Thinking of switching my gaming desktop to linux. Should I?
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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
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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 ).Thanks for the first part.
I know how apps and that works I have been using fedora for 3 years on my laptop.
VM is meant for apps that do not work with wine like photoshop.
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Have you tried the newest release? It seems to be more PS leaning, at least that's what I hear from PS experts.
I last tried it like a year ago.
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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)
Currently installing bazzite. If that turns out bad I will try nobara.
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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.
You should go with Fedora.
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You should go with Fedora.
Believe me I tried. It just will not let me finish the setup process
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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.
As other people noted, Bazzite/Fedora Silverblue can absolutely bite you in the foot if you leave the "normal use cases" — and if you're not just gaming on the device, you sooner or later will. All of this is solvable and IMO worth it, but probably not great for a beginner trying to become more knowledgeable.
Tldr good for absolute beginners, good for "experts" (in both cases because it very rarely gets in your way/breaks)
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Yes, if you want. If you don't, no.
Rude and unhelpful. Are you trying to innoculate OP against people like that in the Linux community? Why not just be different instead?
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Rude and unhelpful. Are you trying to innoculate OP against people like that in the Linux community? Why not just be different instead?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sorry if it came off rude. I'm only trying to say that switching to Linux shouldn't be something other people want you to do, it should be something you want to do. If you're on the fence, try it, see if it's something you like. Otherwise keep your existing OS or try a third option.
You feel me? Didn't mean to be rude at all.
️Edit: this is for gaming as well, so there's that aspect, which I kind of missed.
In that case I would add further that it still doesn't matter. It's only preference. It only matters in the moments where you aren't running a game fullscreen and actually using the system's other programs.
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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)
wrote last edited by [email protected]This env variable might help with your cracked installers
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WINE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1
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I can’t think of any modern distro that doesn’t just have Nvidia drivers as a package in the repos.
Very true, they do ofc exist there. Nobara just gives you a first-time install-wizard which lets you one-click condigure it. I was more thinking of a use-case as OPs where you wont need to tinker too much after the initial installation.
But yes, basically all distros do have the drivers in their package repos, so any would work.
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Just use Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Mint if you want a hassle free, secure, and stable Linux distro that supports everything and works out of the box.
Don't use those gaming centric distros like Bazzite. It's not worth it. Don't use Arch or other bleeding edge distros unless you want to keep troubleshooting your system because of problems or vulnerabilities.
Take it from me. I've been using Linux since 2001 and Ubuntu based distros have always been the best choice for a secure stable OS.
I would actually recommend the nvidia image of bazzite since it takes the potential driver module and kernel mismatch problem out of the equation which IMO is one of the most annoying problems an nvidia user can face, and if it somehow bugs out anyway rollback is one or two keypresses away depending on if you hide grub or not.
Virtualization is possible with the boot flags and vfio if needed setup using the "ujust setup-virtualization" script. qemu/kvm, probably not virtualbox which also requires kernel modules iirc.
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This env variable might help with your cracked installers
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WINE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1
‘’’thanks, i will test it next time i encounter issues. But at least the Kaos Repack installers have some other issue, the UI buttons of the installer don't work as intended, they just don't react at all after clicking the install button.
