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.
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.