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Distro Recommendations (kbin.earth)
submitted 4 months ago by HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
115 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a home built PC that I want to get off Windows 11.

Specs:

  • Ryzen 3700X, upgrading to a 5800X3D soon
  • RTX 2080 Super
  • 500GB NVME for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for files, programs, etc.
  • 1440p Ultrawide monitor
  • an 8bitdo Ultimate controller

Usage:

  • I usually play indie games, emulators, and occasional AAA games. Most of my library is on Steam, with some games on GOG, e.g. Cyberpunk.
  • I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
  • I also write game mods, so I need a distro that is a good fit for software development (C++, Python, and Lisp).
  • Random miscellany: I use mullvad VPN, stream movies from a friend's plex server, and use an SFTP client to back up photos and videos from my phone.

I've been an on/off Linux user in the past, so I know my way around basic/intermediate terminal usage and configuration. Buuuut every previous attempt to move to Linux ended in disaster, so I have little patience for asterisks, strings attached, etc. If you're offering a distro I've never heard of before, you're probably gonna be hard pressed to convince me.

Thanks for the help!

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[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 7 points 4 months ago

Fun story about why I'm such a curmudgeon about this:

Long before Proton even existed, I once researched how to run a Windows VM for gaming on a Linux host machine, with GPU passthrough. At the time I had an Intel iGPU and an Nvidia discrete GPU, so I figured the iGPU could run the host, while the discrete GPU could run the guest.

I asked around reddit and some of my tech savvy friends on what the best distro would be to accomplish this. A few people steered me toward Debian, because I expressed concern that the system wouldn't be stable or would be difficult to work with.

Well, turns out Debian was a fucking terrible choice. First I had graphics driver problems, naturally. Secondly, I couldn't even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn't in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian. So I had to learn to add those. Then I had to learn how to stop Debian from recognizing the nvidia GPU during boot, so that the PCI device could be reserved for the passthrough. That was a monumental headache to figure out. And finally, once everything was set up, I learned that nvidia had more or less disabled their consumer-grade cards from being used in a virtual machine. I spent over a month trying to get that working, and eventually just said fuck it and stayed on Windows. And I caught a ton of flak for that, because obviously I should have known that nvidia was a bad choice of GPU, and I should have just purchased an AMD GPU instead... in the middle of GPU mining bubble, when cards were going for $500 a pop.

I'm really hoping to not have a repeat of that experience.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Secondly, I couldn’t even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn’t in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian.

Debian has a non-free repo containing non-open-source software that it hasn't historically enabled by default, but I don't think that that'd apply to qemu. I'm pretty sure that's all open-source.

goes looking.

qemu's been in the Debian repos since...checks sarge, which was released as a stable release in 2005.

And it was in main, not non-free, so it should have been there as an out-of-the-box enabled repo:

https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20050312T000000Z/pool/main/q/qemu/

QEMU only came out in 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU

QEMU is free software originally developed by Fabrice Bellard; the first preview release was in 2003.

It looks like it was packaged in Debian unstable since 2004, though I wouldn't recommend jumping right on unstable to a new user.

$ apt changelog qemu-system 2>/dev/null|tail -n 15

 -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org>  Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:56:25 +0100

qemu (0.5.2-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Fix build problem so bios.bin etc. can be found. (Closes: #237553)

 -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org>  Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:43:00 +0100

qemu (0.5.2-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * Initial Release. (Closes: #187407)

 -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org>  Wed,  3 Mar 2004 02:18:54 +0100
Fetched 314 kB in 0s (1,431 kB/s)
$
[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 3 points 4 months ago

I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering a detail, it was 10 years ago. I think I needed KVM as well, maybe that's what was missing. Either way, I had to add newer repos to an older version. I think the codenames were Jessie and Wheezy.

[-] Siegfried@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm currently running qemu in trixie because one of my bosses demanded me to run office. It was pretty straight forward, but for some reason i had to create a group and do some permissions tinkering for it to work... nothing too complicated. I dont really remember what issues i had with it.

Currently i managed to set a share folder, keys to give orders to the host (mainly to switch back to civilization quickly) and also i convinced my boss that internet isnt working (it's working from day 0) so she cant force me to use one drive.

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 1 points 4 months ago

I will say it was a good decision to just separate my work PC from my home PC. I didn't want to end up like that guy who got his company hacked just because he was running a vulnerable version of Plex Media Server. So I have a Windows laptop just for remoting into work and nothing else.

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, some people are really bad at recommending a Distro for specific usage.

When I started with Linux, quite a while back, I was recommended gentoo.

It's now my least favorite choice 😁

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 months ago

When I started with Linux, quite a while back, I was recommended gentoo.

Are you sure that wasn't just a cruel joke? Lol

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Actually, I'm not really sure. I mean I was sure at that time that it was a recommendation but as I am an autist (unbeknownst to me at that time) it could've been one of those 'obviously' not serious recommendations.

[-] jimmy90@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago

bazzite is really great and user friendly

highly recommend and run it myself for years

this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
68 points (95.9% liked)

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