Pop_OS
Mint
Manjaro

to name a few would do very well.

You still will have to play around with Proton once you have Steam up and running; when it comes to the WinOS games.

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Pop_OS
Mint
Manjaro

to name a few would do very well.

You still will have to play around with Proton once you have Steam up and running; when it comes to the WinOS games.

did some digging and found Distrowatch. seems like Mint is up there, currently ranked #2. ill give it a try. CachyOS is ranked first place. i might as well give that a try also. ill dig into proton as well. seems like its built into steam from what ive gathered. Thanks!

i think mint is pretty easy and effective, but i highly recommend the gnome shell of linux mint because cinnamon was horrendous in terms of system stability.

ive used manjaro before and it was alot worse for me in terms of terminal language and keeping things updated, but people love arch (manjaros base) just not for me, i think alot of people with programming knowledge prefer it due to going to school for it.

all amd or amd + nvida work well enough for me, be sure to use driver manager and choose the nvidia drivers latest if youre nvidia. if you use open source nvidia (the default) youll lose youre cuda entirely


when youre done getting cozy steam is available from the software sources on mint, just install and launch, sign in, easy. but then you must download the linux runtime software (from steam) then download proton softwares, download the latist one and a fallback, then hotfix and experimental, then go to settings and enable use of proton across all titles OR when downloading your library, if you dont have it on a separate ssd already, click the settings and enable use of a launch option, and youll see your proton versions

im no expert but this is my advice for any soon to be linux users

Mint, PopOS, CachyOS

Take your pick.

I recommend Mint over the other two, unless your'e on the 40xx or 50xx series.

I've been using Mint Cinnamon for 8 months without any issues at all.

Mint and CachyOS trade back and forth for #1 distro on Distrowatch all the time. So if Mint doesn't work for you, use CachyOS. I'm pretty sure that CachyOS is Arch though, so just be aware of that. Arch isn't really recommended for people new to Linux.

Mint is popular on distrowatch for people migrating from Windows. CachyOS is popular for people who are used to using Linux.

Combo AMD?

If you like the color green, Manjaro.

If you like the color yellow, Pika os.

If you like the color purple, Nobara os.

If you like the color blue, Bazzite.

Yes, we move by color :), so in the meantime, try everything, get a large HD, and use Rescurezilla to continue testing.

am I correct going with the latest glorious egg roll version of proton over the standard proton ?

Let's take a game like Dungeon Keeper 2, for example. It runs better and better on various Proton versions on an older version. You need to test the game and tell it which version of Proton you prefer to run it on.

Originally posted by Mabi:

Let's take a game like Dungeon Keeper 2, for example. It runs better and better on various Proton versions on an older version. You need to test and tell the game what you prefer to run it on.

makes sense. just discovered ProtonUp-Qt

Mint is the usual recommendation for newbies. It's not gaming-optimized out of the box, though. But setting up gaming features yourself is a good exercise for getting familiar with things.

Bazzite is probably the best choice for gaming, as it preinstalls some enhancements that even SteamOS doesn't include by default. However, it's an immutable distro, which can be a pro or con, depending on your needs. I prefer having the option of inspecting and making small tweaks in the root, but it's a boon for people who are more scared of breaking things.

I've used Ubuntu as my first one, and still using it for years as the only os. Tried other distros, but didn't find a reason to bother changing habits.
Well known distro, which means good support for any software you might want, and a bit easier to find answers in google or chatgpt.
Just my 5 cents, I'm not saying other options are worse. Except for some narrowly-focused distros like SteamOS. Don't do that.

Good luck, by the way. It might be a bit difficult to get used to new software stack, but it'll well worth it later on in terms of user experience.

I have three builds, and i was thinking to use say 3 or 4 distros, i decided to go with Ubuntu for the productivity/workstation build, so that leave two builds one of them for gaming, i am trying to install CachyOS on the third build that is general and simple use, not sure which distro if i have to install for gaming build, it is not a must, but let say just aside OS for testing and practice, while forth distro whatever it is i can install it on a SATAIII 2.5" SSD so that is removable or portable if i need to use it on different computers.

Grand Eggroll is better for some games than others, depending on what you're doing.

Like, I use normal proton for most things but I use GE Proton for Fallout 4 because it has a built in feature necessary to mod Fallout4 that regular Proton lacks.

ProtonDB.com is your absolute best friend for Linux Gaming.

Also, sounds like you already picked a distro, but I'm just gonna recommend Mint again, since you're on all AMD hardware. Should be mostly painless to switch from Windows to Mint.

Once you PC is set up with Linux, the Steam for Linux discussions page is good for asking Linux specific questions, if you end up having any.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/221410/discussions/

Every distro will work fine with AMD.

I use Debian with Zen kernel on my desktop even if I could compile my own that won't be much different.

Originally posted by Moe87:

which distro do you use? I want something that will play nice with my ALL AMD hardware and is optimized for gaming specifically, if such a thing exists. EAC/BattleEye is non issue as none of the games I plan on playing use it.

Most Linux distros can run games perfectly, but the ones that I would personally recommend for beginner Linux users are distros like Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Manjaro, etc.
But at the same time, I use Windows 11 99% of the time, and haven't really used Linux as a daily driver, so take my personal recommendation with a grain of salt.