Linux Gaming 4 Noobs - Choosing a Distro in 2024

[Music] if you're currently a Windows user and are thinking about making the switch to Linux but aren't sure where to start then this video is for you now about a year ago I made a video going over my experiences with Linux gaming and I demoed several games I was currently playing overall it's been a great experience and in fact it's been so good that I finally ditched windows at that time the only reason I was holding on to Windows was for gaming and for a few productivity apps but I managed to find alternatives on Linux for every application I also made another video talking about productivity software on Linux so if you do any content creation then be sure to check out that video as well the link is in the video description now my Linux gaming video wound up being extremely popular and I received a ton of comments on that one I noticed there were quite a few people asking about which Dro to choose and general questions on how to get everything set up so I'll be addressing both of those things in this video I'll be going over the various dros that are available in 2024 and give my suggestions on which drro to choose and then in my next video I'll be showing stepbystep how to run games in Steam and give other helpful tips to have a smooth experience with Linux gaming now let's first start off by talking about compatibility which is something I could have spent a little more time talking about in my previous video so when it comes to single player games the vast majority of them will work perfectly fine on Linux some might require custom launch options but almost all single player games will run Straight Out of the Box all you need to do is enable proton and steam but when it comes to multiplayer games compatibility might be an issue depending on what you play the multiplayer games that I play personally all work fine but certain anti-che software is incompatible with Linux at the moment so not all multiplayer games are compatible to be clear it's not the fault of Linux but rather it's the developers of these games who are too stubborn to allow compatibility but times are changing as the steam deck continues to gather more steam so I imagine those stubborn developers will give in sooner or later if you want to see a list of which multiplayer games are compatible then visit are we anticheat yet.com as of right now it looks like more than 50% of all multiplayer games are working which isn't too bad but unfortunately several popular games such as fortnite Battlefield and Val an aren't compatible at the moment so now let's talk about the differences between the various Linux dros I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about this and give a complete explanation so that you're not second guessing yourself later on I'll first start out by saying that even though there's countless different dros available there's actually not too much of a difference between them under the hood if someone really wanted to they could transform one Dro into another for for the most part there can be some exceptions but the main differences really come down to the desktop environment and the package manager the desktop environment is mainly cosmetic although there are some differences in functionality with how you interact with the gooey but at the end of the day this all comes down to personal preference some popular desktops include gnome KDE cinnamon and xfce but there are quite a few more as well some dros allow you to choose which desktop you want during installation while other dros only offer one desktop by default the other major difference between dros is the package manager and this affects how you install and manage downloaded software it can also affect how upto-date the software and applications are you can see there are only a few main dros including Debian Fedora and Arch there are several more main dros such as red hat open Souza gentu and more but I didn't include them because these tend to be more Geared for industry and power users now the main difference between Debian Fedora and Arch comes down to the age of their software packages for example if you download video editing software such as Da Vinci resolve or shot cut on Debian then by default you can expect to get a version of that software that's at least a year old but if you were to install these on an arch based drro you'll be able to get the absolute latest version of that software by default and if you go with Fedora then those packages will be slightly older than those found in Arch the tradeoff here comes down to reliability versus the latest features if you want the absolute most stable experience then you'll likely want to go for a Debian disc drro but if you want the latest features and drivers then you'll probably want an arch based drro but to be honest the difference isn't as big as you might think and Arch still provides a very stable experience it's also possible to configure Debian to use what's known as the testing or unstable repositories which will provide the latest software similar to Arch so the difference between Debian and Arch isn't as big as some people make make it out to be but there's actually one other thing which I almost forgot to mention and that's the difference between a standard release drro and a rolling release part of the reason why Debian has old packages is because they only get major updates when a new version of Debian is released after a new version is released the previous version will continue to get security updates for a while but only for a limited time if you want to continue to receive updates you'll need to update to the newer version which can bring substantial changes most of the time the upgrade process is painless though the current version of Debian is Coden named Bookworm and it's the 12th version likewise Fedora is also a stable release and it's currently on the 39th version now a rolling release on the other hand doesn't have new versions every time you update your system you'll receive the latest packages and as a result result your system will always be on the latest version as long as you keep it up to date you never have to worry about doing a major upgrade instead you'll continue to receive incremental updates indefinitely Arch is a popular example of a rolling release open Souza also offers a rolling release but in general rolling releases aren't as common and the vast majority of dros will follow a standard release schedule but like I mentioned a minute ago it is possible to configure Debian with the unstable repo which will effectively change it to a rolling release so again the differences aren't as big as some people make them out to be as there is some gray area now all the other dros I've included here are actually just spin-offs of Debian Fedora and Arch these spin-offs usually have slight modifications to cater to certain users or have customized desktop environments to to provide unique Aesthetics some of these spin-offs are more heavily modified than others for the most part these are fine but in specific scenarios these modifications might cause issues and you're at the mercy of that dros developer to make the necessary updates when problems arise unless you know what you're doing and can fix the problem yourself which is why I generally recommend sticking to a vanilla drro or a spin-off that's close to vanilla instead of a heavily modified drro so when it comes to picking a drro for gaming it turns out most dros will work perfectly fine the more cuttingedge dros such as Arch and Fedora might offer slightly better performance and better compatibility with the latest games but the difference is pretty small let's first talk about a few commonly recommended dros and then I'll give my personal recommendation let's start with noara which is a spin-off of Fedora that's specifically catered to gaming which is why it's commonly recommended to Gamers but it actually doesn't do anything that special it does have some useful pre-installed software that you'll likely want for gaming but you can install all that software on any other drro if gaming is all you really care about and want something that's preconfigured and ready to go then it might be a good choice so feel free to try it out if you fall into this category the same thing applies to Garuda Linux which is a spin-off of arch that's Geared for gamers but for most people I recommend a more vanilla drro which will likely be better for General use since I imagine most of you will want to do other things with your PC reliably than just gaming overall I think an Ubuntu based drro is the best choice for beginners Ubuntu is actually a spin-off of Debian but it's probably the most popular drro around and as a result it has a vast number of guides and tutorials most of these tutorials also work for Debian but Debian usually requires extra configurations and isn't as Noob friendly as Ubuntu so that's why I recommend Ubuntu for new users Linux Mint and popos are examples of Ubuntu based dros and these are good choices however my favorite Ubuntu drro is kubuntu which is extremely close to vanila Ubuntu except it uses the KDE desktop instead of gnome personally I'm not a fan of gnome and I feel that KDE offers a more userfriendly experience especially for people who are coming from Windows it's also highly customizable so that's why kubuntu is the drro I recommend and this is what I'll be using for my guide in the next video now for those of you who want to try an arch based drro so that you'll have the latest drivers by default I recommend trying Endeavor OS which is extremely close to vanilla arch with a few minor tweaks I've actually already made a guide on Endeavor OS so if you're interested I suggest watching that video as well another popular arch-based drro that gets recommended a lot is mangaro but I'm personally not a fan since they make some significant changes from vanilla Arch so I think Endeavor OS is the better choice and one last thing I wanted to mention is that AMD gpus are usually recommended for Linux since the drivers are built into the kernel but Nvidia has come a long way and these days Nvidia gpus will work just fine all right so that wraps up today's video it turns out it doesn't make that much of a difference which drro you choose for gaming but like I said an Ubuntu based Dro is probably the best choice for beginners who want to use their computer for more than just games since Ubuntu has the most resources and guides available if you found this to be helpful then be sure to give it a thumbs up in my next video I'll be showing step bystep how to set up steam and Run games on Ubuntu and other dros so be sure to subscribe to the channel and click the Bell so you can get notified when that video comes out thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Phazer Tech

Views: 72,548

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Id: byz8YPzczxg

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024