I’m ditching Ubuntu. Thinking of switching to Debian.
Has anyone used this, or something similar to set up their Debian gaming setup?
This got me thinking. Do I need to install anything special to Debian 13 to be able to play games? Or can I play them with a normal Debian out of the box?
Please don’t run scripts that a random person uploaded to Github if you don’t know what you’re doing. I didn’t see anything malicious here, but most of the stuff is useless and some of it is even detrimental (e.g. the LLM “thought” the outdated Ubuntu Nvidia ppa was a good idea).
If you want to game on Debian, you can do that just fine. Installing Steam and Nvidia drivers (if applicable) should be sufficient for most people. IMO, the main issue with gaming on Debian are the very old GPU drivers (Nvidia 550, Mesa 25.0). This can be fine on older hardware, but is the reason why I wouldn’t recommend Debian for gaming in general. The script you linked doesn’t help with this at all.
If you really want these “gaming optimizations”, for the limited benefits they provide, I would recommend that you just use one of the distros that ships them. CachyOS, Bazzite, Nobara, Pop OS, or PikaOS all seem like a better choice than these scripts. At the very least the maintainers of those distros will integrate everything and perform some level of QA for you.
Just to add, finding good wayland support can be more important for gaming depending on your hardware. You get HDR, variable refresh rate, fractional scaling for monitors and other goodies.
Yeah, I actually switched distro to get Wayland multi-monitor VRR. But, unfortunately, it seems that it’s kinda broken with my Novideo GPU :(
Wish I could stay on Wayland but it’s not quite there for game streaming yet. Window/scene capture in OBS is miles better on X11 still. For non-streamers though Wayland is amazing
This thing has like 2 commits by 1 person 2 months ago without any review
I wouldn’t really trust this repo at all.
It’s literally a couple of shell scripts. It’s some dude’s personal project.
And the code is right there for you to read.
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Most of the script isnt applicable to any 1 setup
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I ain’t reading all that
If I wanna install something Ill just install it, not run some giant monolithic script.
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my experience with these kinds of hobby scripts, is that they often don’t work, and it’s more work troubleshooting it than just installing things manually
This is the personal project of some LLM.
It even has the common “phase” numbering and long em dashes.
Ah I see. Man I hate how things have become now thanks to AI.
Even YouTube videos now are made by AI with a virtual author and full AI generated animations. It’s crazy.
The worst part is seeing my colleagues work and deliver code that they don’t even know themselves what it does because they got it from GitHub Copilot. It’s insane. I have to sit down with them to review the code so THEY know what their code does.
I hate how people use it.
I am a dev with 15+ years of experience and I just vibecoded some little summarization service that uses a small LLM model because I needed it and couldn’t be bothered with the python stuff for the AI part. It’s only 3 files that I double checked line by line. I posted it on github as a backup and on docker hub so I can pull it easily from wherever I want. I have not advertised it anywhere and the first three words of the readme are literally “I vibecoded this” with a note that if somebody thinks it’s useful I can start maintaining it without AI, cause I fucking can. I could have written the thing myself, and that’s the most important thing somebody should be able to do before having AI do it for them.
I looked trough the script you posted as it might have had some interesting ideas that I could research further. It installs
irqbalancewhich I hadn’t heard of yet. Upon further research it seems to be only good for servers and might even have negative impact on desktop installations, especially ones with 8GB RAM and lower. Nowhere does it mention anything about it.Interesting. Maybe it has some good stuff but i really should go through everything and double check.
✅ What It Does
- Installs XanMod kernel with BORE scheduler (smoother frames, less stutter)
- Sets up a weekly auto-update pipeline to stay cutting edge
Just use Fedora/Bazzite or Arch/Cachy at this point?
You can game just fine on Debian based systems but if you want the latest and greatest from your recently launched hardware, running these scripts that installs a custom kernel and does a lot of tinkering, is of not much use.
This script is like buying a family hatchback car and then making a ton of changes to make it run like a sports car.
- Sets up EAC + BattlEye anti-cheat (Battlefield, Fortnite, GTA 5, Apex)
Seems LLM Generated as well. Because I don’t think Fortnite works well (if at all) on Linux. This just seems an LLM reassuring the Dev that it works? IDK.
Seems LLM Generated as well. Because I don’t think Fortnite works well (if at all) on Linux. This just seems an LLM reassuring the Dev that it works? IDK.
Yeah, it’s for sure AI slop.
Or if they really want specifically Debian for gaming, use PikaOS instead because it is gaming optimized Debian. CachyOS or Bazzite is stilk a better choice IMO though.
I really don’t want to use an Arch based system.
I’m worried about stability and security issues. I don’t mind using a distro with slightly older packages if it means I won’t have to troubleshoot anything or risk any vulnerabilities. That’s why I stuck with Ubuntu for so long.
Go with Bazzite. Stable or LTS distros are more insecure than rolling release, and Debian has a history of leaving vulnerable packages not updated (eg. Chromium).
Debian/Ubuntu use AppArmor for very minimal mandatory access control policies. Fedora (which Bazzite is based on) uses SELinux, which is better.
Use Fedora KDE. It’s general purpose distro. Bazzite is more gaming oriented but IMO you should stay with conservative setup if you want hassle free experience.
Yeah, I’ve considered it. But I don’t really like the company behind it. And the short support cycles isn’t great either. They also make it complicated to install 3rd party proprietary drivers and codecs, which is lame.
I really don’t want to use an Arch based system. I’m worried about stability and security issues.
If you keep it simple, it will not be an issue. I think cachyOS does it really good. That being said. Go with bazzite. It will give you the best Out of the Box experience. For me Debian based systems lack far too behind in feature updates for it be a viable Desktop OS (Don’t at me. It is my personal opinion lol). I remember waiting for a year for KeepassXC’s passkey update which made me switch to Fedora on my office laptop from pure Debian. Of course I could have used flatpak but it then didn’t integrate well with the browsers. Fedora and its derivatives are the perfect middle ground for your use.
Then just use Bazzite
Bazzite is immutable, though. I don’t have anything super weird and I’ve had to ostree half a dozen times on the first day.
I think Bazzite and other immutable ones like it are never a good “just use this” recommendation if you don’t have a good picture of their setup and its uses.
I’m sure the fact that it is immutable has a lot of stability and probably even performance benefits, but I don’t find them appropriate for much other than very static workstations or single-purpose rigs that are not expected to ever support random hardware or special purpose software.
Exactly. I am not interested in an immutable distro.
I’m not looking for the “shiny new thing” like CachyOS or Bazzite. I want the stability and ease of use of Ubuntu but without the fucking snaps. But I want a KDE Plasma desktop as it is my desktop of choice.
They never mentioned no immutability. They wanted stable.
I’ve had zero issues, never had to ostree a single thing, its absolutely fine for daily use
If they’re asking about this script, they don’t know to even ask that question. The fact is that immutable distros pair best with fixed and very mainstream hardware, which we don’t know this guy has or not.
I think these types of discussion as are always a mess because it is difficult to gauge the user’s knowledge and needs based just on a single, often limited post, but I also think that many Linux distros are for a specific use case or set of use cases, such as the immutable ones.
I think it best serves the OPs of questions like this to ask them follow-up questions before recommending something like that, because they can be quite restricting. It is awesome you’ve never had to ostree, so you must be exactly the type of user that immutable distros are for, but please do understand that what they mean by immutable is “you can’t mess with the kernel at all without a performance impacting ostree”, so asking whether that is a dealbreaker is a good move.
I’m a long time Linux user since 2000 or 2001. Started on Mandrake lol. Used RedHat Linux in school too. Then moved to Ubuntu in 2004 and stuck around with them ever since.
I compiled my own Linux kernel to include specific modules for special features on my graphics card back then, like the RCA video input and output. Or for connecting to the internet on DSL. Man, I had a lot of free time back then.
I also worked at Xandros where I build the Linux OS for the Asus Eee PC. Those little 7in and 9in netbook laptops back in 2008.
So, I’m a little bit experienced lol.
Never heard of it hehe. The only derivative I have ever used is Mint.
Mint is directly based on Ubuntu. Mint also has LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition).
True. The readme claims Battlefield 2142 is supported, but on Protondb it’s still botched, because of EA’s Javelin anti cheat.
I run Debian and have done nothing special to game on it. All native games I’ve installed run fine. Only non native game I play is WoW, and it runs fine. Though requires a GE proton update every now and then.
I have an AMD 6600 gpu.
Debian works just fine for gaming out of the box with a few commands from the Debian wiki. Maybe use a Debian testing or at least backports if you want newer packages by if you do its a little more work by Debian stable but less than something like arch.
This is a great how-to. Thanks for sharing!
You can play on Debian stable just fine. I installed Steam through flatpak and I am happy with my AMD gpu. (:
Disclaimer: I don’t play many games, but I wouldn’t say they are not demanding.
Just switch to Debian, I haven’t used a script like this (or heard of it). Get Wine from WineHQ to run Windows apps, they have the instructions on how to install it, and look up how to install the drivers for your GPU, and it’ll work fantastic. That’s all you’ll need provided the rest of the system is working, I don’t even have shit like certain launchers.
Cool.
But what about using an optimized kernel? I see there’s the Xanmod or whatever that provides better settings.
Debian could really use a gaming pack.
I just use the kernel that it ships with. Plays me stuff like Skyrim Anniversary Edition at the FPS I’d expect from my laptop on Windows. Things are nice.
Such a weird grab to avoid getting cachyos and installing the two gaming packages they have.
it just works man. You don’t need to build-your-own-os or reinvent the wheel on an OS just not made for what you’re trying to do.
I fully understand that you can game on any distro you want, and that linux lets you have a full time hobby just customizing it the way you want it to be. That’s all fine, if your hobby isn’t gaming but it’s instead OS customization then gaming on debian is an awesome pet project, maybe you want to try your hand at arch next?
I just want something that works, doesn’t break from updates often (6 months 0 breaks!) does good gaming customizations (kernel tweaks, new game FSR4.1 support, gamemode and other tools readily available in the OS welcome splash) and has enough users doing what i’m doing that when I do run into an issue with something, I can find info. This checks all the boxes. Many gaming specialized distros fit into this sort of thing.
I’m still struggling day to day with opensuse tumbleweed and basic tools. I launch moonlight and it barks about not having GPU acceleration, because they don’t include whatever it requires since it’s not really intended to be a gaming OS first despite being a rolling release and fairly bleeding edge. I can’t select color depth in the controls to get hdmi @ 4k120hz working whatsoever (until linux ~7.2 drops with official support some day…) I use debian for my servers because it’s rock solid stable but the bins are ancient.
If you’re gaming on a system that could be considered ewaste because the parts are >5 years old and you don’t play new releases or anything with bleeding edge tech, then i’m sure debian will support everything you’re doing with next to no issues whatsoever once you take the time to install all the customizations you want it to have. Just a lot of work though to get that square peg through the round hole.
edit: literally the first thread I popped open about an amd issue and someone is bashing debian for gaming . I know this entire comment will be very unpopular in a thread about debian because that brings those users in- but I want honesty, not ‘my team is better’ for this topic.
Can you tell me more about your gaming experience on Tumbleweed? This is another distro that I’m considering.
Works fine for me, mostly.
You go
zypper inrand it should install what is essential. The rest are in the repos, but you’ll have to make a bit of search due to weird naming conventions. Luckily,zypper searchexists.Overall, it’s be much less painful than Debian, but significantly more involved compared to gaming distros like Bazzite, CachyOS, and Nobara.
It’s not built for it. You’ll have to install all the special packages yourself, but they’re at least in the first party repos and frequently updated. For a build-a-bear gaming OS it is probably one of the better ones because of bleeding edge bins and lots of gaming tools in their repos. Unless you are sticking with official proton only, you’re gonna have to use protonqt or some other method of keeping your proton variant of choice up to date like you would on popos or most other distros.
A lot of convenience things are missing for me. I actually avoid using the system because it’s such a pain in the ass without hdmi 2.1 support built in. Earlier tonight I was updating it after not touching it for a few weeks and the updater app appeared to freeze and so did something somewhere in the video stack. I had about 7GB of updates that totaled nearly 3000, so it wasn’t a small amount of updates. I waited ~15 minutes and it did ultimately manage to reboot and re-checking updates showed everything was up to date despite the instability during the process. I was really hoping hdmi 2.1 support had released, but not yet.
I don’t know how cachyos does it, but if I throw my cachyos box into the exact same display setup cable and all, it recognizes hdr and 120hz @ 4k. They have to do some kernel tweaks for that. I am stuck with 1080p@120hz or 4k@30hz otherwise in opensuse. I picked up a displayport to hdmi adapter that claims to support 8k@60hz or 4k@240hz but it still only shows up as 4k@30hz capable in opensuse with a 6800xt, cachyos sees it as 4k@60hz or 4k@120hz depending on how much screwing around with it I do.
OpenSUSE has some pretty awesome enterprise management tools though, and they’re all built-in and included side by side with the user settings. If I was building out linux workstations at work at substantial scale i’d put it at the top one to try because of how powerful the built-in stuff appears to be for RMM.
I went to opensuse from pop and pop sucks by comparison (tried before and after COSMIC release.) Pop was always a bit out of date because they relied on ubuntu bins that were just not quickly updated. If pop was old, debian by comparison is a fossil. OpenSUSE is as modern as it comes though.
I built a system for a buddy four or five months ago and he was willing to go and try linux for gaming. Fairly high end, 9850x3d, 9070xt. He never used linux before. He’s still using cachyos and totally happy with it. I don’t think he’d still be using debian, fedora, endeavourOS or even opensuse.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
If you want a Debian based Linux distro that is gaming focused, I would suggest to you either:
PopOS!
Made by System76, who also actually make their own hardware as well, pre-built pcs, etc, and also successfully lobbied at least Colorado to not have a law that mandates age verification built into OS’s…
PopOS! Is essentially Ubuntu but less shitty, and is also making their own Desktop Environment COSMIC, that is basically an attempt at ‘GNOME, but better.’
There is also PikaOS.
https://wiki.pika-os.com/en/home
PikaOS is basically to Debian as Nobara is to Fedora: Its the base OS, but with a suite of cutting edge/bleeding edge optimizations geared toward improving gaming performance.
PopOS is in active development and I would strongly recommend NOT using it, especially if you’re not an experienced Linux user.
System76 makes great hardware but their OSs leave a lot to be desired right now.
Ah.
I thought they had actually finally finished COSMiC?
Apparently not?
Back 5 ish years ago, I was able to run Steam and the Index on it, back in Proton 6/7 days, via installing Steam from Debian sources.
(obligatory acknowledgement of meme numbers)
Hell I had RDR2 working on it, even online worked up untill the point Rockstar decided all linux gamers are hackers.
Anyway, back when it was their sort of modified version of GNOME, I quite liked it, because it was both easy for newbie to understand the basics, but also allowed significant customizability and tweak ability for more experienced users.
I had some fun with Pop two-ish years ago. it felt very smooth, until it wasn’t. everything collapsed very quickly after that lol
part of the problem is that its not actually out of active development as you noted, which is definitely a communication issue from S76
their github is absolutely slammed with issues, many of which are problems that would be common for casual desktop usage https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/issues
I have a lot of hope for the future of pop and cosmic, there’s a good community around it. it just has a long way to go, and is not typically something people who are looking at Debian (renowned for its stability and reliability) would be interested in, in my opinion.
Absolutely fair.
Personally I switched over to primarily using Bazzite… so… I kind of just figured that they… would have basically finished at least v1.0 of COSMIC by now.
Apparently not.
But! Desktop Environments are fucking hard, so I am glad they are still pursuing it.
But but, yeah if its still basically in Open Beta, yeah probably not the best recommend for a fair deal of people.
I also use Debian. And it is awsome. very stable with KDE + wayland.
I wrote a script to do post OS installation: https://github.com/LuceusXylian/debian-desktop-setup/blob/master/debian_desktop_setup.sh
You do not need the stuff after
# Focusrite ConfigNice!! I’ll check it out!
I recently ditched Manjaro for Debian and it’s amazing. I installed Nvidia drivers as desceibed on Debian’s wiki and have never had to read the wiki since then. Games work fine, system doesn’t break after update, always wakes up from sleep (it was a gamble on Manjaro but mostly didn’t work) and shuts down properly (Manjaro tended to freeze with black screen once it exited DE).
I used to be reluctant about switching to Debian and its derivatives because i read so much about the outdated packages and haven’t had the best experience with pop os but Debian just works and it’s amazing.
Thanks for your feedback.
I think I might stick with Debian after all. Tumbleweed is nice and all, but I quickly ran into some issues for finding third party proprietary software packages. There isn’t as big a user base either. So finding help when things go bad is a bit more difficult. Otherwise I think it’s a great distro. Much better than arch anyway as far as rolling releases go. And a lot easier to use.
Debian might require a bit more manual work, but I’m pretty used to that distro. So it won’t be a big challenge. And I don’t mind my software being a little behind if it means I get to use my desktop instead of troubleshooting.
I develop a similar tool and this thing is absolute slop: it’s full of obsolete settings like RADV_PERFTEST=gpl,rt (both have been unnecessary for years), broken features like FSR4 (it needs a DLL from the AMD drivers to work that this thing doesn’t provide), and anticheat support is a complete lie, none of that trash will ever work in wine.
Also, I don’t know why you would ever use a debian-based distro for gaming, the drivers are 6 months to 2 years out of date, you’re just asking for trouble.
broken features like FSR4 (it needs a DLL from the AMD drivers to work that this thing doesn’t provide)
I assume the LLM assume you are using either Proton-GE, Proton-EM or Proton-cachy, where this flag actually works 🤔
Games will work fine on Debian as-is, but if you want latest-greatest-optimizesest the get either Nobara (stable, based on Fedora) or CachyOS (rolling, based on Arch) Or if you enjoy pain - Bazzite (immutable)
Just use PikaOs if you want a gaming oriented debian base. It’s essentially cachyOS on debian rather than arch
Yeah it looks alright
You’re ditching one outdated distro for even more outdated distro and fixing it by running some script written by unkonown random guy on github.
Why? What’s so wonderful about Debian that you have to use it???
If you want to tinker all day long just install arch. If you don’t, go for Fedora KDE. The only use case for Debian is your 10y old laptop with Intel iGPU
Fuck Arch. It’s a little fanboy distro with unstable packages and a user package repo full of infected packages. I’m never gonna touch it. When a distro has to have a dozen derivatives just to solve the problem of using the fucking thing just shows that it’s completely stupid. They push whatever new package they find and let the users deal with the fucking problems. Fuck that.
Debian is the most stable and secure distro with the largest package repo of any Linux distributions. Even third party software companies provides Debian packages. It’s also a community project that’s not backed or controlled by any corporation. They are professional and dedicated. I don’t care that it’s packages are a bit on the older side (2 years? so what?) At least I know I’m not getting infected or that my next update isn’t going to break my system.
I’m so fucking tired of people saying “JuSt UsE cAtChYoS oR bAzZiTe”. No! I don’t want to spend my evenings and weekends troubleshooting my fucking PC because an update failed. I don’t want to spend time reading forums and release note to ensure my next update isn’t going to fuck up everything. I’m already working IT at my day job. I don’t want to spend my free time doing the same fucking shit. I also don’t want a god damn immutable atomic OS. I want to install packages when I want without having to fucking reboot.
Sorry for lashing out, but I’m just tired of people thinking I’m stupid because I don’t use Catchy or Bazzite. I’ve been using Linux for 25 years. I’ve seen multiple distros come to life and then die a few years later. Arch started strong, but it’s become a clusterfuck and I can’t see it becoming anything serious in the future. Arch is great if you want to fuck around, but it’s terrible if you’re not a student with lots of free time who want any serious hassle-free desktop OS that just fucking works. And the immutable OSes probably have their uses, but they’re not for desktop PCs. (I’d totally see them working on portable devices like smartphones and tablets with flatpaks.)
Anyway,
/rant
I don’t know your particular use case. I dislike Ubuntu desktop because I used it between 2017-2019 and it was horrible, horrible experience.
No! I don’t want to spend my evenings and weekends troubleshooting my fucking PC because an update failed. I don’t want to spend time reading forums and release note to ensure my next update isn’t going to fuck up everything
I spent countless hours diagnosing and fixing because Canonical fucking broke Vulkan drivers on Ubuntu 17.10. I’m not mad that bug happened I’m mad because they didn’t bother to fix it until next major release half a year later.
Also they made wayland default in 2017. No vsync control, no Hidpi scaling, and bunch of other shit broken. On Ubuntu 18.04LTS their system 100% crashed when launching steam after updating kernel. I have still no idea why.
Fuck this company. I’m on rolling distro now. Ubuntu is the reason why Linux is so niche. Every new user is recommended that garbage and most of them must bounce straight back to Windows.
Right now I’m on Manjaro and I’m happy with it but I can see the issues with it.
I don’t use AUR. Maybe there are like two packages I installed from there. I think AUR is conceptually stupid, and I use official repos and flatpak whenever I can.
I’ve never encountered these problems with Ubuntu. And the Wayland as default?? They’ve only started imposing it now in 26.04. So I don’t know what you’re talking about.
If you use the *.10 non LTS you can expect trouble. They tell you so. I’ve only ever stuck to LTS versions and never had issues. It was the best distro around until now.
They made Wayland default in 17.10 and retracted it with next release. It was completely broken mess.
Huh. That’s a surprise. Like I said, I only ever used LTS versons so this didn’t affect me. But yeah that’s pretty shitty.
Calling debian and ubuntu outdated is batshit insane
