I’ve been using fedora but I would like to try something new and I think about arch linux but I don’t know if it’s good for gaming. What do you think?
Arch is perfectly fine for gaming. I use EndeavourOS with KDE and Steam + Lutris (as Flatpaks) on top. Quite similar to the setup you would have on Steam OS, but I would highly recommend using btrfs as your file system and setting up snapshots.*
While I have had little to no problems so far, compatibility issues can still occur on rolling release distros, and it’s extremely convenient to just be able to undo an update.
*This is quite simple btw., you just need to install snapper, snap-pac and btrfs-assistant. The latter serves as a GUI for btrfs setup in general. Create a config for your filesystem root (‘/’) under ‘Snapper’, and under ‘Snapper Settings’ enable ‘Snapper cleanup’. You can also set the number of snapshots to retain there, but note that two will be created per system upgrade by snap-pac. I would suggest to also enable balances and scrubs for ‘/’ and ‘/home’ in the maintenance-tab.
You’ve just reminded me that I need to get snapshots setup on my EOS install, thank you!
Is there a Arch with Installer that delivers this as Standart for rollbacks? I use Fedora Silverblue thats really great but only in my Laptop.
Is there a Arch with Installer that delivers this as Standart for rollbacks?
Yes, Manjaro. It will set everything up for you if you choose btrfs for the root partition. It will take snapshots before every upgrade and you will find them in a Grub submenu.
Obligatory disclaimer, Manjaro is a super-opinionated and customized Arch derivative, to the point some people don’t consider it Arch. It uses the Arch binary packages but delays and curates them into a “stable” branch which doesn’t exist on Arch. It basically requires you to stick to this stable branch, to use a LTS kernel, to install drivers through their driver manager etc.
Personally I like it because I like the idea of a rolling distro with a safety net, and it’s been working great for me over the last 4 years (daily driver for work and gaming). But it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
Garuda Linux has a setup where you can even boot into the snapshots from GRUB, but it is a little more bloated than EndeavourOS and I feel like it’s also less stable. Still definitely worth a try.
As a few others have said, most distributions are good for gaming. Arch, being a distribution that requires lots of manual configuration, requires some setup for the best performance.
Read these two articles throughly and use the tweaks that apply to your system/needs.
Straight from the Arch Wiki:
Gaming (section 7 and section 9 are especially useful).
yeah it’s fine
It’s fine. Only issues I’ve had is occasionally some modifications to glibc will break anticheat but that’s only happened to me twice in the past 8 years.
nah you not gonna gain more fps or something
except if you compare it with windows 11.
My Win11 was so bad (compared to Win10) than I’ve switched to ArchLinux. I’ve won around 10~20fps without doing anything particular (and also gain some better loading time as the nvme sequential access performance was much much better under linux).
I switched fron Arch to Windows 11 and even with insane Hardware the File Explorer feels extrem laggy. I gonna Test bazzite now.
well … SteamOS is based on Arch …
Distro doesn’t really matter when it comes to gaming.
You’re going to struggle a bit on Debian. I know you can install backports and flatpaks but it’s not 100% the same as native recent packages.
Alpine has enters the chat
I can’t chime in on that specific angle but on exactly the opposite. I’d call myself an Arch guy, or Manjaro and Endeavour more specifically. But recently I started hearing more and more about Nobara, I own a Steam Deck and use GE Proton on there which is from the same guy so I said I wana try Nobara and I immediately felt at home. I’m not a big KDE fan but really the out of the box Nobara experience when it comes to gaming needs felt and feels so complete to me I really couldn’t complain about a single thing.
It obviously wont replace Arch in my homelab but I don’t think I’ll ever consider anything else besides Nobara for my desktop again. Point being I had next to zero practical Fedora experience up to that point. I tried Garuda before which is also Arch based and supposed to cater to gaming needs but with that direct comparison I now feel like Nobara is the only distro that truly gets gaming. It’s SteamOS for the KBM based Desktop.
As others have said I doubt you will see a difference but I can attest to arch working just fine for gaming. Between steam and Lutris I haven’t run into any real issues.
So if you’re wanting to try arch go for it with confidence that your gaming experience likely won’t be impacted.
Bazzite, specifically crafted for gaming and isos tailored to types of hardward. https://bazzite.gg/
This looks really awesome. Probably going to have to install this a few places soon.
Omg this is something i have to try!!! I switched to Fedora Silverblue for Laptop and this ostree Thing is insane! Thanks!
Have you heard of Garuda Linux? It’s arch based and is great at gaming.
As someone who uses Garuda Linux as my main OS, I agree! Gaming works right out the box and the OS is incredibly stable. If hiccups should arise, timeshift makes booting into a previous state very easy.
Is Timeshift installed Standart? Also the snapshotsnin grub?
They can all be good for gaming. The distro doesn’t matter. Use what you find efficient, pretty, customized to your liking. They can all game. Don’t install Popos because it’s gaming oriented you can game on vanilla arch if you wanted to or debian. Arch won’t matter much unless you have the newest hardware.
LTS distros and extremely delayed packages can give you problems for sure, the components used for gaming are very fast moving pieces fixing latest issues constantly.
Arch gamer here. I can confirm that it works well.
hello, hi, do you play cs2? If yes, does fullscreen work for you?
I have not played CS2, sorry.
alr, still thanks
I use EndeavourOS (which is almost the same as Arch) for gaming and it works great.
It’s good. The steam deck’s version of steamOS is arch based, so that should tell you a lot about its capabilities.
I’d recommend choosing an Arch-based distro like Endeavour or Garuda so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of installing vanilla Arch.
While SteamOS is Arch based, i don’t think they really use it the Arch way. It’s run as an image based immutable OS, so they control the packages and not run at the bleeding edge.
You might run into problems more likely than SteamOS will.
Although i didnt’t have problems gaming on Arch, it’s not the same
I think they confirmed in an interview at one point that they don’t roll with it. They take the binaries they need from it, test it and freeze it. Initially they were using Debian but ended up needing more recent package versions and apparently Arch binaries in core and extra were more suitable to their purposes than Debian testing.
Valve was using Debian way-back-when, but the pace of getting new stuff into debian proper is too glacial for Valve. Valve is putting a lot of work into “making the linux graphics stack rather good for games”, and having those improvements integrated upstream quicker means that Valve can get to work on the next set of improvements.
Valve is still using Debian as the basis for their runtime environments for games (pressure vessel). Debian’s slowness is great for providing a stable ABI for the parts that come into contact with (seldom maintained) game code. There is some amount of magic that goes into gluing the stable runtimes with rapidly changing stuff like Mesa.
Arch documentation is great, if you’re only doing it once it shouldn’t really be a concern.
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How about doing it never.
I’ll never understand why some people think that the arch install is such a transcendental event that you absolutely must subject yourself to.
And even if it were, sometimes you just want to install Linux not have a life-changing experience.
It’s pretty damn informative, that’s why I encourage people who are interested in Arch to do it once.
I agree that if you are doing it several times it’s a waste to do manually all the time.
people using a system should understand how it works and theretically every linux user should do lfs atleast once
Neither installing Arch nor doing LFS will teach you how Linux works. They’re at least one or two steps removed from the system’s inner workings.
Secondly, that’s way too high a bar.
it definitely taught me about how linux works, at least the parts that are relevant for most users. starting from a clean install without any kind of gui (or common networking tools) really made me understand all the building blocks modern desktop linux uses. sure, installing a full blown desktop environment skips most things, but going with just a window manager and adding required features package by package really does help with understanding, and if a problem does pop up later you’ll know exactly where to look, instead of having to search super generic terms.
Just because Linux as an operating system can have that experience, doesn’t mean everyone wants or, really, needs that experience. Some people buy cars to drive and want it to just work. Others buy cars to play with. Some people dj music that is already made, others buy a guitar.
Arch installs aren’t too bad, it’s the post-install setup that’ll get you though since a fresh install is guaranteed to detonate if you don’t disarm it.
It doesn’t even have to be complex anymore thanks to
archinstall.Disarm? I don’t remember having to do anything like that…
Pretty much everything in the General Recommendations section.
Arch-install had me create a user iirc. Most of the rest of that page was done by installing the KDE meta package for me.
A lot of the things on that page are FYIs, not things you need to do. I still don’t know what you mean by detonate or disarm .
Satire, the stereotypical “Arch just breaks after some time” trope. I’m saying that trope is correct if you don’t fix it.
