Linux gaming thread

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Couldn’t find a Linux gaming thread. Starting a new one.

Since steam deck was announced, there has been a significant increase in interest for Linux gaming.
Looking for reviews, issues, experiences from other users. Which distro, windows gaming in dual boot or vm etc, wine, proton, lutris, steam etc.
If not gaming, looking for experiences from those who have been using Linux in general.

itsfoss.com

11 Best Linux Gaming Distributions in 2025

Wondering which Linux distro is best for gaming? We got a list of 11 gaming Linux OS for you here.
itsfoss.com itsfoss.com
fossbytes.com

13 Best Linux Gaming Distros You Need To Use In 2021

Linux gaming is getting better each year!
fossbytes.com fossbytes.com

Pop OS and Manjaro seem to be the top recommended ones. SteamOS 3.0 hasn’t been released yet.
 
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Yes, PopOS seems to be best option for beginners.

Another distro I liked a lot is ZorinOS. For non gaming use, I would say it’s the best linux for windows user.

Would be least ‘jarring’ for a windows user, compared to other distros. Very similar to windows and has an awesome feature where you can run exe files in right click menu(afaik it uses wine to do that, not sure if it can be done in other distros)
 
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Yes, I've used almost all of the top 10-15 distros for like 30 days or more in the past 5 years. With that I can say that the most easy and beginner friendly for a user who's coming from Windows OS is ZorinOS and then I'd say PopOS is excellent as well. If you like to use Mac like UI then elementaryOS is also good but it comes with less software pre-installed so the user might need to struggle initially.
Finally, Linux Mint and Ubuntu themselves are great if you're fine with installing stuff yourself and wanna stay on bleeding edge.

For gaming, I'd stay to stick with PopOS which is ubuntu based with great community support for beginners. Manjaro while aiming to be beginner friendly even if it's based on one of the most complicated distros (Arch) ever can still cause a lot of struggle for newbies.
 
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When I tried Linux for gaming a few years back, I found that the biggest problem for me was the lack of mouse sensitivity controls. Acceleration was on and tracking was poor af, and no way to turn it off. Is this still the case with most distros?
 
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calvin1719 said:
When I tried Linux for gaming a few years back, I found that the biggest problem for me was the lack of mouse sensitivity controls. Acceleration was on and tracking was poor af, and no way to turn it off. Is this still the case with most distros?
Click to expand...
I have been on KDE Plasma for a few years now, and it has options to disable Adaptive Acceleration. All recent distros that support KDE have the option to opt for a Flat profile and to adjust the cursor speed.

Although I haven't checked out GNOME-based distros recently, but earlier versions of GNOME didn't have mouse acceleration profiles. You had to install a tool for it (gnome-tweak-tool), but the situation may have changed, hopefully for the better.
 
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Useful tool for those who want to try multiple distros. Don’t have to flash each iso to usb. Flash this tool and copy the isos to the usb.

Ventoy

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
www.ventoy.net www.ventoy.net
 
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Just switched to Linux, so here's me hoping to receive valuable info by touching off this thread.

I used to tinker on my old laptop a lot with Ubuntu, but after building my PC it's been only Windows 10 for about 3 years now. Recently, I had this issue:
BullettuPaandi said:
There seems to be some sort of bug in the steam version of FH4, which I use, where the G27's clutch input is not detected. From what I could find on other forums, the MS store's version works fine with the G27, apparently due to it being a UWP application.
So, I was using Direct Input with the combined axis mapped to clutch. My guess is that I'd forgotten to re-calibrate after removing window's G27 drivers. I tried the game sometime later, after proper calibration & deadzone assignment the game works fine.
Click to expand...
with my Logitech G27 on Windows. Direct input + deadzone assignment worked fine, but since not all games have deadzone settings, I had to remove the wheel and re-install drivers to play such games (and again otherwise to play FH4).

Now that Linux Gaming is more feasible than ever, and since I enjoyed tinkering with Ubuntu a lot, I decided to give it a shot hoping to get the best of both worlds. I'm currently using Nobara Linux 39 (KDE Plasma) - just picked the one from ProtonDB that required least tinkering & worked well for most games that I looked up, as I needed to see if the FH4 clutch issue would still persist on Linux. Fortunately, it didn't and the game runs just fine with about 5-10fps lower than on Windows. So far, I've tried Dirt Rally 2.0, which worked flawless & BeamNG.drive, which has some graphics issues & force feedback doesn't seem to work. Yet to try Assetto Corsa as it seems to require some tinkering.

I've done no tinkering with drivers, optimisation, tools, etc. yet; just installed these games and run them. So kindly let me know if something could be of use.
Thanks!
 
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