I am surprised no mention of Mint yet. As far as beginner-friendly Linux desktop Mint is one of the better ones and it is just very nice overall. To be fair I have not used it for gaming but I would not think there would be any more issues with that than any Linux distro.
If one is interested in the perspective of using Mint for games:
I have been using Mint for gaming for ~4 years and anything that was broken for me is fixed now. Went straight from Windows 7 to Mint and have had a very pleasant experience. If you're using Steam primarily, there's very little that doesn't simply work out of the box. The rare case that doesn't is generally solveable through ProtonDB, or eventually fixed.
The only shit that doesn't work for the foreseeable future is generally online-only stuff specifically that has invasive anticheat. Big MMOs, Destiny 2, Valorant, that sort of thing. Blizzard games mostly work fine, though have some random temporary issues rarely. But I don't usually play games like that for various reasons, so I do not personally care myself.
Special mention to League of Legends which is the big multiplayer game I do play and works a hell of a lot more consistently than it used to, there's actually a community here on the fediverse if you have issues setting it up, ( !kbin.social/m/leagueoflinux ) but in recent years it should be pretty easy compared to even 2 years ago. Install through lutris and it just works for me now, and it runs measurably smoother.
I wouldn't really recommend using the Epic store, as stuff does not run very consistently and it's awkward and slow to run through lutris. Itch has a native client that works very well for native games, and at least tries to run windows stuff through wine (so-so on if it works, some small first-timer games just aren't very stable ha. Most games work for me.) GOG is a pain in the ass imo and I know that's a controversial opinion, some people like downloading every individual game through the website lmao. I have hundreds of games and this is mostly annoying to me, personally. There's actually a third party doodad for it (minigalaxy) that works fine, but I don't care to try it myself. (A lot of the appeal to GOG for me was their client, not being able to use it just makes it "worse steam" to me.)
If you like indie games (especially those popular enough to have steam pages), singleplayer games, or retro games, it's a great OS. (It's actually superior to run retro games on Mint versus Windows, from my experience, trying to get some of them to run on Windows was an absolute nightmare.)
I have had no drivers issues, didn't really have to go out of my way to "set things up." Though I would recommend having a rig with an AMD gpu. Nvidia is the one you run into more drivers issues with. I did swap to pipewire manually but it's not really necessary. Everything I've stuck in has been serviceable as plug-and-play, though some I've added tweaks to some things for my own tastes over the years.
I mean, I’ve had pretty much the same experience on ubuntu
the few games (outside of ones with broken DRM that will never work on linux, regardless of distro) that I have had problems with, have all been proton related and fixed in a future proton update.
Hell I even played Cyberpunk 2077 on release day, thats pretty fuckin amazing in and of itself, even if it did have some minor issues like ambient audio not working at the time.
How do you get Bluetooth controllers to connect. I’ve got an Xbox One controller and for the life of me I cannot get the damn computer to see it. I ended up just hooking it up to my steam deck so I got some use out of it
denuvo dosent prevent piracy. it’s very sad when pirates get a better experience than paying customers. don’t get me wrong i buy my games but i avoid most triple A games because of shit like denuvo. i don’t mind basic copy protection like serial numbers but intrusive/performance hogging or even always online DRM is a plague.
I had to set launch options to skip the launcher and use proton 7 or below, 8 is causing problems for me. Game is working now, some crashes but I think its one of my mods doing it
The 3rd is very different in character than the original 2. It has more in common with Divinity: Original Sin (1&2) than the original games, so they’re the best ones to check out compatibility wise.
I played it using Lutris. I think I had to use winetricks to install .net and after that it ran flawlessly. Do a search on the net. I think the same can be done for Steam using Protontricks. It is such a cool game and if BG3 is anything like it, I am stoked.
I think I found a fix, I added it as a lutris game and launched from there, and seems to be working now. I didn’t set up a prefix, just searched for cyberpunk and added the already installed game.
Not sure if that’s the fix, or if the latest software update I did fixed it.
What manual? cause everytime I look for solutions to a problem with regards to linux, I dont find a manual. I find random posts with a bunch of esoteric commands to copy and paste into terminal with minimal/no explanation of what they do, and a 50/50 chance that it’ll either fix the issue, or do nothing because the commands are now depreciated and the post is 12 years old. And when I finally spend 1-3 days of trying to solve it myself with no success, I sigh and tend to make a post about it somewhere, knowing there is a 1/3rd chance I either get a reply like yours, which does nothing helpful. 1/3rd chance of outright hostility, and if i’m lucky… the 1/3rd chance someone helpful will reply and provide help in a way I can understand.
Maybe if a manual existed that someone with no linux knowledge could understand and use as a guide to solve their problems, RTFM would be a valid stance, but now it just makes you sound like an ass.
If it’s a terminal command you need help with, type “man [command]” in the terminal and it will give you the literal manual page for the command. For example, to get the manual for tmux, type “man tmux”
If it’s something else, check the Arch Wiki. Yes, even if you aren’t running Arch. It’s some of the most comprehensive Linux documentation all on one site and most of it can be generalized to any distro.
But to be honest, your attitude here makes me think you will never have a good time on Linux. It does require a certain curiosity and willingness to learn – maybe even some patience while you get the experience to intuit solutions as you likely already do on Windows without thinking about it.
The manuals really do contain exact information on how to engage with pretty much everything, but if someone suggesting that you use the resources designed to help you makes them “an ass,” then I suspect you will simply fail to become familiar with the environment. I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just telling you that when you’re new, you need a different mindset than what you’re showing with this comment.
I mean it’s not a comeback, it’s just advice. I started using Linux in 2004, when trying to Google an answer basically never worked, and once I was told that the included manuals contained all the instructions for everything, I started having a much better time. It was humbling since I considered myself very proficient with Windows troubleshooting, but I had to recognize that I still needed to read the instructions now that I was in unfamiliar territory.
Anyway, since you’re not interested in that, have a nice day, and I hope your future experiences work out better for you.
No one is obliged to help you. Most problems are fixable by taking the time to understand the whatever package you are having trouble with. If you tried and can’t find a solution, asking online is fine, obviously. I recommend explaining what you have tried already and extensively describing your setup, attaching log and config files, etc. This shows that you actually HAVE tried to solve it yourself and makes it easier for people to help you.
Tbh, with the tone of your comments here, I wouldn’t be inclined to help you either.
One last piece of advice : ChatGPT is actually pretty good at troubleshooting, if you provide the relevant info. Just yesterday I successfully used it to fix pipewire/pulseaudio resetting the device profile on every boot. Also it won’t give you sass and has the patience of a saint, no matter how dumb your question.
This whole thing can be overwhelming to people new to Linux and especially those without a very deep interest in the topic.
The basics, most users don’t really know about all the layers and complexity involved in an operating system. That is okay for the most part. Your issue is likely related to the kernel itself. When you are on edge hardware, you likely need to be on a very recent kernel for proper support. That is what is mentioned in the linked issue. No one expects you to be at the same level as these people or to report issues like this in the kernel. This is just a concise example with things to check if you know the gist of the example. Feel free to ask questions about whatever. I am no expert here. Others may be able to answer. I’ll try to help any way I can.
Years ago I moved to Linux and one of the reasons was to not spend as much time gaming. Nowadays if I wanted to do the same I would have to move to BSD.
Make sure to re-check your display settings outside the game to make sure your refresh rate is still set above 60. I’ve had multiple times where for whatever reason Nobara will reset my refresh rate from 144 back down to 60.
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