Yeah. It’s another one of these. But! Here me out! So I have some experience using Linux. Run some VMs for services I run in my home, I switched my surface book 3 (funnily enough) to ubuntu for my work computer as I was getting more and more frustrated by windows 11 and it turned out really good. Was able to completely get off windows and i didn’t miss out on anything. Now. Ive been trying to migrate my gaming rig to Linux with… Not a lot of success. I have 3 monitors plugged into it, a Samsung crg49 and then 2 small no name brand monitors I like for websites and discord and stuff while I play on the Samsung monitor. On windows it works flawlessly. No Linux distro I’ve used has been able to handle it and I’m not sure how I should be approaching this. Running games has been fine. I use lutris and have been able to play pretty much everything I’ve wanted to with some tweaking. But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out. I have a ryzen 3700x, and a Nvidia 2080ti. 64GB of RAM. all my storage is nvme. I have tried most major distros. Mostly Ubuntu is what I have experience with. I have tried some others like nobara, but performance was awful, and display management was an issue. Ive never really installed other desktop environments other than what comes with those distros, so if it’s a matter of “use distro x, but you need to install weyland” then sure. Just let me know that’s something I need to do. 😋 So… What do you suggest I run? I really dont want to go back to windoze. It’s just awful these days.
If gaming with Nvidia hardware is your primary concern, then maybe Bazzite would suit you. It’s based on Immutable Fedora, with tweaks to give it a SteamOS like experience. It offers Gnome or KDE for the desktop, and supposedly has everything dialed in for gaming. I’ve heard a bunch about it doing great with Nvidia cards and gaming in general, I suspect that you’d be able to do everything else you might need via the desktop it provides, but I have no knowledge of how it handles multiple monitors so maybe therein lies the fatal flaw.
+1 for Fedora Atomic.
Especially Bazzite comes with Nvidia drivers already built in and everything should just werk™.
It’s very modern and reliable. If it doesn’t work with that, nothing will.
To be fair, the use case is very demanding. Just 2 years ago, we were glad that we can play more than one game on Steam, and now, we’re complaining that our triple monitor setup with Nvidia and VRR/HDR doesn’t work perfectly. I’m happy we’re at this point, but some things, like that, may hinder the wide spread adoption…
Thats fair. And for that reason i just keep going back to windows after trying out linux and waiting for it to catch up. Its come a looooooong way. I guess with the accelerated enshitification of windows i feel like i would like to get out asap. :P
Maybe consider buying hardware with better Linux support in the future, e.g. getting an AMD GPU instead of a Nvidia if you want to get a new one anyway.
I personally have zero issues with my (relatively normal) setup. Even more, I have better hardware support on Linux than on Windows! For example, I noticed that I can dim my monitor, which doesn’t work on Windows!
Or, my GPU is more silent, because Bazzite and the Linux kernel ship some tweaks that make the energy draw and fan curve more efficient in my experience.
Again, I think it’s just your hardware, especially the multi monitor. Multi monitor is supposed to be fine on AMD (can’t confirm, I only have one ultra wide), or single/ dual monitor is also supposed to be almost great on Nvidia, with the proprietary drivers.
If you have a spare laptop with proper Linux support (most ones do, even with Nvidia, Surface, etc.) consider installing it and just try it out. uBlue (Aurora/ Bluefin, Bazzite, etc.) is great for that, so, maybe check that out.
If not, then we’ll welcome you again in a few years. The OS is just a tool, use the best suited one for your use case. In yours, it may be Windows currently.
Never saw that one before. I’ll give it a shot. Thanks.
I’m now deeply curious if it works for your use case. Hit me back if you give it a go and let me know if it works out or not.
So far i’ve actually been pretty impressed. I got it up and running pretty seamlessly. Displays are still a bit weird. One of my displays seems to not want to come on at boot, but just turning it on from standby mode once its booted and it works fine. Was able to install a few games via lutris and steam with no issues. Everything is running pretty good so far, but its literally been installed for a couple hours only. So it will be interesting to see how at least the next few days go.
Definitely keep us in the loop!
You should, it’s amazing for gaming. Especially steam, everything just works.
Gave this a try today and actually am pleasantly surprised. So far its been pretty solid and i’m enjoying the feel of it.