I play a lot of games over steam, and I am coming from windows.
Zorin OS
I switched to Bazzite on my gaming rig a month ago and felt great. I managed to install and mod Skyrim effortlessly and yesterday I installed Tarkov and SPT with no problem whatsoever. Highly recommend.
But check if your favorite games are compatible, mainly the multiplayer ones: Tarkov can only be single player PvE, GTA is story mode only and forget about Destiny 2. Not a problem for me, plenty of alternatives, but you should check for yourself.
Bazzite scared me when it chose not to boot one day. I had to do some sort of command and got it working again (saved the details to my system build notes). I can’t have stuff breaking on me so I was concerned. I haven’t had an issue since, so I’m pretty stoked on Bazzite now. I will say, I couldn’t get Steam Play working (the thing that let’s you play games remotely on a tablet or phone or whatever, Steam itself works fine). I fixed the issue with Sunlight/Moonlight which does the sane thing but did it with less lag, picture degradation. Personally, I suggest you hold out on choosing and load a few different distros on USB sticks to try. I recently built a PC for a family member and did some distrohopping to find the right OS for them.
I’d love to help you, but unfortunately I can’t think of a single distro that would run on a cat.
Not even CATchyOS?
They only run Miaowcrosoft products.
Look at zorinOS or Mint. Those are good starting points
Thank you
Always remember, distrohopping is allowed. Your first distribution doesn’t have to stray with you forever. It can, but doesn’t have to. If you hear about a cool new distro, feel free to try it out.
Worth mentioning that if you’re on AMD, you’re pretty much open for choice. If you have nVidia, make sure the OS you go with calls out nVidia support as a feature. Even then, your specific config may require that you try out a couple before finding the right fit.
I personally tried Bazzite and had a rough experience with performance and haven’t had issues on EndeavorOS, but have read reports from other nVidia users that had the opposite experience. All to say, your mileage may vary, and don’t give up right away if the first one doesn’t feel right.
If you have nVidia, make sure the OS you go with calls out nVidia support as a feature.
That makes the setup easier, but the capacity of making it work or not doesn’t actually change.
I’d say not only pick an OS that explicitly supports it, but make sure to test first as a live-image without installing and overwriting the OS that is already there working.
I wish there was an easy way to test this, but I got two weeks into my setup before I noticed performance issues because it was only affecting some of my games. This is still a good idea, just not a guarantee.
Can’tbelieve no one’s said this yet, but first you should check protondb.com for all the games you play a lot. It will show you how well they work in Linux. The biggest issue are competitive/esports titles because of their anticheat systems. Most other games run fine out of the box, but some run better with some tweaking.
I usually recommend Linux Mint. Its based on Ubuntu, so when searching for help online everything that works for Ubuntu should work for mint. Another Advantage mint has is, that it has quite a lot of UIs for a lot of applications/settings. This means, that you dont have to work with the terminal that much when doing something. However, I Am highly recommending that in the long term you should try to find your way around in the terminal. A lit if help that you will find online is based around the terminal, and knowing what commands do is quite valuable.
I just got Mint working on one of my machines yesterday, the process was remarkably painless
My experience is that Linux Mint is the closest we have to a “it just works”-distro that is also decently up to date. Try that first.
I recommend Mint for a beginner friendly stepping stone. Works right out of the box and is really easy to jump to from windows.
I’m just glad that someone FINALLY asked this question!
I would say SteamOS if you can run it. Otherwise, CachyOS.
Thank you
Worth noting if you take this advice: SteamOS (and Bazzite, recommended elsewhere) are immutable distros, which, to over-simplify it to an extreme degree, limits your ability to install things that modify the system directly. This can be a good thing, but it can also make it difficult to install certain things that you might want. There are workarounds, but you might find this frustrating at first.
If you primarily game, this is probably not an issue for you except that some non-Steam games may require some extra work to run (particularly ones that, for example, require you to install .NET Framework or specific Java versions.)
Not trying to discourage you from these - they’re great OSes and the ‘downside’ of immutable distros can actually be beneficial when new to linux, as they prevent you from breaking things through inexperience, but it’s something you should be aware of up front. (FWIW I use Bazzite as my daily driver for everything, and it works fine.)
My following recommendations are often pretty easy for new users: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ZorinOS. These distros will give you a chance to become more familiar with linux without getting overly lost in the process. Debian based distros tend to be the best starting place, as they often just work, their approach to Third Party Drivers is sane.
I recommend you steer clear of Arch or Arch-Based distros like CachyOS…If you are just starting out, this will not be a good experience for you. I’ve found that installers of either EndeavourOS or CachyOS can fail in ways you aren’t prepared for, like failing to install the Linux Kernel or failing to allow you to correctly configure partitions. Please, don’t listen to those that recommend CachyOS or anything Arch Linux. Unless you are prepared to cry, or are very technically inclined and can figure stuff out fast.
It looks like you found a cat instead. Please pet the cat.
Use Fedora. Or not, I’m not your parent.
They’re all pretty much the same except for a couple, like nix, Gentoo, slackware, etc. maybe stay away from those. fuck around and find out is the best way.
actually genuinely this. The recommendations here are if you just want to install linux once and not think about it again but distro-hopping is really the best thing to do if you’re ok with re-installing everything once in a while.
From what I hear, gaming = bazzite.
Also you can check compatibility of your games with ProtonDB.
My wife and I play a lot of games; my wife is also not super technical — she can get her way around some problems, but not deeper ones, and never uses the terminal, — and we’ve enjoyed bazzite quite a bit with almost no issues.
I also do development, and that’s been fine as well.
