97
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world

I'm ditching Ubuntu. Thinking of switching to Debian.

Has anyone used this, or something similar to set up their Debian gaming setup?

This got me thinking. Do I need to install anything special to Debian 13 to be able to play games? Or can I play them with a normal Debian out of the box?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] stuner@lemmy.world 53 points 4 days ago

Please don't run scripts that a random person uploaded to Github if you don't know what you're doing. I didn't see anything malicious here, but most of the stuff is useless and some of it is even detrimental (e.g. the LLM "thought" the outdated Ubuntu Nvidia ppa was a good idea).

If you want to game on Debian, you can do that just fine. Installing Steam and Nvidia drivers (if applicable) should be sufficient for most people. IMO, the main issue with gaming on Debian are the very old GPU drivers (Nvidia 550, Mesa 25.0). This can be fine on older hardware, but is the reason why I wouldn't recommend Debian for gaming in general. The script you linked doesn't help with this at all.

If you really want these "gaming optimizations", for the limited benefits they provide, I would recommend that you just use one of the distros that ships them. CachyOS, Bazzite, Nobara, Pop OS, or PikaOS all seem like a better choice than these scripts. At the very least the maintainers of those distros will integrate everything and perform some level of QA for you.

[-] olafurp@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

Just to add, finding good wayland support can be more important for gaming depending on your hardware. You get HDR, variable refresh rate, fractional scaling for monitors and other goodies.

[-] stuner@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Yeah, I actually switched distro to get Wayland multi-monitor VRR. But, unfortunately, it seems that it's kinda broken with my Novideo GPU :(

Wish I could stay on Wayland but it's not quite there for game streaming yet. Window/scene capture in OBS is miles better on X11 still. For non-streamers though Wayland is amazing

this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
97 points (86.5% liked)

Linux Gaming

25985 readers
61 users here now

Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.

This page can be subscribed to via RSS.

Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.

No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.

Resources

Help:

Launchers/Game Library Managers:

General:

Discord:

IRC:

Matrix:

Telegram:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS