4w ago

The best linux distro for gaming and graphic design?

I am in the process of building my own PC. Nothing fancy, just something that is much more powerful than the old PC I currently have. I've been using Linux on my laptop for a few years now (KDE Neon), and I'm very happy with it, I would like to put Linux on my next PC, but I have my doubts...

I don't know if I should stay with the distro I already use or if there is one that better suits my needs.

On the one hand, I'm a graphic designer but I've been using only FOSS for many years, I only use Adobe in the office (reluctantly). On the other hand, I have seen that thanks to Steam with Proton gaming on linux is getting better and better. What I don't know is if SteamOS can be good not only for gaming.

I would like to know if there is a distro that works well both for gaming and designing using FOSS (like Krita, Inkscape, KDEnlive, etc) or if it's ok to stick with KDE Neon.

22 comments

Stick with what you’re familiar. You can run Proton with any distro most likely.
- Aren't some distros better at drivers and such than other distros?
  
  Stable Distros such as debian hold updates longer for testing, for example the newest Nvidia driver in the Bookworm Stable repo is 530(535 maybe?) wheras rolling release or bleeding edge distros might have up to 570 already.
  You're always able to manually install any software not available in your distribution's repositories, but beware, in some cases here be dragons. Most of the time these manual installations are trivial, but in the case of Nvidia drivets for example, its VERY important you properly prepare your system, lest you end up in a state without graphics. This is of course, easily repairable, but a pain in the bum and something that can scare away new users.
  
  KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS, you’re fine.
Everyone is already saying it, the best is the one you know.
Basically, all distros can do whatever you want. The one you are most comfortable with and find easiest to use is what you will be able to make do those things.
But if you’re a bit of a newbie and not comfortable doing much with your current distro anyway, then there are some safe bets I’d often recommend:
Opensuse tumbleweed is very up to date, has btrfs + snapper by default in case you break it badly. Updates are also less likely than arch, for example, to cause a break. Also has a lot of pre installed software that can be more difficult to make go away due to how their “patterns” work. At some point it’ll reinstall everything you remove unless you blacklist that software.
Aeon is an immutable version of tumbleweed but without all the pre installed stuff. The auto updates work spot-on (you’ll just see a message say your system is up to date) and auto rollback on next boot if an update does break things. Great if you want to rely on flatpaks and distrobox. The KDE software suite is all good on flathub too. (Aeon is gnome only though!)
- Im probably going to try slowroll
Pop_OS! is touted as being designed around gaming and creative purposes. I use it as a daily driver and can’t complain, it plays nicely with whatever I throw at it gaming wise.
- I tried Pop about 6-8 months ago and had lots of trouble with the nvidia drivers on it (and, subsequently, ubuntu and mint) with a bog-standard RTX3060. Pop's particular issue was that whenever I tried to update the video driver, no matter which version I used (except closed-source 555-server, for whatever reason) it hard-locked my system and on reboot had reverted back to the default video driver (so my 40" ultrawide screen was trying to do like 1024x768 and shit). I have since tried 2 seperate Ubuntu installs (LTS and non-LTS) and Mint in the last month, and all of them refused to even initialize the GPU. So, just a heads up for folks with nvidia cards, Ubuntu-based distros might give you trouble. Fortunately Nobara 42 (fedora) is working great.
Bazzite is made for gaming, so it's a safe choice in that regard.
They recently released a DX (developer experience) spin, which I've been running lately. That feels very similar to the other atomic Fedora developer spins, so it has a lot of creative software working well. I've used GIMP, Inkscape, Darktable etc. on it, and there's even some nice automation to install/update DaVinci Resolve.
They're also working on a GDX (game developer experience) spin, which should be even better. You might want to check that out when it's ready.
The answer is always OpenSuse.
Kidding. Stick with what you know works.
But seriously: OpenSuse.
Just joking.
Not.
When I started using Linux more frequently everyone recommended Manjaro for gaming. Since then many people berated me for even mentioning it...
I've been using it for years and never had any problems; both gaming and graphically intensive apps run perfectly. It's best to go with all AMD, given how bad Nvidia drivers seem to be.
- Honestly this is one of the things I hate about the Linux community. The distro elitism is over the top. Make recommendations, but don’t talk down to others or you’ll never get Linux to grow.
- Manjaro is sort of speedrunning things. It is not a responsibly managed project. You CAN get shit done with manjaro the same way you can drive to work by just flooring the accelerator the entire way. It’s a bad idea but technically it can work.
  
  Ok.
I have no idea about graphic design, but for gaming I've seen Nobara (made by the guy who created Proton-GE) recommended a ton for its frequent updates and many default-installed compatibility options. Been using it about 2 weeks now myself and most things just work great (which is a hell of a relief; I had a ton of issues with Pop, Ubuntu, and Mint hating my bog-standard RTX3060 GPU for whatever reason.) Had some trouble getting battle.net/epic games working through lutris, but nothing too hard to sort out, and steam games have (with the sole exception of Marvel Rivals) just worked.
While doing your research, check out Garuda, it is gaming focused and I have found it extremely user friendly.
I tried kde neon on my gaming PC and had endless issues. They don't test their releases well and Nvidia drivers had a lot of problems. I'm using garuda dragonized right now (arch based) and really enjoying it. It's highly optimized for gaming, to the point of having its own fork of proton. It also uses KDE plasma desktop, so a very similar user experience.
bazzite is the way to go imo. it feels light years ahead of all the other gaming focused distros, ive tried all of them. it does take getting used to, but once you figure it out, its rock solid. nothing breaks. its almost boring in a way, lol. everything just works and i basically never have to fix or research anything. ublue has an insane amount of contributors on bazzite in comparison to other gaming distros as well, ive submitted many issues to them and patches are applied quickly. for example: garuda has around 9 contributors, cachyos has around 7, nobara has maybe 10, popos has 39 (some are full time employees). what does bazzite have? 113 or so. but they're also not a typical distro, theyre an image of fedora kinoite/silverblue. a lot of the effort is shunted onto the supermassive org (24k+ contributors) that fedora/rhel is and many of their patches are upstreamed. the update process is very seamless and smooth due to this method of organization.
just remember to install most things through flatpak, distrobox, and brew. and you're set. i love atomic for cluing me into distrobox, distrobox is straight up the laziest way to use linux and i love it. if you need some niche program that some dev only released .deb files for or only fedora/opensuse/aur commandline instructions, its got you. it just works. its somewhat similar to WINE and lets you run any linux distro installer and program as natively as possible.
also look at this fun graph for fedora atomic spins. as an fyi the fedora project as a whole has around 300k active users

22 comments