I want to replace Win10 on the desktop system I mostly use for gaming. It is an older system with an Nvidia GeForce 1050ti gpu in it, which from what I found, should not be a problem. I was thinking about going with Ubuntu since it is well supported. I was interested if anyone has any opinions about this. I am also going to try and dual boot it with the Win10 for now. I purchased a new SSD drive just for Linux.
That GPU probably is going to cause issues a few years down the line. We now have earily development foss Nvidia stuff but it only supports cards that are 2000 series or new I believe.
With that being said, I would install Linux Mint.
This is what I run in both my main gaming rig (I9/4080) and my retro rig (old i5 and Radeon 580) works great for both. Steam and Proton do 95% of the work with no issues.
It’s a 9 year old system that I upgraded the video card on a few years ago. But it still handles newer games like Bauldars Gate ok. Not sure if I should expect a performance decrease going to Linux or not.
All distros are the same – none packs a exclusive feature that makes gaming “better”. Other than having predefined changes/packages that are more suitable for gaming.
There are distros with highly customised kernels that are objectively better for gaming (higher and more consistent framerates).
…which these “customized kernels” can (also) be applied to any other distro.
Mate, that technical detail is hardly useful to someone asking which distro might be good for gaming. The whole thing of distros is they are a collection of opinions around a Linux kernel. Are you really suggesting those differences are meaningless, especially to a beginner?
“Oh, but it’s a technical detail!” does not make what I said a false argument – you are extrapolating for the sake of “being right”.
CachyOS!
Based on replies I think I will try mint and then bazzit. I have read a lot of recommendations for mint and wanted to try it anyway. Since it will be a fresh install I can experiment. SteamOS does not get recommended much for some reason.
+1 for Bazzite but be aware that they have a different install image for “older / legacy” (🤷♀️) GPUs that you need to select when downloading (before 16xx, I didn’t realize this when installing at one sysyem of mine).
SteamOS 3 is only available for Steam Deck at the moment (or other handhelds in the near future). There is no desktop version for it yet. SteamOS 1 is over a decade old and not usable anymore.
Good luck with Mint or Bazzite! Either should serve you well.
I would recommend Bazzite, Nobara or PopOS. Arch and its derivatives are also great, but they can be a bit technical. You do get access to the AUR though. I use Nobara, though.
Ubuntu snap store is full of trouble, mint has a good reputation for beginners.
I used debian a long time as my main gaming machine but it wasn’t handling the transition to nvidia with wayland very well from what I could tell. I ended up switching to nobara (fedora based) because of its gaming set-up and that was awesome until fedora dropped X11. Wayland is still a big drama with nvidia so I have now switched to arch.
My arch installation is great, I’m loving it and since I last installed it on my other machine about 6 years ago the archinstall script has gone a long way and it’s pretty easy to install now.
Anyway, whichever one you choose be sure to install X11 instead of wayland for now until nvidia comes to the wayland party.
You could give Bazzite a try! https://bazzite.gg/
I’m greatly enjoying their other flavors as well for my laptop and desktop rig.
I’ll second Bazzite. I tried Pop!OS and had a handful of problems with it, but they all evaporated when I switched to Bazzite.
I would suggest Linux Mint over Ubuntu. It’s beginner friendly, very stable and overall a very good choice for any purpose. It’s based on Ubuntu so most of the stuff you find online applies to it as well. The APT package repository contains most if not all the software you might need.
Down the line almost every distro will be suitable for gaming.
When I was moving to linux first distro I’ve tried was Ubuntu because of the same reasons. But in my case I didn’t have a good time with it sadly, I have encountered way too many problems that noob as myself could handle. Then I got recommended Bazzite and it worked flawlessly! I was very happy with it, it worked out of the box and was rock solid and stable. I’m saying that in past tense, because now I moved to Arch, but simply because I was curious and wanted to learn linux more and not because I wasn’t happy with Bazzite.
