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!
Linux Mint!
It’s based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.
Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.
Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.
Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It’s a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.
However. I might not be as ‘cool’ as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.
Mint is not something that I use myself, but it’s what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.
Bazzite. Fedora based, “atomic”, has nvidia drivers and windows compatibility utilities preinstalled. Atomic means easy rollback after update in case if something breaks, and it probably doesn’t expect you to use command line much. It is expecting users to install apps with flatpak so make sure flathub has the software you need (I think it does).
I have never personally used Bazzite, but atomic distros and namely Bazzite are known to be very user friendly and breakproof.
Steam Link is available for Linux. I suppose that most Steam-things are.
Not sure why you got downvoted. Bazzite is great.
Plot twist: it was I, OP, all along! Let me explain why.
Whenever I see these distro recommendation threads, all kinds of people come out to make a comment. Many if not most are well-intentioned, but the kind of person that bothers me the most is the evangelist. The kind of person who’s blind to the limitations and drawbacks of the thing they are espousing.
If you’re gonna recommend a distro, I sure hope you’d have some personal experience with it. Otherwise, how do you know what it’s limitations are? So to admit you’ve never used Bazzite even though you’re recommending it, it just seems irresponsible. “You have a peanut allergy? Try this Pad Thai restaurant! I’ve never been there but I hear it’s great!”
After discussing with a few more developer friends of mine, they advised me not to use an atomic/immutable distro, because setting it up for development is a chore. I’d apparently have to learn how to use distrobox, set up containers, and learn an entire other flavor of linux to set up a development environment. As a reminder, I did say in the OP that I needed something I could program on as well, and Bazzite sounds like a poor fit for that use case.
I can understand and respect your points here.
To be totally fair, Bazzite can be used to do anything any other Linux distro can do, it’s the beauty of Linux. I’ve set mine to run .NET, PHP, and node. Had to use containers for SQL server, but got that going too.
Yes, it’s a bit of a pain, but it’s been my favorite Linux experience so far.
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.
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 😁
