I’m looking for a specific distro to handle some tasks.
I got a second hand rig with Nvidia GTX 1050 that I want to use as a home server. I wanted to use HoloISO but it doesn’t support nvidia. If someone says “do it anyway, it’s fine” I’ll install it though.
The idea is to support a Jellyfin server and Steam Link gaming but steam is not big on Nvidia so it’s hard to narrow down “black screen” issues etc. I’m also planning to manage it via VNC and SSH.
I’m familiar with Ubuntu based systems since I develop software on Ubuntu based KDE distro but never had a graphics card.
So it boils down to:
- Ease of setup including nvidia drivers
- Ease of update via command line (I’m not going to download nvidia drivers from their website to update proprietary drivers)
- Graphics performance
- Prefer Ubuntu based
I’m up for Gnome, Xface, Cinnamon, KDE or whatever DE.
Edit: Changed title to better reflect requirements and not have misleading “headless” and “server” in it
Ubuntu is primarily Ubuntu-based for example.
I’m up for Gnome, Xface, Cinnamon, KDE or whatever DE.
…on a headless server. What does the word “headless” mean to you?
Nowadays, servers that are not connected to a monitor, keyboard or mouse are often referred to as headless. Regardless of whether they have a graphical user interface (which can be used with tools such as Guacamole, for example).
I’m not trying to say that this is correct, but simply to point out that the term “headless” is now often interpreted differently.
Fair enough. I felt tempted to reply something like “SSH, that’s all the DE you need”, but OP specifically says they’ll use VNC to access, so that answers it I guess.
That’s exactly it. No keyboard, mouse or monitor. Just a laptop connected to it via VNC.
I understand the desire to have some graphic interface, and it’s not a bad machine you have so the desktop environment shouldn’t take too much CPU and RAM from the server side of it. For my money though — and my significantly worse hardware — I’ll prefer to go completely headless and SSH in.
Have you considered just having it boot straight into steam with gamescope like the steam deck does?
Ease of setup including nvidia drivers
Any mainstream distribution would relatively satisfy this requirement (Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu); however, Fedora might be slightly less amenable since it would require third-party repository RPM Fusion. Don’t get me wrong, it is a real simple process to add, but it can also cause some headaches.
Ease of update via command line (I’m not going to download nvidia drivers from their website to update proprietary drivers)
The best way to install the Nvidia driver is through your distribution’s system package manager. In fact, it is never recommended to download from Nvidia’s website. If you do, you’re flat out doing it the wrong way…
Graphics performance
The graphics performance will mostly be the same since you are using Nvidia and relying less on open source components; however, you still would want a distribution that is updated relatively frequently; therefore, I would suggest Fedora or Ubuntu.
Keep in mind that SteamOS is based on Manjaro (Arch), so I’m sure it would be fine as well, but Arch based distributions are more “rolling” and can experience their own issues.
Fedora has its own quirks as well; therefore, I would recommend hanging back one full release. For example, right now, Fedora 39 is the latest release and that means you should likely install and stay on Fedora 38 until Fedora 40 releases.
Prefer Ubuntu based
Your best option would be to use Ubuntu / Ubuntu LTS
I would use Bazzite 100%. It’s an atomic fedora spin that aims to replicate SteamOS. It has a KDE Nvida variant, and comes preinstalled with all of the gaming software and optimizations you need out of the box. All that is required to update it is a restart.
Just switch to X11 from Wayland after first boot and you’re as good as gold. (If Wayland works fine with your card it may be a better option because I think it plays more nicely with BigPicture mode if you need that)
I’m familiar with Ubuntu based systems
Then use what you’re familiar with. Done.
Maybe better go with Debian for a server. It works mostly the same, behind the scenes.
I was hoping for a more specialised distro, another user mentioned Bazzite for example.
Why? People in this community waste a lot of electrons debating various distros. In the end its all running basically the same software though.
What do you think “bazzite” will give you that you can’t do now?
Support for game controllers, HDR, DisplayLink, VAAPI, nvidia Wayland patches, Sunshine and Moonlight.
Like none of that was in your original requirements. :-)
Most of that I look at and think “yeah - why wouldn’t that work on an Ubuntu-based distro?” I wouldn’t care about wayland vs. X11 unless you have some very specific requirement that’s met by one or the other. If it works what do you care which you’re using?
Just because one distro is “optimized for gaming” doesn’t mean others can’t do gaming. Steam works just fine with bog-standard Ubuntu 22.04 and an NVidia GPU. You just may need to take an extra step or two to install nvidia drivers (e.g.
sudo ubuntu-drivers install nvidia:525).99% of the time I’d just say “install it and see if it works”. It’s super easy to just install a quick Mint/Pop/Ubuntu/etc. and see what happens.
Yeah, I didn’t know those requirements were a thing until a few hours ago. I’ve been running Steam on KDE Neon with Intel embedded graphics and everything is great out of the box or easily installed. I just had a feeling that there would be “SteamOS but with Nvidia” thingy for Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora that has some nice features.
I mean, Linux gaming is moving so fast it’s hard to keep up. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 2025 we’ll have a distro that has “run as game server” and “use Steam” toggles in the installer and you can access it from an Android TV from first boot.
Bazzite user here. For gaming it’s great… Until it’s not. Let me explain.
Out of the box, as pure steam machine is fantastic. Everything just works. But if you try to deviate, thighs get hairy.
It’s inmutable, so almost all your apps need to be flatpack/appimages. If those don’t work, you need to pray distro box can help. For some uses I had to do a lot of weird workarounds.
The main problem I have is that every now and then an update breaks the system. It’s not a big problem as you can rollback easily, without affecting home, but it’s a learning curve and very infuriating to see AGAIN boot to black and hope next update will fix it.
I installed Bazzite on my system and experience so far has been great. It’s not what I would choose for a day-to-day workstation but for a computer that mostly just runs games and servers it’s been really nice.
Setup was super easy, installing packages with
rpm-ostreeworks very similar todnfjust takes very long. That’s a small price to pay for Sunshine/Moonlight with VAAPI hardware encoding and Steam optimisations in my case.
