A friend is due for a gaming PC build. But he’s super pissed it needs to run windows 11. I told him just run something else. He said his job needs something that runs windows-only and on the odd occasions where he needs a desktop to do something he’s not buying a second computer just to run windows.
Dual booting exists but Microsoft likes to clobber boot loaders. So I reminded him he could just run windows 11 in a VM when he needs to, everything else in bare metal Linux.
He’s now sold on moving to Linux.
The question is where should he start? It used to be as simple as “if you aren’t sure, use Ubuntu.” But his use case kinda seems like what everyone has been crowing about using bazzite for.
I have zero experience with bazzite but the page does describe something built for his use case. There are 3 concerns I have though.
- Is it common enough that he can Google an answer?
- it’s an atomic distro, so classic Linux answers he might find online won’t always be applicable here.
- selinux, ugh.
What’s a good gamer Linux distro? He’s not super into tinkering. He just wants it to do the thing without Microsoft’s invasive bullshit.
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I don’t have a recommendation other than don’t recommend something to your friend for which you’re not willing to provide tech support.
Bazzite is great out of the box. My favourite part is that the menu automatically suggests flatpak apps you might want to install without getting in the way of your existing apps.
No matter the distro (since there’s plenty of good ones out there), help your friend set up Winboat and you’ll be all good.
Echoing what others have said, a “gaming distro” really isn’t necessary. I have used Ubuntu for years on and off. When I switched my gaming PC to Linux earlier this year I went with Kubuntu, because it’s just Ubuntu and I like KDE Plasma better than Gnome. I do feel like Ubuntu is one of the easiest to find support for when you’re looking online.
CachyOS
Trust me it’s super easy and nice.
^This is the answer.
Mint still does not work well with Wayland from what I can tell, and if you need features like HDR, you’re gonna have to stick to something that runs Wayland well.
While Bazzite seems fine, it is an atomic distro. If you were to try installing certain software natively, like another Firewall for instance, it might not work. And if you continue to layer such software, the update times can take longer.
Cachy(with KDE) seems very stable to me. You’ll pretty much find every software through the repo. If not, you’ll have to manually install flatpak yourself. Never had to do it myself though. But it shouldn’t be a hassle, I think.
It has its own proton variant and they recommend that you disable Steam preshader caching and increase maximum shader cache size when you’re using Proton-Cachy or GE.
Ask him which software it is that requires him to run windows. If it can not be used with wine their is also winboat. Which is technically a windows VM where programs seemingly integrate on the Linux DE
Mint (LMDE). It might actually be easier to use than windows. My dead dad could use it and he was a moron. I held out for quite a while to try out ‘cooler’ distros but yeah, Mint is what I’m telling anyone moving from windows to use now.
My dead dad could use it and he was a moron.
I really was not prepared for that sentence 😅
I’m still reeling
Dual booting is fine. Microsoft destroying bootloaders is mostly a meme off a few bugs. Any distro that ships an up to date kernel and drivers is good. Fedora/Ubuntu. Bazzite is kinda weird for gamers because it just makes every problem harder to solve. If you never tinker then its fine but Bazzite feels more restrictive than windows without knowing how it works.
Just install Mint. Honestly, “gamer” Linux is a pretty silly concept. You can install Steam and Lutris on any distro which gets you access to basically all modern PC gaming. Even something as slow to embrace change as Debian has recent enough drivers and kernels available.
I have a mini PC for gaming and originally installed Mint, but switched to Bazzite to see if it would fix an issue with my XBox controllers cutting out. It didn’t, and I also didn’t notice any better performance in games. After coming to the conclusion I’d have to rebase to uninstall Steam (I only use Lutris), I decided immutable is cool, but I’ll stick with Mint.
I would recommend installing Heroic Launcher too. It works good for GoG, Epic & Amazon games.
Fact. I game on Debian (mostly through Steam flatpak) and it works great. I tried the so-called “gaming” distros and eeked out 0-5% fps gains while also experiencing paper cuts or bugs in other areas of my daily driving that weren’t present on Debian. I’m not into e-sports so so long as I’m not hitting a 30 fps floor I’m fine. The time I save not having to navigate paper cuts I get to put toward fun things, like actually playing games.
(Edit: typos)
LMDE 7 and send it. Regular mint has Ubuntu nonsense baked in, lmde is basically the same end user experience and smooth Debian jazz underneath.
Like someone else said, steam, heroic.
I’d avoid any of the gamer distros.
I have bazzite, it also includes graphics drivers ready to go which is nice. If you’re going to use steam for gaming i find it great. But this distro is not needed for gaming, one can install and game on any of the popular distros. You’re friend needs to try a few and see what feel best for them.
I’m throwing in my vote for CachyOS. Not because it’s the easiest to use (though it isnt difficult imo) but because it works out of the box, then they have nice wiki to guide you through simple things (like using Lutris and Proton). It’s also Arch based so there’s the arch wiki to fall back on. I ran Windows for 35 years and just switched to Linux in like October, fwiw.
Honestly, my recommendation for new users who are into gaming is Bazzite. Just install everything through the software store and it just works. Well, everything that’s available as a flatpak at least. Steam comes preinstalled, as do all the drivers (among some other various gaming-oriented things like kernel optimizations and Lutris), so it’s basically just install and done. The software store, Bazaar, will find basically anything a normal user needs. The nice thing about atonic distros is that you generally don’t need to do anything through the command line,as installs are perfectly consistent across all computers (so no random things breaking in the background without someone else noticing and either filing a bug report for you in the beta, or fixing the issue outright). After over a decade of Linux use, I’ve never found an easier distro. I honestly have switched to it as my main distro because I love Fedora, and the atomic features are nice (and Bazzite is just a little nicer for my use case than Kinoite).
When I set someone up with Bazzite, I just tell them to install everything through the software store, and I rarely get questions other than “how do I install this software that isn’t available on Linux”, which I usually meet with a recommendation for an alternative, or if it’s really critical, I’ll have them install through Bottles or something. I always mention the “no Adobe or Autodesk” caveot before they install, so I never really get questions about that except for “well, what would you recommend I use instead?”
As to answer your questions directly:
- It is very common, so you can find Bazzite specific answers,
- As far as I’ve used it (which is a couple years now) things never break, so finding solutions that work in other distros doesn’t tend to apply for me (except for when I want to make custom scripts like when I bound a mouse button to hard mute and unmute my mic, though I just had to look up generic Pipewire stuff)
- Everything installs as a flatpak, so selinux is essentially completely unnoticed. I’ve never had a single issue with selinux and I’m a power user. I’ve used Fedora-based distros for many years and only ever encountered selinux issues on my server, and that was for low-level processes that aren’t relevant to desktop use (for instance, setting up NUT to automatically power off all devices on my network during a power outage when the UPS battery is low)
I have a specific use case for CachyOS but I see two categories:
- Bazzite, not intending to use the terminal much. Also less frequent updates which ought to be very stable. Atomic.
- CachyOS, using the terminal and frequent updates. Rolling, and good support base.
Both use flatpaks which will keep apps sandboxed. A lot of users don’t seem to like snaps being pushed by Ubuntu so flatpak is the big choice.
Cachy at least doesn’t do flatpaks out of the box.
Ah my mistake, I must’ve installed it shortly after installing CachyOS.
Anyone in these comments claiming there is a big difference between “gaming distros” and any other is flat wrong.
Any distro works. It’s about the initial experience they want without having to fuss about changes. You can switch Desktop Environment on any distro easily, none of them offer massive gaming performance differences over the others. It’s subjective. For a beginner, don’t recommend immutable. That’s pretty much it.
Side question: his job is asking him to run work programs on his personal machine? If they are not willing to provide a work laptop or if it is something that does not require powerful hardware to run, I feel like in that situation I would buy a burner laptop off ebay to run the work thing on.
That’s just my personal preference, but I do not mix work and personal things on the same computer.
There’s also the security concern. A workplace should not have an employee run work software on a machine that isn’t bound by group policy.
So I can address this from my experience, their mileage may vary: sometimes it’s about saving yourself time. Say if your normal daily driver is a desktop for some reason, but you’re on call to do a task. You can (in theory) do that task from your home PC or you can drive in to the office for (arbitrary round trip time) to do it ‘properly’. Even when I used windows at home /and/ had a work laptop I still maintained a VM (an ersatz air gap) for work shit on my personal PC for convince sake.
