The Gaming scene on Linux has drastically improved over the past few years. The sole reason for this is the heavy time invested by Game developers and hardware manufacturers to support the operating system. Configuring your Linux desktop to experience AAA titles was an arduous task until Ubuntu 20.04, which was followed by distros like Pop!_OS and Linux Mint based on the same came out this year.
In fact, some might argue that playing games on Linux today is much easier than playing on Windows. But, no matter how many features an operating system ships with, there’s always the elephant in the room, which, in this case, is: you can play tons of games on Linux and this number is greater than the number of games that don’t run on Linux.
This was mainly possible due to the Proton compatibility layer that helps translate Direct-X windows-only games to Vulcan on Linux. Thanks to this, more than 73% of the top thousand games in the Steam library can be played on Linux, and most that don’t work is due to various anti-cheat mechanisms found in them.
The good news is that Denuvo Anti-cheat used in DOOM: Eternal will support Linux in the future. This means chances of other anti-cheats supporting Linux in the future are much higher.
So, coming to the main point of this article, how do you go ahead, find out, and install a Linux distro for gaming?
Well, the answer’s simple. Download any Distro based on Ubuntu 20.04, Install Steam, download games, and you’re good to go!. If you’re on AMD, enable ACO in Steam launch options for supported titles. That’s pretty much it. Nvidia users? Don’t stress out too much.
Thanks to the open-source nature of AMD drivers, they constantly keep improving. Whereas the closed source Nvidia GPU drivers are not very well optimized, you might face some issues.
Best Linux Distro for Gaming
Pop!_OS
Maintained by System76, based on Ubuntu 20.04, Pop!_OS is one of the best Linux distros for gaming. That’s mainly due to two different images users can download – one for AMD/Intel GPU and the other for Nvidia drivers.
Apart from that, Pop!_OS is very light, looks amazingly modern, and is highly customizable thanks to GNOME.
SteamOS
Steam has its own Linux distro for those of you who don’t know, and you guessed it right! It focuses solely on making high-end games on Steam available in the OS. The distro has gained a lot of following recently, after the rollout of Focal Fossa.
This distro cannot be used as a daily driver as all you can do is web browsing and gaming. Apart from that, the UI is also quite okay. Support for hardware like controllers and gamepads makes this the perfect distro for gaming.
Manjaro
Now, there’s a lot to Linux gaming than what meets the eye. Gaming on Arch-based distros like Manjaro is also possible, but there’s a myth that needs to be busted. People consider Arch-based distros hard to use, which is completely false. Learning a new distro requires effort, just like learning anything else.
One amazing thing about Manjaro is its stability. It comes pre-installed with AMD and Nvidia gaming drivers just like Pop!_OS; hence, minimal effort is needed from the users’ end, making it the best Linux distro for gaming.
The distros mentioned above are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Many other distros can run games, but the stability you get in the above three will be unmatched.
With gaming on Linux improving each year, the exposure of Linux to gamers is growing each day. And that day is not far when Adobe will launch its suite for Linux as that’s the only reason why most content creators refrain from making a switch.
So, what’s stopping you from switching to Linux? Let us know in the comments section below.
The post How to Choose a Linux Distro for Gaming? appeared first on Fossbytes.
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