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Thinking of switching my gaming desktop to linux. Should I? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So I was thinking of switching my desktop to linux. I have been running fedora on my laptop for 3 years and I really like it. My main question now is just what distro works best for gaming (considering my specs) and can I use VMs in any of the gaming oriented ones (mostly because I don't wanna keep dual booting).

Edit: I have gone with Bazzite for now and it seems to be working fine. Some games don't rrally work acceptably (I expected that) so I will keep dual booting for a while.

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I can't believe that no one has asked you this question yet (fucking fanboys...):

Do you mind losing access to most features on your GPU, including (but not limited to): RTX HDR, Shadowplay, the Nvidia App, a Nvidia Control Panel end everything it offers, including the 3D Settings page?

If any of this matters to you, you may want to consider switching to an AMD GPU first before you consider Linux. Nvidia does not support it nearly as well as they support Windows. You get a driver that lets you run games, and that's about it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah I only kinda really use shadowplay anyway. I don't have a hdr monitor at all. Firstly I just want to see if my games run well enough. If not I will wait a couple years and then upgrade to an AMD card and then switch for good.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Afaik AMD isn't fully supported either

And you lose the ability to run tensorflow if you like to do AI

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago

DO IT.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

JUST DO IT.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago

The only thing that kept me booting windows for gaming was destiny 2, which choses not to support running on linux.

The current expansion "edge of fate" is terrible though, so it's full time linux gaming for me.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

I really hope Bungie changes their stance at some point. The new portal in Edge of Fate seems perfect for quick sessions on a Steam Deck, if nothing else.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

the portal is a good idea, but how they tied (or rather didn't) it to the rest of the game is currently terrible.
the whole game feels like a broken plate that someone glued together again.. So, i would not expect great things from them currently...

[-] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

Coming from a Steam Deck, I was really happy when I learned about Bazzite. I tried installing it and stuck with it for a few months now and I'm excited to have gotten rid of Windows. It's fast and works well out of the box. Plus I have the SteamOS experience without fuss.

Bonus points for you, it's Fedora based and easy to install on top if Fedora.

Notably I had tried Ubuntu before this and had issues with VRR and a couple of other things. Bazzite is built for this, and it works well.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

i love bazzite, just got a new app store too

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Does the rockstar launcher run? I’d like to move over but always wonder about losing access to quite a few games in the process

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

I think I got to install & launch GTAV without modifications or additional software. I'll confirm and get back

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

From my experience on SteamOS, I’m launching RDR2 through the steam app but I own RDR2 on Rockstar game launcher. I used these steps to get it running: https://expertbeacon.com/can-steam-deck-run-red-dead-redemption-2/

I can only assume it’s similar on Bazzite but I haven’t tried.

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

linux mint.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Linux Mint Cinnamon was is my first Linux distro coming away from Win10, and I have no issues with it. Mint uses Ubuntu as its codebase, so it's essentially Ubuntu with a different desktop presentation/look/feel.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Agreed. Mint is a very 'new Linux user' friendly distro, and has everything you really need. I've got some recent converts from Windows and even the gamers I've set up are happy with it.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Nobara is good, it's fedora but with better nvidia driver stuff out of the box.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Of course you should - Do a dual boot as a test on whatever rig you're currently using. Easy to undo and it costs you exactly zero.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

I use Nobara on my laptop which has rtx 3060 6gb with ryzen 7 5800h. Sure Nvidia sucks on every linux distro, but you will get many quality of life improvements when using linux instead of windows.

Btw, Nobara is just Fedora with some good gaming related chages.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

You should go with Fedora.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Oh you have Nvidia ? Try out PopOS, they have a special ISO file with Nvidia drivers

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Garuda dragonized gaming will get you everything out of the box and you can change the theme after. It will walk you through a lot with assistants, which is nice to learn things on an arch based distro. Its an easy switch from windows, plus, now I can use fish konsole htop and paru alright.

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I see bazzite mentioned a lot here, but wasn't there a post here a while ago saying that it might stop existing if fedora pushes through with the decision to ditch 32bit support? Did they decide not to do it after all?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

The proposal to ditch 32 bit support was withdrawn

[-] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I think they decided not to, with some (IMO fairly) snarky comment on how that was just a proposal and people were getting needlesely outraged.

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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
152 points (89.2% liked)

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