried it myself). I'm not sure why PopOS is considered the easiest - from a quick glance it seems the only thing separating it from other desktop-oriented is that it enables proprietary NVidia drivers per default (which is almost mandatory for gaming). But installing the proprietary drivers is a matter of a few mouse clicks via the GUI in most mainstream distributions, and with an AMD gpu this is not an issue (the drivers - for gaming/desktop users - are already in the Kernel).

 

For general desktop experience, the most important thing is the choice of DE (not the distribution per se!). Many distributions use Gnome, which I really dislike (it is too basic and dumbed-down, if you will, for my taste), but the choice of DE really boils down to user preference. I encourage to try out several ones! You can install several desktop environments in practically any distribution out there and change the one you use quite easily. I'm really set to using KDE Plasma (more suitable for a power user IMO, more Windows-like than Gnome), but I have tried several DEs over the years. I also like i3 for it's simplicity, but remember you will really need to change your orientation towards the UI as there will be some paradigm shifts if going to some less-mainstream DEs.

 

As for video editing: I don't do any video editing, but last time I checked, video editing applications are much fever in Linux than on Windows. Some proprietary editors do have a Linux version IIRC, while some don't; Sauron claimed your editors don't work in Linux. As a result, there are very few people doing any serious video editing on Linux AFAIK (it's an egg-or-chicken problem - there will be no good editors as long as there are no users). Some FOSS solutions exists but they are often buggy (community driven where development has often stalled) and / or have a sub-optimal user experience because of a badly designed UI. The FOSS solutions might not be up to any professional work (but ok for some every now-and-then, say a few times a year home video editing etc.). Blender is often cited as the best FOSS editor, despite being a 3D computer graphics software suite!

 

In general it absolutely makes sense to check before switching if the applications you absolutely need work in Linux, and if they don't, if you can find an alternative which does. WineAppdb is handy if you want to check wine compatibility, and for games, add protondb to the list. If it seems bad, then you might consider not switching or dual-booting.

Thanks for the long info, the reason I'm looking forward to switching from windows to Linux is cuz, it's proving to be a annoying os (especially with the cpu and ram usage) and i also wanted to check out linux and try new things and to see what the 'open-source' os is all about...

[PHNOM]

18 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

If you are into gaming, there is no advantage in moving away from Windows. Why would you even do that?

the reason I'm looking forward to switching from windows to Linux is cuz, it's proving to be a annoying os (especially with the cpu and ram usage) and i also wanted to check out linux and try new things and to see what the 'open-source' os is all about...

[Dat Guy]

I can promise you that gaming on Linux is not less annoying...  but of course, curiosity is appreciated.

[LloydLynx]

First of all, this is a Linux system that's not built yet so trash that GT 1030 and get a Radeon RX 550 or 560. You'll save yourself the headache of Nvidia drivers on Linux. Radeon drivers are built in to the OS and generally function better. Good luck with everything else. I totally agree that Windows is an annoying and bloated piece of crap, only once you learn how to use a Linux system and get used to it. 

[Wild Penquin]

Didn't notice OP hasn't build their system yet. I'd indeed take an AMD GPU over an NVidia one given the choice, however NVidia drivers are not necessarily bad either. They will more likely interfere with stuff like hibernation, so with a Laptop, it is double as important to try to steer towards an AMD GPU. Things used to be vice-versa (going back in time to the fglrx times), but things have changed! But NVidia drivers are still usable.

 

Also, this may seem nit-picky:

7 hours ago, LloydLynx said:

Radeon drivers are built in to the OS and generally function better.

but that statement is untrue (emphasis mine). Both AMD and Nvidia are "built into the OS" exactly on the same level. The difference is that the NVidia drivers are closed source and the AMD drivers are open source (the desktop-oriented version; there's also the CUDA/enterprise/computing oriented version which is partly closed source). In practice, this means two things: first, the users are at the mercy of NVidia on how they develop their drivers and on what they prioritize, and their co-operation with the Linux Kernel hasn't been that good AFAIK.... the AMD drivers clearly seem to have a better development model and they've benefited from the fact their driver is Open sourced.

 

Get a deal-breaker bug with NVidia? Though luck - you can try to post on their forum and **hope**!

 

Got a deal-breaker bug with AMD? Provided you know how to make a proper bug report, you can make one on your distribution or upstream bugzilla and it will gain attention unless the bug is really, really rare and obscure! If it is a common one, someone else will report the bug!

 

EDIT: Got some other bug in the Kernel, and using NVidia? The first thing they will tell you is to disable the OOT NVidia drivers since it "taints" the Kernel and then reproduce the bug! 

 

The second thing from users point of view is that the NVidia driver needs to be downloaded / enabled separately (on most, but not all distributions), but the core reason is in the licensing. From software point of view, it is a driver (or several components of the chain) exactly similarly as the AMD driver is.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Wild Penquin
emphasis; comment on out-of-tree and tainting

[LloydLynx]

4 hours ago, Wild Penquin said:

but that statement is untrue

Maybe I should have said Radeon drivers come with the OS and generally work better. There are exceptions like PopOS, but you get what I mean. 

[betalars]

I would not reccomend anything debian based tbh - including popOS - right now.

A lot of the work Valve is currently doing is being made on arch, so it will take a long time to be merged into popOS for instance.

 

There's beginner friendly arch derivatives such as Manjaro, that you should be able to just pick up.

 

Also ... just wait a bit ... I am 95% sure valve said you will be able to use SteamOS 3.0 outside of steam decks so check for tutorials and blogs from people having tried that out. I have much hopes in this becoming a easy-to-use linux distro suitable for most gamers.

[Nayr438]

2 hours ago, betalars said:

A lot of the work Valve is currently doing is being made on arch, so it will take a long time to be merged into popOS for instance.

Most of that work only matters if you use AMD Graphics. There are also community members that backport the Kernel and Mesa Builds to more downstream distros.

Everything else in Valves Steam Proton Build is containerized which should make versioning not matter. The exception for Proton is Native Builds like Proton-TKG, which primarily target Arch and often tend to have minimal improvements at this point, sometimes introducing new issues.

[Wild Penquin]

The main target of most (all) game publishers targeting Linux is still Ubuntu. It makes little sense to install any other kind of distribution, if the main goal is gaming.

 

I must admit the bleeding edge of Arch Linux (or a derivative) is enticing. However, bleeding edge comes with a cost; it might sometimes break or be unstable because not that much testing has taken place (yet). I don't mind since I know my way around in a Linux environment. I would not recommend any Arch based distribution for a beginner in general (however, if one is prepared for breakage, and knows what might entail, is not afraid to read documentation - then go ahead with it).

 

Manjaro is a nice idea, but since it is a much smaller undertaking than an Ubuntu based distribution (or Arch), it has less QC which means some more rough edges; or, that was my experience the last time I tried. If one wants more stability than pure Arch, then I'd say Manjaro is not an alternative for some Ubuntu flavor. Things might have changed, though - there was nothing majorly broken which couldn't be fixed, but their customization and differences from Arch brought more problems (=time needed to fix things) than benefits for me. Manjaro deviates too much from Arch to "feel like home", and is in an "uncanny valley" between stability and bleeding edge, and not good in either (sadly, before you ask - I don't remember specifically what was broken in Manjaro the last time I tried; so take this all with a grain of salt!).

 

Another reason I'd like to use an Arch-based distribution is the AUR; however, as Manjaro is not in sync with Arch, which means sometimes packages in AUR will not work without intervention. But YMMV - you might not care about AUR and/or might want to adjust the PKGBUILDs when needed / make your own! (typing this, I'm starting to think about giving Manjaro another shot!)

 

For a workhorse / gaming or any Linux installation which "should just work" (I'm not interested in tinkering with it) I'd choose a non-rolling, mainstream release distribution (Ubuntu).

[Nayr438]

1 hour ago, Wild Penquin said:

The main target of most (all) game publishers targeting Linux is still Ubuntu. It makes little sense to install any other kind of distribution, if the main goal is gaming.

Most Game Publishers targeting linux are Targeting Steam's containerized Runtime and other open-source projects have started shipping in Containerized FlatPaks.

Lutris, the most common Manager for Windows Executable, also ships it's own Runtime.

 

We are pretty much reaching a point to where the underlying distro really doesn't matter outside of Development, and even that is changing. Even with that said, there has been a rather recent shift to upstream Distro's like Arch for Developers.