I currently run windows 10 on my main desktop PC, and also have a steam deck that I sometimes use in desktop mode instead of my desktop. With the way Windows is going, and the way Linux Gaming is dramatically improving, I might consider ditching Windows, at least for the most part, on my next PC build. What would be the best distro to use for gaming, with casual use as well? Any suggestions?
If you have an AMD GPU: Pretty much any distro that would come up in any “best linux distro of 2023” video.
If you have an nVidia GPU: Ubuntu or Linux Mint (or probably any debian based distro?). You are going to want to make sure you use the proprietary drivers from nVidia, not the nouveau drivers. I suggest Ubuntu and Mint because they have a nice GUI to handle this and you don’t have to run any extra steps. If you don’t mind a bit more work, Fedora and its derivatives is really seamless and, honestly, seems less likely to break whenever you do update those drivers.
If you have an Intel GPU: I am so sorry.
In all cases? You are probably playing most of your games through Steam and Proton. So Steam itself handles almost all issues outside of drivers. There are ideological (and, to a limited degree, technical) reasons to prefer one distro over another. But Steam/Proton really makes most of that irrelevant for gaming use. If you have other uses (beyond browsing the internet and whatever) then you may need to do more research. But, for gaming, your big issue is the proprietary drivers (if you need them).
What do you mean? They have good support on every distro.
Pop OS has specific Nvidia settings as well. Works pretty good on my work laptop, though I don’t have gaming experience with that combination.
My own pc is and only and runs pretty good with Pop OS, in some cases better than Windows.
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