In my experience the version of Pop!OS with Nvidia support also works out of the box with no hassle.

I suspect the horror stories are from people who had to install the Nvidia support themselves.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing though.

As an example, I figured out (on a 4900HS CPU/2060 GPU) that Stellaris and modded Rimworld game ticks are on the order of 40% slower running linux native, and still slower (but less dramatically so) in Proton. There was zero public information on this until I tested it myself.

As another example, modded Minecraft is dramatically faster on linux.

They run fine, yeah, but one’s game settings are kinda capped by CPU performance in all these titles. I don’t have to know the difference, but would like to, hence I’m wondering about CP2077 from the opposite side: am I missing out on a boost from linux?

I believe one of the problems is that nvidia is an out of kernel driver so it requires each kernel update to rebuild it. There is a lot of distro’s that handle this with a proper configuration of dkms but some dont and it causes issues that are hard to solve for the average user.

I see your point, but installing your usual linux distro on a new device is quite easier than switching to linux for the first time, which is what people don’t wanna do.

I’ve seen it first hand recently with a friend who sought advice regarding a low budget laptop purchase for school work and multimedia use. While he was open minded about what hardware to choose, there was no convincing him to ditch Windows. I told him he’d be better off using a lightweight linux distro on such modest hardware, but he insisted on Windows 11 based on questionable arguments (“I need office”), even knowing it’d be slow, bloated, full of ads and AI features no one care for. Old habits do die hard.

Did you find mint easy? I am a bit of a computer person, and I’ve been struggling a bit with it

Also, you might be able to fix that!

I clock limit my 3090 to like 1700MHz-1750Mhz with Nvidia-smi (built into the driver) since any faster is just diminishing returns. You might check what “stable clocks” your 3070 runs at, and cap them slightlt lower, and even try an under volt as well.

Be sure to cap the frame rate too.

Do that, and you might be able to handle RT reflections and otherwise similar settings without much noise. The hit for just that setting is modest on my 3090 but much heavier with full “low” RT

Effortless. My only issue with it was installing Plank Reloaded.

I’ve been struggling quite a bit switching file managers. Nothing is fully satisfactory

What’s the best Linux distro to play games? Im currently on Ubuntu 22.04 and won’t leave it as my main but I have a AMD TR 1950 with a GTX 1080 TI will to play some final fantasy.

Valve put together a good product this time compared to the first steam machines push. Most games work without fuss and it’s priced well. They didn’t start the handheld PC market but they sort of Apple’ed it by taking something other companies had been doing and streamlined it enough to get mainstream copycats, Lenovo/Asus/etc. Plus SteamOS/bug picture looks a lot better today than 10 years ago. So proven market/platform that can again try to undercut Windows machines in price because Linux is free and leverages the work of open source developers

All the major desktop distros play games about as well as one another, assuming you set them up correctly.

Choose a distro based on other criteria, like the release cadence and admin tools that you find most comfortable. If you don’t have any particular needs or preferences, I guess you could save 10 minutes by choosing a distro that installs Nvidia drivers by default, but it’s not going to run games appreciably better than the others.

Would love more support for MacOS but I’m also fine turning my windows 10 rig into a Linux machine. Need recommendations on a gaming distro! AMD TR 1950 w/GTX 1080TI

Not sure what you’re saying…. I download drivers for my hardware, download and install steam and my game and start playing? Or is it not that straight forward yet?

The thing that confuses me is that Microsoft is no stranger to Linux. They use it in their data centers. It’s plainly obvious if you know what other offerings are doing.

Their entire front end stack for azure virtual machines is OpenStack. Some years back they integrated with OpenStack to allow it to manage hyper-v, but OpenStack can also natively manage KVM hypervisors, as it was originally designed to do, and also VMware.

Hell, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a Microsoft distro of Linux floating around (not available to the public… Not yet at least).

The people who seem to be pushing Microsoft, more than anyone, are game studios. Their garbage Anti cheat rootkits work best on Windows. So use Windows so they can low jack your PC.

All we can do is guide them. Personally, I guide them to treasure I cannot have, since I’m damn near obligated to run and deeply understand Microsoft Windows because I work for IT support.

All of my work tools are Windows centric.

That’s exactly how straight forward it is.

Which distro you pick is mostly a matter of taste.

The other big change that’s coming for a lot of people I know: end of Windows 10 support. Honestly, the majority of people I know who still have a traditional Windows PC are using machines that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11.

The average person just simply won’t upgrade. These are the people who find regular updates or shutting of their PC already a pain, what makes you think they would switch to a completely different OS?

I highly recommend Nobara.

Bazzite is the go-to gaming distro. It’s basically Steam OS.

I’m personally a fan of Mint (old, stable) or Fedora Plasma (cutting edge), as both feel very familiar coming from Windows. I went with Mint personally.

If Ubuntu works, I rather stick with that. Just weird I haven’t seen anything about using that one. If I can home lab/self host and develop either gaming, that would be sweet.