So I've mentioned before but was waiting on an SSD upgrade, but I'm finally taking the plunge into Linux gaming now. Those of you that are using Linux for gaming, is Garuda the best distro? Should I try something else?
Main concerns are being able to run as much of my games as possible, with the biggest portion of my library being from GoG, the rest with Steam. I'd prefer to not have to spend hours on config files for every game. I do intend to keep a Windows partition to dual-boot, but for me to consider this a success, the vast majority of my single player games and emulation needs to be in Linux. I don't plan to share installs on an NTFS drive so I can play on one or the other or anything, if it's to run in Linux it will be on a proper Linux partition.
My Linux experience and knowledge is well above average, it's been my "productivity" desktop for about 4 years now. I've done some small-scale server administration going back 20 years. Command line doesn't scare me, but I'm pretty bad at getting things to work that I have to compile myself.
I know Trump is the hot topic right now, but no reason to be the only topic.
Use SteamOS. It works with non-Deck hardware and Proton is genuinely one of the most important innovations in gaming of the past decade. It's also a fully functional distro that does anything a normal distro can.
If you go this route, absolutely download Proton-GE. Certain games run way better with it. Sticking with standard Proton is usually the way to go, but the GE build will save you more than once.
I'll have to look into that, I didn't realize it was viable for non Steam Deck
where can you get it? as far as I can tell it's only the OS that comes with the steam deck.
Here's the official guide complete with download link. I'm strongly considering doing this myself, but Windows is super annoying about dual booting these days and I can't uninstall it for work reasons.
I assume this. (I'm a Windows pleb but this is the first result on Brave search)
Any distro that you can install Steam on is perfectly fine. You can use Steam to play any game in your library with no hassle beyond going into settings one time amd clicking the option to use whatever the latest version of Proton is. For any non-Steam game or application you can use http://lutris.net/ which has built in support for GOG games and is simple to add any standalone programs to.
The existence of Lutris is what convinced me to give it a shot at all, I'll be looking forward to trying it out. I almost installed on my main Linux PC, but it's iGPU so I didn't figure worth messing with.
My personal recommendation for someone who is new to full-time Linux is: don't get involved in non-mainstream distros.
There are a lot of distros that might be just perfect for what you want. But if something doesn't work right or, worse, something works and then stops one update, you're going to be SOL for a while because there are fewer eyeballs on your specific software landscape.
The sales pitch of these alternative distros is usually "better than Ubuntu, better than Fedora, better than Arch". This isn't nefarious, and they might be 100% correct for certain component values of "better". They just want that critical mass of users where the support machine takes off on it's own. But, unless you're both an expert and okay with having a borked system until such a time that you yourself can figure out a problem (and, most likely, figuring it out based on what happened in another distro that was similar), you'll be unhappy.
I'd recommend something like Ubuntu or popular derivatives from Ubuntu like Mint, Pop_OS. I'd even say interest in SteamOS is high enough that they have that critical mass with the extra bonus of avoiding Ubuntu descendants. If you're okay hitting the books and can follow guides precisely, you'll learn a lot with Arch, but that's a rolling release which brings it's own issues for people who "just" want to game (or go online, or do spreadsheets, etc).
Good news is I'm not new to Linux at all, just gaming on Linux. I know nothing about how to do any of the graphics stuff, outside of just install and hope amdgpu works. I've been on desktop Linux for 6ish years now. Just not on a gaming PC. The PC at my desk is just a little mini PC and it's what I do internet, spreadsheets, business stuff, scripting, etc. on. I actually moved from Ubuntu to Fedora because of the rolling release thing. Can't remember specifics, but there was something I had that was not cooperating that had native support in a newer kernel, and back then Ubuntu was on some ancient 4.x kernel. Most of my other experience is Debian or RHEL based server stuff, which skills translate to gaming pretty much zero outside of comfort with the console. I'm not great with drivers, because you just don't have to do that much on servers.
I think I'm going to start with Arch and just see how it goes. I was thinking of going to that on desktop some day anyway. If it doesn't go well then I'll try Steam OS or something.
Funny enough, I had the idea that Steam was only officially supported on Debian, because that's all they offered on the website. Yeah, I should have at least looked at my own system first. I never expected it would be in the Fedora repos already.
Just normal Arch is fine. Thankfully there's now an install script. I had to reinstall a while ago and that was useful for not having to bother with it all again.
PC in question for me is gaming-specific, so I'm just going to partition this new SSD in half and you're right I probably end up trying a few different things before I settle on something. I needed a new SSD for another project where I really wanted to be able to "sandbox" some things on a totally separate physical drive. So I get a nice big 4TB for the gaming PC and rotate the rest of them downward to less demanding things. The way game size goes, that will be futureproof capacity for at least six months before its all 500GB games.
I'm on Garuda, I use it for the convenience of easy setup to many of the libraries (winetricks, mostly), and it does have a few nice bells and whistles. Basically checkbox for 'nvidia drivers, proton-GE, steam, wine, winetricks' and boom it's at least there in a non-ass configuration.
I've gotten bit by this distro probably twice in the last year though, as they are a small team that can't find everything before updating their deps. So in one instance I couldn't boot and had to use a snapshot (thankfully easy to do cus again, it was set up that way without me touching it) and found out minutes before I updated they had a breaking dependency change.
The other time they moved from one library to another for their UI layout and it took about an hour to get my configs back to looking how I'd already set them up, which eh, all things considered not a bad deal.
Overall I'd say about 8/10, would recommend.
I do it the hard way by using Arch and stock Wine so I have no good suggestion for you. Proton seems to work well and is therefore popular so find out what distro it can be easily used from and pick that. Perhaps it comes as part of the bundle with the Steam client.
All I know is that native Linux games from GOG work well for me and Wine fills in the gap for older things.
[EDIT] The idea about using different drives for Linux and Windows is a good one.
Always had the worst luck with Wine, but it is always me trying to run some ancient non-game thing and it won't cooperate or makes the output the size of a postage stamp and expects me to read it. I guess on the plus side, forced all my desktop software to native Linux stuff.
I may go for Arch next time it's time to reinstall the main desktop PC. I'd like to see how I do at getting all the desktop environment stuff set up from scratch there. Never done that before, at least not in a year starting with 20.
Yeah up to you. I don't recommend people use Arch unless they acknowledge it is the hard way.
When I say "older things" I usually mean around the time of Civ 4. 10 years older than that and you might be encountering 16-bit code. Some well-written new stuff works and works well and some new stuff doesn't. Example of the good: Mechwarrior 5. Example of the bad: Baldur's Gate 3.
As for native games, I've not had a problem with any yet except 32-bit builds needing 32-bit libraries but most of those are required by, or optional dependencies of Wine anyway.