What are some recommend changes for gaming for linux distros? Know I or to get steam and portion, but not sure what else
Have a AMD Gpu and cpu if that is important
I use Fedora (KDE) and game a lot. While I mostly like it, I’ve had some problems with it that were non-trivial to solve, so if you’re a Linux beginner I would not necessarily recommend it to you.
Perhaps Bazzite would be a good option? It’s based on Fedora and created with gaming in mind. I got it recommended here and installed it on a friend’s kid’s computer and he’s very happy with it so far.
There’s also Nobara which builds on Fedora to create a gaming-focused distro.
I use Bazzite, I freaking love it.
Second Fedora, because it’s just so good. Bazzite is the goal if gaming is your primary concern.
Go Fedora for Gaming with new hardware. If you’re a couple generations behind in hardware, Mint will do just fine.
Fedora gets new hardware support faster along with newer drivers, same with Arch and Arch-based distros (like EndeavourOS, BazziteOS)
isn’t bazzite fedora based
Mint is still on X11, though there is Wayland support in experimental stage. But if I were gaming, I’d find a distro with up to date Wayland support out of the box, like Fedora.
I use open suse it’s nice
https://news.opensuse.org/2025/01/16/gaming-on-linux-how-os-stacks-up/
In addition to steam with proton, you can add :
- ProtonGE : it’s a modified version of Proton, if games don’t work with the default Proton versions you can try this one and sometimes it fixes the issue.
- Don’t bother installing it manually, though, just install ProtonUpQt with your package manager, run it, and have it install the latest ProtonGE for you. Then you go in steam, in your game’s compatibility options, and you choose ProtonGE in the list. It’s not needed for most games, but it’s nice for those few cases where the game doesn’t work.
- Protontricks
AMD GPU is good, it means you won’t want to die installing Nvidia drivers if you choose Fedora.
- ProtonGE : it’s a modified version of Proton, if games don’t work with the default Proton versions you can try this one and sometimes it fixes the issue.
If you have an AMD GPU (except for the very latest GPUs), you should be good out of the box. The AMD driver comes pre-installed with mesa.
Other than that… don’t use NTFS to store your games.
Edit: Maybe I misunderstood your question. I understood it as: What are some recommended changes to do after installing a Linux distro. Did you meant to ask about differences between distros?
NTFS?
Yes, ntfs
It will, if your games even work, nuke your performance into oblivion
The Windows filesystem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS. Basically, don’t try to share the game drive with Windows.
It’s a Microsoft network filesystem. They’re probably telling you: don’t leave your games on an old Windows computer and try to remote mount the drive with NTFS; if you do, you’ll be sorry. Re-install the games on Linux.
It’s not a network file system. It’s a regular file system for hard drives, SSDs and such, which is used by default on Windows since Windows NT (that’s where the NT comes from - it doesn’t stand for network but “new technology”).
The implementation in Windows is closed source meaning the file system had to be reverse engineered to even work at all under Linux. Support nowadays is okay-ish, but as soon as you don’t properly shutdown your computer or use the file system under Windows, you will run into weird problems.
Also it just straight up doesn’t work for most games running under wine.
Wtf also, “NT” in “NTFS” does not mean “network”, holy shit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS
Well, I didn’t say “NT” stood for “network”, but you’re right that I was wrong about it being a network filesystem.
holy shit.
I’m glad you’re so passionate about people being wrong!
I didn’t really mean to sound mad, sorry.
Naw, I didn’t think you were mad; it was funny that you sounded so shocked that someone on the internet could be wrong.
NTFS has nothing to do with the network. Maybe you’re thinking of NFS? But natively Windows uses SMB.
Wtf? NTFS is the NT File System.
For some reason my phone ate the “nothing” in “NTFS has nothing to do with the network”. I’ve put it back.
Ahh got it. I was just confused for a moment 😁
Can you be more specific. Can’t understand your question.
Can’t decide if aneurysm posting or non-native speaker.
