Thinking of switching my gaming desktop to linux. Should I?
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It actually doesn't really matter.
The distro doesn’t. Getting off windows is a great idea.
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Bazzite is a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro focused on gaming, this means...
- out of the box support for Nvidia cards
- ships with a lot of useful gaming utilities
- very hard to break as you should primarily be installing Flatpaks and can do rollbacks
Basically all modern Linux distros have virtualization support, so does Bazzite, of course. Actual performance differences between distros is also negligible, so feel free to choose whatever you like.
https://bazzite.gg/ if you're interested.
I second Bazzite
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Bazzite is made for gaming and it's worked for me pretty flawlessly for about 6 months BUT I had a lot of issues getting it to run a VM. I'm certainly not a Linux expert but I eventually gave up trying.
There is a ujust script for enabling KVM.
I forget exactly how I had to do it. If there's anything need beyond ujust, if you search for it, you'll find solutions (if nothing for Bazzite, try "silverblue" instead in your search as it'll likely be the same solution)
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
It's more personal preference and use case than anything.
Gaming dedicated versions are nice if you really only plan to game. Bazzite, ChimeraOS, Garuda, along others are available. ChimeraOS is what I installed on my stepson's pc and outside of a network issue it has worked pretty well. He is happy and since he mainly uses his android tablet for web browsing and whatnot, it's perfect for me to not need to do a bunch of troubleshooting issues. I've tinkered with Garuda but I'm not convinced it's for me and I dislike anything with a Mac feel.
I use an Ubuntu based system (Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04LTS) with a 5800X and GTX1080TI because I want stability and the ability to edit video, game, manage websites, manage our home services, along other things.
Instead of asking which one you should use go out and try some demos and look at your intended use case.
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There is a ujust script for enabling KVM.
I forget exactly how I had to do it. If there's anything need beyond ujust, if you search for it, you'll find solutions (if nothing for Bazzite, try "silverblue" instead in your search as it'll likely be the same solution)
Never heard of silverblue. That should narrow things. Good info, thanks
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I'm pretty sure if you use bazzite-dx you get the virtualization setup as a ujust set-up script
I'll give that a try too, thanks
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
Yes, if you want. If you don't, no.
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Bazzite is a Fedora Atomic based immutable distro focused on gaming, this means...
- out of the box support for Nvidia cards
- ships with a lot of useful gaming utilities
- very hard to break as you should primarily be installing Flatpaks and can do rollbacks
Basically all modern Linux distros have virtualization support, so does Bazzite, of course. Actual performance differences between distros is also negligible, so feel free to choose whatever you like.
https://bazzite.gg/ if you're interested.
I loved bazzite, it was my first out of the box success with Linux gaming, but if you plan to do anything outside of gaming installing stuff can get a little difficult. It was invaluable for teaching moments, but I've moved on to cachyOS and it has been just as seamless and less difficulty installing things after installing yay
My 2c
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make sure first that it isn't issue with specific games, some may require some proton flags to be set for them to behave properly. Or just newer/older proton/wine.
in general worth a try to switch the compatibility thingy (technical term),
steam, in game's properties:
but similar option is in lutris/heroic too.
I know at least one of the games has a linux version that runs better on my laptop than on the desktop.
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make sure first that it isn't issue with specific games, some may require some proton flags to be set for them to behave properly. Or just newer/older proton/wine.
in general worth a try to switch the compatibility thingy (technical term),
steam, in game's properties:
but similar option is in lutris/heroic too.
God damn I literally just did a clean install of fedora 42 and I cannot even get past the stupid setup stage. They changed it so now you choose everything after installing and I cannot get past the timezone select screen. It just freezes
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Never heard of silverblue. That should narrow things. Good info, thanks
It's another immutable Fedora spin that predates Bazzite.
If you're using Bazzite and have trouble finding solutions online, usually substituting silverblue works for me. "Kinoite" might also work. Anything with ostree is going to have similar solutions for most things.
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
wrote last edited by [email protected]since you already have experience with fedora, you might wanna look at nobara, which has an nvidia-specific installer available. i'm running it a bit longer than 7 months now, and don't have any issues with it, and i have a pretty similar hardware config to you (a ryzen 5 instead of a 7, and a 3070 Ti instead of the normal one)
I also run a windows 10 VM, mainly for stubborn installers from cracked games that won't run correctly under wine and for my mouse/keyboard software (they have onboard profiles, so i pass them through to the vm to configure)
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I tried GIMP but just cannot get used to it. Heard there are some ways to make the tools and shortcuts behave like PS though just never tried it.
Have you tried the newest release? It seems to be more PS leaning, at least that's what I hear from PS experts.
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).
Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.
Hi I recommend against using an Arch based distro like manjaro or cachyOS ( arch by nature demands active maintenance ) also depsite the brand name ubuntu is a very bad place to start ( due to them forcing snap packages ).
Go for something like fedora kde or bazzite, most of the app you need can come from flathub.For games you got Steam, Heroic ( for epic games ), lutris ( for everything else ).
You will have to quit the habit of hunting .exe file online, most of your apps will come from your store ( discover in your case ).Vms will not let you bypass anti-cheat stuff so keep that in mind. Check for game compatibility on protondb if needed.
Don't be afraid to ask question ( even dumbs one ). -
I loved bazzite, it was my first out of the box success with Linux gaming, but if you plan to do anything outside of gaming installing stuff can get a little difficult. It was invaluable for teaching moments, but I've moved on to cachyOS and it has been just as seamless and less difficulty installing things after installing yay
My 2c
Cachy. So hot right now.
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IMO, basically any distro with fairly modern (fairly often updated) packages should do. Apart from some build/packaging differences it's all same software anyway. The gaming side of software gets updated fairly often, so that's why you'd probably want frequently updated packages.
"Gaming" distros are basically just selection of gaming specific packages installed as default, instead of lets say productivity apps. You can run VM's in gaming/studio/whatever distros
FWIW, I got 5800x3D, RTX3090 - so, "close enough" same system as you. At least same series cpu/gpu. Running Arch, and gaming has been pretty easy, haven't yet found a game which didn't work - that said, some occasional game has had odd stutters (Darktide, for one. But I haven't tested in months).
Getting things to run did get a bit more involved than "just click it". Some extra compatibility stuff (proton-ge-custom), launchers (lutris, heroic, because GoG Galaxy just refuses to work). Steam & steam-games tend to "just work", although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.
But overall, stuff works, and in case of issues it now just seems to be either disabling ntsync and/or wayland for specific games and gaming away.
although actual native-linux games seem to have issues while running the windows-version of the same game on proton just work - WEIRD.
Its not really weird.
- Windows is unfortunately what most people are using so it gets first priority for everything
- Linux environments can vary considerably. Running it in Windows gives a fixed environment for the game to run in
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God damn I literally just did a clean install of fedora 42 and I cannot even get past the stupid setup stage. They changed it so now you choose everything after installing and I cannot get past the timezone select screen. It just freezes
Try Manjaro KDE. XFCE if you adventurous.
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Cachy. So hot right now.
My selling point was being able to use the arch documentation.
You can kind of do that with bazzite/fedora, but to a way more limited extent because fedora package installers are disabled.
Mugatu.gif
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It's another immutable Fedora spin that predates Bazzite.
If you're using Bazzite and have trouble finding solutions online, usually substituting silverblue works for me. "Kinoite" might also work. Anything with ostree is going to have similar solutions for most things.
Awesome, thank you
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Take Fedora, as you're already used to it. Steam handles Windows games for you. In 99% of cases they just work. Only games that do not run nowadays are games with unsupported kernel level anti cheat. Look at https://areweanticheatyet.com/ to see if your games are supported. A VM won't help you as that is usually blocked by such anti cheat as well.
If you do have a problem with a non-multiplayer game look at https://protondb.com/.
For games from GOG, Epic or Amazon use Heroic. For every other store you can add the launcher or just the game itself to Heroic.
ProtonDB is a godsend. People will even post config tweaks for games
