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

[WelshBloke]

2026: Year of Gaming on Linux

Linux Gamers on Steam Finally Cross Over the 3% Mark - Slashdot

"It finally happened," writes the GamingOnLinux site: Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark. The trend has been clear for sometime, and with Windows 10 ending support, it was quite likely this was going to be the...

linux.slashdot.org

 

[Indus]

@WelshBloke regarding you wanting to use KDE to perfectly center the icons..



See how I used panel spacer x2 to get 1 on either side and have that middle space perfectly center..

You can put icons and taskbar there or maybe even widgets.. like I did here



So definitely possible to do what you want!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

​

I've been dragging my feet on setting up a gamer on anything other than SteamOS or Bazzite. I think I still have Pop!_OS on a nvme for my Deskmini, but that is for old or lightweight games.

So to quote heart shaped box. Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint! Are the other distros you guys are using allowing above 1080 in Steam games without setting it per game or via launch arguments?

 

[WelshBloke]

@WelshBloke regarding you wanting to use KDE to perfectly center the icons..

View attachment 133412

See how I used panel spacer x2 to get 1 on either side and have that middle space perfectly center..

You can put icons and taskbar there or maybe even widgets.. like I did here

View attachment 133413

So definitely possible to do what you want!

I got it working but I still don't like KDE!

I replaced my MB so I ended up distro hopping again! Although my old install booted up with the new motherboard!

Ended up using Ubuntu 25.10, stripping out the snap stuff, using the gnome software store with flathub, and making it look like my old install.
Has a recent kernel and gnome 49 (with added HDR and VRR goodness) with .DEB support.

 

[WelshBloke]

​

I've been dragging my feet on setting up a gamer on anything other than SteamOS or Bazzite. I think I still have Pop!_OS on a nvme for my Deskmini, but that is for old or lightweight games.

So to quote heart shaped box. Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint! Are the other distros you guys are using allowing above 1080 in Steam games without setting it per game or via launch arguments?

I wouldn't worry too much about the distro, something with a fairly new kernel if you have modern hardware. Try out a bunch, personally something based on Ubuntu is always easy to find support on but Arch based distros are pretty popular and well supported for gaming now.
Then it's what you want it to look like, something like Zorin is easy to use if you're coming from Windows11 but you can't go wrong with KDE or Gnome.

 

[Indus]

​

I've been dragging my feet on setting up a gamer on anything other than SteamOS or Bazzite. I think I still have Pop!_OS on a nvme for my Deskmini, but that is for old or lightweight games.

So to quote heart shaped box. Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint! Are the other distros you guys are using allowing above 1080 in Steam games without setting it per game or via launch arguments?

1440p works for me

My only launch command is:

DXVK_HUD=compiler %command% (which lets me know when shaders are compiling in background)

And I'm gonna go opposite of @WelshBloke and say avoid arch and fedora.

Go with debian or ubuntu or opensuse.

 

[Indus]

I got it working but I still don't like KDE!

I replaced my MB so I ended up distro hopping again! Although my old install booted up with the new motherboard!

Ended up using Ubuntu 25.10, stripping out the snap stuff, using the gnome software store with flathub, and making it look like my old install.
Has a recent kernel and gnome 49 (with added HDR and VRR goodness) with .DEB support.

That's cool.. you're comfy with what you're comfy with.

And that's my exact problem with gnome.. I still don't like it!

KDE suits me like GNOME suits you! Go with what you're comfy with.. but atleast underneath I'm happy with debian.

 

[WelshBloke]

1440p works for me

I've had no problems with resolutions (and I run a slightly edge case one of 3440x14440 @144hz)

And I'm gonna go opposite of @WelshBloke and say avoid arch and fedora.

Go with debian or ubuntu or opensuse.

Arch is kinda the go to for gaming (its what Valve uses), not that any other distro wont be able to game fine.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I wouldn't worry too much about the distro, something with a fairly new kernel if you have modern hardware. Try out a bunch, personally something based on Ubuntu is always easy to find support on but Arch based distros are pretty popular and well supported for gaming now.
Then it's what you want it to look like, something like Zorin is easy to use if you're coming from Windows11 but you can't go wrong with KDE or Gnome.

Do the games allow you to pick your resolution normally like windows?

I Have to use the options I mentioned with Bazzite. BTW, It is the latest Fedora 43. Besides the one time annoyance per game, I am stoked with Bazzite. VLC, ublock Origin lite, all of my favorites are there, even PIA is now officially supported on Fedora. I have almost a TB of games on the 2TB drive I used for this build already. I also use 2FA and authenticators for all my stuff; no desire to do that again immediately.

 

[Indus]

Yes you have to pick the resolution especially in full screen. I usually start by playing in windowed by default and configure it that way.

If possible I actually like playing games windowed so I can monitor stats if needed and alt tab to research quests.

The only ones I don't play windowed are shooters.

 

[WelshBloke]

Do the games allow you to pick your resolution normally like windows?

Yeah, all works exactly like windows when I'm in a game.

I Have to use the options I mentioned with Bazzite. BTW, It is the latest Fedora 43. Besides the one time annoyance per game, I am stoked with Bazzite. VLC, ublock Origin lite, all of my favorites are there, even PIA is now officially supported on Fedora. I have almost a TB of games on the 2TB drive I used for this build already. I also use 2FA and authenticators for all my stuff; no desire to do that again immediately.

So there can be a few issues using NTFS in Linux (I assume that your storage drive is formatted with this?). I'd strongly advice you not to use that with Linux. Also if they are Steam games I wouldnt just try to use the same library, you should do the "back up game thing in Windows Steam then restore the game using Linux Steam" dance!
You'll find that most of your apps will be there in Linux apart from Adobe stuff and MS office stuff, It still makes me smile when I fire up Halo in Linux!

Things that wont work (just so you dont hit any unexpected game breakers). MS office; you can run the online version or theres plenty of alternatives but if you really, really need MS office then you'll need a Windows VM or dual boot. Same with most Adobe stuff.
Some of the big competitive online games wont run, stuff like Fortnite or battlefield 6. No amount of tinkering will get those running at the moment.
Also if you have an Nvidia video card things can be a bit more complicated. It'll work but theres a bit of faffing and they dont work as well as they do in Windows, AMD cards work perfectly in linux when you get your head around the idea that you dont need to install drivers for them!

 

[WelshBloke]

That's cool.. you're comfy with what you're comfy with.

And that's my exact problem with gnome.. I still don't like it!

KDE suits me like GNOME suits you! Go with what you're comfy with.. but atleast underneath I'm happy with debian.

Its weird. I can make KDE look almost exactly like my Gnome DE but I still dont like it that much!
I did miss the HDR and VRR that KDE had but Gnome 49 has that now so I dont have too much FOMO going on!

I think comfy was the right word! Theres nothing I particularly dislike about KDE, it just isnt comfy for me!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yeah, all works exactly like windows when I'm in a game.

So there can be a few issues using NTFS in Linux (I assume that your storage drive is formatted with this?). I'd strongly advice you not to use that with Linux. Also if they are Steam games I wouldnt just try to use the same library, you should do the "back up game thing in Windows Steam then restore the game using Linux Steam" dance!
You'll find that most of your apps will be there in Linux apart from Adobe stuff and MS office stuff, It still makes me smile when I fire up Halo in Linux!

Things that wont work (just so you dont hit any unexpected game breakers). MS office; you can run the online version or theres plenty of alternatives but if you really, really need MS office then you'll need a Windows VM or dual boot. Same with most Adobe stuff.
Some of the big competitive online games wont run, stuff like Fortnite or battlefield 6. No amount of tinkering will get those running at the moment.
Also if you have an Nvidia video card things can be a bit more complicated. It'll work but theres a bit of faffing and they dont work as well as they do in Windows, AMD cards work perfectly in linux when you get your head around the idea that you dont need to install drivers for them!

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I have been retired almost 6 years now. Don't need office, adobe, or any of that jazz. I am running just the 2TB drive for OS and games, so should be just BTRFS. I don't play anything competitive, and rarely even game online at all. Those days are behind me. I was just looking to make certain the resolution thing was because of the distro I use. Again, I am stoked with Bazzite. Impressively user friendly and easy to get gaming on.

 

[biostud]

I'm now on my third distro. Both Mint and Ultramarine (Fedora) became unstable, with freezing and crashes.

I might be the culprit, but I'm now trying Debian 13, just to see if it works better for me.

 

[Zepp]

I'm now on my third distro. Both Mint and Ultramarine (Fedora) became unstable, with freezing and crashes.

I might be the culprit, but I'm now trying Debian 13, just to see if it works better for me.

hope it works well for you. I've been very happy with it for the last 3 months.

iirc Debian is a little obtuse by default. I think you need to enable non-free repos and setup sudo and add your user to it.
Spiral took care of most of that kind of stuff on mine but I still had to download a settings app for lightdm to enable auto selecting user on bootup so I didnt have to manually type my user name every time.

You can also enable debian backoprts repo and get a much newer kernel version than default deb13.

 

[biostud]

hope it works well for you. I've been very happy with it for the last 3 months.

iirc Debian is a little obtuse by default. I think you need to enable non-free repos and setup sudo and add your user to it.
Spiral took care of most of that kind of stuff on mine but I still had to download a settings app for lightdm to enable auto selecting user on bootup so I didnt have to manually type my user name every time.

You can also enable debian backoprts repo and get a much newer kernel version than default deb13.

Currently it works just like my Ultramarine with KDE. But I haven't done so much yet. I just choose my user and type my password.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I run everything in 1440 UW on CachyOS using my 9070. Some games dont handle the ultrawide very well, but, that was the same problem in windows.
I did get a 4k 120hz OLED TV for the home theater.
Currently, I have an old am4 PC running Ubuntu connected to it, but it just has a 1080ti, so its not even able to output at 4k 120.
I currently am able to use it at 4k/60hz, but its not really powerful enough for 4k with the 1080ti.

I do have another pc running cachyos with a 4070. Since the 4070 is more powerful, and it supports displayport 1.4a, i should be able to get a dp 1.4a to hdmi 2.1 adaptor and then drive a display at 4k 120hz..

Been playing around with steam's game streaming from one pc to another, and, having the more powerful GPU on the lower resolution monitor has held me back from experimenting a bit. I know there are ways around it (going back from wayland to X and setting up a fake/phantom display to get it to run stuff at 4k even though monitor does not support it, or creating a fake second display using one of those terminated dp or hdmi fake devices) .. but, anyhow, been very pleased with CachyOS here.

My close friend who cares more about stability/reliability, he gets anoyed when he pc wont boot or when the kernel gets broken or something, he switched to Fedora Silverblue, immutable makes a lot of sense for him, and he loves it.

I still have an ubuntu box, and a plain arch box,

my Slackware box is fully retired. Old 400mhz FSB northwoods celeron 1.8 that was replaced with a pentium 2.4 and went from 128mb ram to 4gb of ECC ram .... It was a dell poweredge deal from the hot deals forum back in the early 00s.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Let's Go!

 

[WelshBloke]

Let's Go!

That'll be a fun watch for later!

I do hope that he's not going to feed the hype that Linux is faster than windows for gaming though! In my experience it's pretty much the same within a fairly big ballpark. By that I mean that my games run on the same settings in Linux as they did in Windows but if I had to guess I'd say they run slightly slower in Linux. That said my experience in games is fundamentally the same. My reason for swapping over was to get away from Windows that I was very much not enjoying (for a variety of reasons) and I've not regretted the switch over at all. And at the end of the day it doesn't take long to switch either way if minds change!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

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.

 

[WelshBloke]

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.

I really like Steve when hes doing a talky show, I find reviews that are heavy benchmarking not so great in video format. Theres only so many pictures of bar graphs with someone speaking over I can tolerate!

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.

I'm all AMD (5800x3d and a 6950xt, and just changed my MD to a x570) so maybe thats why I've had an extremely easy time changing over?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Same here. I put together a killer Bazzite beast from parts I already have that were unused at the moment. 5800X3D, Noctua D15, 32GB kit 3600, Pulse 7900XTX, MSI MAG 850GL, 2TB gen 4 nvme. Bought a Asus ROG STRIX B550F GAMING II BF pricing, and have a be quiet! Pure Base 501 coming tomorrow on BF pricing to finish it off. The 5600X3D + RX 6800 I may put cachyOS on since I am reading good things. My spywindow box is 7800X3D+9070XT.

Depending on how well heroic games launcher does for me, maybe I can completely give MS the 🖕next year. I have a couple of financial services I use authenticators with, that I have not efforted yet either. Seems like I can just add Google authenticator to Firefox and be race ready.

 

[WelshBloke]

I wouldnt worry about which distro you initially pick, you will change it lots of times!

Luckily installing Linux is a lot quicker than installing Windows!

 

[WelshBloke]

Depending on how well heroic games launcher does for me, maybe I can completely give MS the 🖕next year.

I've had more luck with Faugus as a launcher but I pretty much only use it for Ubisoft Connect.

 

[WelshBloke]

Let's Go!

Interesting BG3 results! I use the linux build at 3440x1440 and am pretty locked at 144fps, Ill have to try the other builds! Also I play WH3 a lot and have had no problems at all!

I wish he'd do a cross linux distro performance video but I get that that would be a huge amount of work!