A friend is due for a gaming PC build. But he’s super pissed it needs to run windows 11. I told him just run something else. He said his job needs something that runs windows-only and on the odd occasions where he needs a desktop to do something he’s not buying a second computer just to run windows.
Dual booting exists but Microsoft likes to clobber boot loaders. So I reminded him he could just run windows 11 in a VM when he needs to, everything else in bare metal Linux.
He’s now sold on moving to Linux.
The question is where should he start? It used to be as simple as “if you aren’t sure, use Ubuntu.” But his use case kinda seems like what everyone has been crowing about using bazzite for.
I have zero experience with bazzite but the page does describe something built for his use case. There are 3 concerns I have though.
- Is it common enough that he can Google an answer?
- it’s an atomic distro, so classic Linux answers he might find online won’t always be applicable here.
- selinux, ugh.
What’s a good gamer Linux distro? He’s not super into tinkering. He just wants it to do the thing without Microsoft’s invasive bullshit.
So, I’m an all-around Bazzite fan, but it does have a bit of an odd learning curve. It’s easy to use for a beginner, child, or grandma. However, if you’re used to fiddling with your system, it might be a little harder to get into because you have to navigate the immutable nature of the OS, which can complicate some online tutorials and potentially lead to frustration for an intermediate/experienced user migrating from Windows.
So my suggestion would be:
Child - Bazzite
Grandma - Bazzite
Gamer - Bazzite
Experienced Windows user - Fedora or Mint, then once you’re used to Linux, Bazzite
Developer - Bazzite
I personally use the Gnome version. It’s really polished and pretty.
Side question: his job is asking him to run work programs on his personal machine? If they are not willing to provide a work laptop or if it is something that does not require powerful hardware to run, I feel like in that situation I would buy a burner laptop off ebay to run the work thing on.
That’s just my personal preference, but I do not mix work and personal things on the same computer.
So I can address this from my experience, their mileage may vary: sometimes it’s about saving yourself time. Say if your normal daily driver is a desktop for some reason, but you’re on call to do a task. You can (in theory) do that task from your home PC or you can drive in to the office for (arbitrary round trip time) to do it ‘properly’. Even when I used windows at home /and/ had a work laptop I still maintained a VM (an ersatz air gap) for work shit on my personal PC for convince sake.
There’s also the security concern. A workplace should not have an employee run work software on a machine that isn’t bound by group policy.
Bazzite
I don’t have a recommendation other than don’t recommend something to your friend for which you’re not willing to provide tech support.
Garuda, Bazzite, Zorin, Pop OS…and get a seperate machine for work. Hell no, I’m not letting my employer on to my personal machine.
The employer should have a way for you to remote in. There is no reason for you to have a work machine at all anymore.
And I am not talking a VPN.
Don’t even get me started
CachyOS
Trust me it’s super easy and nice.
^This is the answer.
Mint still does not work well with Wayland from what I can tell, and if you need features like HDR, you’re gonna have to stick to something that runs Wayland well.
While Bazzite seems fine, it is an atomic distro. If you were to try installing certain software natively, like another Firewall for instance, it might not work. And if you continue to layer such software, the update times can take longer.
Cachy(with KDE) seems very stable to me. You’ll pretty much find every software through the repo. If not, you’ll have to manually install flatpak yourself. Never had to do it myself though. But it shouldn’t be a hassle, I think.
It has its own proton variant and they recommend that you disable Steam preshader caching and increase maximum shader cache size when you’re using Proton-Cachy or GE.
My choice also. Specifically with KDE Plasma
I’m throwing in my vote for CachyOS. Not because it’s the easiest to use (though it isnt difficult imo) but because it works out of the box, then they have nice wiki to guide you through simple things (like using Lutris and Proton). It’s also Arch based so there’s the arch wiki to fall back on. I ran Windows for 35 years and just switched to Linux in like October, fwiw.
maybe the distro you use? so that you could directly offer help.
if not, maybe just plain old debian?
This. I use Arch myself so to my friends I just recommend one of the downstream distros. Might not be the most stable things ever but it’s just easier for me to help them.
I’m using fedora server right now and my daily driver is still a Mac at the moment. I’m still transitioning.
Mint (LMDE). It might actually be easier to use than windows. My dead dad could use it and he was a moron. I held out for quite a while to try out ‘cooler’ distros but yeah, Mint is what I’m telling anyone moving from windows to use now.
My dead dad could use it and he was a moron.
I really was not prepared for that sentence 😅
I’m still reeling
Fedora or Ubuntu. No need to overthink it. They are the two biggest distros in popularity by far (except Arch, which probably beats Fedora), so you have access to maximum mindshare and previous troubleshooting.
Including Arch, these three distros are among the most polished, stable, and well-documented. Arch takes quite a bit more effort, so a beginner without much time on their hands should start with Ubuntu or Fedora.
Avoid Ubuntu like a plague it’s one of the least googleable distros there are. It suffers massively from poor documentation and out of date fourm posts. Not to mention gnome at this point has endless weird problems for new users.
Iv helped over 200 people over the last year change to Linux. Gnome has been the cause of almost every major problem with them.
Stick to kde, stick to fedora or arch, stay away from lts releases or anything with an older kernel.
There’s a really good reason steam went with arch.
I have felt this way about ubuntu since the beginning. It’s always a mess.
I was surprised two years ago about how good Fedora got, while also being really up to date.
And Debian? I don’t understand how you can list Arch as one of the most stable distributions when, based on its update model, it doesn’t seek stability but rather constant updating. If you’re referring to operational stability, in my opinion it’s not on the same level as Debian, Leap, Ubuntu, or Fedora. Stability is not synonymous with number of users.
Stability in the sense of: my computer does the thing i expect with the hardware i happen to have, every time, over many years.
I agree Debian is up there. I only mentioned Arch because of the massive userbase. I think Debian is a little more technical (for a new user with limited time and attention) than Ubuntu or Fedora, but much less so than Arch
Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch are undoubtedly the big 4 Linux distros in terms of long term community, stability, and documentation
If not Bazzite, Nobara is an option. It is based on Fedora, but is not an atomic distro, and iirc, it replaces selinux with apparmor, but unless you’re getting into development, docker/podman etc, selinux will never be an issue.
Nobara is maintained by Glorious Eggroll, who also maintains proton-ge. Is also comes with an iso with built-in nvidia drivers, and also comes with an HTPC iso.
I have been using it for a few years, now. The documentation is also well detailed. And anything that works on Fedora will work on Nobara.
The Bazzite KDE version is a great option, as long as you install apps from the built-in Bazaar store, it’s hard to mess anything up, and it already includes most of the software you’ll need so it usually works well out of the box.
If your friend has to troubleshoot issues on bazzite, it’s better not to install extra system packages on top of the core OS (“layering”), because that can sometimes cause problems and make things harder to fix.
You can also set up a tool called Winboat, which lets you run Windows inside Bazzite; it integrates nicely and isn’t too difficult to configure.
Bazzite is the first recommendation if the apps your friend needs are available on Flathub. If they need more complex software that only comes as Debian (.deb) packages, Linux Mint is probably a better choice because installing non‑Flatpak apps there is much easier, although the trade‑off is that installing a lot of extra packages can potentially break the system if you are not careful. If they mostly stick to the Mint software store, it should stay stable and they are unlikely to run into problems.
+1 for Winboat. As long as you’ve got the RAM and CPU cores to spare, it’s a really nice solution to the Windows software that you really can’t replace. My PC has an 8core CPU and 16Gb RAM. Much less than that and it gets pretty taxing.
WinApps is more complete, in that you can right click on a file to open it in an installed Windows app, which isn’t something you can (currently) do with Winboat, but WinApps is more of a bastard to set up.
Anyone in these comments claiming there is a big difference between “gaming distros” and any other is flat wrong.
Any distro works. It’s about the initial experience they want without having to fuss about changes. You can switch Desktop Environment on any distro easily, none of them offer massive gaming performance differences over the others. It’s subjective. For a beginner, don’t recommend immutable. That’s pretty much it.
Any distro works.
Any non-LTS distro works*
Using a distro release based on a 2 year old kernel with brand new hardware is asking for a horrible experience. For gaming especially, you’re also losing out on months/years of improvements to Mesa.
I’ve been running CachyOS and they have some gaming packages, but I forgot to install them and haven’t run into any issues just installing Steam.
Echoing what others have said, a “gaming distro” really isn’t necessary. I have used Ubuntu for years on and off. When I switched my gaming PC to Linux earlier this year I went with Kubuntu, because it’s just Ubuntu and I like KDE Plasma better than Gnome. I do feel like Ubuntu is one of the easiest to find support for when you’re looking online.
While I generally agree, the benefit of it being gaming focused means if he has to look something up any community or support he finds will already be familiar with exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. It will help the newbie when I’m not available to.
LMDE 7 and send it. Regular mint has Ubuntu nonsense baked in, lmde is basically the same end user experience and smooth Debian jazz underneath.
Like someone else said, steam, heroic.
I’d avoid any of the gamer distros.
Nobara is alright if you just want games to work without tinkering etc
It’s also developed by glorious egg roll, the GE in GE-proton. I wanted to love it but Wayland + multi monitor + KDE + Nividia = pain
Everything except nvidia is how I use it and it works very well. I have had a few issues with kde once but never again since then
Are you talking about scaling monitors at a different rate in a multi monitor setup? I thought they’ve fixed that.
Mine freezes the display output to one monitor after awhile. (Intermittent, my favorite.) This was probably 6-9months ago. Usually apps kept working behind frozen display. Just with reduced utility.
Monitors are identical make/model 2K 165hz
Which Ubuntu stuff does Mint Cinnamon have? I thought the point of Mint was that they removed a bunch of that stuff like Snaps.
Mainline mint is a derivative of Ubuntu. Lmde is largely the same OS with a pure Debian heart without Ubuntu clogging the arteries
Yes, I know Mint is downstream of Ubuntu, that’s how I know it doesn’t include Snaps. What exactly other “nonsense” is there or was your statement just a general LMDE puritan hand-wave?
I’m an ubuntu hater / snap hater. I prefer my mint without junk in the trunk. I’ll confuse people though, I think systemd rocks. And let’s make more people mad, vim is a pointless flex and nano is better.
Fair enough, I totally agree about Ubuntu, although Mint doesn’t have most of the bad Ubuntu stuff. What it does benefit from is Ubuntu’s superior hardware support, PPAs (most important for up-to-date Mesa) and GUI stuff like Driver Manager/Update Manager. For a beginner or casual user there’s no contest.
LMDE is missing various useful programs, such as the GNOME disk utility. Just stick with stock Mint if you’re going Mint.
I could spin up a VM and check, I’m 99% sure you’re wrong. Also lmde includes almost the same preinstalled programs.
or…
apt install -y gparted
Well it was missing something I needed when I tried it a while back.
I mean, fair. It also doesn’t have mint’s driver manger, which is a bummer.
Edit: it does have the driver manager! The hell with vanilla mint for sure then.
