I recently moved to Linux for gaming. Last time I tried was around 2008 and I guess I was reluctant to move gaming to Linux because that experience was far from smooth.

Honestly, it's like magic that I can run "The Finals" on highest settings without any hiccup. It literally 'just works'. Happy that I could completely get rid of Windows (it was only there for gaming). It's still hard to believe, given back in 2008 when playing CS I had framerate bugs, text would not render properly (even after messing around with it for some days), and mouse input was.. not ideal. It's come a long way since the days of WINE.

FWIW, I moved from Debian to "Nobara Linux" for this. Mostly because I was in the mood for some distro hopping as well. Highly recommend the experience. (https://nobaraproject.org/). It was a smooth experience from the start, no issues installing it, drivers worked out-of-the-box, audio settings all worked fine, and Steam was pre-installed as well. Super cool.

Would not move back to Windows gaming for Ubisoft games lol.

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alanwreath 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I too have been distro hopping, loading up Claude has made it extremely easy to be comfortable in exploring other distros

	▲	Insanity 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I hadn't used Fedora-based distros for over a decade. I haven't ran into issues with Nobara, but I'm sure that if I do any LLM can help me debug/resolve them. Definitely lowers the barrier of entry for someone entirely new to Linux as well.

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stackghost 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Which distro are you using? I'm currently on bazzite and it's merely an okay experience.

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stavros 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I used both Bazzite and Debian, and, while the games do "just work", the problem with Bazzite was that the peripherals were fiddly. Getting the Xbox controllers to work needed some fiddling every time, streaming games from the desktop was hit and miss, and a few other small things like that.

It's still amazing how well gaming on Linux works, but the only reason why I wanted a Steam machine is becasue when a few friends are over, I don't want to spend twenty minutes fiddling with controllers, it kills the mood. I want to turn it on and game immediately.

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Insanity a day ago | parent [-]

Steam Machine looks genuinely interesting, but the price is painful. Not their fault of course :(

	▲	stavros a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah :( I was really sure I'd buy it immediately, but then it ended up being around $500 more than I thought, and passed :/ Such a shame.

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Insanity 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nobara Linux, which is based on Fedora. I used the "Gnome" installer rather than "official" because I still want a regular desktop experience. I've been on Linux for development since 2008 as well so I wanted an "all in one" OS this time rather than dual-boot Linux/Windows.

I'm running this on AMD CPU & GPU (because AMD historically was always better supported than Nvidia). I've not run into any issues the past weeks. Discord and the game both run smoothly. Honestly hard to believe given how rough it was in the past.

That said, I don't play a wide variety of games, I tend to stick with a single game for years. So I'm happy just running "The Finals" and haven't tried other games lol.

What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?

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stackghost 2 days ago | parent [-]

>What kind of issues are you running into with Bazzite?

It's just a mess. There are three different ways to get software, so despite being a seasoned Linux user of 20+ years I'm never really sure if I'm installing something via the happy path or not.

I wanted to install Battle.net, for example, and the best/only way I could get it to work is by following some random forum post to run battle.net as a steam app, so if I want to play StarCraft 2 I need to launch Steam, launch bnet from within steam, then finally run sc from that.

Networking is kinda flaky, too. Sometimes games (incidentally, StarCraft, but also other battlenet games like HOTS) will simply refuse to connect to the master servers.

Controllers randomly don't work, etc.

I could go on. None of these are deal breakers in and of themselves, but I'm continually reminded why The Year of the Linux Desktop isn't happening. It's just generally janky.

	▲	Insanity 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		If your sample set is Battle.net games, could be an issue with Battle.net. I've not tried any Battle.net games so can't compare with Nobara. I think we might both be dealing with a skewed sample set haha, given I only really played 1 game and had no issues.

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faxcundo123 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I recommend you Zorin OS it works perfect out of the box

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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