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Spending over an hour of research trying to figure out which distribution of Linux I should pick. I primarily do a lot of gaming on my PC with some writing. I also have a storage drive attached to my PC that I have a bunch of movie stored on to. I'm not entirely motivated to try out each distribution to see which I like, so I would want to see what people think about which version is best.

Spending over an hour of research trying to figure out which distribution of Linux I should pick. I primarily do a lot of gaming on my PC with some writing. I also have a storage drive attached to my PC that I have a bunch of movie stored on to. I'm not entirely motivated to try out each distribution to see which I like, so I would want to see what people think about which version is best.

(post is archived)

[–] • 4 pts

Go for a walk in the woods, you can't beat the realism and graphics.

[–] [deleted] • 3 pts

I do not look for the realism. I look for something that allows me to immerse myself in a different kind of world. It helps me relieve stress. Considering the world we live in is a fucking shit show.

[–] • 3 pts

Pop OS if you have an Nvidia card.

[–] [deleted] • 0 pt

I have an AMD card. Would Pop Os still be viable?

[–] • 0 pt

Of course. The thing is you're gonna get about the same performance on any modern distro. I switched to Fedora from Ubuntu and all my games run the same.

[–] • 1 pt
[–] • 0 pt

I'm pretty sure SteamOS is just an outdated Debian distro.

[–] • 1 pt

It is a debian derived set of software in part, but it has a bunch of other drivers and such that are entirely Valve's stuff. It is not outdated, they make updates to it plenty. The priority of it all is to run on recent hardware and to play games, it is what they have on their steam deck and steam machines.

[–] • 1 pt

SteamOS2 was dropped, SteamOS3, which is used for Steam Deck, is based on manjaro linux, which is an arch variant.

[–] • 1 pt

Manjaro linux has been designed around gaming and the Steam client, and is what the new Steam OS (that the Steam Deck runs) is based on.

Valve still hasn't released a general version of the new Steam OS yet. There's a somewhat reverse-engineered version called "holoiso" that does pretty well, but IMO isn't quite ready for general use yet.

[–] • 1 pt

Probably Debian is the most stable if I remember right... Not 100% on this though and never looked further into the matter after not being able to decide on a graphics card

[–] • 0 pt

I think Ubuntu would be what I would look at for gaming. I use Debian which has a slower release cycle. Ubuntu seems to have the support for things before Debian. It also seems to be popular and supported by commercial end user software makers more than other distributions.

All this assumes you want to install software and have it work with minimal fuss. If you care deeply enough and want to put the work in you could make any distribution into a gaming system.

[–] • 0 pt

I've heard that Manjaro is well suited for use with Steam at least. It is also a general purpose OS so your writing and storage drive should be just fine. I tried Manjaro maybe 5 or 6 years ago and worked well with Steam. It is based on Arch.

Also anything Ubuntu and its derivatives should work well for your scenario.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

Any distro that you can install the latest nvidia driver on. Steam takes care of providing the latest version of Proton/Wine.

I always recommend Debian stable because its a solid OS. Better to start with a solid OS and then bleeding edge the parts that you need than to bleeding edge the entire distro.

[–] • 0 pt

Which version is best? "It depends".

I would choose one of the bigger distributions because: 1. Valve/Distro devs care about that Steam works. 2. Any problems are easy to search for (big community) 3. Patches arrive in a timely manner.

For me that would be one of Ubuntu, Manjaro or Fedora, depending on whether you prefer Debian based, Arch based or Red Hat based.

Personally I've been running Steam on Ubuntu with no issues since 2017.