Linux Gaming

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.

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.

I don't think there's a "best" but PopOS sure is one of the recommended ones. You might also find some answers in this post: https://lemmy.ml/post/1130762

You're gonna get a million different answers to this question. lol But yes, PopOS is a great option, for sure! I started my Linux gaming journey on PopOS and I loved it!

Another cool one is Nobara, a gaming-centric Linux distro based on Fedora. My one caution would be that it usually takes a month after Fedora updates (which is already slower than some other distros because of their release model), for Nobara to get those updates. Otherwise, it not only installs the necessary GPU drivers during install (like PopOS), but it has a bunch of gaming-related software pre-installed and pre-configured. You can basically just start downloading and playing games without any hassle.

With that said, PopOS is going to get much faster and more regular updates. It's stable, easy to use, and makes driver setup easy.

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.

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 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.)

I've been using Ubuntu for a while now, and was planning for my new build (Within the next week or two) to try out PopOS (Which is still based off of Ubuntu).

If I was more familiar with Fedora, I might have tried out Nobara, (but it doesn't have the support that PopOS does yet).

And considering you use Nvidia, I've read that PopOS makes it easier to get drivers for that. If you're still new, either PopOS or base Ubuntu would work, but PopOS might get you set up faster. I wish I could give a more detailed answer.

Garuda comes with all of the game stores and drivers preinstalled if that make any difference to you. Plus you get to say you run arch, which is kind of like being a vegan since everyone has to tell you within seconds of meeting you that's what they are.

https://garudalinux.org/downloads.html

@hellerphant I have no problems with Mint (on AMD CPU and GPU) - wont use Pop because of the idiotic name.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

While we are at the topic of Pop!OS...I'm about to install it on my laptop with AMD iGPU and dedicated Nvidia GPU. Can someone tell me if I should use the Nvidia iso in that case?

Sorry for hijacking your post ':D

Recommending OpenSuse. Its not hard to set up your GPU there anymore, you are less gimped than with Ubuntu, and you'll have a more widespread and mature community than with PopOS, resulting in more software to be available.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why not install SteamOS?

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 Garuda Arch with great results, though I've heard PopOS is also....popping off 😪

@hellerphant OpenSUSE Tumbleweed isn’t really the easiest distro out there, but definitely is the distro with better gaming performance (and performance in general). Some games run under proton on OpenSUSE TW better than they do natively on windows

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.

PopOS is shit. Use anything else.

I generally like Mint and I don't really wanna switch distro unless it would give me any significant benefits. Like what's the deal with PopOS? What does it have over other distros that makes it a good gaming distro?

I can easily install proprietary drivers on most distros these days. Steam is available in the repos of any debian/ubuntu distro that i can think of. There's gotta be something that I'm missing?