Linux for gaming?

[EdoTensei]

I was wondering if there's any well made Linux, which is great for gaming? 

 

Windows has lots of unnecessary poop, and if MC would someday made Windows Gaming Edition, that would be great. But meanwhile, is there any good Linux which would perform better? 

 

My experience with Linux ends by knowing that Android is made on Linux Kernel .. 

 

But the question is, if there is some Linux, and I know there's lots of those, how about compatibility? 

 

My sys:

Ryzen 9 5900X

32Gb Ram 3600cl16

RX7800XT 

B550 Asus F-Gaming

1Tb M.2 

Seasonic PX750

NZXT H9 Flow 

 

Are those specs (except PSU and Case ) 

Would they be compatible? 

 

As far as I've seen, GPU drivers for Ubuntu they are much older, and not much support for newer games. 

 

Any thoughts? 

[OhioYJ]

As someone who uses Linux as their primary OS, and has for a very long time, I'm still of the opinion, gaming is the wrong use case for Linux. Everything else, yes I'd prefer to do in Linux.

 

Your hardware won't be an issue. For me hardware support has honestly been better than Windows. Heck I'm sitting next to a brand new HP laser printer that only works in Linux for some reason.  I'm typing this from a 13900k / 4090 machine right now running Linux.

 

I'm not saying Linux can't game, many games will run on your Linux. However you'll come across games you have to tinker with to get running. You'll come across games that just plain don't work at all in Linux. If you want to run Linux for other reasons that's great. However if you want to game, I'd dual boot and still use Windows for gaming. Trying to only run Linux and expecting it to be your gaming machine is setting yourself up for frustration.

[MiszS]

As much as i like linux, if you game a lot it's not for you, because some games just don't work. Thought with proton nearly all steam games work on linux, so it's fine if you just game sometimes. If you still do install it, make sure it's a rolling release distribution like Arch linux, because those often have better compatibility too

[manikyath]

47 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Heck I'm sitting next to a brand new HP laser printer that only works in Linux for some reason.

i guarantee you i'd get that to work on windows in 10 minutes... but that's just because it's been my job to do so for several years. HP's printers are an absolute disaster, the only reason why it's likely it works on linux is because they probably didnt bother past their standard driver package that supports 90% of their printers.

 

47 minutes ago, MiszS said:

make sure it's a rolling release distribution like Arch linux

or not, because some people prefer stability.

 

------

 

on topic;  if gaming is a primary usecase for you, linux desktop is not where you want to be (yet?). instead, spend your time and effort catering windows 10/11 to your usecase. 

[ilovecats7715]

Watch the Linux challenge from linus and luke, that will show you what to expect. (if you don't want to, than linux is quite bad for gaming)

[The Hope]

For Linux gaming:
ChimeraOS -- https://chimeraos.org/about/

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

[Uclydde]

My recommendation for people with AMD graphics is to use EndeavourOS. Because it's a rolling-release distro that quickly updates the kernel (where AMD drivers are). Also, it's based on Arch Linux, like the Steam Deck.

 

For people with Nvidia graphics, I recommend Pop!_OS which does the best job of configuring Nvidia drivers out-of-the-box.

[jaslion]

If gaming is the primary focus then skip and keep using windows too many games dont work not to mention drm and anti cheat software.

 

Steamos/proton has done WONDERS for linux gaming, but there are too many issues still to say linux is truely ready for gaming.

 

 

[WereCat]

A lot of Single-Player games run on Linux well. A lot of especially Multi-Player games don't run on Linux at all because of anti-cheat.

 

If you're mainly Single-Player and are willing to get over some hurdles then there is absolutely nothing wrong with trying gaming on Linux and some games do actually run better on Linux but that does not automatically mean that Linux gaming is better as the experience will vary from game to game.

 

If you're mainly Multi-Player then I can't really recommend Linux for gaming at all unless you're absolutely sure the games you want to play do run on Linux. You can check something like https://www.protondb.com for that.

You also need to keep in mind that just because the MP games you want to play right now, they may not run after an update like League of Legends for example when they forced their Vanguard anti-cheat and the game no longer even launches despite being able to run flawlessly for many years before.

 

Best distros for gaming are usually rolling releases but they are also less stable. IMO something like Arch or Fedora will be best but I can't really recommend Arch based distro for newbie.

[BoomerDutch]

I'd use nobara os, its included with steam and libary packages for gaming.

 

I've been playing games on nobara os for 4 years. And now I'm improved and build arch and included gaming related to it.

 

And now I'm playing games on arch.

Arch is only recommended if you are familiar how it works.

 

Some games with anti cheat enabled can be run on Linux for example battlebit and dayz they are both allowing Linux users to play thanks to valve proton support. (For that you will install proton battle eye on steam)

[CosmicEmotion]

Look into Nobara Linux. Works out of the box with great performance. And, depending on your specs and game preferences, Linux is better for gaming than Windows imo.

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, EdoTensei said:

well made Linux, which is great for gaming? 

Steam OS, but its build for the steam deck. Not sure how well it would work on other none steam deck hardware.

[xAcid9]

[MiszS]

3 hours ago, The Hope said:

For Linux gaming:
ChimeraOS -- https://chimeraos.org/about/

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

no way bro put Gentoo in here

[Ralphred]

1 hour ago, MiszS said:

no way bro put Gentoo in here

It's ability to mix and match stable with testing (and even git sources) means you can have the best of both worlds. Slotted packages means you can keep multiple version of wine floating around for legacy games you "just don't want to let go". And because you have had absolute control over your OS from the very beginning, making sure that memory usage and CPU overhead aren't wasting bits and cycles not making pretty graphics is really easy.

The only thing people really have a problem with is the steep learning curve.

 

The pro of Gentoo: It does exactly what you tell it to, no more.

The con of Gentoo: It does exactly what you tell it to, no more.

[MiszS]

1 minute ago, Ralphred said:

It's ability to mix and match stable with testing (and even git sources) means you can have the best of both worlds. Slotted packages means you can keep multiple version of wine floating around for legacy games you "just don't want to let go". And because you have had absolute control over your OS from the very beginning, making sure that memory usage and CPU overhead aren't wasting bits and cycles not making pretty graphics is really easy.

The only thing people really have a problem with is the steep learning curve.

 

The pro of Gentoo: It does exactly what you tell it to, no more.

The con of Gentoo: It does exactly what you tell it to, no more.

oh, i didn't know some of that stuff, it's just that most gamers wouldn't bother with installing and configuring everything on gentoo

[Ralphred]

6 minutes ago, MiszS said:

installing and configuring everything on gentoo

The beauty of a rolling release is you only have to do it once, the trick is to know what you want when you start.

Yeah there is the odd glitch; I updated my kernel* the other day and the battery monitor for my gamepad stopped working because the nomenclature surrounding the file that stored the battery level changed, five minutes later it was working again.

 

*the AMD-pstate driver for CPU scheduling is on another level; my CPU now runs faster and cooler during gaming than ever before, because the powersave policy is so low latency to update I don't need to set it to performance to game anymore.

[wasab]

*sigh

 

Please just pick ubuntu. Game publishers actually targets this platform. Can't say the same for everything else. 

[goatedpenguin]

On 4/6/2024 at 4:52 AM, ilovecats7715 said:

Watch the Linux challenge from linus and luke, that will show you what to expect. (if you don't want to, than linux is quite bad for gaming)

You my friend don't know anything. Linus and Luke were idiots when doing that challenge. 

[Leahh]

https://nobaraproject.org/

 

I personally would recommend Nobara linux for anyone who wants to use linux for gaming. It's made by the same guy that is maintaining the most popular fork of Wine.

Most configurations you'd want to do for gaming on something else like Ubuntu are already pre-done.

But at the end of the day it's all preference, choose what you want to.

[AA.koploper]

To be brutally honest, if you have no experience with Linux and are not a programmer or IT professional, it will probably be easier for you to debloat Windows 10/11 than to live with Linux. That's just my experience (I used Fedora 36 as my daily for 2 months and it was a pain). I see you have an AMD GPU so it will probably test your patience a lot less than it did for me, but I strongly suggest that you try "maining" your chosen distro on a VM before you start using it on bare metal, so that you know what to expect and there would be fewer unforseen issues.

 

And about the performance question, it is completely up to the game. For me, Elite Dangerous and Project Cars 2 (with controller) ran just as good on Proton as they did Windows, while Arma 3 gets literally half the FPS that it gets on Windows, and BeamNG loads in with broken terrain textures. Also look out for how your hardware reacts, for example with me both my CPU and GPU ran at least 20 degrees hotter while running Linux than while running Windows, even when idling. Probably an Xorg thing, so it shouldn't be a problem for you since you're all AMD. 

[MiszS]

1 hour ago, AA.koploper said:

Also look out for how your hardware reacts, for example with me both my CPU and GPU ran at least 20 degrees hotter while running Linux than while running Windows, even when idling. Probably an Xorg thing, so it shouldn't be a problem for you since you're all AMD. 

That's weird, i have intel cpu and an nvidia gpu, and they both run slightly colder than on windows

[AA.koploper]

12 minutes ago, MiszS said:

That's weird, i have intel cpu and an nvidia gpu, and they both run slightly colder than on windows

Curious, I had an i5-12600 and RTX2060S when I ran Fedora36 and my temps were pretty bad on Linux. I tested it during both winter and summer to be sure (before I finally nuked my entire Fedora install), and during winter my Windows idle temps were 35 for the CPU and 27 for the GPU, while for Linux it was 52 for the CPU and 49 for the GPU. I made sure to use the same sensors and everything ofc. At the time I was told it was because Xorg uses so many resources because its design is so old, and that made sense to me.

 

In either case, he can probably run Wayland semi-decently since he is on all AMD, and he might not have the hardware acceleration nightmare that I put up with. I still think he should try to main either Linux Mint, Fedora, and/or Manjaro on VMs before he goes with them full time, just to know what he is getting into. Some have been giving Linus and Luke shit for how they went about their Linux daily challenge, but my experience dailying F36 has been even worse so I consider their feedback valid.

 

Oh yeah a lot of people have been suggesting Nobara to him. Aside from the package managers, very little about Linux is mutually exclusive. You can easily turn a Fedora install into Nobara by enabling flatpaks, a few proprietary repos, and Nvidia drivers, Nobara just saves you the hassle. 

[wasab]

I can just install emulators to turn it I to a gaming box but I am pretty against the idea of playing windows games on there. I have windows on my 2nd drive so if I want to play windows games, I would boot into that instead. Not sure why I would want to wine it. Emulating ps2, switch ect or playing open-source games are different matter. They are pretty much equivalent on both windows and linux and I would pick my linux os over windows in all cases when equal. 

[goatedpenguin]

Adding on to what @wasab said about emulators, emulators for nintendo, sega, ps2 games etc. All perform better on linux compared to windows since 99% of those games were designed to run on some sort of fork/modification of linux rather than windows. Another benefit is that on lutris I believe you can basically drag n drop your game ROM without having to even do any further configuration like you would have to do on windows.