Best Linux Distros for Gaming in 2017 | Hacker News Reader

Best Linux Distros for Gaming in 2017

thishosting.rocks

82 pointsnickreiner50 comments

It's quite surprising that he doesn't mention Solus - quite a lot of effort has gone into making Steam run as well as possible. The readme at the following URL goes into detail about the problems with the steam-native-runtime, and how Solus tries to rectify the issues.

https://github.com/solus-project/linux-steam-integration

Oh, that looks very nice. Thanks for the hint.

The article does got not really go into the real issues with Linux gaming and instead just mainly presents some gaming targeting distros. There are only two things that are important:

1. Can you get Steam running?

2. Do you get modern versions of your gpu driver?

Ubuntu is good for both, though you need a PPA to get the current Mesa driver, which is the only choice for AMD gpus (and that driver works great!). Otherwise a rolling release distro like gentoo is actually great for gaming, since you get the current driver, but it takes some effort to get Steam to work (also because of 64-bit vs 32-bit). I needed to delete old steam libs[0], set the LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH for Steam[1] and then, depending on the game, need to re-set the game-specific LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH[2] again.

If Solus integrates Steam automatically and also has current drivers(?), that would make it a good alternative.

[0]: http://www.funtoo.org/Steam#OpenGL_GLX_context_is_not_using_...

[1]: LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH="/usr/lib32/dri" LIBGL_DEBUG="verbose" /usr/bin/steam

[2]: Set `LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri %command%` in the Launch options of the games Steam Properties.

For what it's worth, using the solus steam runtime (SLI) I see noticable improvements over steam-native.

When I installed Solus around 4 months ago, steam was noticably faster on the same hardware than it was when installed on Ubuntu.

There are probably ways to get the same experience on Ubuntu, but if I were a non-technical user I think I'd only really care about which gave me the best experience out of the box.

> When I installed Solus around 4 months ago, steam was noticably faster on the same hardware than it was when installed on Ubuntu

That's not impossible, but are you sure that did not come from moving to newer driver versions? Especially if you use the Mesa driver each new version in the last year or so brought very big performance improvements.

Can you explain what that (Solus) is? The website is rather light on details. Maybe a distribution. With three different DE editions, one being 'home-grown'.

I haven't found any information about the history of the project, if it's built from scratch or based on another distribution's work. Can't even figure that out by looking at the 'how to install software' documentation - it just gives a screenshot of a GUI package installer, no clue what the package manager is.

Searching Google for Solus (or Solus Project) comes up empty or with a survival game based on the Unreal 4 engine.

What is Solus?

Edit: While their website answered none of my questions, distrowatch and wikipedia did. Started as Debian based distribution, seems to be something completely new/different now.

Till OP answers have a look at https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solus.

It's not something I've used to any great extent, just that I use the steam runtime developed for it on my arch system and the lead developer has been a guest on a few podcasts I've listened to. That said, this is my impression of it so far:

Solus is a distribution built from scratch. I believe the main target is non-technical end users, rather than, say, servers or power users. What that quite equates to, I don't really know beyond missing certain development or server software from the base install and in some cases the repositories. I currently can't see a way to install external packages (like the AUR or PPAs). I've had a play with it for a couple of hours and it's pretty slick, with really fast start up times. It's probably not ready for you to hand to your Grandmother just yet, but it seems very user-friendly to me. I have it currently running on a laptop I gave to a friend around 4 months ago, and so far it's the only distribution I've been able to hand over to a non-technical user and not get called to fix/change/etc. every couple of weeks.

Ubuntu would be the smartest choice. It's got the best support of any Linux distro, and you can install Steam on it just fine with the deb.

Would Debian be a smarter choice? Ubuntu's based on Debian GNU/Linux, and hardware support tends to come downstream from there. Steam based their OS on Debian, not Ubuntu. Do you know of any issues installing the .deb onto Debian?

It works just fine!

I haven't tried installing it in Debian, I only have it installed as a GUI-less server, but in theory it should be fine.

The reason I mention Ubuntu is that the community is just much larger than that of Debian and there is more of a chance of someone already having solved any issues you may run into.

Debian is ideologically opposed to things like closed source drivers that ubuntu makes easy. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just makes it not a good choice for casual users and especially gamers.

Installing proprietary drivers is harder and pretty much all game devs test only with Ubuntu so you might get issues due to slightly different versions of some libraries.

Ubuntu is the distro everyone is targeting so for seamless experience you kinda need to stick with it.

(That doesn't mean other distros won't work tho.)

In my experience, steam works just fine under Debian. I previously ran it under Jessie with no problems, and currently run it under the pre-release version of Stretch also with no problems.

I've been using Steam on Linux Mint for a few years, and generally everything Just Works(tm).

Mint, in turn, is based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is based on Debian gnu/linux

Except that Debian lacks those precious closed source drivers.

Except it doesn't... (See for example perhaps the single most relevant example: https://packages.debian.org/jessie/nvidia-driver)

Not that I'm saying that Debian is a better choice than Ubuntu here – Debian stable is Debian stable, and Ubuntu often contains stuff still considered experimental on Debian side – but unlike with, say, Fedora, many non-free drivers are included in the official repositories.

Same here, I have a Linux Mint desktop set up for my kids and overall I'm happy with the performance. It hasn't been 100% smooth though. In particular updating from Mint 17 to Mint 18 took some effort to get things working properly. Maybe proprietary Nvidia drivers were to blame, but it didn't Just Work until I sat down with it and sorted things out.

You can install Steam and NVIDIA proprietary drivers just fine on Arch Linux or any other distro, as well.

Ubuntu is the only officially supported distro, as in mentioned in system requirements, just because it's the most ubiquitous distro. It doesn't actually mean you will have any less problems with the problematic Linux games on Ubuntu, than on any other distro.

On Arch, with an NVIDIA card, getting this "all" up and running boils down to: sudo pacman -S steam nvidia

This gives you the most recent NVIDIA driver, 378.13-5.

I just install steam on my arch linux machine, seems to work fine, with only the occasional issue for the lastest game.

I could imagine this article caters to the less experienced on the linux gaming subject. Haven't used Arch linux my self, but I've heard that it requires tinkering to get it to run like a shelf OS. Which is something that can be daunting for someone with no experience in linux

Well, I would be surprised if people install Linux just for gaming. OP basically said that Steam works just fine on the distro they are already using.

Solus[1] has a good reputation for gaming in my experience.

[1] https://solus-project.com

For sure man, installing Nvidia drivers on Solus is a breeze compared to some other distros (I'm looking at you Fedora). Unfortunately I find Solus package repos to be rather lacking, but it works well enough that I use it on my desktop.

Hm, I use an nVidia 970 GTX and all I had to do on Fedora to install those was (following enabling RPM Fusion):

    dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia akmod-nvidia "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
    dnf update -y

Give negativo17 a try for fedora. It does a very good job of packaging drivers, cuda etc. I also think that the situation is improving significantly in fedora 26.

It blows my mind that only five years ago gaming on Linux was but for a few exceptions a complete non-starter. The big argument being made then was there was simply no money in it. The number of titles available now certainly says otherwise.

We're still missing big AAA titles. But there are hundreds (thousands?) of independent titles and fantastic games to choose from now. A lot of the change is surely due to the Unity game engine.

Many missing, sure, but at least we have started getting titles from the more known publishers and developers: Dirt Rally, Alien Isolation, Pillars of Eternity, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Total War: WARHAMMER, Hitman, BioShock Infinite, XCOM 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mad Max, Dying Light, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Valve's own games.

As for numbers, there are 1950 Linux games on GOG and 6000+ on Steam.

Or maybe it says that multiplatform game engines have become popular.

Good point; Unreal Engine has improved drastically in recent years and Unity adoption has been soaring. Whatever the cause, the consumer wins.

True but the companies involved wouldn't have bothered porting to Linux if they didn't expect to see growth in that space. What's really interesting is that there are Linux ports for some of the SDKs. Really makes me question those who downplay Linux as serious platform for anything that isn't server related.

Any info about making a VM running Windows that takes all the power from GPU? I'd want to do that, but I'm not sure it's possible

The keywords you are looking for are PCI-passthrough, KVM and VT-d. It is possible and performance is as great as it sounds, but it does not work on every hardware. https://scottlinux.com/2016/08/28/gpu-passthrough-with-kvm-a... is a howto. I did not do this myself yet, would need a second gpu (I think that is about to change, but support for shared passthrough gpus - really not sure how that is called - is not there yet).

Seems to be a pretty detailed article: https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08/gpu-passthrough/

There's a subreddit dedicated to that: r/VFIO

it works perfectly, around 97% of the native performance (according to 3dmark)

I've been using mine for almost 2 years now, the only problems I had was laggy/glitchy sound (which was fixed by an extra $20 soundcard and a line-in cable)

I tried it two years ago. I couldn't tell the difference performance wise. A large majority of the games in my (extensive) stream library worked. Some wouldn't stream to my Steam Link [1] (black screen). Couldn't get controllers to work on a few of them. One or two didn't have sound. One in particular would crash and somehow make the VM unbootable. Made two attempts with that game and ended up giving up after that.

The host system was Arch, the guest was Windows 7. Fedora is the only other distro I ever heard being it done on. This page [2] was very helpful.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/353380/

[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

Manjaro hands down these days for me at least. All the arch edge but with a bit less crashing. The hw detection tools is second to none, steam just works, so does wine, etc. I'm even devving my own project on the Linux editor of UE4, which crashes all the time because Epic.

I tend to distrohop very frequently, but I haven't moved from manjaro for months now.

Do you really notice better stability with Manjaro or is it more about the straightforward installation and configuration? I ask because I gave Manjaro a try and I encountered many Manjaro-specific problems over time (notably, a lot of issues with their custom kernel builds). I've since been much happier with Antergos which I view as the best of both worlds. It doesn't try to fix the things that aren't broken in Arch but does make desktop configuration a breeze.

I am really picky about the kernel choice, so maybe that's why I haven't run into similar issues.

A while ago i tried dual booting elementaryos on my windows machine. Steam and counter strike global offensive work just fine. Half life 2 as well. After realizing that i could play cs on eos, i simply had no reason to go back to windows.

Streamos: http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/

Doesn't any distro do the job on which you can install proprietary graphic drivers and Steam?

Yes.

No mention of the Windows Subsystem for Linux? Seems like the obvious choice for a gamer.

none

Steam works fine on my Kubuntu, more games than I can possibly play in a lifetime, and of every sort imaginable.

It is limited for those who want to, say, play a new AAA FPS game ever day. But that's got to be pretty unusual?

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