this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Questions about migrating to Arch from Pop! for a gaming rig (self.linux_gaming)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Anticorp to c/linux_gaming
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been using Arch on an old laptop for a few years now, but I use Pop on my gaming desktop. I've wanted to switch to Arch for a long while now, but haven't had the motivation (if it ain't broke, and all that). I'm finally ready to do it, but I'm a little concerned about my gaming experience. Are there any gotchas for gaming with an i7 and a 3070 ti that I should be aware of before I make the switch? Is it pretty seamless? Can I still use a freesync monitor with the g-sync compatibility setting? Is it easy to install the Nvidia drivers and well documented on the wiki? I'm open to information about any other sticky scenarios you guys encountered getting Arch set up for use as a daily driver and gaming computer.

Edit: is there any way to backup my internal drive mappings and mounting points, or will I need to set all of that up again?

I've only ever used Gnome for Arch, but one of the things that has me motivated to switch is that KDE 6 supports HDR. Does anyone have experience with it? Is it a pretty slick and simple DE?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

I don't think you'll have any issues, none that you didn't already anyway. If you use archinstall it installs the drivers for you. Not sure about freesync as I can't really tell the difference, but there's a setting and it seems to do something.

Not sure if xwayland flicker (including on some games) is a thing on gnome, but on kde you'll need the nvidia 555 beta driver to get it mostly fixed. It's on aur but you need the flag -Syud (on paru) since the dependencies can't seem to be resolved automatically.

About the mount points, I can only think of backing up fstab and swapping the uuids.

Highly recommend kde, although don't get your hopes too high with hdr. It's still not finalized so most programs don't support it. You can run games inside gamescope to make them see the hdr support but since gamesope doesn't support multiple windows any game with a launcher makes it crash. And when hdr is enabled the color profile is set to the built in color profile of the monitor, which for my monitor makes all the colors extremely dull and boring in comparison to no color profile.

[–] Anticorp 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks for all of the great information!

What's the deal with the flicker? The screen flickers when playing a game? That's definitely not an issue I've encountered with Pop and Gnome. I'll definitely use the 555 driver. Thanks for that warning. That probably saved me a bunch of time.

Oh good idea about fstab. That'll simplify the setup since I have like 7 hard drives.

Damn, that's disappointing about HDR. I was pretty excited about getting it working. Hopefully they get it dialed in soon. I suppose I'll still benefit being on Arch since I'll be able to use the fix whenever it comes out rather than waiting for the next LTS version.

Thanks again for the great response.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

What's the deal with the flicker?

In some xwayland programs on Wayland with nvidia gpu it looks like the last couple frames alternating instead of being shown in order once. Steam completely glitches out on first launch until you resize the window (still on 555).

Not sure if the hdr color profile issue is fixable since windows 10 also does the same thing, but that might not be an issue for you either way.

[–] Anticorp 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Does that driver fix the issue? If not I guess I'd rather just use x11.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

For most things yes, not for steam (but resizing the window fixes it until next launch).

Edit: Most games don't have it to begin with, only some do

Is there freesync on x11? I thought it was a Wayland thing Edit: nevermind

[–] Anticorp 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Yes, using X-server. You can toggle it on just like with the Nvidia control panel in Windows. You said nevermind, but there's the answer in case someone else comes along and sees this later wondering the same thing.

Edit: you said most things don't have it to begin with. Do you mean that the flicker issue is only present on a few games?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Do you mean that the flicker issue is only present on a few games?

Yes

[–] Anticorp 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah that's good to hear. Thanks for all of the information. I just finished backing everything up and making my install USB, so here it goes!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Good luck!

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Holy hell! The first time I installed Arch for my laptop it took me like 40 minutes, but I forgot to install a DE and had to go back to the live USB mount every, chroot in, and install Gnome. All in all it took about an hour. This time it took me literally the entire night and part of the afternoon too!

I installed grub and ran the command to install it on the EFI, but I forgot to make the config file. So I spent hours trying to figure out why the hell it wouldn't boot into Arch. I ended up completely reinstalling Arch 3 times in case I had borked the install since I have another EFI partition, another OS on this drive, and 7 partitions total. When I finally figured out that I skipped the config file I wasn't even mad. I was so freaking relieved to figure out what I had done wrong that I was happy.

Then I installed Plasma, but it needs a bunch of other packages that either aren't in the man page, or I missed them since I was pretty tired by that point. Got that all installed finally and set up, restarted, and realized that I can't even log into KDE with a root account! Haha. I had to go back to the live CD and install sudo, and set up the sudoers file.

Holy shit man, that was the hardest time I've had with an install in over a decade. I've been doing this a long time and it usually goes pretty smoothly, but I guess my brain was in my pocket or something today. But it's done!

KDE Plasma seems pretty slick. I still need to install my Nvidia drivers, steam, and all that jazz, but it's way past bedtime now. I'll do it after work tomorrow.

Oh, I installed yay too and wow, what a time saver! On my laptop I've been manually making packages for stuff like Firefox and whatever the whole time I've used it. I don't have a lot of software on that laptop since it's old and mainly just an Internet portal, but I'm definitely going to be using yay for that from now on.

If you're still reading, I'm so exited to have finally made the switch and have it done. None of my friends are into this kind of stuff and my wife has no idea about any of it, so I just had to tell someone, and you seemed kind of invested earlier. Thanks for listening! Lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Happy that you made it! Why didn't you use archinstall? It would save a lot of trouble

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago

I guess I felt like that would kind of eliminate one of the benefits of Arch, being able to manually select every package that gets installed. I totally should have though, because in my frustration I installed the kde-applications package, which includes like 50 packages, including a bunch of games and stuff, instead of kde-desktop. Now I need to go through and uninstall all the ones I don't want. Oh well! Next time.

[–] Anticorp 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Hey, have you ever run into an issue where the Nvidia driver is installed, and listed as working, but the Nvidia control panel doesn't have any options? The graphics information section is completely blank. I've done a bunch of troubleshooting, and I'm pretty sure that I've completed every single requirement. I even tried a different Nvidia driver in case that was the issue, but with that one it was really clear that it is the wrong driver since it threw a bunch of errors. I'm confident that I'm running the right driver, I have grub set up to load it early, I have all of the modules listed in the intramfs config, I ran Nvidia options config and all the other stuff, but I am still seeing blank options.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you're on Wayland, nvidia settings doesn't support it. Although I just checked X too and nvidia settings doesn't have an options tab there neither. Is there a separate nvidia control panel than the nvidia x server settings?

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh! So it's not even supported at all?

I don't see a different UI app for Nvidia options, just X Server Settings. So, if I can't use that, how do I control the more advanced features of my GFX card? Command line only?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I remember searching about setting a fan curve on Wayland and iirc the 'solution' I had found was running the thing on an x server on a different tty. Didn't look into overclocking

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago

Okay, then I guess I'm done. Heh. I just wasted a bunch more time trying to get that GUI working. Time to install steam and try a game!

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I'm replying here at the top of the thread again because it's getting pretty crowded down there. I got steam installed and it's working. I ran Baldur's Gate 3, which worked flawlessly on my Pop install with Gnome, but in KDE Plasma on Arch the screen is going black for about 10 seconds at a time, then the game shows for about 5 seconds, and it goes black again. Is that the flicker issue you were talking about? It's a pretty bad issue. I've been unable to resolve it so far. I'm pretty burned out working on it for now, so I'm going to take a break. But I wanted to see if that describes the flicker you were talking about or if I'm experiencing something different.

Edit: I disabled screen tearing in the KDE options and it stopped. I also made some changes to my config files, so I probably should have tested without disabling screen tearing first, but at least it's fixed! Sweet! I have a working Arch Linux gaming setup now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

That's not the flicker I was talking about but I do remember the screen intermittently going black in games for like half a second when the 550 driver first came out. Had to downgrade the driver to get rid of it. Eventually upgraded again and it didn't happen so I thought it was fixed. Maybe those two or three bugs are related

[–] Anticorp 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah okay. I think I did see the flicker too when I was playing the game. It happens when changing views, like going to a loading screen, or opening a menu. That's at least tolerable for a game like Baldur's Gate. You said if I just resize the window it will stop?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Resizing the window stops steam glitching, I haven't tried in full-screen games but maybe it would work

[–] Anticorp 2 points 2 weeks ago

Okay. Thanks again for all of the great information and just listening to me while I shared my experience. Cheerio!