Hey folks!
Thinking of switching back to Linux. I was running PopOS about 1.5 years ago and was pretty happy with the gaming aspect of things, but I was playing a lot of VALORANT back then, and I got sick of dual booting. That is less the case now, so I would like to try going back to Linux for the majority of my gaming / streaming setup, and just use Windows for the handful of games like Destiny 2 that won’t run on Linux.
I am fairly new to Linux. Don’t mind learning some terminal stuff, but I am basically a noob so it does need to be pretty easy to start with. Got a NVIDIA 3080 and AMD CPU if that matters at all.
Recommend me a distro please fellow penguin gamers.
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Pop_OS is good, I’ve been using it for a bit on my laptop. On my main gaming computer, I have been using Nobara for over a year and it’s been great. Very stable, only a few small bugs. Games run great on it and it’s optimized for gaming specifically. It’s part of the Fedora family and developed by the same person who created the Glorius Eggroll version of Proton for Linux.
If you want to stick with something more fully mainstream, then Fedora Vanilla is fantastic also. Just know that the default Wayland desktop will be a little buggy depending on the game/app. I still use X11 personally and will stick with it for another year or so while Wayland gets a bit more ironed out.
Overall, you won’t go wrong with Pop_OS or Fedora for mainstream Distros. If you want a little more freedom and customization, go with Fedora and their Plasma desktop version. If you want something a little more power-user but still very friendly and slightly more optimized for pure gaming, Nobara with the Plasma desktop.
If you want total no muss/fuss vanilla, plug n’ play, go with Pop_OS.
Links for you:
Fedora KDE Plasma - https://spins.fedoraproject.org/kde/ Nobara All versions - https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/ Pop_OS - You already know it lol.
Good luck and welcome back to the full Linux experience!
Keep in mind that Nobara uses Wayland by default and you will have some issues with streaming. Nothing you can’t configure and work around, it’s just Wayland has some privacy “features” that prevents apps from listening to each other unless you give them explicit permission.
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned switching over to X11. Wayland is so close, but just a little too buggy still for me. I am planning on switching to Wayland 100% at the end of this year.
By then it should be where I’m comfortable with.
I stuck with Wayland because literally streaming is the only thing that’s screwy for me, it still largely works. I have 4 monitors and x11 don’t like that so much…
Fair points.
I was using Linux Mint when I made the switch and it was great cause everything was just working, no tinkering needed. I want to mention https://nobaraproject.org/ though, cause it’s a modified Fedora version that works very well for gaming too.
I’ve had Nobara running on my gaming PC for over a year and it’s worked fantastic. I was using Fedora previously but was having some issues figuring out how to get Blender to properly utilize the GPU for rendering. It worked seamlessly once I made the switch to Nobara.
I’d recommend going back to PopOS first as that has worked well for you before. If you want to, you can always distro hop later. PopOS is still a very good distro and, in my opinion, having a smooth and sustainable transition back from Windows is more important than trying out new distros right now.
I’ve been using Pop for the best part of two years now, I love it. I’ve tried switching away, I went to Nobara for a bit, but I’ve always ended back up on Pop. If you didnt want to touch the terminal, you would never have to.
I’d stick with PopOS because it is noob-friendly and makes installing Nvidia drivers a breeze compared to a lot of other distros. If you ever feel more comfortable with Linux you can still make the switch to something else, but I don’t think there will be many reasons to do so as long as you like PopOS and get everything working the way you want.
In the meantime you can just read about other distros and if you come across a good reason for switching, you can consider it then.
endeavourOS! It’s pretty much Archlinux with a gui installer and some helpful things for new users. I recently installed it on a spare drive on my gaming PC with AMD/nvidia and everything just worked after installing steam.
I will have to check this on out too! Thank you.
If you’re newer to Linux I recommend Garuda as a beginner distro. It’s very similar to Endeavor as an Arch base, but has some friendly GUI options like Snapper bootable backups for easily undoing bad updates and an update script that takes care of mirror list and orphan notifications. People complain about bloat in Garuda and while there is some it’s also helpful bloat, still less than Windows, and has negligible impact on modern hardware
I’ve been using Garuda Arch with great results, though I’ve heard PopOS is also…popping off 😪
If you want something that just works, PopOS is a great option yes. If you feel more adventurous you can go on something more bleeding edge (they are called like this for a reason) like EndeavourOS which is arch derivative.
If you are running W11 with Secure Boot enabled, then I would recommend you to go with Fedora as I don’t think either PopOS or EndeavourOS supports it.
I use Endeavour. It’s not necessarily easy and not necessarily hard but there’s a Calamares installer and the website has really good instructional articles and forums. Comes with Dracut now which is super fast compared to mkinitcpio. Everything runs great for me and I have similar hardware (same GPU, AMD 7800X3D proc). Tbh I would just recommend rolling release for gaming.
@hellerphant I have no problems with Mint (on AMD CPU and GPU) - wont use Pop because of the idiotic name.
Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not install SteamOS?
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The posted install instructions say its just Debian. I would assume it would have Debian’s hardware support?
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There’s no official installer for steamos, only a recovery image for the steam deck. Then, some people in their free time hacked that image to allow installing on other hardware (except Nvidia GPUs) but imho not very easy
Huh? the first thing that comes up when I google SteamOS is DIY install instructions.
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Nope, first party SteamOS
This is an old version which was for SteamOS devices, the Steamdeck has a completely revamped OS which has not that much in common with the old one.
That SteamOS used Debian as base, the new SteamOS 3 Arch with countless of adjustments to make the usage of the Steamdeck a joy.
I really wouldn’t install the old SteamOS as of now, there won’t be an upgradepath because they use different bases, there are countless of better alternatives out there and maybe they will release SteamOS 3 for custom devices in the future.
Got it, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the information!
I’ve used PopOS as a daily driver on my gaming rig for about a year now. No real complaints and it was definitely great when I had an nvidia card.
(Though I am looking to switch to Arch soon, since I want to really avoid background processes that I ultimately don’t need, and since I switched to AMD and their drivers are in the kernel, I don’t need the nvidia help anymore.)
PopOS, Mint, Ubuntu are the main ones recommended for new users, just try them out and see what you think. I personally used Ubuntu for about half a year and then moved over to Archlinux and have been using arch for like 4 years now, but arch is too hard for new users so dont try it.
To be fair. I’ve never used Arch and thought I’d give it a try, their new “archinstall” utility makes installation a breeze. This includes driver and DE selection.
Was able to complete a KDE Plasma install in about 15 minutes.
archinstall is good yeah, it would be nice if it had a proper graphical install rather than the console ui. I think less technical people would be put off by it.
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I usually recommend linux mint for it’s windows like aesthetic
Got a NVIDIA 3080
popOS has an ISO that comes with nvidia drivers but linux mint has a driver manager
my […] streaming setup
OBS works on GNU/Linux
popOS has a lot of features/bloat and looks fairly different from windows. If you chose PopOS update your system before installing anything so the package manager doesn’t uninstall your desktop environment
Thanks for the tips. I liked PopOS’ vibe, but I might check out Mint seeing it is recommended a bit.
Can vouch for Mint. Have it running on a laptop and it just works.
Heads-up, Valorant won’t work on Linux; Riot is borderline hostile to attempts to use Linux for their games. Plenty of other games work great on most distros, but not Val.
Thanks, was aware of that. I have pretty much stopped playing Val, and if I ever needed to, I could boot back into Windows.
Rust is another big game which isn’t working, the game runs very smooth but you won’t be able to join any server outside maybe not even a handful servers or you can go selfhosted.
ProtonDB is a great source of compatible games, if it runs on Steamdeck, it will run on your Linux PC aswell. https://www.protondb.com/explore
It’s worth to check it out before making the switch, just so you won’t be disappointed in the end.
