Don’t game much but I’ll pitch in with a different suggestion: Debian minimal install or Arch, same as for every use case.
I prefer apt based distros so I always go Debian, but with flatpak it’s basically irrelevant afaik.
I’ve had no trouble mimicking my deck’s setup and game compatibility on basically any distro, gamescope, proton etc.
Debian isn’t bleeding edge but it also just werks and with flatpak I haven’t encountered any issues getting new stuff essentially totally segregated from the main OS.
There isn’t “a best” exactly.
There are some things to consider though.
- What hardware are you using?
- Are the latest Video Drivers available for the distro you are considering?
- How much configuration do you want to do?
Its a nuanced question. There isn’t a 1 size fits all approach to this.
For me, going Arch was the move. It fit my usage habits.
Intel Core i5-7300HQ, GeForce 1050 Ti. I know the proprietary Nvidia drivers work on Ubuntu-based and Fedora-based distros, and I think arch-based.
I run endeavourOS and has done so for a few years already. I love it. For convenience sake I recommend you install flatpak and a kde-discover/gnome-software just for your everyday apps.
I game on a 1070ti and Nvidia is working fine for me on x11 Gnome. Give it a try :)
I’ve had good luck with Garuda after nearly two decades on Ubuntu and its derivatives.
So much so that I moved my work os to it, despite the gaming bent.
Manjaro, hands down.
i genuinely can’t get my head around this, why recommend that distro, it is probably actually the worst one of all of them for every usecase
Probably because you’re incapable of forming your own opinions and you suffer discomfort whenever you see someone who can.
It’s okay, I see it all the time.
I did form my own opinion on the distro, I recommended it to people for years and did their it work for free… that’s how I know it’s horrible for every possible usecase, why do you like it?
It’s basically a pre-configured Arch. I’ve used it exclusively for years without issues unique to Manjaro.
I’ve heard of endeavoros. I haven’t tried it and seeing their website used to describe it as a “command-line centric” distro made me avoid it.
I don’t see any reason to switch from Manjaro if I want another distro to function the same. The problems the community has with it are irrelevant to me, and frankly, seem like a bunch of crybabies jumping at the opportunity to shit on a popular distro that focuses on making things easy for users.
Ease of use is EXACTLY my issue with manjaro, as someone who has serviced 5 separate people, they have all managed to break it with their limited experience, in ways that have been increasingly difficult to fix, i eventually had them all switch.
You’ve been lucky, if you use something like bazzite, you’ll literally never have any issues even if you try, let me give you an example of something that might happen if you use nvidia
each linux package is version numbered, instead of just having a “linux” like arch does, manjaro insists you have linux49 installed, and that you use their gui kernel replacer to change them out.
If you have the nvidia package installed, and don’t update for a very long time, eventually, this linux package will be one that’s out of date, and will conflict with the nvidia one, meaning now your machine can’t update, without some lengthy maintenance, this was something i had to do literally dozens of times. There is no chance an inexperienced user could figure this out for themselves. I essentially had to rdd the nvidia package, update, reinstall it, and it took hours.
There are many other examples of this, manjaro is a pre-configured arch, sure, but it’s an extremely poorly pre-configured arch, endeavoros is command-line centric, sure, but you can just use the gui in the same way you can with manjaro, arch is just a cli-centric OS. If you don’t like the CLI, I highly recommend bazzite, you’ll never have any of these issues, updates will be automatic and easy to rollback, the system will be entirely unbreakable unless you try very very hard.
“It just works” is precisely the problem with manjaro, it doesn’t just work, ease of use is not a valid usecase for manjaro for so many reasons.
https://github.com/arindas/manjarno read this document for all their insane security failings.
That’s not even going into the fact that they use the AUR and don’t push it back two weeks while also pushing back the arch packages two weeks, which accomplishes literally nothing, and also causes aur packages to break things regularly.
These kinds of issues are not something I would ever recommend for someone who wants something easy to use. If you want something pre-configured, I assure you, you do not want arch, that defeats the very purpose and the very usecase of that distro.
My entire focus is finding distros that are exceptionally easy to use for people, because I give linux to the elderly and i’m trying to increase the usernumbers, recommending manjaro is an absolute no for that. I actually had less maintenance when I was giving people arch setup with just archinstall kde and discover.
Furthermore, if people hated “easy for user” distros, why are they not shitting on linux mint? Or bazzite? It’s quite possible that you’ve just chosen a bad distro and been lucky with your maintenance needs.
why are they not shitting on linux mint?
Great question. There are more reasons, such as the bandwagon mentality among these forums. I’m not going to list them all, and I’m going to block you but I’ll leave you with this.
Linux Mint was literally hacked and served malware on their website. Manjaro has had nothing near an issue like that, yet we constantly hear people shit on it. You don’t see people mention Linux Mint being hacked every chance they get.
You can’t think for yourself. It bothers you when people make decisions for themselves. I don’t believe most of what you say and you’re just here to shill your own, niche distro.
Goodbye. Easy block. I hope everyone reading this can realize how asinine this community has become and make pragmatic decisions for themselves!
You don’t see people mention Linux Mint being hacked every chance they get.
Because it happened once and they dealt with the issue, manjaro… has never dealt with any of their problems with any seriousness.
It bothers you when people make decisions for themselves.
No, I just think that people shouldn’t be recommending obviously bad things for new users. New users should be presented with evidence of why something might be good or bad, as long as that evidence is verifiably true… most importantly, they should be given things that will actually be easy. Which is why I recommended bazzite.
I don’t believe most of what you say and you’re just here to shill your own, niche distro.
Literally everything I said is a verifiable fact except that i service 5 people.
I hope everyone reading this can realize how asinine this community has become and make pragmatic decisions for themselves!
Dude this only makes you look asinine. Did you really post to a public forum with a poorly thought out bad opinion and no evidence and expect everyone to rally behind you as a pragmatist?
Why is that an easy block? The user you responded to was cordial, laid out his reasons and even provided some sources to corroborate. What exactly did he do wrong in your mind?
EndeavourOS is the closest to vanilla arch, so i’d recommend that. There’s no good distro for gaming, as long as the packages are up to date (so no debian) it’s perfectly fine.
Debian has all the updated packages one needs for gaming just as well as the other distros. It also has a better stability record than rolling distros like Arch. Please stop spreading misconceptions.
Debian has all the updated packages one needs for gaming just as well as the other distros.
Yes and no, but I agree with the overall sentiment. Debian is entirely fine for gaming.
Bazzite
Not if you play rocket league lol. Bazzite has an inexplicable bug where rocket league specifically only uses 40% of your GPU and 25% CPU regardless of any graphics settings or launch options. With occasional drops to 7-10fps.
Haven’t used it myself, but I wanted to recommend it too. I’ve heard it’s basically SteamOS for anything that isn’t a Steam Deck.
Not only that. It can either be an almost 1:1 replacement for SteamOS (if you choose the
-deckvariant), or just a normal desktop distro with a lot of gaming optimizations, like the fsync-kernel, gamescope, hardware enablement, and quite a lot of QoL improvements.It’s basically a “Download the iso and begin gaming in 30 minutes”-distro.
It also ships some additional software that is optional, but quite neat. For example, I discovered
LACTthrough it, which made over a year of GPU humming gone by allowing me to set fan curves.For some diehard Arch users, it might be “bloated”, but I find it just right. I never had the feeling that the included tools are useless, and those that might be (e.g. Discord, OBS, etc.) are only installed when you tick the checkbox in the installer.
I’ve been pretty happy with Garuda Linux, Arch based. You’d be fine with near any of them though. Fedora base is amazing and stable and as well as the Arch based systems I use.
In the end it comes down to your hardware and what kind of gaming you want to do.
AMD gpus seem to work the best next with Intel GPUs. Nvidia can certainly work and be stable but has some drawbacks with Wayland from what I remember. (Maybe have been fixed?)Anticheat is a crap shoot sometimes
Bazzite or Cachyos. One is designed for Gaming and be harder to break, One is Designed for Performance.
Bazzite has been perfect for me!
I’m quite new to linux gaming, and so far I’ve only used CachyOS and EndeavourOS.
I have a dedicated gaming computer with an AMD GPU, only one hard drive and no critical data. Both were easy to install but I just used the default options, didn’t try to do anything complicated.
Performance-wise, I didn’t see any difference (but I don’t care enough to run benchmarks so maybe one gives me 3% more FPS than the other). I play in 1440p.
I’ve had a few mishaps on CachyOS regarding updates (2 years ago) so I tried EndeavourOS and it’s all been smooth since then.I guess the answer to your questions depends a lot on your gaming style and on what is important to you.
If you’re like me, you just want it to work and you do nothing else than gaming, then all the distros mentioned in this thread are about as good.
If you want to squeeze that extra 2 FPS, or if you want to game on older hardware, or if you also use that computer as part of your homelab… then there are going to be differences.
You might want to consider giving us more information on your needs/projects so that we can adjust our answers.Welcome to linux gaming :)
A distro that comes with the latest video drivers.
Whatever works best for you. No distro is fundamentally better suited for gaming than others.
I’d stay away from Manjaro, personally. They’ve had a number of organisational and security fuck-ups that in my opinion makes it hard to take them seriously. Plus there’s the whole “we hold Arch packages back two weeks but not AUR packages” - which means there could be dependency issues if you like installing stuff from AUR. In fairness though, they do request that users do not install AUR software on their site.
Endeavour is good. If I was to go back to an Arch distro, it’s what I’d use hands-down. Fundamentally just Arch with a better installer and a nice theme.
I’d also consider something Fedora based, like Fedora (duh), or Bazzite (if you want an atomic/immutable OS). Up-to-date, extensively tested. Bazzite even allows you to install it with out-of-the-box Gamescope support (in simple terms, you get some of the performance options and performance overlays that the steam deck has).
Manjaro was the first distro I used and it happened twice that it wouldn’t boot anymore just because I installed updates. To be fair, I did use the AUR but that’s like half the reason to use Arch in the first place IMO.
After that I installed EndeavourOS and that always worked fine but nowadays I use Fedora.
I can vouch for Fedora, I used plenty of distros from Arch to Ubuntu (and many of it’s forks) and even weird outliers like Solus and Fedora is the most boring distro out of all of them, and I mean that in the best way. To quote a certain Todd: “It just works!” Do note you will probably want to enable RPM fusion (basically mandatory if you use nVidia) to get access to useful non open source and license encumbered packages Fedora can’t ship by default (like media codecs). Other than that, install Steam and whatever other launchers you want and enjoy a boring, reliable distro.
I switched from EndeavourOS to Fedora too and I love it
As someone considering the switch in the other direction, what made you want to leave EOS?
Not the person you asked, but I also switched from endeavors to fedora. My reason was simple - after all my screwing around in arch, I realized I was just building fedora. And fedora updates take less attention than arch’s do (and I’m lazy).
I just didn’t feel like setting everything up myself anymore (e.g. switching to BTRFS and enabling compression, switching to Pipewire and stuff like that) and I also wanted to be able to install packages through GNOME’s Software app, which isn’t possible on Arch but is on Fedora. Fedora has really good defaults IMO, they’re really fast to use new technology, like what I mentioned I had to manually switch to before.
I’m not the above user, but I also went from Endeavour to Fedora.
I had a couple of issues with Grub after updates - this was an Arch bug that was quickly resolved, but it was still an annoyance that highlights that the bleeding edge isn’t without risk.
Fedora pretty aggressively pushes modern tech into their distro. They’re kind of the main driver that paves the way for other distros to join the modern world, IMO. Wayland, Flatpaks, Portals, PipeWire, they push all of that.
Last time I tried Endeavour, despite the packages being new, it still defaulted to a lot of older technologies (that may have changed now, it’s been 2 years since I used it). Fedora doesn’t, and it plays a part in shaping those technologies. Some people may not like that, but personally I love it.
Like I said in an earlier comment, though, I do love EndeavourOS. If I went back to Arch-based distros I’d use it without a doubt.
I do have annoyances with Fedora. Stuff like having to enable proprietary media codecs via a command is utterly brain-dead and not intuitive for new users.
I’ve been using EndeavourOS for a little over a year now and maybe only twice have hit issues with updates or packages or whatever. Their built in update script helps a lot. I will also say I have an RTX 3080 and fedora wouldn’t run games on my setup, EndeavourOS would.
See also another source for the same.
Issues with using AUR was enough for me to stay clear and not recommend to people.
Not that I’d necessarily recommend Arch as something for someone just getting into Linux or anything, but if you’re deadset on using something derivative, I would just recommend going with Arch.
This install scriot makes it no harder to install than anything. And the wiki is robust.
However, if you don’t want to learn how your OS works, and troubleshoot fringe issues, don’t use Arch.
My route into Linux I wouldn’t tell others to take.
If “more stable Arch” is why you’re considering Manjaro, consider openSUSE Tumbleweed. They’re rolling like Arch, but openQA and rebuilding everything after a compiler update seems to catch a number of issues.
If you want easier to install Arch, consider EmdeavorOS.
Manjaro is pretty much never the right answer.
I just installed EndeavourOS on a virtual machine to see what it was like. I can confirm, it’s easy. It’s definitely similar to other distros. Didn’t feel like Arch at all.
I can’t disagree. I love Manjaro on one of my devices, a shitty old HP laptop. It runs better than any other distro on it, and it’s smooth as butter (even for light gaming) even though the hardware is terrible.
But.
I’ve had to reinstall more than once because things broke while installing upgrades, lol
Imo. You shouldn’t worry about “which distro is best for gaming” since they are all the same under the hood (mostly). There are no real performance benefits with different distros, so just pick one that feels and looks the best for you. I’ve heard that PopOS seems to be quite friendly for newcomers so it should be a good place to start exploring.
Windows, lol
That famous Linux distro…
I’m not going to pretend that people won’t have a good time gaming on Windows, but this is like someone asking for Italian food recommendations and you recommending sushi.
Presumably this person knows Windows exists. They don’t need to be told about Windows.
