I'm planning to build a Linux gaming PC. Any suggestions?
How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton? Is it so big or just small? Hows the performance of cartoonish Windows only games? And whats your hardware and how much is the price? I'm sorry but I cannot test it myself because I'm still on my mobile. Can you also tell about how many games are compatible with Proton? What about non-popular games?
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I see a lot of bazzite recommendations but I think that is an outdated take. IMO CatchOS is the better choice, ofc this is personal opinion.
Some tips for you:
Check game compatibility using https://www.protondb.com/ this will let you know if the games you want to play run on Linux and how well they do so
Buy an AMD GPU, support for Linux is great on them, miles ahead of nVidia. If you already had an nVidia card it's usable, but if you're starting fresh 100% AMD.
Don't fret too much on the distro of choice, not sure how familiar you are with Linux but because of the questions I assume not much. If this machine will also be used as a normal computer prefer a general use distro (my recommendation would be Mint), if you'll plug it on the TV and use it as a console prefer a gaming distro (I've heard good stuff about Bazzite but never used it myself). You can have
/and/homebe different partitions, this means that you can distro hop and maintain your games, saves, and most configs from one distro to the other, or even when reinstalling the system, I strongly recommend people to do that.Linux is not windows, things are done differently and that's okay. A lot of the frustration of new users comes from trying to do things the windows way and failing miserably, e.g. trying to install programs/drivers by navigating to a random web page and downloading a binary.
Good luck, and ask any more questions you might have.
Mint is a good suggestion for a new user. An underrated distro, but solid, simple, and works well for any purpose.
Underrated? It's the single most recommended distro for beginners.
i mostly see immutables recommended to beginners on here
I'd also suggest Mint for getting started. I've been using it for several years with minimal hassle.
Isn't mint the most used distro after like catchyos?
I don't agree with the sentiment that Linux Mint is underrated either. As you note, it is quite popular and is mentioned a lot in the discourse.
However, I don't think that CachyOS and Linux Mint are the most popular distros; that undoubtedly goes to Ubuntu. And, if anything, I'd think that Linux Mint is more popular than CachyOS.
Yet, if we'd limit it to the distros used by gamers, then CachyOS probably does take the crown for most used distro (aside from SteamOS). At least, there are metrics that suggest as such.
That is what I based my statement on. Cachy has consistently 1000 more page hits compared to mint.
Ah okay, thanks for clarifying!
FYI, DistroWatch isn't a very reliable metric for gauging the user base of any given distro. Heck, strictly speaking, I'm unaware of any metric that does this any justice besides the opt-out DNF Count Me found on Fedora-based distros. And we will use exactly that to discredit DistroWatch!
So, Fedora (1112^[As per DistroWatch's 12 months, I'll use the same table for Bazzite*.]) has put out a number (relatively) recently; 961k users. And Bazzite (770) outright displays it on their website; 90.8k users. Like, Fedora is roughly 10 times as big as Bazzite. But their respective DistroWatch rankings don't quite reflect that.
“Top 10 most popular Linux distro” type articles I’ve seen usually list Mint near the top.
CachyOS
Go with AMD GPU, be prepared for true happiness.
I tried out Bazzite with an Nvidia 40-series card last year and performance was the same as Windows for everything I tested
All things being equal I would go with AMD too, but if I was OP I certainly wouldn't turn down a good deal on an Nvidia card if one presented itself.
I agree here as well!!!
The speed drop is negative. That is, it's often actually faster.
Yes, I know it doesn't seem to make sense.
Someone explained it in laymans terms as "imagine it not as a virtual machine, but more like a translation program converting windows-specific code into linux."
I did not fact-check if they are just pulling the explanation out of their ass tho, so please correct me if inaccurate.
That's correct. Wine, which is what Proton is based on, is not a VM or emulator. It is a re-implementation of key windows APIs so Windows EXEs can run. Assuming you're on a x64 PC, the code is executing natively.
Yeah, do it 3 years ago.
I'm honestly not convinced that's true.
For the most part you would just build the same machine as if it was a Windows gaming machine. That said, there are a few things to know:
For a new PC I’d probably recommend fedora, purely due to more modern kernels with better hardware support, though Mint now has the Hardware Enablement Kernels iirc
Honestly, in some cases, proton is faster than games directly on winblows. Microslop even said they're going to try to make windows faster than proton again.
proton is faster than games directly on winblows>
Thats good news, cause Linux is my OS choice.
It is more or less the same. There are countless comparisons and Linux usually wins by a small margin but not always.
I got broke by just reading the title.
Most games I just click play and they run.
Ryzen 9 x3D, XFX Radeon 9700 XT, 32 GBs RAM, with some flavor of MSI mobo I am too lazy to get the box out to look at.
It took me like a year to build as I was saving for all the parts (and the everything crisis began, at the time called the RAMpocalypse). I think it was around 3K to build then including the 2TB M.2
I'm never going back.
Just want to add that this is generally not a good idea. Because by the time you finish, your earliest parts are already a year old, and chances are you could have purchased something with a better value if you just waited.
Oh believe me, it happened lmao
I wasn't suggesting it didn't.
Wow cool rig.👍😎
That's basically double up overall compared to mine. 😋
I have Ryzen 7, Radeon 6600 XT, 16 GB Ram, 1 TB SSD.
PS:
Didn't AMD change the naming scheme on the Radeon 9000 series so it's 9070? AFAIK a 9700 is technically a board dating back to 2003.
R9700 is a workstation card.
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGASAP39701/Sapphire-AMD-Radeon-AI-PRO-R9700-32GB-GDDR6-Graphi
EDIT: They said XT, so you’re right they probably mean 9070.
OK I didn't know that. Pro cards used to have a W in the start of the name.
Ah well, AMD never was very good at naming schemes.
I have no idea I didnt look anything up and I'm kinda baked. Those numbers are getting so meaningless to me I'm too old.
I'm never going back>
To Linux or Windows? But why?
To windows. Linux is just a far better user experience at this point.
AMD gfx cards cannot meet or exceed 5080/5090 cards. That said, I think a 9070xt is the best choice right now, because it’s probably going to be cheaper overall to just upgrade in 3-4 years rather than buy a 5090 and hold onto it for 10 years or whatever. You do you, but for me, I think upgrading early is the better choice since 2 flagship AMD cards should equal the price of the nvidia 5080.
I second this opinion. I have a 9070XT and it’s fantastic on Linux. It’s the best card AMD has to offer right now and more than good enough for my use case.
I have it plugged into an LG C3 OLED and it works great. I wouldn’t go back to Nvidia unless they worked seamlessly on Linux.
Apart from other things said here (e.g. AMD GPU), if you are planning on using wifi check that the adapter works well. Intel wifi usually works very well on Linux (although I have read that there are some issues with their newer wifi chips). AMD mobos usually use some kind of mediatek chipset. It might be better supported now, but I ended up replacing mine with another m.2 wifi (intel ax200).
A quick search for general support from the mobo vendor is probably a good idea too.
I got a good bundle deal from Microcenter on a mobo with a wifi card that took over a year to be properly supported by the Linux kernel (or whatever relevant entity). This is good advice, but it’s likely that since we’re at the end of the AM5 generation, no new mobos should come out needing updates to function properly.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler In my case, it was that I needed to hard power cycle (unplug, replug) sometimes to get Linux to initiate the networking card. :::
As far as distros are concerned, Bazzite is a fantastic starting point because you almost certainly can’t go wrong. If you run into programs that need a kernel module or superuser permissions, just distro hop. It’s very likely that in your first time using Linux that you’ll not need those power user things, so Bazzite will be rock solid for you.
Also, in Linux, best practice is to set your home folder to be a separate partition on your HD. You can point your distro to the existing home folder so if you distro hop and you won’t lose your desktop environment prefs/setup or your files.
Here’s my notes on this for Fedora if you need a guide:
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
Apps
Discord
<aside>
💡
</aside>
system settings > autostart > add new,,, > application > select discord
see properties > application tab > Arguments > enter
--start-minimizedCEMU (from Discover/Flatpak store)
Retroarch :::
The rest of your post is fantastic, and I appreciate a good distro hop... However I gotta say that with bazzite, using dev-env to build quick boxes to get work done and user space for layering configuration and other tweaks has been a much better user experience for me. I have been using Linux distro since 2004 and every time I sudo installed something it inevitably would lead to some weird lib or system level configuration change that wasn't easy or obvious to fix. With bazzite I've been able to write drivers for my flight sim setup without having to use root once.
Tldr: bazzite/immutable for the win
You picked a terrible time. Hope you luck out on components though. If you try the Chinese ram, tell us how it works?
I get better performance on Linux than Windows.
The significantly lower system overhead more than makes up for the translation layer.
I mostly game on Steam, occasionally Lutris. The only thing that just plain wouldn't work was Control from Gog - I probably could have gotten it to work if I played with the configuration. But I didn't really care that much.
I am using Bazzite for my gaming pc and am happy that it simply works
I’m not enough of an expert to provide advice, but I can share what works well for me. I have tried games released across a 30 year span from multiple publishers using multiple types of engines using multiple launchers. I’ve had no issues with 240 Hz, an ultra wide display, or HDR. The one problem I’ve had is that the sound card doesn’t wake up properly after a long period of sleep, and so I double click an icon to wake it up. When I do, the Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound works perfectly.
OS: CachyOS Mobo: Rog strix x870e CPU: Ryzen 9950X3D RAM: 64 GB DDR5 6000 MT/s (don’t remember brand) GPU: Asus Tuf 5090 SSD: 1x Samsung 9100 2TB 1x Samsung 9100 4TB both PCIe5 Power: Seasonic 1200W 80 gold modular
Not sure if you've chosen a distro, but I can vouch for CachyOS being pretty decent. There are more stable (i.e. non-rolling) gaming distros, but CachyOS doesn't take a huge amount of tinkering, and most things truly just work (I've actually had some games be less buggy on Proton than native Windows).
I second cachyOS. I distro hopped a bit and came back.
I went to pure Arch because
I'm a computer masochistI prefer it's minimality. Now, I've migrated to Artix, and I'm considering NetBSD.I am speedrunning Unix-like OSes.
Bazzite is far more user-friendly for new users.
I'm very weary of recommending Arch distros to new users, Arch expects you to read the news and breaks stuff. 99% of the time for experienced users it's fine, but new users tend to touch random configs when exploring which prevents pacman from upgrading them, and they won't read the news to know about possible issues.
And before someone says Cachy is not Arch, it is, for this purpose it is, it suffers from the same thing by reason of being a rolling release that uses the same package manager. Just because YOU haven't experienced a problem doesn't mean it's not there, I also have never experienced a similar problem with over a decade of Arch as my main distro, but it happens and you have to be blind to say otherwise.
The cool thing about default CachyOS is it has preconfigured snapper built-in. So in case something breaks during update, it's couple minutes to restore to previously working state. I use openSUSE and this is a godsend for rolling distros IMO. And having it working out of the box is a win for newbies.
That's good, didn't knew that but that's a very smart move from them. Even so, that's IF they know about that, also it only fixes the immediate issue of broken system, not the fact that you need to know what to do to not break it.
Cachy works great, it's essentially a preconfigured Arch, but Arch issues for new users was never the installation process.
Not sure how it's with CachyOS, but I update once I feel like it on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Sometimes twice a week sometimes once in months. It works flawless most of the time, but couple times it pooped me out I rolled back, waited another week and updated again without problems. It just works (for me at least).
Long story short, pacman doesn't touch config files you have touched, instead it creates a .pacnew file. This means that if something has a config change but you touched that config it won't get updated, so if the new config is required or running a new version of the thing with an old config causes issues you will experience those issues. In Arch systems you're expected to know about pacnew/pacsave files and how they work. When some program has issues with old configs it can affect Arch users that don't track their configs, if you don't touch the configs you're safe, but new users are likely to touch random configs for many reasons and end up with things that won't get updated and can possibly cause issues.
I agree wholeheartedly. I only recommended it because it's the only gaming-centric disto that I've used, and I wasn't sure what OP's technical skills were like.
Can you afford CachyOS? I've heard you must be always up to date with Arch, its base distro, so it's like Windows 11.
CachyOS is free, so unless there is another meaning for afford that you meant, anyone can afford it.
CachyOS is Arch based, but is its own OS. So you don't have to do anything with arch. You just need to run updates the same as you would any OS. It is not really anything like Windows 11, so not really sure what you mean by that.
I also run CachyOS and it has been fantastic. No issues at all, and they have easy to follow instructions for installation and how to add their gaming package which includes Steam.
Games that run on Linux are about as fast on Linux as on Windows. In fact they tend to run a little faster on Linux.
Use AMD CPU and AMD GPU for the smoothest experience.
AMD CPU is more reliable, and Radeon graphics have the best support for Linux.
It is estimated that around 12000 Games work on Linux, or about 90%. For specific game compatibility you can always check protondb. Notice though that some games that have native Linux versions are also on ProtonDB, so you should check on the steam client first if there is a native Linux version.
https://www.protondb.com/
PS ProtonDB state the number of games that are verified to work as almost 9,900, and playable as almost 30,000 😎
But Platinum or Gold rated games are only 60%.
Personally I generally check ProtonDB before buying a game, but it's been quite a while since there was something that didn't work.
Others have commented on performance, so I don't have anything to add. The parts/cost is really large and varied topic depending on what you're trying to do and what your budget is. And pretty much every part of my rig has gone up in cost since I got it, so no idea what it would cost to build at this point, but more than I'd be willing to spend.
So I'll just cover a few things you may run into issues with when trying to game on Linux.
Anti-cheat: Some anti-cheat software is not compatible with Linux or the developers didn't properly set them up for Linux. There isn't anything you can do to work around that. Just the way it is.
Some launchers/DRM: Ubisoft and EA seem to be big ones for launchers that are broken regularly. There may be others as well, but those are the ones that come to mind. You can sometimes get them to work by switching to different versions of Proton, but it can be hit or miss.
Niche gaming hardware: Some niche hardware like steering wheels, shifters, pedals, flight sticks may have some issues. Some work right out of the box, some work but can't have software/drivers updated, some can't be customized because of proprietary software that is windows exclusive. This hobbies have some pretty dedicated fans, and more of them are making the transition to Linux. So you might be able to find assistance here on Lemmy or on various forums if this is something you're trying to get working.
You may run into other minor issues but there are a ton of resources out there to get games working. Most will rum pretty much like they are native. I think Linux is a fantastic platform for gaming, and it will likely continue to be better as more people adopt it.
Go back in time a few years when it was affordable.
I switched from win11 to cachyOS a few months ago and are never going back. For gaming it just works, my only struggle right now is some audio configuration to get a virtual amplifier for my guitar to work.
But troubleshooting on Linux is so so much better than on windows, because 99,999% there's a solution in comparison to windows were often it's just "well, we disabled the solution to the problem, so tough luck".
I'm running 32GB ram, rtx4080 and a 5800x on a dual monitor setup (32" 21:9 and 24" 16:9). Was basically plug and play.
Don't you already know because you switched from Ubuntu to fedora or something last month?
I believe that was their old pc
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Download protonplus to manage proton versions. Try proton GE 10-34 first, 99% of the time it works.
To elaborate on why the GE is relevant. (as comment for OP, i’m sure you know it already)
GE is a special fork of proton that comes with lots of fixes and improvements. Sometimes a games cutscenes won’t work on proton, but they will on proton GE (because of H.264 codec crap).
Great advice. ProtonPlus is so helpful. DW Proton has actually been working better for me than GE lately, though.
Maybe try winegui so it's easier to install and manage wine bottles as well as wine versions.
Go with an AMD graphics card over Nvidia, even if it costs significantly more. with Nvidia you will need to deal with shitty drivers (similar to Windows) and eventually your GPU will stop being supported. Also niche distros may have extra steps required to get everything working.
With AMD your card just works great no matter the distro, no matter how old the card gets. I never think about my GPU because it works at full performance every time with zero setup
CPU matters less: Intel and AMD are both solid on Linux
Linux can live with less RAM than Windows and work fine, but with more RAM Linux will intelligently cache frequently accessed files to speed up pretty much every program. Linux looks like it's using more resources but it's actually using them for something useful, and Linux will still back off if something you are doing actually needs more RAM
When do you see Linux using more resources?
Just watched a rescent video comparing Mint and Windows loading some games and it looked like Linux was always lower as Windows starts the race allocating more.
unused RAM is wasted RAM. Just idle desktop browsing it can look like Linux is using more than the same task on Windows, but Linux does a better job actually feeling fast.
Just my experience but i'm not the first person to notice this. Could definitely vary by distro or setup, but comparing memory usage between Windows and Linux is very "Apples and Oranges"
You will have a better time with an all amd system (amd cpu's are just currently better, and amd gpu's are more linux friendly)
Every game that I played on windows, I can also play on linux
Build your pc with at least 2 drives, with 1 drive ideally just for the operating system. Not the end of the world if you cannot afford that, but it does make things easier long term, the same applies to windows installs.
Ignore anyone who tells you to use mint as your distro, they are either trolling you, or trolling themselves, it's trash.
Don't expect to find the distro that suits you straight away.
Don't judge all of linux based on the choices you initially make.
Don't listen to trashtubers like linus
If you are coming from windows, the desktop environment 'kde plasma' should be your first choice (as opposed to gnome, xfce, cinnamon etc etc)
If you use WiFi instead of a cable, imo it's worth it to use a WiFi chip/module that's not from realtek. I've had insane amounts of trouble with their proprietary drivers and WiFi working crappy. Found lots of people having similar problems with realtek on Ubuntu here: https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/WLAN/Karten/Realtek/ A WiFi module from e.g. Intel is 20-30€ an solves WiFi on Linux for me.
My first laptop i put linux on had a realtek chipset, back in 2016. It never fully worked, and actually made me switch back to windows for a short time. Now I use an Alpha external wifi antenna on my desktop and it just works
If you're ok with inexpensive entry level gaming performance, you could get one of the AMD BC-250 boards which is essentially a Playstation 5 for a couple hundred bucks. Last I checked all disabled CPU and GPU cores can be unlocked.
I don't get the hate against Nvidia GPUs.. i have been using Linux for 3-4 years on PC and Laptop with RTX 3000 and 4000 series and it just works. Even with Cuda. Apt or pacman just give you the right driver (havent tried other package managers..) I understand there were problems, but is it really deserved nowadays? Just go with whatever gives you the best price/performance?
Well that's the thing, ampere gpus (rtx 3000+) with the open kernel nvidia module is super solid on wayland now. Anything under rtx 3000 sucks.
I use a 1660 on fedora and have never had issues with GPU drivers, so like ximtor, I'm not understanding to problems people have. Maybe I lucked out, maybe I started using linux/fedora at the right time, who knows?
Isn't 1660 technically the same gpu as 3060? Or am I mistaken completely
That has been my experience too, having run Linux on different diy PCs from gtx970 to rtx3090. Everything has just worked.
So an acquaintance's son asked for upgrade advice and I told him to get a rtx5060 because that would give him the most performance on his limited budget, without also requiring a PSU upgrade... And it turned out to be a nightmare to get it up and running. I spent hours to get it to boot and then to actually use the GPU, and the computer still freezes on shutdown so he has to hold the power button to turn it off.
It could be the combination of rtx50xx, gigabyte motherboard and Bazzite, i.e. not necessarily only Nvidia's fault but the computer worked fine while he had a gtx1080
In addition to what other people have said, don't sleep on Intel gpus, they're great and they have great Linux compatibility. Even as vgpus for VMs.
Get more RAM than you think you need, I know it's expensive, get more than you need.
I do everything through virtual machines, so I have a Linux gaming virtual machine that gets the GPU passed through to it directly, and I have a Windows gaming virtual machine that gets the same GPU passed through to it. Both work fine, some things work better on one than the other. Anti-cheat is annoying especially in a VM. There's a ways to get around it, but if you can't or you don't want to, you can dual boot the machine directly into Windows. To make that easy simply have a full nvme drive just for Windows or Linux gaming if you want, and then boot directly into it when you need to go bare metal.
That covers all my gaming use cases, so Linux gaming VM most of the time, Windows gaming VM sometimes, and bare metal windows on occasion.
The benefit to using VMs, you can snapshot them easily, you can roll things back, you can limit the damage of bad games or mods you don't trust, you can have multiple things running on your computer at the same time. If you're running a game that doesn't need all of your CPU all of your RAM, they can be doing productive work as VMs, or when your not gaming the GPU can be doing stuff like jellyfin transcoding.
In current climate? I'd say almost the opposite, get 16 gigz of RAM and only add more if you really need it or if it gets cheaper. You can add ram any time, it's the beauty of a desktop pc builds.
Yeah, that is fair.
try to have only one graphics card or something that can "mux" properly on linux.
try not to have secureboot for the Mobo.
EDIT : Check the driver compatibilities for all your components.