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.
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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.
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.
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 It suffers massively from poor documentation and out of date fourm posts.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
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 😅
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.
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.
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
Arch or Debian. Depends on their personality and use case. I prefer Arch, but have no problems with recommending Debian and use it on one machine myself.
Edit: after re reading I’d say Debian. Little more stability but it is more annoying if they ever do wana tinker more. OpenSuse is an honorable mention as well!
Arch as a first distro? 🧐
Yeah, but depends on the person I guess. Its just so simple, and nice to set up without needing to do any backtracking or opt outs right out of the gate.
“depends on the person” alright.
He’s not going to want to tinker. This is a pc he wants to work like a console
Bazzite is great out of the box. My favourite part is that the menu automatically suggests flatpak apps you might want to install without getting in the way of your existing apps.
No matter the distro (since there’s plenty of good ones out there), help your friend set up Winboat and you’ll be all good.
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.
On dual booting, I’ll say I’ve been running Win11 through several updates with GRUB and Mint installed on a second SSD with no issues for over a year now.
do you think it could be safer to dual boot if windows an linux are on separate physical drives? he really doesnt want win11 but for a few of his games he’s going to need it.
Sounds weird they are mixing work and pleasure on the same machine, but anyways +1 for dual boot.
VMs haven’t been a great experience for me if you need to get real work done.
I’ve been dual booting on one drive for years, never experienced any issues. Heard doing it on separate drives is even better though.
Probably extra points if your linux partitions are encrypted.
My instinct would be yes, and this was the recommendation I found while researching it before implementation. Windows is less likely to screw with another drive than it is the partitions on it’s own drive. That said, it’s a best guess and you never know what Microsoft vibe coders will break next! But I have foubd it stable.
Linux Mint
I am not too clued up to say this or that, but Mental Outlaw on YouTube has been doing very good breakdown on loads of Linux stuff to noobs.
So I will link to this, https://youtu.be/3MwJbRq3-rM
I saw no one mention ZorinOS.
I personally love Mint, tried different distros but I keep crawling back to green Ubuntu
After I left Bazzite I switched to Garuda, it is also gaming and performance focused, works with Nvidia, and has been super easy as a beginner.
It may be worth a look.
We aren’t building with nvidia. Absolutely not.
I mean … it’s not required. So, good for you, I guess.
It’s a matter of their ties with palentier at this point. We aren’t paying for that.
I mentioned it because a lot of people already have a card they need to accommodate, not to try and convince you.
Kubuntu is fine. I’ve been running that without issues for months now.
Bazzite is good too. But do push for the KDE version.