I'm heavily eyeing the switch to arch for gaming on my main rig. Testing it on a laptop rn but I got lost in rice land before even installing steam
If you're new to Linux, you may just want to go with Ubuntu or a derivative. Arch can be... temperamental.
I've been messing with Mint for a year but didn't do much with it. I'm loving arch so far. I think I'll weather whatever storm comes my way.
I used Ubuntu before Arch, and I would say the opposite is true. Ubuntu disabled all the repos you had to add just to get up to date software, and would often just fall over with every version update.
Anyone that wants to game on Linux should stay away from Ubuntu IMHO, unless you like playing old games and a system you cannot update without fear of having to reinstall the whole OS like Windows back in the day.
Debian is now amazing with gaming, with amd at least. I made the switch from arch, and have no issues with any game. Would recommend Debian with xfce all day long.
Recent Windows user who moved to Arch here. I was debating between Debian and Arch when I first migrated. What makes gaming easier on Debian? Less packages to install to get going?
Idk, specifically for Baldur's Gate 3, I didn't have to tweak a thing, installed it, pressed play and it just worked, no stuttering or messing with wine or anything
Yep, just enabled MangoHud no tweaking at all needed
I run on Bazzite:
It's immutable KDE Plasma Fedora but a "Chimera" of Steam and other goodies baked in.
It's steam is installed via an exported Arch Distrobox and plugins like OBS VKCapture work out of box 🥹✌️
Haven't been around Linux overall for long, with my first proper introduction around early 2021. But from what I hear and read, plus my own observations in those past 2.5 years, even if, most of the time, it's not "ideal" (as in, "plug and play"), Linux as a whole seems to be getting better and better for gaming. And ever since behemoth Valve came with the Linux-powered Steam Deck, I expect it to help increase Linux's naturally-slow-but-constant momentum even more.
I've trialed Pop_OS for a month when Valve released proton. I played Sekiro the first week of release and was blown away how well it runs back then. That said, there were a lot of quirks that made games still broken, and there are definitely still some, but the improvement since then is absolutely massive.
As someone who has dabbled in and used Linux since 1995. You are in at a good time. Linux has always been very stable and capable for most things. But it has definitely gotten much better in recent years in terms of gaming and windows compatibility. I still keep a Windows system or two around just in case. But I'm much happier with my daily driver being a system running linux.
It's gotten really sad with Microsoft not supporting ~5 year old systems under Windows 11. Apple at least still supports roughly 10 year old systems. I had to laugh a bit about the controversy when the subject was broached of removing support for 486 and older 32-bit systems from the Linux kernel. Those being roughly 30 years old by this point.
And besides the discussion that brought the controversy, from what I can gather, Linux benefits the most from KVM, making using a virtual machine with some super old Linux system in it very viable. ^_^
Well yes and no. Some things you absolutely can do that with. But not a lot of people realize just how common it is for industrial devices and applications to still use older chipsets. 486s and pentiums still in use today. Simply because by modern standards they are relatively low power tried and tested basic designs. And when you need a discreet portable device. Virtualization often isn't really useful. One could argue why don't they make a wireless dumb terminal of some sort tie back to a central system with a bear minimal system on it just for displaying information. But in noisy industrial environments that really isn't an option. I do see some vendors Etc starting to use Android based devices. But it's a slow change over. And only just starting.
Welcome! Enjoy your stay foreverrr ^.^
UPDATE:
I've got Corectrl up and running with AMD Overclocking functioning on RDNA2 (6800 XT).
From yesterday's limited testing I'm kinda blown away.
The card runs significantly more efficient under Linux so despite setting the same target clock as in Windows being 2700MHz, the cards actual clock when ruining games and not bouncing off of power limit is only 30MHz lower, on Windows it was usually around 60MHz lower.
But the major thing is that when bouncing off of the power limit I've seen the clock drop only by around 100MHz on Linux but on Windows it was usually a massive swing by 200-300MHz.
VRAM OC on Linux seems to be completely broken though, even increasing clock by 1MHz when on desktop will result in massive artifacts and eventual crash.
Voltage control and behaviour on Linux also seems to behave quite a bit differently than on Windows. Needs further testing though.
What CPU do you have?
I never got lm_sensors or corectrl to pick up my CPU temps (7800x3d).
Wondering if it's my motherboard choice (Asus b650e-i)
5800X3D and I can't get power readings from it. Apparantly I have to install zenpower3 first
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
WWW:
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram: