Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
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I understand your struggle. As others said, Arch is not a beginner friendly distro.
I would suggest trying gaming tailored distros like Nobara, Chimera or Bazzite and see how you feel about them. Don't install your full steam library during these testing period, try games separately and prioritize the games you play the most.
Learning involves trial and error and the Linux ecosystem has a lot of that.
In the end it's ok if you say This is not for me right now
If you're a beginner... or hate jank, don't use Arch. And make sure you're using a desktop environment that supports Wayland (GNOME or KDE). Gaming on X11 can be buggy, janky and inconsistent
Arch for a beginner can be a bit too much.
Try Bazzite.
I also heard good things about Nobara in terms of gaming. Haven't tried it myself though.
I installed Bazzite on my gaming computer and it just isn't great, there is screen flickering and occasional crashes:( I am not going back to Windows but it has required more emotional energy to troubleshoot than I wanted
I probably should get an AMD card, but I am going to try Nobara next to see if it just works...
somebody gave you bad advice if you chose arch for your first distro
I wonder if the Arch bros will ever realize they're doing more harm than good...
Honestly Arch-based is a good choice, but straight up Arch for a newbie? Nah.
I’m running EndeavorOS with KDE and it’s been solid for gaming. A few bugs, but mostly minor, like it picked the wrong default NIC driver (but still worked) and SMB shares wouldn’t auto mount recently until an update a week or two ago.
My main PC for non-gaming runs Manjaro. I know there are haters about it, but it’s been a solid distro for general use, and I’ve encountered no issues to speak of.
Obviously NixOS is the way to go for a gaming OS, just use the right flake and you're all set!
/s
Yeah, Arch is not a great choice.
I would suggest PopOS! or Nobara.
Or just good ole reliable Debian.
First of all nothing to apologize, no one should be forcing anyone to use any OS.
Secondly, you shouldn't start with Arch, it's a very manual process that has several small things that can be done wrong. I recommend you try Mint, Pop or any other beginner friendly distro, you can still tinker and customize them as much as you want, but you will be starting from something that works instead of having to build a working system from the ground up without knowing what that looks like.
Arch Linux
Unless you're on a good downstream like SteamOS, I'd suggest switching to something stable cutting edge (Fedora or Nobara if you want to put in zero effort).
Arch by itself will give you way the hell too many possible problems. You could waste hours on DKMS alone.
Mint will also work, but it has the downside of having slower updates to software packages.
with the issues you've had i think it's perfectly understandable, but I'll agree with other commenters that arch is not a good choice for a first distro. i recommend trying dual booting windows and a more "beginner " distro like Linux mint or pop_os
What the hell, he uses Arch as a first checkout linux gaming distro?
Bro, you missed one small but crucial information there just at the beginning of your journey...
the reason why arch gets recommend a lot as a gaming distro is that it is bleeding edge. Their for has very up to date drivers and parches that can help gaming. But with the current state of gaming on Linux this is a bit less of a requirement. most distros are new enough for most games. Exception might be debian LTS or something.
So i totaly agree that choosing something other then arch for gaming is a good option if you are rather new to linux.
Arch for gaming, what the hell
Works quite well for me. But I would agree it’s not the best to start with if having little desktop Linux experience.
This may seem odd, but check if your mobo has a bios update. Often bios break uefi standards to appease Microsofts non-standard requirements.
These get fixed overtime as ACPI bugs are fixed.
Linux may very well not be for you, but using Arch first is like jumping into the deep end to learn how to swim. It's no surprise you're drowning. I'd recommend you try a gaming-focused distro like Nobara before you go back to Windows for good.
Nobara is great if you're into Fedora. PopOS! or Linux Mint if you're into Debian. Those will take you further way faster and with less pain than any Arch based distro.
Who the hell recommended Arch to you? Arch is for when you've been using Linux for a few years and have gotten bored waiting for the latest updates to hit your repos.
Arch Linux is great for people that want to do nothing but Arch Linux.
I’ve been daily driving arch for like five years now, and this is just flat out not true at all. I agree it’s not a beginner distro, but if you know what you’re doing and know what you want it’s the best.
Do people not use Manjaro for this?
For a long time I couldn't get a stable distro working on my HP laptop with Intel 4 core & Nvidia 1660ti but after numerous successful daily driving on my desktops + steam deck of course I tried Bazzite which did the trick. Everything runs smoother & I haven't encountered anything unable to run because the steam proton is mature. Lutris is perfect for anything to do with alternative launchers, roms, I even got modded black ops 2 working and I never thought that would be possible.
I wish you the best of luck.
Shit that's crazy, I'm ryzen 3800x with 2070 super and Elden ring runs BETTER on manjaro Linux (arch based) than windows!
I really couldn't believe it.
If you're not having a good time, stop. Life is too short.
If you're still interested in using linux, LinuxMint or PopOs! are what most people would recommend to a new user, not Arch.
Arch can be perfect for users with the time, knowledge, and effort to perfectly tailor things to suit their needs. They can make it perfectly efficient, without any excess.
I just want to use my computer whenever I want it to work. I am fine with it having a few extra packages/applications that I might never use. I've being using linux as main (or only) operating system on/off for about 20 years, and I currently use Mint.
Lol try Linux mint, it just works
Good luck! Linux is sadly not quite yet for everyone, but it’s so much further along than it was when I started in 1999.
I bounced between Linux and Windows for decades, but when the Recall debacle happened, it became clear that Microsoft have lost their collective minds. I wiped my system, put Garuda Linux on it, and everything works quite well for me with no tinkering except with user-level KDE settings. I also changed from an NVIDIA RTX 3070Ti to an AMD RX 7800XT just so everything related to graphics would just work and I didn’t have to wait and hope that explicit sync really does fix everything for NVIDIA on Wayland.
I also use proton-ge for everything (in Steam as well as in Lutris which uses umu-launcher) and every game I’ve attempted to run (thus far on the order of 35+ games), has run great, including Elden Ring. I’ve found in my 25 years experience, the trick with Linux is two-fold: researching hardware to guarantee full Linux support…and having patience. And I’ve fell victim to that last one dozens of times over the years which led me back to windows each time.
No more.
Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I plan on keeping Linux on my second drive to continue playing around with it, but my gaming will probably go back to Windows. Might give bazzite or popos a try next.