cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14762903
I am switching to Linux for the first time.
I heard Mint is really good but am not sure exactly which distro is best to use with Steam, as well as with newer games, as I primarily use my computer for gaming.
I generally play games like Final Fantasy XIV, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, Elder Scrolls Online, and Total War: Warhammer 3.
For purely steam gaming and browser work, I’ve really liked Pop! OS.
I’ve been using Nobara for gaming a while now, and it’s certainly a good choice from by experience. It’s a modified Fedora distro that’s designed for gaming.
Having used many distros (gaming-oriented and otherwise) Nobara would be my recommendation as well.
People saying “doesn’t matter” aren’t considering someone brand new to Linux would probably benefit from an out-of-the-box gaming ready distro (nvidia drivers ready, rgb drivers built in for gaming laptops, other gaming specific tweaks and fixes that they won’t know to install on say mint, a perfectly fine, general use distro). Not to say they wouldn’t be able to do all that on mint or Ubuntu or whatever with a bit of googling and effort, but they’re asking specifically for gaming.
Fedora , but you can’t go wrong with any major distro honestly.
Check out bazzite.gg - it’s a gaming spin of Fedora atomic and I’ve heard nothing but good things.
Otherwise there’s always Arch, or a derivative like EndeavourOS, that’s where I do my steam gaming. I have, on occasion, had issues with the Nvidia dkms driver and have needed to fork the nvidia-dkms package to track a particular driver release to skip a buggy version. Aside from that it’s been pretty smooth sailing. I use flatpak steam and ProtonPlus to pull Glorious Eggroll releases and everything I’ve played has worked well.
As long as you don’t have an Nvidia card, choose whichever functional and complete distro (some people call these “beginner” distros).
MintLinux and Pop!OS are normally the two front-runners for new users. Basically, if you use Steam and you don’t play online-only games with bad implementations of anti-cheat software, you are good to game on either.
Make a USB that you can “live boot” from, so you can test out how they work with your hardware before you actually install the OS. Generally speaking, Mint works better with AMD, and Pop! works better with Nvidia.
Here’s the official basic guide for Mint:
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/And here’s the official basic guide for Pop!:
https://support.system76.com/articles/install-pop/Nvidia drivers are largely reliable these days. I’ve daily driven AMD/Nvidia hybrid setups since ~2020 and have only occasionally had Nvidia driver issues. I’ve actually had more breakage in amdgpu due to insufficient testing and code churn - I think I’ve reported close to two dozen regressions over the last 4y.
I have a nVidia card. Is that bad?
Or if you hate yourself:
- You can Fedora on Nvidia
As a general rule for Linux; Yes, Nvidia hates linux, and the drivers cause issues in a lot of cases.
But Pop! has specifically worded to try to deal with Nvidia, so it might be smooth sailing, depending on which card you have.
Any distro is fine.
At most you’ll maybe see a 1 to 3 fps difference due to a different DE, but that’s about it.
I would check Protondb to see if your favorite games actually run on Linux before making the change!
For people who just start out using Linux, pick something tjay considered stable and looks a bit like the OS you’re used to right now.
Note that ProtonDB covers Proton, which is Valve’s version of WINE, which is a reimplementation of Windows’ libraries. It’ll deal with Windows binaries running on Linux, but not Linux-native binaries. Some games have both Linux and Windows binaries, and some just Windows binaries. Steam calls running Windows binaries under Proton “Steam Play”, if you see that term.
Steam indicates which binaries are shipped for a game on the store page of a game.
Here’s Team Fortress 2’s Steam store page as an example.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/440/Team_Fortress_2/
You’ll note little white icons next to “Play Team Fortress 2”.
There’s a Windows icon, so they have Windows-native binaries. An Apple icon, so they have MacOS binaries. And a Steam icon, so they have Linux binaries.
By default, if a game has Linux-native binaries, Steam will download and use those.
You can also force Steam to use Windows binaries via Proton by going to the game’s properties under “Compatibility” and choosing – I’m not at my desktop at the moment, but something like this – “force use of a specific compatibility tool” and choosing a particular Proton version.
Just so anyone reading knows…some games with Linux binaries sometimes run better using proton and the windows binaries.
Crusader Kings 3 is buggy with Linux binaries but fine using proton, while Stellaris is the reverse for me. Ymmv.
ProtonDB also has a number of entries for Linux native games, and sometimes people will suggest running the Windows version instead if the Linux version is buggy. It’s a great resource to check regardless of Linux support.
It’s probably worth noting though that the only distro Valve officially supports is the latest Ubuntu LTS running KDE/Plasma, Gnome, or Unity. That doesn’t mean you’ll have problems on other distros – and you probably won’t! – but Ubuntu is the distro they’re testing on. Valve also maintains Ubuntu-specific troubleshooting resources as well.
I find it so odd that they’re only testing on Ubuntu when Steam Deck runs on Arch.
That said, Valve does not support the official Ubuntu way of installing Steam, which is via snap (‘apt install steam’ will install the snap). So you have to make sure to install the Steam way (manually via the deb) instead.
Nobara works well.
The way Steam works is that it contains a set of mini libraries, kind of a mini-distro, that Linux Steam games use, so it doesn’t matter that much. It’s based on Ubuntu. Games that are released on Steam targeting Linux normally “target Steam” rather than a particular distro.
Some distros tend to have newer kernels than others, which can help with video driver support for the latest cards for 3D games.
Also, some very specialized Linux distros won’t have a Steam package; that won’t be a concern with anything you’re likely to pick.
But in general, I wouldn’t worry too much as far Steam goes.
I use Debian. That’s the largest “parent” distro today, and many distros – including Mint – are “child” distros of that, and Steam is packaged for Debian, so they’ll have it too. Red Hat has a Steam package, and it and its child distributions make up the next-largest tree.
some very specialized Linux distros won’t have a Steam package; that won’t be a concern with anything you’re likely to pick.
And the Steam flatpak can be used on any distro that doesn’t package Steam but does package Flatpak, so it’s even less likely to be a problem.
