Generally speaking amd is favored over nvidia on linux because it’s driver lives in the kernel (more free), better wayland support (this is changing tho) and not having to install a driver manually or an installing a restricted driver from the package manager. I’ve been running my 6900xt for a couple of year and it’s been great. The only downside of amd is if you need/want some of the nvidia tech like rtx and cuda. Here are some older benchmarks from when the 7900 xt was coming out www.phoronix.com/review/rx7900xt-rx7900xtx-linux
Nobara has been an absolute pleasure and “works out of the box” experience. Mainly due to having things preinstalled or prompting for installation of gaming dependencies and software up front.
My “get into Linux gaming” distro was Pop. Solid distro tho and having isos depending on your hardware is super helpful and cuts down on a lot of issues you may encounter with other distros. You can’t go wrong either way. If you are looking for a “do it for me/minimal tinkering and installing” go for Nobara. If you are looking to “possibly tinker/install a bit more up front” go for Pop.
Edit: Forgot to mention my specs are somewhat the same as your. i5 with 16gbs of RAM, 1080ti and 1tb ssd. Both Pop and Nobara run smoothly with heavy games like Cyberpunk as an example.
I wasn’t familiar with Nobara before your comment but now I’m really intrigued. I loved Fedora generally, but getting it to work with my older mobile nvidia card was a nightmare. I might give Nobara a spin based on your recommendation. Thanks.
It is indeed. Just remember normal sysadmin/security stuff still applies just like any other OS/distro. For example, update regularly, backups, test your backups every now and then, etc.
Honestly you learn most by doing it yourself. Where to start depends on how versed you are with system administration, Linux, self hosting, etc. If you are an absolute beginner then start with Linux sysadmin videos (for example, what are the top most important things to do to a new Linux server, how to secure a Linux servers, etc). Once you have a list of “you should do x” then dive deeper into each topic to make sure you understand why and how.
Just don’t run random commands that you don’t understand what it does. You said you were learning right? Then take that command and learn why and what you are running.
I can help further if you have specific topics you need help with. This community is also amazing but some times a search on the community yields exactly or close to what you are looking for so leverage that too!
Did you manage to get similar performance on Linux? Halo Infinite on windows 10 gives me an average of 150fps with medium settings, on Linux I get 70fps with he low prest and more stuttering. I use gamemode as well. My GPU is rtx 3070.
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
I’ve almost completely switched over at this point. The only reason I really keep Windows around anymore is because of some specific games that use incompatible anti-cheat systems (like CoD), and for VR (although, I hear the Valve Index works almost perfectly on Linux, and projects like OpenHMD are getting closer to running Oculus on Linux too)
What fascinates the most about desktop Linux and gaming on Linux that all of that was achieved with limited funding compared to Microsoft. Imagine what could be possible with more market share and more companies investing in the space. The current state is already great, but I believe we are just getting started.
I understand that it’s an absolute brightness standard, not like the relative levels in SDR
The standard is also relative brightness actually, though displays (luckily) don’t implement it that way.
why does it end up washing out colors unless I amplify them in kwin? Is just the brightness absolute in nits, but not the color?
It depends. You might
have a driver bug. Right now only AMD has correct color space communication with the display, that doesn’t work correctly on Intel and NVidia yet
have a display that does a terrible job at mapping the rec.2020 color space to the display
be just used to the oversaturated colors you get with the display in SDR mode
Why does my screen block the brightness control in HDR mode but not contrast?
Because displays are stupid, don’t assume there’s always a logical reason behind what display manufacturers do. Mine only blocks the brightness setting through DDC/CI, but not through the monitor OSD…
Why is my average emission capped at 270nits, that seems ridiculously low even for normal SDR screens as comparison
OLED simply gets very hot when you make it bright over the whole area, the display technology is inherently limited when it comes to high brightness on big displays
Hey there, thanks for the comprehensive reply, I learned a lot. Also, your blog is fantastic, I’m always happy when there’s a new post =)
Question about the last point: I feel like in SDR mode, the OLED is pushing brighter images. I almost feel like it’s underselling the capabilities at 270, but does so to give pixels a rest every now and then, in the hope that the bright spots don’t stay stationary on the screen. It’s a wild guess, I have no idea.
Also, your blog is fantastic, I’m always happy when there’s a new post =)
Thank you, I’m glad you like it!
I feel like in SDR mode, the OLED is pushing brighter images. I almost feel like it’s underselling the capabilities at 270, but does so to give pixels a rest every now and then, in the hope that the bright spots don’t stay stationary on the screen. It’s a wild guess, I have no idea.
It’s certainly possible, displays do whacky stuff sometimes. For example, if the maximum brightness in the HDR metadata matches exactly what the display says would be ideal to use, my (LCD!) HDR monitor dims down a lot, making everything far, far less bright than it actually should be.
KWin has a workaround for that, but it might be that your display does the same thing with the reported average brightness.
DirectX 8.0 as a reminder was introduced in late 2000 and went on to power games like Serious Sam: The FIrst Encounter, Max Payne, Star Wars: Starfighter, Grand Theft Auto III, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and many other titles now hitting around the 20+ year mark
I haven’t played this one, but I did the one from KanoOS several years ago, and it was really helpful for learning some of the common CLI tools, like cat, cd, and grep.
More of these kinds of games is a good thing, IMO!
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