Hello, I've been using Linux for about 2 years now,
I wouldn't recommend "gaming" distro's, most of the time the performance increase is in the margin of error and they are more bloated.
I would recommend Fedora, Endeavour or Mint
I'm not a huge fan of APT (it breaks alot.) and thats what mint uses
Endeavour is "bleeding edge" you get the newest packages about when they release.
Fedora is great, they have "spins" which all do something differently, for example Fedora Silverblue is immutable, which means that you can't interact with the root itself, which is great for beginners as its impossible to break stuff.
Oh yeah, forgot to add, if you have a nvidia gpu, don't use wayland, wayland is a newer display protocol?? (i dont know how to call it) but nvidia's drivers dont support it that well yet, so i would recommend using xorg.
Also make sure you're not using the open source nvidia drivers, they're awful for gaming and will result in a big performance decrease.
Thanks! I'm not too worried about things braking as for now I'm not planning to use it for actually storing anything but the gaming files that I can always just reload if I have to install everything again. Mainly just thinking of gaming as a use case to start learning Linux.
Lol yes there are quite a few that are.
If you don't know exactly what you're doing, some are absolute nightmares.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation
Thats the fun part about linux, he said earlier that he has a 5700 xt so he can eventually go over to musl if he wants too (no gaming though), thats what I did, I mostly use kiss and alpine.
Still, I'd go ahead and say gentoo and alpine and whatnot are pretty hostile to newbies. Approachable is the key to getting people in/interested in desktop Linux.
Not to discourage you but I wouldn't call gaming on Linux beginner territory, on a PC at least. Most games still aren't released natively for Linux so to play those you need to use emulation/translation.
Now this has gotten a lot better in recent years, not at least thanks to SteamDeck, but it is still something that can require some tweaking and experimentation. Depending on your hardware you might also need to load proprietary drivers that aren't always available by default in some distros.
I'd say a good beginner Linux distro would be one of the mainstream ones where you can easily find help. Something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
For gaming however you might be better suited with something that builds on SteamOS, to get the best performance.
Haven't tried it myself yet, but [Bazzite](https://bazzite.gg/) is supposed to be a good gaming focused distro.
Thanks!
I don't mind a bit of trouble with the setup. I know that Windows is obviously the easiest choice by far but I wanted to try Linux just because I can and hoping to get a kick out of it when I make it work!
Hello, I've been using Linux for about 2 years now, I wouldn't recommend "gaming" distro's, most of the time the performance increase is in the margin of error and they are more bloated. I would recommend Fedora, Endeavour or Mint I'm not a huge fan of APT (it breaks alot.) and thats what mint uses Endeavour is "bleeding edge" you get the newest packages about when they release. Fedora is great, they have "spins" which all do something differently, for example Fedora Silverblue is immutable, which means that you can't interact with the root itself, which is great for beginners as its impossible to break stuff.
Oh yeah, forgot to add, if you have a nvidia gpu, don't use wayland, wayland is a newer display protocol?? (i dont know how to call it) but nvidia's drivers dont support it that well yet, so i would recommend using xorg. Also make sure you're not using the open source nvidia drivers, they're awful for gaming and will result in a big performance decrease.
Thanks, I'm having an 5700XT so should be good I guess :)
Thats VERY good, i have a 5700 xt aswell. amd gpu's are the best supported on linux, thats why I always buy amd.
Thanks! I'm not too worried about things braking as for now I'm not planning to use it for actually storing anything but the gaming files that I can always just reload if I have to install everything again. Mainly just thinking of gaming as a use case to start learning Linux.
The Ubuntu-based distros are generally the beginner's Linux distros. Linux Mint and PopOS are highly recommended.
Thanks for the recommendations!
Install a friendly distro like pop os. Install steam from the app store. Dig through steam settings and turn on proton for all steam apps. Done.
Thanks! Are there also hostile OSs? :D
Lol yes there are quite a few that are. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, some are absolute nightmares. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Full/Installation
Thats the fun part about linux, he said earlier that he has a 5700 xt so he can eventually go over to musl if he wants too (no gaming though), thats what I did, I mostly use kiss and alpine.
Still, I'd go ahead and say gentoo and alpine and whatnot are pretty hostile to newbies. Approachable is the key to getting people in/interested in desktop Linux.
Not to discourage you but I wouldn't call gaming on Linux beginner territory, on a PC at least. Most games still aren't released natively for Linux so to play those you need to use emulation/translation. Now this has gotten a lot better in recent years, not at least thanks to SteamDeck, but it is still something that can require some tweaking and experimentation. Depending on your hardware you might also need to load proprietary drivers that aren't always available by default in some distros. I'd say a good beginner Linux distro would be one of the mainstream ones where you can easily find help. Something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. For gaming however you might be better suited with something that builds on SteamOS, to get the best performance. Haven't tried it myself yet, but [Bazzite](https://bazzite.gg/) is supposed to be a good gaming focused distro.
Thanks! I don't mind a bit of trouble with the setup. I know that Windows is obviously the easiest choice by far but I wanted to try Linux just because I can and hoping to get a kick out of it when I make it work!
When in doubt, go with Mint