Arch. If it's not a server, arch. Always arch.
Linux Gaming
Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
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Arch Linux is Linux built my way. My system blends to what I do. Clean and fast, no clutter in sight, with 100% freedom and control. I use Arch BTW !!
It suits my needs because I decide. It's bleeding edge, so I get latest packages. Just the way I like it.
Nobara but considering other option such as Bazzite and GLFOS.
I would suggest you to choose a lightweight DE, in simpler word everything but GNOME. On my machine GNOME was eating ressources resulting in less FPS around roughly 10%-20% performance loss. But from a distro to another one I haven't seen major gap in my benchmarks. Desktop Envrionement had much more impact
Void Linux with XFCE on my desktop, and Bazzite on my media center PC.
Debian Stable
Slackware current.
This isn't a troll. I use it to game on my dual core pentium lovingly dubbed 'the craptop'. And I use it to game on my mid-tier gaming PC.
Fedora atm, I heard it's pretty good I haven't really tried anything else.
Currently Pop!_OS
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Meets all my requirements 😀
You can game on just about any distro -- I'm using NixOS and it's great for many reasons, but also can be a real pain to learn and to solve new problems.
But if you're looking for the easiest to set up that will be most likely to just work and gaming is a priority, go for Bazzite.
I will second Fedora and Debian as extremely solid, well-supported distros, though both will require some initial setup (mostly enabling nonfree repos, especially for Nvidia gpus)
Endeavour OS! So far it's been smooth for the past 4 years. I've enjoyed it.
Debian. It wont win any awards for fastest release cycles but it's rock stable with great support for my Ryzen 2700 and 6700xt.
Debain gamer here as well!
There seem to be dozens of us
As a FreeBSD user just trying to game on Unix, I've blown up my Debian machine so many times. A couple of years ago, trying to get CUDA in Blender working AND have a recent enough driver for the Windows games I was playing on Proton was killing me. I don't remember what exactly but it seemed like every time I tried to change something, the whole fragile mess would bork itself.
yeah, back when I used nvidia I had to run their driver installer or nothing would work right, and of course any little system update would bork everything until I ran the installer again. Thankfully everything with AMD just works now.
Thank you for validating my pain.
Fedora and steamOS
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed here, both on my desktop and Steam Deck. i like the stable rolling release model. Allows me to get shiny new things that have at least gone through automated tests.
And in case anything goes wrong it comes with snapper configured by default for easy rollbacks.
Fedora KDE works great for me, but I'm quite comfortable with Linux already
I just run Arch, I've been an Arch guy for years and never saw any reason to switch
Nobara (Fedora)
Tried Bazzite for a year. Was fun but now back to a normal distro.
Guix
Guess I'll lie, next time.
Eh, I don't find dnf very limiting nor do I frequently get stymied by a missing package.
Just rolling with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
I don't think the hard part of linux is getting proprietary GPU drivers. They all have package managers that will grab them for you, after quick google search anyway. Mint will have the most specific google support for more esoteric problems/goals. Pika OS includes gpu driver bundles and is similarly debian based. But it wasn't good at waking from sleep on my old hardware with 1650super. Too hard to fix.
Cachy OS on personal PC and Bazzite on steam console (htpc) and a onexplayer handheld. Then just good old steamos on the steam deck.
Another vote for Bazzite. It's been such a smooth experience for a year or so.
I game on Fedora because it was just the OS I installed on my gaming PC when I moved to Linux. Everything is fine between Steam, Heroic, and Lutris. The NVIDIA drivers were easy to install from the App Store and the only game that doesn’t run well is Death Loop but there’s been some updates and I haven’t tried it in six months so it may be better now. There was a memory leak apparently but I think there were more problems.
I started with Bazzite but wanted a system that wasn't immutable, so I switched to Garuda. Both have been easy and reliable.
Bazzite and Mint
Bazzite runs great on my main gaming PC in desktop mode and on my HTPC in gaming mode. Maintenance is minimal and it just works (on AMD hardware), while packages are pretty recent and it's absolutely stable.
NixOS. Works great. I'm a bit of a masochist.
Bazzite on the living room PC.
I'm a Linux Mint user and I've not had many problems using Steam as a Flatpak.
Pretty much any distro will work for gaming these days. Really up to personal preference. I use Arch but have heard good things about Pop!_OS.
I was on pop for a while! It was cool.
Why does the pop shop suck though? Why?? Why is it so slow, why does it crash so much? Why is this such a problem with so many users? It wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, it was more like an unnecessary brick the camel had to carry.
The pop shop is ass, but you can install the cosmic store and it works wonderfully (cosmic is the DE in development by system76).
Unfortunately I already left Pop! for Fedora when I updated my GPU. I needed something with an updated kernel anyways and Fedora played nice with it out of the box.
But man, I still am surprised when I open up software and it just... loads with no issue.
Mint for two years. Then Arch for a decade. This year I have been trying out CachyOS.
Bazzite. Literally built for gaming.
Fedora on my desktop, bazzite (rebadged fedora) on my steam deck.
I'm always a lil surprised how few fedoras I see on these posts. Fedora is chill. Considering the difference between distros is basically a package manager, seems weird the second most bleeding edge distro doesn't get much love.