How is the gaming experience on Debian? I'm genuinely asking, not a snark.

I use desktop Ubuntu because it's up to date and it just works for me, and I can play the latest games in it with Steam + Proton. I don't have to tweak it or do any additional downloading of stuff besides the Nvidia drivers (I actually don't remember how I installed them).

Can I do this with Debian, in a no fuss way? (I know this can be done in any distro, that's why I'm stressing "no fuss").

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theandrewbailey 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not bad. Steam/Proton keep themselves updated. If you rely on Wine from the repos, you might be in for a bad time, but Heroic/Lutris/Bottles in Flatpak stay updated. You mentioned Nvidia, but amdgpu has a repo that should keep things reasonably up-to-date: https://instinct.docs.amd.com/projects/amdgpu-docs/en/latest...

	▲	Fnoord 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For some games like WoW I use Faugus on Ubuntu. It ensures I always run the latest and greatest Proton-Wayland. But this is the thing I appreciate about Ubuntu. I know my LTS is from 26.04. I know all my software (with specific exceptions) is backported from that. The previous LTS were 24.04, 22.04, etc. With Debian, I won't know these out of my head. Partly cause I am into Ubuntu, but also because it isn't opaque. I mean, I don't remember from which time Potato and Woody were (but I used to run both back in the days). With Ubuntu, I remember (the codenames of Ubuntu I forgot). Rest of games, Steam handles. I'm hooked on their ecosystem, kind if for a similar reason as Ubuntu (loyally sticked to them). As European I'd prefer a European gaming distribution platform, but Steam is just good and a fair netizen. Linux-friendly, too. I own a Steam Deck, too. Only reason I'd want non-Steam is all these free games I got on GOG/Epic/Amazon, and maybe some good ol' emulation.

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benlivengood 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nvidia proprietary drivers are generally pretty old. I did some messing around with the CUDA packages to get recent desktop drivers in order to run some games.

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dwoldrich 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Right? Can I install Debian and have Steam work as well as Ubuntu? Can I install Debian over my Ubuntu (without pain) and keep my dual boot with Windows 10 situation? If yes to both, will consider!

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hurricanepootis 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my experience, Linux distros on older kernels sometimes struggle with modern hardware. Especially with newer devices, features and especially bug fixes take a while to make their way to the distro.

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magguzu 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I believe Steam just works as long as GPU drivers are working.

On Arch I just installed the flatpak and didn't think about it, everything works.

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swiftcoder 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I didn't have any issues setting this up in Debian