this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 months ago

yeah it's fine

Image

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Every distro is going to be good for gaming. Arch is going to be about equal to Fedora when it comes to gaming (both are good).

SteamOS is based on Arch, for instance.

You're not really going to see a difference when it comes to compatibility or performance, and even if you did, that's usually just a configuration issue (like setting a large enough VM heap size, which distros are starting to do by default anyway).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

SteamOS is based on Arch, for instance.

Heavily tweaked and customized by Valve... you're not going to get the same experience on vanilla Arch.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 6 months ago

well … SteamOS is based on Arch …

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

You’ve just reminded me that I need to get snapshots setup on my EOS install, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

I use arch for gaming btw.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Its the best distro for gaming. Valve is using it, rolling distro.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago

I don't think Valve is rolling it though, I'm pretty sure they do feature freezes for stability.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Distro doesn't really matter when it comes to gaming.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Alpine has enters the chat

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (10 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Disarm? I don't remember having to do anything like that...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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 .

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I've been using Nobara for some time and it's amazing. Nice installer and gets all drivers and fixed applied from the get go. Also it is maintained by GloriousEggroll himself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Echo nobara.

Been the most stable nvidia experience for my odd setup.

Able to handle an ultrawide and normal monitor 1440 at different hz and one is display port other is hdmi.

Would run into the occasional hickup with manjaro. Been all good on nobara

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Fedora > arch confirmed

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Arch gamer here. I can confirm that it works well.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Bazzite, specifically crafted for gaming and isos tailored to types of hardward. https://bazzite.gg/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Omg this is something i have to try!!! I switched to Fedora Silverblue for Laptop and this ostree Thing is insane! Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

This looks really awesome. Probably going to have to install this a few places soon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

any distro can do anything another can, itll be fine for gaming and has a massive community

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Arch works well for gaming. However, depending on what you're doing, you should keep this in mind:

  • on any distro, updates may break things or change the behavior of apps. The difference in arch is that youll update no less than weekly on average, maybe biweekly at worst. This would matter more if you have a complex setup. If you're just using steam, I wouldn't worry
  • arch only uses the latest versions of software. If you ever install something from outside the arch repos, you have to make sure it is compatible with recent versions. Sometimes it may not be.
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Whatever you use, make sure it's the furthest upstream. Everything else is dependent on the upstream to update systemwide. Yes, some downstream distros will fix certain issues before upstream does, but because their teams are generally smaller, they won't fix all the issues in any given distro. And feature/major version updates start at the top and trickle down.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I use EndeavourOS (which is almost the same as Arch) for gaming and it works great.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

nah you not gonna gain more fps or something

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

For the love of Tux, whatever you do install Arch on the btrfs file system so you can time shift back whenever arch decides to try and ruin your day on an update.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

3 years (or is it 4? What is time?) on arch exclusively and I do quite a lot of gaming. It's been great. There were a few occasions over the years where something didn't work, while others on ProtonDB had seemingly flawless experiences, but it was always just a few minor tweaks. Much better experience than what I had on Manjaro prior to switching. Also, this is all on Wayland (sway) and even with that, it's been great. BTW.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

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:

Improving Performance

Gaming (section 7 and section 9 are especially useful).

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