A friend is due for a gaming PC build. But he’s super pissed it needs to run windows 11. I told him just run something else. He said his job needs something that runs windows-only and on the odd occasions where he needs a desktop to do something he’s not buying a second computer just to run windows.
Dual booting exists but Microsoft likes to clobber boot loaders. So I reminded him he could just run windows 11 in a VM when he needs to, everything else in bare metal Linux.
He’s now sold on moving to Linux.
The question is where should he start? It used to be as simple as “if you aren’t sure, use Ubuntu.” But his use case kinda seems like what everyone has been crowing about using bazzite for.
I have zero experience with bazzite but the page does describe something built for his use case. There are 3 concerns I have though.
- Is it common enough that he can Google an answer?
- it’s an atomic distro, so classic Linux answers he might find online won’t always be applicable here.
- selinux, ugh.
What’s a good gamer Linux distro? He’s not super into tinkering. He just wants it to do the thing without Microsoft’s invasive bullshit.
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So, I’m an all-around Bazzite fan, but it does have a bit of an odd learning curve. It’s easy to use for a beginner, child, or grandma. However, if you’re used to fiddling with your system, it might be a little harder to get into because you have to navigate the immutable nature of the OS, which can complicate some online tutorials and potentially lead to frustration for an intermediate/experienced user migrating from Windows.
So my suggestion would be:
Child - Bazzite
Grandma - Bazzite
Gamer - Bazzite
Experienced Windows user - Fedora or Mint, then once you’re used to Linux, Bazzite
Developer - Bazzite
I personally use the Gnome version. It’s really polished and pretty.
Garuda, Bazzite, Zorin, Pop OS…and get a seperate machine for work. Hell no, I’m not letting my employer on to my personal machine.
The employer should have a way for you to remote in. There is no reason for you to have a work machine at all anymore.
And I am not talking a VPN.
Don’t even get me started
Bazzite
I’m throwing in my vote for CachyOS. Not because it’s the easiest to use (though it isnt difficult imo) but because it works out of the box, then they have nice wiki to guide you through simple things (like using Lutris and Proton). It’s also Arch based so there’s the arch wiki to fall back on. I ran Windows for 35 years and just switched to Linux in like October, fwiw.
Echoing what others have said, a “gaming distro” really isn’t necessary. I have used Ubuntu for years on and off. When I switched my gaming PC to Linux earlier this year I went with Kubuntu, because it’s just Ubuntu and I like KDE Plasma better than Gnome. I do feel like Ubuntu is one of the easiest to find support for when you’re looking online.
While I generally agree, the benefit of it being gaming focused means if he has to look something up any community or support he finds will already be familiar with exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. It will help the newbie when I’m not available to.
maybe the distro you use? so that you could directly offer help.
if not, maybe just plain old debian?
This. I use Arch myself so to my friends I just recommend one of the downstream distros. Might not be the most stable things ever but it’s just easier for me to help them.
I’m using fedora server right now and my daily driver is still a Mac at the moment. I’m still transitioning.
Mint/Ubuntu simply wasn’t feasible for me as a beginner. The Nvidia GPU drivers weren’t updated properly enough to run games after waking the PC for some reason and trying to fix it myself kept making things worse. CachyOS works fine for gaming and has plenty of support considering it’s a mutable Arch-based distro.
If not Bazzite, Nobara is an option. It is based on Fedora, but is not an atomic distro, and iirc, it replaces selinux with apparmor, but unless you’re getting into development, docker/podman etc, selinux will never be an issue.
Nobara is maintained by Glorious Eggroll, who also maintains proton-ge. Is also comes with an iso with built-in nvidia drivers, and also comes with an HTPC iso.
I have been using it for a few years, now. The documentation is also well detailed. And anything that works on Fedora will work on Nobara.
I wouldn’t put my work system running inside my first Linux distro. This is a recipe for disaster.
I came here to say this also. First bad update and then both would be broken and pretty stressful for your friend…
Pile in if I’m wrong, but I dual boot win11 and linux it works fine. The only condition is it has to be separate physical disk. I wasn’t able to use the same hard drive with just partitions had to be completely different drives.
Windows will break your bootloader in a few updates time. It will literally check all drives in your PC and put a windows bootloader on it, overwriting any others that are already there.
With a tiny bit of offsec you can make pretty bulletproof setup.
Work only exists inside of a Win11 VM. It never touches the underlying system! All files associated with that VM (most importantly the virtual disk) live on a separate partition, or better separate drive. That partition is not mounted in fstab. So under normal circumstances it should never be mounted. So any fuck up they do to their Linux system will leave that partition untouched. If worst comes to worst that can boot a live iso from USB and run their work VM from there.
I would trust that setup infinitely more than having windows as a base system.
On dual booting, I’ll say I’ve been running Win11 through several updates with GRUB and Mint installed on a second SSD with no issues for over a year now…
do you think it could be safer to dual boot if windows an linux are on separate physical drives? he really doesnt want win11 but for a few of his games he’s going to need it.
Sounds weird they are mixing work and pleasure on the same machine, but anyways +1 for dual boot.
VMs haven’t been a great experience for me if you need to get real work done.
I’ve been dual booting on one drive for years, never experienced any issues. Heard doing it on separate drives is even better though.
Probably extra points if your linux partitions are encrypted.
Yes, I have heard that windows likes to be on its own drive. I’ve also never had any problems with it erasing grub unless I was installing windows after Linux.
I would recommend setting windows to the UTC timezone so it doesn’t fuck with the PC’s system clock.
I still recommend dual booting over VM if you have to interface with any peripherals.
Dual booting sometimes can result in other hardware interface problems, or solve them. They’re not common, but keep an eye out. For instance I had a laptop once where the wifi kill switch only worked in windows, and if you pressed it in Linux, you’d have to reboot into windows to toggle it back on.
My instinct would be yes, and this was the recommendation I found while researching it before implementation. Windows is less likely to screw with another drive than it is the partitions on it’s own drive. That said, it’s a best guess and you never know what Microsoft vibe coders will break next! But I have found it stable.
Arch or Debian. Depends on their personality and use case. I prefer Arch, but have no problems with recommending Debian and use it on one machine myself.
Edit: after re reading I’d say Debian. Little more stability but it is more annoying if they ever do wana tinker more. OpenSuse is an honorable mention as well!
Arch as a first distro? 🧐
Yeah, but depends on the person I guess. Its just so simple, and nice to set up without needing to do any backtracking or opt outs right out of the gate.
“depends on the person” alright.
He’s not going to want to tinker. This is a pc he wants to work like a console
I don’t really follow what’s going on between different distributions as Debian has been my workhorse for decades, but a few weeks ago out of curiosity I threw bazzite on a desktop which was left ower due to work changes and that hardware is now just for gaming. Installation was pretty much just next-next-next and it after boot there was a steam login window ready to go. Every game in my library so far has been just as flawless experience than with windows, if not even better. I don’t have any the new AAA-titles and I’m not a fan of any online-multiplayers, so YMMV. For Epic I installed Heroic-launcher and (atleast games I’ve tested so far) everything works.
Nobara, LinuxMint, Zorin, PopOS & Manjaro. Or MXLinux or Antix if the hardware is potato
I can’t speak about Bazzite, but I installed Mint for a friend about two months ago and he was totally able to web search himself through a few problems. I didn’t have to intervene at all.
mint is in a weird place with wayland right now so I’m not putting him on that.
Mint, Fedora, openSUSE.
