Personally, I feel like any distro works for gaming these days, especially since you have an Nvidia card and don't need to stay super up to date with kernel and Mesa. My advice is to go with whatever distro suits your daily needs, not just gaming. As long as it isn't some super stable enterprise-centric distro like RHEL or Debian stable, you'll be fine.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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especially since you have an Nvidia card
Can you elaborate on why Nvidia is especially good? I've mostly seen AMD being recommended before (though both generally work fine).
No, I was just saying that with Nvidia, the need for the latest Mesa and kernel is lessened somewhat since you'll most likely be using the proprietary drivers instead. With AMD, its pretty important to be on the latest Mesa and latest kernel, especially for newer AMD GPUs. On Ubuntu, this usually means adding a bunch of additional PPAs, whereas on other distros like Fedora and Arch, those driver updates just come through the regular system updates.
On the subject of AMD vs Nvidia in general, it really depends on your usecase. I feel like a lot of Linux users on Reddit and the Fediverse are really biased towards AMD while being blind to the cons of owning an AMD card. It basically boils down to:
AMD Pros
- Better performance / dollar (for rasterized graphics only)
- Wayland
- FOSS drivers that work out of the box
- Better support for hardware video acceleration in browsers.
Nvidia Pros
- Much better raytracing performance
- DLSS
- CUDA / Optix
- Better video decoder and encoders (when they're supported by the software you use at least)
- Better support for compute and AI workloads
- Better day one support for new hardware and usually adopts Vulkan extensions faster
Corporate loyalty is stupid and should be left on Reddit. Make your own decision based on your personal needs. Anecdotally, I own both AMD (Vega 7 and Radeon 680M) and Nvidia (RTX 3090) hardware. AMD tends to be less stable in my experience, but I know others have experienced the opposite.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Will keep that in mind when I'm finally upgrading my system.
I think they're saying that Nvidia hardware doesn't benefit from being at the bleeding edge, so stable, LTS style distros will also work just fine.
As far as AMD vs Nvidia today, I can confidently say that you'll have a far better time with an AMD GPU at the bleeding edge.
Nobara has been an absolute pleasure and “works out of the box” experience. Mainly due to having things preinstalled or prompting for installation of gaming dependencies and software up front.
My “get into Linux gaming” distro was Pop. Solid distro tho and having isos depending on your hardware is super helpful and cuts down on a lot of issues you may encounter with other distros. You can’t go wrong either way. If you are looking for a “do it for me/minimal tinkering and installing” go for Nobara. If you are looking to “possibly tinker/install a bit more up front” go for Pop.
Edit: Forgot to mention my specs are somewhat the same as your. i5 with 16gbs of RAM, 1080ti and 1tb ssd. Both Pop and Nobara run smoothly with heavy games like Cyberpunk as an example.
I wasn’t familiar with Nobara before your comment but now I’m really intrigued. I loved Fedora generally, but getting it to work with my older mobile nvidia card was a nightmare. I might give Nobara a spin based on your recommendation. Thanks.
Ok I just switched to Nobara. It’s great.
It is indeed. Just remember normal sysadmin/security stuff still applies just like any other OS/distro. For example, update regularly, backups, test your backups every now and then, etc.
Can you recommend a good site for learning the ropes? It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff with just a web search.
Honestly you learn most by doing it yourself. Where to start depends on how versed you are with system administration, Linux, self hosting, etc. If you are an absolute beginner then start with Linux sysadmin videos (for example, what are the top most important things to do to a new Linux server, how to secure a Linux servers, etc). Once you have a list of “you should do x” then dive deeper into each topic to make sure you understand why and how.
Just don’t run random commands that you don’t understand what it does. You said you were learning right? Then take that command and learn why and what you are running.
I can help further if you have specific topics you need help with. This community is also amazing but some times a search on the community yields exactly or close to what you are looking for so leverage that too!
I'm rocking a similar setup and running arch (btw) with kde, 0 issues so far. It feels snappy and I can even game on it.
holoiso is great for a gaming focused distro, essentially the steam deck os but you can install on most devices, but may not play so great with Nvidia cards.
geruda Linux is an arch based distro that is built with gaming in mind and has many flavors of desktop environments to choose from.
I just went through this decision. I landed on Garuda with Nobara a close second. I was coming from Manjaro which was almost completely stable for the last 3.5 yrs. I was only moving because I picked up a new SSD and wanted to see what else was out there.
I chose Garuda not because of the better gaming or perf, but for the preconfigured BTRFS with auto snapshots on upgrade and the presence of a distributed team reduces the "bus factor" problem that Nobara has for future updates and support.
I've been caught out a few times from upgrades on rolling distributions, so the simplified approach to rollbacks is greatly appreciated.
Now for the caveats:
You won't get Wayland with Garuda and Nvidia by default (at least with their "stock" dr460gonized edition on KDE). And if you have more than one screen, I'd say that's probably for the best right now (especially if they vary in resolution, refresh rate, or orientation).
I've found that there's a few little polish things that leave me a bit wanting, but they're by no means deal breakers: one of my USB hubs won't reinitialize after waking from suspend (which worked just fine in Manjaro) and color codes (but not full escape sequences) are printed in terminal applications (eg man journalctl prints 1mDescription0m and the like). They're both probably issues with the Garuda customizations, so I figure debugging them will help me understand things a bit better.
If you're willing/able to hop between distro for a bit, I'd suggest trying at least a couple on for size and seeing how they fit you!
OK so now I'm thinking Garuda vs Nobara :🤔. How do I do a poll lol. Thanks for the feedback btw's.
I'm more inclined to say Pop but that's only because it's more established but either should be fine.
I settled on Pop, the other distro was giving me wifi problems and I didn't feel like going up and down stairs. Pop works great out the box.
I guess it depends on what you want.
I'd go with something with a lot of support like Ubuntu if you're new to Linux.
I have been using Pop-os for a while now. I want to try and switch to arch but i just cant figure it out lol. I really like the feel of pop os tho. I dont use a dock, only the top bar and tiling function and it works great out of the box without having to install tiling window managers and stuff.
Also i'm on a laptop and the battery power manager of pop os works great.
Anyways, pop os has been great for me :D
I've been using Nobara for the last year on my main gaming computer, it's been great. Pop_OS is solid too, Ive used it on my laptop for a bit, pretty smooth too.
Most mainline distros will work fine. If you just plan on gaming mostly and want an easy solution, Nobara is really good.
Whhhhhhy!!! I finally installed Nobara, why did everything go fine had wifi. After updating and restart, wifi doesn't work. I tried looking around can't find anything. I have a usb netgear wifi adapter. It's so annoying because it works before updating. I tried 3x, I'm still new to linux.
Sorry that's been a pain! Does it connect to your router but can't access websites or completely can't connect?
Connections has a red X over it. Works in live, but not after install. Popos worked np.
Why do you want to switch if everything is working out for you with pop-os?
Well I'm not atm because I really like the setup at the moment, but I was hoping it was a known quick fix just in case I feel like hopping on something else for whatever future reason. That being said I am pretty happy with my pop experience.
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