I’ve ordered myself some parts to build a PC for Linux gaming. In the meantime, i’m deciding on which linux distro to use.
For the desktop environment I typically use KDE.
I have used Ubuntu in the past but i’m ruling it out because of snaps and other such annoyances. This also applies to Ubuntu based distros that use the same repos (KDE Neon etc).
I see the wikis recommend Nobara, but I’m reluctant to use a Fedora based distro because I’m so used to Debian/apt (both as a desktop and server distros). I’m not ruling it out completely though.
Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam? Will I be missing out on lots of performance improvements or is this easily addressed by using an additional repo for a tweaked kernel and proton version or whatever?
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Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam?
No reason to avoid Debian unless you have hardware so very new that it requires the very latest kernel to operate.
If you go with Debian Stable, you can enable Backports for a fairly recent kernel, currently 6.5.10. You could go with Testing or even Unstable if you’re addicted to upgrading as often as possible, but chances are you won’t need to.
I’m gaming on Debian Stable with Steam in a flatpak. It works great, and is blissfully low maintenance.
At some point, you’ll probably run into people claiming that Debian is bad for gaming performance because of “outdated” packages. In most cases, those people don’t know what they’re talking about. I suggest ignoring them unless they identify a specific performance issue that actually affects you.
Technically it is possible that outdated packages can decrease your performance. Some games may not work because of outdated libraries, but in most cases you should be fine.
Oh man, you’re in for a treat there.
PopOS is what you’re looking for friend. Debian is a bit too bare and general use-case. Ubuntu is wrong for the exact reasons you laid out.
Pop is built for the end users, with native integrations for flatpak/deb/whathaveyou. It’s built on top of Ubuntu with all the ubuntu annoyances removed.
They even have a distro with pre-baked nvidia drivers should you need it.
I tried it and swapped all of mine over
Fwiw I switched off of Pop onto Debian cause I was annoyed with some of Pop’s bloat and I’ve been loving it. I game pretty heavily on Debian and it works just fine. I do mostly play the same older games rather than buying new releases, however, so mileage may vary if you’re looking at cutting edge games, as driver updates can significantly boost performance in that case.
Make no mistake though, when I say ‘bloat’ I’m mostly nitpicking. Pop is a perfectly valid choice and a good option for gaming.
+1 for Pop!_OS
Using it (as my first real use of Linux) a few months now, and I have yet to find a game that doesn’t work.
Turned away from mint/Ubuntu because they definitely pre installed more. There are almost no included installs that I don’t use on Pop, very clean.
It’s also a frequently updated “stable” release- it gets kernel/driver/more updates every 2 weeks or so. They should really add the update# to the iso, because “22.04” alone makes it sound old.
I have 3 running Pop, soon to be 4. ( Try to switch kids over)
I would recommend fedora. It has more recent packages than debian and it’s also quite stable and easy to maintain
Nobara personally is just right for me it’s kernel and drivers are alway up to date configured asnd patched for gaming. Even if there is bugs with some package for example they ship with patches applied it is just so convenient. I think learning dnf is well worth it and even if there is some debian only app that you want to install there is alwayd distrobox
DNF as a package manager isn’t that hard either, and it’s never given me any troubles.
Nothing wrong with Debian but if this is a gaming PC, why not use a gaming OS?
I use Chimera
I doubt you’ll miss out on anything from using Debian Linux is Linux but I will shill fedora. Love that distro
Honestly, I don’t think you are going to take that much time to get used to fedora based distros since in my experience the only thing that ended up changing was the name of the package manager and the faster updates.
I would recommend that you use more up to date distros since gaming in Linux has been having fast-paced performance updates and with the new proton stuff which is relatively new and is only to get more patches because valve is investing on it. So picking up fedora might be a good choice since its more up to date and it isn’t that different to debian compared to more minimal/advanced distros such as arch and void (but being more advanced as a lot of percs that simpler distros don’t have).
I would second up to date distros for the same reasons. I think the WINE guys suggested as much. I’d personally go OpenSuse as it’s rolling, up to date, solid and great for KDE.
It’ll probably be fine, although I’d personally pick some rolling-release distro for better performance.
In any case, besides the release model I’m pretty sure a distribution you use doesn’t matter that much. Usually every somewhat popular distro has the same few packages you need for games to work (32-bit libs, wine, steam, whatever).
Here’s the thing: some distros are aimed at gamers and have some useful gaming stuff in their default setup. But at the end of the day, if you’re comfortable installing stuff on your own, you can game on any Linux distro. It frankly doesn’t matter.
So, yes, if you want to game on Debian because you can avoid bloat, by all means do it.
The thing with Linux is you shouldn’t be afraid of distro hopping. Just try any distro you want for a few days, and if you don’t like it, move on to another one. Repeat until you find the distro you like the most. You can grab a new SSD and swap your system partition to try the new distro of you don’t want to format your current system partition.
Pick what you’re comfortable with. In the end, you can get anything running in any distro. Linux is Linux. Worst case you may need to enable unstable repos or cherry pick packages from there.
Some of the “gaming” distros do include patches so if you want an out of the box experience it might make sense to pick one of those. But if you know your way around Linux, it stops mattering because your skills on your preferred distro outweighs the convenience of having it all readily available out of the box.
If you use Flatpaks, some include updated mesa/GPU drivers so the Debian base won’t even matter all that much as long as the kernel is new enough. Installing a bleeding edge kernel on Debian is usually fine if you have to as the kernel tries its best to never break userspace.
If you’re going to be gaming a lot, I can vouch that Nobara is indeed really good. Debian is a solid option but it like the other commenter says, it gets packages a bit later than other distros. This can be annoying since you’ll have to go out of your way to install the newest drivers or app that you need.
The bigger reason to use Nobara though is that it comes pre-installed with many patches (some kernel patches too) that would be a total pain to do yourself on Debian. You can see a list of patches on the official site and scroll down.
I haven’t tried it, but I suppose you’ll do just fine with debian sid. i.e edit /etc/apt/sources.list, swap $distro_nickname for sid, sudo apt update, sudo apt full-upgrade.
I think WINE recommend an up to date distro due to rapidly changing stuff needing up to date software and kernel. I think Debian wouldn’t be great for that. I’d personally recommend OpenSuse. Rolling, up to date and great with KDE. Good luck.
How does zypper compare to apt?
I have no idea. It’s quite subjective.
You can install packages and remove them and it resolves dependencies, just using different commands…
Depending on the games you wanna play it’s probably safer to be somewhat closer to the bleeding edge than Debian would allow you to be. Nobara gets recommended so often because you get a good tradeoff between the newest updates and stability. Also KDE is their standard DE. PopOS is good if you wanna stay with apt, but comes with Gnome out of the box.
