My journey to successfully game under Linux (and overcome Microsoft's Stranglehold)

[Indus]

He covers the windows fail that is inspiring the change. Think of this video as a rough draft. Steve spends a lot of time explaining methodology, challenges, etc.

On performance: Nvidia needs to devote more resources to Linux drivers, because in Bazzite, frame pacing is often terrible. Using an all AMD system is still the meta from a best bang for buck perspective. Frame pacing is the most important element to a good experience, and AMD is doing great there. Ray tracing is a disaster for AMD, but no one buys team red because RT is a top priority for them.

Actually bazzite is based on Fedora and Fedora had 1 big problem as that drove me to debian.

Exactly after 1 month.. the drivers go to SHIT. It's not a patch, or anything.. and it happens exactly at the 30 day mark. Happened to me in Bazzite, happened in Ultramarine x2 and happened in Fedora.

That's why I went with Debian and I'm currently at 40 days with no problems.

I do hope Fedora has fixed that problem with AMD drivers (it didn't happen with nvidia ones).


Think you'll be safe with Cachy/ Opensuse/ Debian/ Ubuntu. I just have a sore spot for Fedora because I really wanted to like it but 38 fps in games is not my idea of fun (after 30 days) and then having to reinstall.

 

[EXCellR8]

That's interesting. I've been using Bazzite for a little bit now with a RX 6700 XT. I'll certainly pay attention to how it holds up after reading that.

Debian distros always my go to, so I guess there's a chance I'll return to it for gaming as well. I've had so many Ubuntu/Xubuntu devices that I wanted to try something different. Zorin OS is also pretty nice if you've got a system that's a bit lighter on hardware resources. I've never had a dedicated Linux PC for gaming until just recently.

I mainly just fart around with older Steam games on there.

 

[biostud]

My problem with Ultramarine was that suddenly Dolphin (file explorer) started to freeze and saving files in LibreOffice resulted in hangs.

 

[Indus]

My problem with Ultramarine was that suddenly Dolphin (file explorer) started to freeze and saving files in LibreOffice resulted in hangs.

I almost read that the wrong way and was like Discover was not working in which case I was going to suggest Warehouse.

But I get it.. dolphin file manager. Didn't happen to me but you can use Nemo if you want. I use Dolphin but can get by with either just fine.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Ultramarine

The machine god is clearly displeased with you.

 

[Indus]

The machine god is clearly displeased with you.

What about the forums server?

Should clearly sudo dnf update rather than stay on windows 10, err 7, errr xp.. msdos 6.22

 

[Indus]

BTW @DAPUNISHER what's the most advanced game you've played on Linux so far?

I think Cyberpunk 2077 is the most graphically intensive one for me and it works fine at 1440p.

 

[Indus]

That's interesting. I've been using Bazzite for a little bit now with a RX 6700 XT. I'll certainly pay attention to how it holds up after reading that.

Debian distros always my go to, so I guess there's a chance I'll return to it for gaming as well. I've had so many Ubuntu/Xubuntu devices that I wanted to try something different. Zorin OS is also pretty nice if you've got a system that's a bit lighter on hardware resources. I've never had a dedicated Linux PC for gaming until just recently.

I mainly just fart around with older Steam games on there.

I thought it was just me but it's all over Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1k0g4x7/fedora_42_very_noticeable_performance_loss_for_no

That's why I made the other thread if anyone had tried Debian or Open Suse: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/anyone-use-debian-or-opensuse-leap.2632080/

Anyways I'm really happy with debian and in no mood to change/ reformat again. It's funny and true.. Debian is boring but it just works!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

BTW @DAPUNISHER what's the most advanced game you've played on Linux so far?

I think Cyberpunk 2077 is the most graphically intensive one for me and it works fine at 1440p.

I finished the build last night, and I am posting from it. I've been saving another 2077 play through for when I get through my massive backlog.

Spidey games are the most demanding so far. Hammers CPU and GPU. Run great without RT. I get crashes with it turned on. Probably a fix; have not looked around yet.

My dain bramage kicked in and had me going for a good 15 minutes. I was spicy because I did not understand why I was restricted to 60Hz and no FSR Premium. I'd plugged the new 48Gbps HDMI cable I bought for this build into one of the "non gaming" ports on the TV. FML

 

[Indus]

Oh and can you please merge this thread and the debian one:

Anyone use Debian or OpenSuse LEAP?

Any reviews? Is it stable? How's it for gaming and home networking with SELinux?

forums.anandtech.com

Both are my threads and both relate to gaming and I think it might be easier for anyone to look up stuff if they were both one thread!

 

[EXCellR8]

Anyways I'm really happy with debian and in no mood to change/ reformat again. It's funny and true.. Debian is boring but it just works!

So would you suggest strictly Debian with KDE or something else? I've used Ubuntu since the mid-late 2000's and I've always just liked how everything seemed to work without much fuss. I have tried other distros over the years, but I always seem to circle back to Ubuntu/Xubuntu with GNOME or XFCE. I do like the Plasma environment too, though.

I'm gonna stick with Bazzite for now since I've only just started using it really, but I'm by no means committed to keeping it for gaming if I notice a similar performance snag. I haven't run anything too demanding, so I might try something a bit more modern and see how it goes.

 

[Indus]

So would you suggest strictly Debian with KDE or something else? I've used Ubuntu since the mid-late 2000's and I've always just liked how everything seemed to work without much fuss. I have tried other distros over the years, but I always seem to circle back to Ubuntu/Xubuntu with GNOME or XFCE. I do like the Plasma environment too, though.

I'm gonna stick with Bazzite for now since I've only just started using it really, but I'm by no means committed to keeping it for gaming if I notice a similar performance snag. I haven't run anything too demanding, so I might try something a bit more modern and see how it goes.

You can experiment with anything to see you like it but if you're building a long term main rig.. yes I'd go with Debian.

I love KDE but some prefer GNOME.. use whatever you're comfy with. A GUI is basically a tool..

And you can never go wrong with Debian.. others like Arch/ Fedora/ ubuntu say nice things are popular but there's a reason most of them have 1.2 million users tops and Debian has 40 million.

Debian is reliably stable! And it's also the BASE for ubuntu!

The only reason someone has to not use debian is if they have a very new rig with new hardware and debian hasn't updated it's kernel yet officially.. (that's the only place where arch/ fedora/ ubuntu have advantages, but debian also has backports to allow that)

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea it's odd I suppose, as you'd think I'd have tried base Debian before since I know Ubuntu is built on it--just never have used it. Don't really have an answer other than I may have just gotten turned onto Ubuntu originally because a much younger version of myself saw it as "better" than what it was based on. Kind of like Linux as a whole derived from Unix etc. Or it might just be because orange is my favorite color and I like free things.

As for GUI... I think I actually prefer XFCE over GNOME over KDE, but like you said it's just a preference. Others like Cinnamon and MATE I've almost never used.

 

[Indus]

Yea it's odd I suppose, as you'd think I'd have tried base Debian before since I know Ubuntu is built on it--just never have used it. Don't really have an answer other than I may have just gotten turned onto Ubuntu originally because a much younger version of myself saw it as "better" than what it was based on. Kind of like Linux as a whole derived from Unix etc. Or it might just be because orange is my favorite color and I like free things.

As for GUI... I think I actually prefer XFCE over GNOME over KDE, but like you said it's just a preference. Others like Cinnamon and MATE I've almost never used.

Well you can use xfce in debian.. it gives you that option at the start.

Best part is if you're used to ubuntu.. you don't have to learn anything new in debian. The same old text commands work..

sudo apt update

You don't have to learn dnf/ pacman/ zypper etc

 

[EXCellR8]

I was under the impression that Debian was very lean and meant for older systems and didn't offer out of the box support for many modern applications... and thus others have built off of it etc.

Ubuntu distros like Kubuntu (native KDE) and Xubuntu (native XFCE) were better for modern hardware and workloads. Gaming is also better because they have driver management and work with more demanding graphics features out of the box. Debian needs more added to it to get it to that point etc.

 

[manly]

Oh and can you please merge this thread and the debian one:

Merging an entirely different thread into this long-running one would be awful for both.

I was under the impression that Debian was very lean and meant for older systems and didn't offer out of the box support for many modern applications... and thus others have built off of it etc.

Ubuntu distros like Kubuntu (native KDE) and Xubuntu (native XFCE) were better for modern hardware and workloads. Gaming is also better because they have driver management and work with more demanding graphics features out of the box. Debian needs more added to it to get it to that point etc.

I don't daily-drive Debian, but it's a very comprehensive distro.* They have a very FOSS philosophy, and the stable branch tends to be extremely conservative. Thus, in the past, Debian didn't evolve quickly enough for consumer desktop OS usage patterns. Hence, the long-running success of Ubuntu, which is based off of Debian's unstable branch. Ubuntu was releasing every 6 months, and made certain things easy like installing Nvidia's binary blobs.

* How lean it installs is kind of up to you, but historically it was hard to use Debian stable on desktops because the packages just got too old over time.

 

[Indus]

I was under the impression that Debian was very lean and meant for older systems and didn't offer out of the box support for many modern applications... and thus others have built off of it etc.

Ubuntu distros like Kubuntu (native KDE) and Xubuntu (native XFCE) were better for modern hardware and workloads. Gaming is also better because they have driver management and work with more demanding graphics features out of the box. Debian needs more added to it to get it to that point etc.

No.

Debian is meant to be ultra reliable for servers and targeted to people who want ZERO SURPRISES of something breaking down. That's why they take almost 2 years to update things but roll out security updates regularly.

Works just fine for me as the programs can update sooner on their own but the core system/ drivers are basically locked and nothing goes haywire. I'm able to game perfectly fine.

However the problem is that when someone upgrades to the newest cpu/ motherboard/ video card and it may not be supported for debian for a while.. they then are forced onto ubuntu or probably even fedora/ arch.

I put in a 9060xt in my rig so I had to wait till debian 13 release to get on debian and now it's supported.

Earlier this summer it wasn't.. (that's why I spent 3 months on bazzite/ ultramarine/ fedora despite it's problems)

So basically newest hardware: arch/ fedora might be better.

few months or 1 year old: ubuntu/ debian can definitely work for you!

 

[EXCellR8]

Gotcha, good to know!

 

[Indus]

Gotcha, good to know!

This is from when I installed debian 13 on Oct 16th..



and this is current:



So the updates are there. (notice the kernel)

Unless you're upgrading to the newest nvidia gpu or amd/ intel cpu.. you'll be fine for your gaming rig.

 

[WelshBloke]

This is from when I installed debian 13 on Oct 16th..

View attachment 134532

and this is current:

View attachment 134535

So the updates are there. (notice the kernel)

Unless you're upgrading to the newest nvidia gpu or amd/ intel cpu.. you'll be fine for your gaming rig.

Trixie is unstable testing isn't it? That said I'm running Ubuntu 25.10 which is based on Trixie.

 

[Indus]

Trixie is unstable testing isn't it? That said I'm running Ubuntu 25.10 which is based on Trixie.

It's debian 13 stable now!

Debian -- Debian “trixie” Release Information

I think you are thinking before it was released.. when it was indeed unstable testing for a long time

Currently debian 14 is in unstable testing!

 

[biostud]

Since hardware has become so standardized and there is no reason to tinker with it in most cases. Trying Linux and tinker with it has been the most fun (and sometimes frustrating) in a long time.

I would definitely recommend getting a separate disk for Linux and dual/triple boot with Windows as well. To me there's no problem having a backup OS.

 

[iCyborg]

I'm considering moving to Linux with the new PC build.
Two usecases worry me, gaming obviously, lots of talk about things having improved, but many of them are somewhat SteamOS/Proton based, not sure what state we're in with Mint/Zorin/Ubuntu without Proton with just Wine or something, no Bazzite etc. That said, I'm not a heavy gamer, so I could probably live with whatever the state is.
The other one is that I will miss Visual Studio for pet projects, and I dont want to relearn a new IDE.

How is VR support? Like for HTC headsets, not the new Steam VR.
And for the content, though this is a general OS-agnostic question, as someone who won't use VR for gaming (nor porn), I wonder how much content there is outside those two.

Also, how's Linux and X3D dual CCD CPUs? Even Windows isn't quite PnP with these for optimal performance.

 

[WelshBloke]

I'm considering moving to Linux with the new PC build.
Two usecases worry me, gaming obviously, lots of talk about things having improved, but many of them are somewhat SteamOS/Proton based, not sure what state we're in with Mint/Zorin/Ubuntu without Proton with just Wine or something, no Bazzite etc. That said, I'm not a heavy gamer, so I could probably live with whatever the state is.

In my experience, as long as nothing is booked in your install, most distros run Steam the same and gaming is similar across distros. Some have more stuff pre installed but that stuff is freely available.

The other one is that I will miss Visual Studio for pet projects, and I dont want to relearn a new IDE.

You could run that in a windows VM?

How is VR support? Like for HTC headsets, not the new Steam VR.
And for the content, though this is a general OS-agnostic question, as someone who won't use VR for gaming (nor porn), I wonder how much content there is outside those two.

Can't help you there I'm afraid.

Also, how's Linux and X3D dual CCD CPUs? Even Windows isn't quite PnP with these for optimal performance.

IIRC dual CCDs performed better on Linux than they did in Windows to start with. The Linux scheduler is pretty robust.

 

[iCyborg]

In my experience, as long as nothing is booked in your install, most distros run Steam the same and gaming is similar across distros. Some have more stuff pre installed but that stuff is freely available.

I don't use Steam at all nor do I plan to start using it. Pretty much GoG only.
That's why it's a bit hard for me to find info, as most articles are "great experience with Proton, SteamOS runs tons of games etc". The first post in this thread is like that too, LMDE fine for non-gaming and then moves on to Bazzite.