I want to replace Win10 on the desktop system I mostly use for gaming. It is an older system with an Nvidia GeForce 1050ti gpu in it, which from what I found, should not be a problem. I was thinking about going with Ubuntu since it is well supported. I was interested if anyone has any opinions about this. I am also going to try and dual boot it with the Win10 for now. I purchased a new SSD drive just for Linux.
You could give Bazzite a try! https://bazzite.gg/
I’m greatly enjoying their other flavors as well for my laptop and desktop rig.
Bazzite is my favorite for gaming as well. I liked it better than nobara
I had a couple hiccups, but it’s been working well for me with a Nvidia card on my laptop.
I’ll second Bazzite. I tried Pop!OS and had a handful of problems with it, but they all evaporated when I switched to Bazzite.
Based on replies I think I will try mint and then bazzit. I have read a lot of recommendations for mint and wanted to try it anyway. Since it will be a fresh install I can experiment. SteamOS does not get recommended much for some reason.
SteamOS 3 is only available for Steam Deck at the moment (or other handhelds in the near future). There is no desktop version for it yet. SteamOS 1 is over a decade old and not usable anymore.
Good luck with Mint or Bazzite! Either should serve you well.
I haven’t seen it mentioned here, so just an FIY: Linux Mint is a “regular” distro, while Bazzite is an immutable distro, meaning the root filesystem is read-only.
That means a lot of the “normal” ways of doing stuff you find online will need to be done differently. For example installing system level packages requires a reboot, to boot in to the new “system image”. If something gets booked you can reboot in to an old system image to recover. Regular desktop (Flatpak) apps can be installed without rebooting.
Bazzite is based on Fedora, and very similar to Fedora SilverBlue (immutable version). So if you can’t find answers when looking online “how to do X in Bazzite” try instead “how to do X in SilverBlue”.
And FYI Linux Mint comes with an easy to use app Timeshift for system level backup and restore (by default it does not backup your documents etc in your HOME folder). Very handy to recover from a borked update or installing something you shouldn’t have.
+1 for Bazzite but be aware that they have a different install image for “older / legacy” (🤷♀️) GPUs that you need to select when downloading (before 16xx, I didn’t realize this when installing at one sysyem of mine).
I would suggest Linux Mint over Ubuntu. It’s beginner friendly, very stable and overall a very good choice for any purpose. It’s based on Ubuntu so most of the stuff you find online applies to it as well. The APT package repository contains most if not all the software you might need.
Down the line almost every distro will be suitable for gaming.
That GPU probably is going to cause issues a few years down the line. We now have earily development foss Nvidia stuff but it only supports cards that are 2000 series or new I believe.
With that being said, I would install Linux Mint.
This is what I run in both my main gaming rig (I9/4080) and my retro rig (old i5 and Radeon 580) works great for both. Steam and Proton do 95% of the work with no issues.
All distros are the same – none packs a exclusive feature that makes gaming “better”. Other than having predefined changes/packages that are more suitable for gaming.
There are distros with highly customised kernels that are objectively better for gaming (higher and more consistent framerates).
…which these “customized kernels” can (also) be applied to any other distro.
Mate, that technical detail is hardly useful to someone asking which distro might be good for gaming. The whole thing of distros is they are a collection of opinions around a Linux kernel. Are you really suggesting those differences are meaningless, especially to a beginner?
“Oh, but it’s a technical detail!” does not make what I said a false argument – you are extrapolating for the sake of “being right”.
Technically correct, famously the best kind of correct. Context be damned.
