I have kubuntu on my laptop but have been using windows 10 ltsc on my desktop for the last 6 or 7 years. I've heard that lots of progress on linux gaming has been made since the steam deck was launched a few years ago and am considering switching my gaming pc over, any recommendations?
Manjaro here. It's essentially Arch with a pleasant installer, reasonable defaults, and a nice desktop theme. I recently had to switch from the KDE build to the Gnome build because KDE does NOT seem to get along with Nvidia GPU drivers right now. Now it's butter. Use Lutris to manage your windows games in their own little sandboxes, 9/10 games you'd swear they're native software. Some actually run better under linux than under Windows 11. Cities Skylines 2 was the most dramatic example. Like 20 extra fps.
A little bit of a rant for anyone reading, but if you want the Arch experience, just use Arch itself.
archinstall(which comes with the bootable installation media) makes it super easy to install with your favorite desktop environment and it cuts out the middleman who is known to break their website and repositories quite often.Or manual install and learn a bit how it all works (just a bit, it’s not LFS lol)
I switched to gaming on Ubuntu last year. Most of the games I care about run the same or better (Path of Exile, Dyson Sphere Program, modded Minecraft). Unreal Engine games run like garbage for some reason (Palworld, Satisfactory specifically). I just switch to my Windows boot for those.
I've heard AMD rigs work a lot better with Proton, not sure why that's the case but that might be worth looking into.
good to know, forgot to mention my current setup is a 5800x3d with a 7900xt
i'm on manjaro and have had pretty good experiences. one of my friends does all his gaming in pop_os and similarly has only good things to say. i'm on wayland KDE and it's even been fine.
I use Ubuntu cuz I'm lazy. You can take me to the gulags now.
Also coolest plane ever
Linux Mint is pretty great for gaming. I tried some gaming specific ones, but they didn't do well with bad Nvidia drivers last summer.
Zorin os. It's based on Debian so I think thats where the stability comes from. I like it because it is pretty. Might move my laptop to Qubes OS to see how that goes.
I switched to nobara at the beginning of the year. It’s excellent for gaming, it doesn’t happen with every game but sometimes you can feel that the game is slightly faster. However it’s annoying for programming because a lot of packages are different or not built for fedora
I'm on NixOS but wouldn't recommend it unless you enjoy the process of tinkering to get things exactly as you like.
SteamOS is arch based so I suppose you'd get the best support on an arch distro. I've heard good things about endeavorOS if you don't want to deal with the normal arch install.
Mfs in here listing pokemon when op asked for Linux dostribution.
You can’t fool me, Garuda is a 4th gen dark/dragon type and bazzite is electabuzz pre evolution.
Op: just use debian if you can get someone to send you the iso link or arch if you need to get help in discord instead of forums.
E: I just saw another one! Zorin is one of the new normal/fighting types. Ngl this one’s lame. Looks like Mr mime with a sword.
Fedora Linux. It's well made and not Gamer-ified. Though I do admit Nobara (aka Gamer Fedora) does do a lot of changes I would personally make to a Fedora installation. However, it does a lot of things I also wouldn't do.
