Hopefully HDR starts working outside gamescope in KMS within the year. Or the quirks get ironed out of the latter as it was still a bit buggy last time I checked. Oh and HDMI 2.1 working on AMD cards will be nice, although some DP -> HDMI 2.1 converters have finally started working near fully this year.
Nice to see the progress though, and it’s good to have somewhere to test out this bleeding edge stuff.
Chiming in to say it annoys me that Keychron have cool thinkpad looking keyboards that feature Bluetooth but not a 2.4ghz wireless dongle, I’m on linux you recon my Bluetooth works?
If you want something budget for a mouse, I got the darmoshark m3. It’s only $43, 58 grams, works wired, with a dongle, and through Bluetooth, 1000 hz polling rate, and it works out of the box with no software required. It has buttons on the bottom of the mouse to switch DPI and polling rate. Just make sure you set it to 1000 hz since it’s set to 500 hz by default I believe
“Note: I don’t recommend installing the Flatpak version of Steam. It has some issues specific to Flatpak, and makes your Steam files difficult to reach which can be annoying. Use your package manager instead.”
What issues? I’ve been usin the Flatpak for more than a year without issues, both on Silverblue and on Arch. On the other side I had games not running with the version on the repos with Arch and Nobara.
And difficult to reach files how? Just add a shortcut on Files or Dolphin to the Steam folder for easy navigation.
Edit: saying not to use the Flatpak version is like saying not to use the Steam runtime.
I’m sure there will be a lot of people where it works just fine but I’ve seen really common complaints regarding it. Issues like steam input not working, confusion over file system permissions, the flatpak version using its own drivers which may be outdated, etc… It can be a hassle, and there’s no real benefit to it compared to just using your package manager.
Input not working comes from people not installing the steam-devices package, it doesn’t matter if you are using the Flatpak or the repo version (for example the magnificent ublue distro comes with that rules added by default). For using steam you don’t need to change any permissions on the Flatpak. And about the drivers, you can use the Mesa beta channel Flatpak if you want to have the latest.
Also, the Flatpak works perfectly with mangohud, vkbasalt, gamescope plus everything is containerised and doesn’t litter your home folder.
Immutable distros are the future now, and practically excluding them from your guide doesn’t makes sense to me.
Great article. Interesting you went with Heroic, as a relatively new Linux gamer I do find Lutris easier to work with since most of the settings have toggles. But I have both installed anyway haha
I actually did use Lutris but while doing some research for this people told me to give Heroic another shot, many saying that it replaced Lutris for them. I tried it for a bit and I agree, Heroic provides a simpler experience I think most people will appreciate.
Aside from having better QoL like automatically downloading game images and first-class support for Epic Games and GOG, it’s less confusing when adding drm-free games. Lutris scripts are also a bit of a sore spot for me because I found that they’re often outdated and can cause more issues than they fix when you’re trying to run something.
Obviously it’s all preference but I think Heroic won me over and I’ll stick with it unless I specifically need the wall of options Lutris provides.
Unless you are getting a good deal on a used model (which technically would not come with a license anyway), I strongly suggest avoiding windows at all at this price range. That is going to be a significant chunk of your 250 USD budget, even at OEM rates.
I would also be rather shocked if you could find anything with even “last gen” gaming performance at the 250 USD range without getting a really good deal on a used office computer. Which isn’t bad (if you shop local, you can get decent specs for closer to 100 USD), but will still need a GPU. Because yes, you can “game” on integrated graphics. But even for older games, I strongly discourage it. it is a MASSIVE drop in performance (AMD’s APUs are only a large drop in performance) and, especially for older games, you may run into quirks of the drivers/OS that having a bit more power would have gotten past.
So unless you really know what you are doing (and, no offense, your post doesn’t make it sound like that. And there is nothing wrong with that), I would really suggest saving up for another month or two and going more for the 400 USD range. Then just get a Steam Deck (optimally a refurb if any are in stock). Won’t have Windows without some (honestly not that bad) shenanigans and the upgrade potential is weak. But it can more than play “previous gen” games and most of the remasters are going to either be explicitly or implicitly targeting it. And if Windows is the priority, you might be able to get a GDP or Aya or ASUS equivalent on sale/used.
The minisforum 773. About 400 dollariedoos and has decent gpu performance and very good cpu performance. Full speed pcsx2. Gas igpu The lenovo 715 gen2 has a ryzen cpu with okay integrated graphics and it’s 140 usd
Mini all-in-one PC are expensive, just buy a used/refurbished regular PC. If you want, you can get them in SFF (Small Form Factor), which are still upgradable and a better option than AIOs. Here are some results on eBay for reference.
I’d recommend getting AMD because of their excellent Linux support and overall better gaming performance. Also, you don’t need a dedicated GPU for playing old games, even more so since AMD’s integrated GPU is a lot better than Intel’s, and works better on Linux too.
But it you want to play current games, you’ll need a dedicated GPU, and that $250 budget isn’t going to cut it unfortunately. However, you always have the option of buying a cheap used GPU later on, when you’ve got some cash to spare. But for now, if you focus on older games then the integrated GPU on an AMD will do fine.
Thanks for the thorough explanation! This was very helpful. I was about to ask about why AMD over intel, and this gives me confidence that I won’t run into issues with setting up linux. I don’t really have any interest right now with current games except for the remastered versions of the aforementioned classic games, and if thos will work with dedicated GPUs, I should be good.
In that price range the best you can get is probably something with a Ryzen 5500U. If you were to go up to ~350 then you could get a significantly faster 5800H
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