Comparing Linux gaming distros performance (with Tuxedo Atlas S)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Go to ground.news/TLE to to know where your news is coming from. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.

[@jacquesroux7362]

No 1% lows? Averages mean nothing if your 1% lows suck.

[@z0rden_]

🤓☝️

[@nicktyrin4401]

Yeah having the framerate distribution details would've been nice

[@petarmiloradovic5374]

True, we need better benchmarks

[@mikem9536]

That's because the real truth is, 1% lows are usually terrible on Linux.

[@petarmiloradovic5374]

@@mikem9536 can't tell without actual data, they can be good or bad.

[@malcaniscsm5184]

The point of "gaming distros" is that you get the most up to date hardware support and all the other stuff you need installed as part of the maintained and at least somewhat tested package.

[@iclonethefirst]

The Computer Case is from Fractal Design. It is called "Terra".

[@smashpro1]

I personally love their Ridge case. Fits perfectly in my entertainment center for my HTPC, which I just installed Bazzite on.

[@Techmagus76]

Is it just me or does: "Have asked me more or less nicely" just sounds like a neat way of saying: "Yelled literally right at my face"

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Correct 😂

[@gecked8560]

To be fair to Bazzite, it doesn't advertise above average performance

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Oh, yeah it’s not criticism, just trying to compare to see if all these patches actually serve a purpose !

[@bobbybyrne1899]

The strength of Bazzite is in its stability and ability to rollback easily. You can also try out a beta version without worrying about botching your system. Just pin the latest stable and rebase the beta.

[@NinjaQuick]

@@bobbybyrne1899 ostree is very nice

[@DumbWithDom]

I just like that most things are already installed for me and mostly configured

[@millennial_weeb2382]

​@@bobbybyrne1899That is literally the point. Bazzite is the SteamOS alternative, with more updated packages. It serves it's purpose by simply existing, it never claimed to be THE Gaming Distro.

[@azultoledano1983]

I'd really like to see a comparison between a bleeding edge gaming distro and a more stable desktop one, like Zorin or Debian 12

[@aspacegamer92]

tbh i don‘t need a gaming distro but gonna say i did switch from a debian based to fedora simply because of the hugely outdated drivers that made some games unplayable (nvidia drivers) then again it also introduced me to the pains that is wayland on nvidia

[@2greenify]

And Ubuntu please, thats still is the most used distro (unless someone believes the running joke from distrowatch that is bombarded with fanboy server clicks).

[@StephenMcGregor1986]

CachyOS / Garuda / Nobara

[@millennial_weeb2382]

​@@aspacegamer92Yep. It's all fun and games until you as a Linux newbie has a game that literally won't start for zero reason and no error codes to work with. I have seen people leaving ProtonDB reports in 2024 about Games being borked while running Linux Mint Kernel 5.18 when we are about to hit Kernel 7.0 like good lord. Ubuntu/Debian is for Stability & not for Gaming as a priority, as such when Wine or Proton does something experimental to progress Linux Gaming, you might not benefit from it, even if your kernel is up to date. Gamescope on Ubuntu is literally 2yrs old as a .deb & building it from scratch won't work because the packages you need are literally not downloadable ATM. Tested on Pop_OS.

[@azultoledano1983]

@@StephenMcGregor1986 I was thinking Zorin/Nobara/Arch or something like that

[@raxen001]

Gaming distros all about just have the best preinstalled experience

[@happygofishing]

gaming distros are a meme, basically the only factors that matter are your kernel version, GPU drivers, and compositor.

[@marcelorauber_]

Yep, that's it. But I've seen A LOT of comments on KZbin from people saying that they're waiting for Valve to release the SteamOS ISO to migrate to Linux. I've also seen videos questioning IF a distro is good for gaming. It doesn't make sense.

[@CFWhitman]

Well, if you're expecting better performance from a gaming distribution, then prepare to be disappointed. However, the point of most gaming distributions is to have a gaming focused interface, or to have a lot of stuff preinstalled/pre-configured for games to work. If you want to game on your desktop, then you don't need a gaming distribution; if you are dedicating a machine to playing games all the time, it might be something you should consider.

[@pablofreitasmachado8076]

The point of a gaming distro, for me anyways, is Batteries included. yeah, kernel, drivers and compositor are the main pieces. but getting that up an running, on... say debian, or hell ... gentoo.... is a nightmare. Get nobara instead, as an example, and it's all done, and you can focus on gaming.

[@hecos1779]

they make things easier, the average gamer that doesn't understand much about linux won't know that they can get better results with a kernel that supports fsync, or that using gamemode or system76 scheduler will help on cpu-intensive games, or that proton-ge can fix some codec issues on some games, gaming distros just allow a better out of the box gaming experience

[@Basserino84]

Hence why I use Pop OS. With KDE on top.

[@BlogingLP]

For anyone interested in the case, it's called Terra and is made by Fractal Design

[@sush7117]

it would be interesting to see how base distros (arch, fedora, debian) compare to gaming variants of them

[@mariolis]

yeah...

[@Fedor_Dokuchaev_Color]

I don't see why they would be different. If drivers and linux kernel are the same, perfomance should be within marhin of error. Games do not care about your package manager or desktop environment.

[@Rood67]

⁠@@Fedor_Dokuchaev_Colorin the words of Yosemite Sam, *I hate you rabbit!* 🤣 I care about these things, but you’re absolutely correct, the software doesn’t care. I just don’t like Debian or its grandchildren. Fedora is a love hate relationship. I actually like Arch, but I have run into an issue with a software package I must have for work. I try to avoid distros with only one or two people working on it, ie Nobora seems to have one developer.

[@ivyZorz]

The difference is that with arch for example, you would have to configure proton, NVIDIA drivers, proton-ge, lutrus, wine, proton-qt… bla bla bla yourself. And oops a Linux noob may have bricked their system in the process. The point of gaming distros is that someone who’s more experienced than you with building distros did it all for you

[@savagepro9060]

0:17 You don't have to kill any birds. Just break WINDOWS with one stone . . . Linux, metaphoric, sorry, metamorphic Rock!

[@CathrineMacNiel]

Is it a bleeding rock, rolling rock or a stable rock?

[@Winnetou17]

@@CathrineMacNiel Cutting rock, btw

[@savagepro9060]

@@CathrineMacNiel Rocky Linux

[@villenmillenion7986]

If you are going to compare fps in games you need to compera de 1% and 0.1% lows, this is because on the same hardware the average is always going to be under the margin of error, the drops are more interesting to measure OS impact. Other than the point of gaming distros is to streamline the user experience and avoid having to waste time installing or patching stuff so you can teabag some noobs. And completely unrelated I recently discovered PikaOS which is technically a gaming focused distro and has a few interesting thing.

[@kiko2129]

That is literally the Fractal Terra case, I'm baffled that they don't even mention that on their website :/

[@TDRR_Gamez]

A Sega Genesis still hooked up to your TV? That's really cool.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Oh yeah, I still play it often!

[@branislavavramovic2601]

@@TheLinuxEXPI low-key hope you are a Comix Zone fan.

[@jamesyoung151]

I miss my Sega Genesis. I had a ton of games for it. I didn't buy the Sega CD though. I didn't see much of a library to justify the cost of it.

[@robertszynal4745]

You probably already know but, for the sake of any that don't, it was only called Genesis in North America. For the rest of the world it was called the MegaDrive.

[@TDRR_Gamez]

@@robertszynal4745 yes I am aware. I live in South America so technically it is called Mega Drive here, but I prefer the name Genesis, personally.

[@ndm6023]

I thought I was gonna see Regata OS and Garuda linux somewhere in this video.

[@andy-kn2by]

Yes, that are the two gaming distros I was also missing here

[@KosmicWolf]

From the info I've seen Regata OS seems to be a bad version of OpenSUSE

[@sweetsweetkhajoor]

i wanted to see cachy os

[@ndm6023]

@@sweetsweetkhajoor thanks for the reminder. I often forget I'm using a Hybrid of Garuda/CachyOS

[@jausat141]

13:05 but if you ran the tests on the desktop session you didn't benchmark the gaming session with gamescope and the "gaming compistor"?

[@jausat141]

maybe the benchmark approach was not the best idea for this video I think you should have compared the features and differences of the distros because the performance was expected to be same'ish

[@Pesthuf]

I think the same. The gamescope integration is one of the main features of those distros. Valve invented it for SteamOS for a reason.

[@jorge86rodriguez]

lesson of the video: use kde, the distro does not matter

[@damnhatesyou]

I could never use KDE 😢

[@edricusty2682]

kde doesn't matter neither, use a distro that ship gamescope if you want a steamos experience

[@isabellaheart3698]

Would love to see deeper dive into Bazzite, as all of my PCs running Bazzite/Universal Blue distros, with my Steam Deck and "lapdock" acting as my main laptop and Legion Go with a dock acting as my main desktop

[@npaladin2000]

Wouldn't mind seeing some deeper drives. Bazzite and Nobara in particular look like they could work as daily drive desktops too.

[@alanonsr3942]

same here

[@davidshields4624]

I would love to see you do a review of Bazzite. I can't seem to find a good one.

[@JuanFernandes-hj6rd]

Bazzite is just Fedora with preconfigured and preinstalled software. Excelent for set up quickly and go play games as a normie user, but anything specific you want to know is just the same as Fedora.

[@julienmans3359]

Average FPS is not the only important performance measure (1% low, loading times...), and these distros are not only about performance, there's also hardware compatibility, software compatibility, stability... A comparison with Windows could also have been interesting, just an idea Past this, great video, I was just wondering which one to try as I'm looking for a replacement for Arch (too many arches to manage at once :'-))

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s why I specifically compared performance here, I’m not judging the relevance of the other things these distros do :)

[@AlphaNeon]

Why not? ​@@TheLinuxEXP

[@michalsvihla1403]

I think you'd be the perfect candidate for NixOS. You'll have an easily replicable setup that makes maintaining multiple machines a doddle.

[@RacsuTech]

Surprised that you are using Nobara in your gaming rig now! It is a distro that I really love. :) Didn't comment for a while, but nice video as always!

[@Alphachicken22]

Did you run your benchmarks from gamescope or the desktop environment? That's the actual unique performance feature with these distros since it's just setup to run gamescope in an exclusive mode with all the scripts & patches in-place for gamescope to run well. It gives you a more UI/controller friendly way to launch games at lower resoultions, impose frame-rate limitations, and upscale games with the built in stuff in the side menu. Then there's decky for any extra functionality you might happen to need.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

DE, the default experience these distros offered

[@Alphachicken22]

@@TheLinuxEXP Cool, very interesting comparison. So the main benefits are if you want the console-like and controller first UI for a PC at that point. As well as mangohud or other tools built in. The power limiters aren't terribly useful in a non portable use case like this.

[@TechStache]

Great video! I would love to add CachyOS and another idea for another video could be to test different kernels.

[@montecorbit8280]

At 0:32 "....three cubic meters worth of space...." You have computer cases that big in France?? Can you post some pictures?? What type of rig are you running inside those cases???? Totally awesome!!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Hahah no, but I wish 😂

[@montecorbit8280]

@@TheLinuxEXP I remember a case that I got back in the late 1990s. It was a case that was recommended by MaximumPC. Really nice case!! Came up to mid thigh on me, and solidly enough built that I sat on it on occasion. (I weighed 225 lb, or 100 kilograms) It had four 5 1/4 drive external bays drives, I don't know how many 3 1/2 external 3 1/2 drive bays. It had a huge amount of internal 3 1/2 inch bays. It was also pretty wide....it was huge. I built six different computers in that thing....still one of the best cases I've ever had.

[@pcallycat9043]

I'm honestly not surprised these results are so comparable. At the end of the day, for the most part, it's relatively the same software running on the same hardware, with different packaging strategies, but still the linux kernel running the same translation layers on the same hardware.

[@Scoobin]

A number of Arch based distros not included here, such as Garuda. I would have been interested to see CachyOS also. They have a customised kernel out of the box and a bunch more customised kernels where that came from, so at least you could see what different kernels offer.

[@MrKyuubiJesus]

One thing that you forgot to mention is that for powerful machines the differences are much less that if you're running a low spec setup. There's a lot more that comes into play on lower end machines such as efficient scheduling for CPU tasks.

[@BernhardErnst]

So true. My PC is only 6 years old (1st gen Ryzen 7 with GeForce GTX 1060. Also one memory channel on the motherboard is dead) and my laptop has an Intel HD 4400. At the moment, PC prices are so high that I cannot even consider buying another PC. Add to this that the local currency is quite weak compared to USD and EUR.

[@RedVRCC]

One gaming centric distro that does have a purpose is lakka. It's perfect for making a custom controller friendly emulator console type thing. You could always just use retroarch too but the idea of having an OS that is entirely meant for emulation means there's no additional bloat and it can even run on a raspberry pi with the ARM ISO. Perfect for making a tiny little console you can plug into your TV and tuck away and game on the big screen. 6:07 i didnt see the sponsor tho, I have sponsorblock... Now I'm kinda curious as to what it is.

[@randomei1]

It would be interesting to include fedora, archlinux and cachyos in gaming tests.

[@cybernit3]

A1rm4x does all this with those OS and others...so check that out

[@JelmerSchreuder]

What was the reason for running the games from Gnome on ChimeraOS? That's what a ChimeraOS user would do. Not sure if it makes a difference, but the SteamOS-session should be more barebones on the background compared to Gnome which might give some more performance. So it's a bit weird to compare it this way, especially given that the Horizon-result seemed surprisingly lower.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I ran all games from the KDE desktop, on all distros, so I felt it would be more faire to do the same on chimera

[@JelmerSchreuder]

@@TheLinuxEXP not really, it's primarily a gamescope-based distro. Not sure, but I'm guessing all performance related improvements in it were done there. Gnome is only included to also have a desktop for tinkering, but it's selling point is having a gamescope-based setup meant for a console-like gaming PC. That's how its performance should be considered, not as a desktop, which it is not.

[@ChrispyNut]

5:17 - No, that's not true, it's actually "Phenomenal cosmic POWWEEERR ... ity bity living space". 😉 Negative 15 points from whomever doesn't get the reference.

[@LordHonkInc]

The movie is 31 years old, cut the zoomers some slack xD

[@ChrispyNut]

@@LordHonkInc It got remade and it's an absolute classic, which they probably grew up watching dozens and dozens of times. E2A: And ... they probably have more internet points than they know what to do with, so it'll be like a nepobaby and parking fines. 🙂

[@dedoyxp]

why can't I find information about the linux system on chimera? like kernel, what de, packages... and no available information on distrowatch

[@Basserino84]

Fedora, Fedora, arch, arch, Ubuntu. In general, having a good kernel version and AMD hardware helps tons, particularly on the graphics end. Nobara can game, but it is NOT gentle on light hardware configurations.

[@kennystrawnmusic]

Someone test Garuda on it, please. Also a gaming focused distribution but not mentioned here.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

They don’t advertise as a gaming distro on their website, which is why I didn’t include it :)

[@andy-kn2by]

⁠@@TheLinuxEXPGaruda offers a „KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition“

[@BeastViper007]

Thats​ just Garuda with steam and other gaming packages pre installed. @@andy-kn2by

[@alexcerzea]

10:19 I really would love your complete take on the distro in a video, well fedora Silverblue can be rebased to bazzite, pretty rare but good if you think about it

[@CreeVal]

You'll probably be better off with just Arch or something Arch based like EndavourOS, not saying the results would be better or worse but using a gaming distro to improve performance in games is just silly. Using a distro like Nobara would probably give you easier access to gaming since GE is amazing work for Linux gaming in general, he's also very helpful if you encounter something not mentioned in the pins in his discord channel. Only reason I switched to EndavourOS myself was because I needed newer kernels because I got the 7800XT when it hit the marked and the Kernel in what was then Nobara 38(or 39 I can't remember) didn't work as well for me. But for an average user with newish hardware, I'd recommend Nobara every day... It's a fantastic distro, you get the newishness of Fedora and the gaming stuff from GE, what else is there to wish for?

[@abraxys]

It would be interesting to do a deep dive on BAZZITE OS. I use NOBARA 39 for desktop and gaming purposes. I recently had to swap from NOBARA GNOME to KDE base as GNOME will no longer work with my processor (to old). My PC still runs an AMD FX6300 Black Edition processor (overclocked to run 4.5MHz) with an RX580 GPU, 12GB 1333MHz Corsair Vengeance Memory. Running the following trio of games - Battlestar Galactica: DEADLOCK, Control and Talos Principle 2 my computer can still run games a solid 60FPS, or very close to it. It would be interesting to find out if BAZZITE could do the same. I would also be interested to find out if BAZZITE works with older processors and motherboards.

[@onesterkin]

Would be interested in Bazzite review from Nick, considering installing it myself

[@ryanhorner9639]

Hey Nick!, I have been using Garuda Linux (Arch Derivative gaming focused) for about 3 years on my gaming laptop and custom built desktop. It has been an amazing experience for gaming. (Using the Gnome desktop instead of the flagship KDE). I feel like it is a pretty under-rated distro. Would love to see you give it a review.

[@FlorentChardevel]

Very useful video, thanks! For future tests, it would be interesting to get the 1% low fps as well. I'd say it's actually even more important than average fps (though you need the average value to compare it to the 1% low), because it tells you how stable the experience is. I'd rather go with a slightly lower average fps but better on the 1% low for a clear gaming experience, especially with a VRR screen.

[@millennial_weeb2382]

Well this is an ad, so that won't happen.

[@noel737]

I think it would’ve been nice to have a fuller distro review/comparison of the gaming distros *as* distros. Especially as the differences seemed to be minor from a performance standpoint. For example, I don’t know how I feel about immutable distros, but being able to choose some basic configurations beforehand and have it start up onto “big picture mode” (is that what it’s called?) seems really cool and helps sell it as a “console”-an important barrier to entry for anyone in a household who aren’t as familiar with pc gaming or just want to turn it on and start playing a game as you would on a console. Thinking about it now, I’d be curious how “big picture mode” works with emulators and such-or is it strictly a Steam interface? Similarly, I’d be interested in the other tools and such they provide and if they make much of a difference-ie, how much nicer is it to have this or that pre-installed rather having to look for it and download/set-up yourself? Tangent: it makes me wonder if rather than a gaming “distro,” it might be better to pursue a gaming “desktop environment”. Something with the ease and focus of console launchers while maintaining some of the mutability and wider scope of a pc…on a similar note, it’s surprising none of these distros seem to have gone for an alternative kernel, like the ones mentioned in your last video…

[@CodeEnthusiast78912]

will tuxedo make an arm based laptop soon ?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

No idea! I know they had plans for a 2 in 1, but for now, ARM CPUs that are generally available are pretty underpowered

[@UmitSeyhan75]

@@TheLinuxEXP Seems like X Elite going to change this fact.

[@osbert]

They mentioned on their subreddit that they are exploring possibilities

[@JacksonNick-j6i]

Gaming compatibility in ARM platform is bad even on windows. Linux is ahead of windows in ARM support for the base system but Windows will be ahead soon because they're coming with a emulation layer and Linux doesn't have that. App compatibility is also an issue.

[@anarchicnerd666]

i can say for myself having just switched yesterday from Win 11 to Linux myself - gaming distros make a massive difference. i run a brand new RX 7900 GRE with my R7 5700X - tried Ubuntu and Mint and fount out neither had a kernel that supported my GPU, it was too new and obscure. so i went ahead and installed Garuda, and it worked smoothly out of the box. if you're running new or cutting edge hardware, you might need a bleeding edge gaming distro, like it or not.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Not a bleeding edge gaming distro, just a bleeding edge distribution :)

[@anarchicnerd666]

@@TheLinuxEXP heh, that's fair :)

[@anarchicnerd666]

@Cresimi i tried Ubuntu 24.04 first actually, the logic was that it would work with my GRE right off the bat given it's a brand new release barely over a month old - unfortunately it didn't, got consistent game crashes over and over (Resident Evil 4 Remake, Immortals of Aveum, Hellblade 2) and nothing booted. the problem is GRE stands for Golden Rabbit Edition, it's a China exclusive card that just got a worldwide release a few months ago. it's pretty new and (frankly) niche, enthusiast and weird XD it's a cut down 7900 XT that costs about $530 ish and uses a cut down N31 die with 80CU's, so significantly more than the 7800 XT, but it's paired with 16GB of 18GB/s memory to keep costs down. it's a weird card but an enthusiasts dream that overclocks nicely

[@motmontheinternet]

Does the Mint Edge iso not work with the GRE? That card is almost a year old

[@anarchicnerd666]

@@motmontheinternet i didn't actually try the Edge iso, didn't know it was a thing - n00b here XD sorry

[@JacekWoj]

Couple of things: 1. Test Garuda 2. Where is 1% low? It's more worthy info than avg 3. Try this test with different screen resolution if it's possible 4. I've got same problem like you with Holo, but mine problem was with Ubuntu Server. Try different programs to make bootable USB. I've tried Balena Etcher and Rufus on Windows and it doesn't work. Until I've used Unetbootin. Then booting went perfectly without freezes, errors or bootloop after choosing USB in boot menu.

[@JacekWoj]

Oh and the last one! Which proton did you used on each distro?

[@drubizzy]

The measure, as always, is to check and see how many contributors a distribution has. Most of these gaming distros are very small to one person teams. Debian with flatpak Steam and Bottles for everything else has been perfectly fine for me, performs well, and I know my OS will be well supported and stable. Not to crap on these other distros. The work is needed and vital to grow the gaming space on Linux. I know especially with Nobara, GE is considered an "end user" so he can ship a bunch of stuff in there that would get Microsoft's lawyers angry if those things were shipped with Fedora itself. I personally found Nobara incredibly unstable (and I'm running a full AMD setup 5800x3d and 6950xt). Sleep didn't function at all and sometimes it would just fail to boot completely.

[@markdevaal4116]

Funny thing is that even TuxedoOS have a non standaard Tweaked kernel. Basically TuxedoOS is in the same category as Bazzite, Nobara, ChimeraOS and HoloISO etc.

[@cybernit3]

Your TuxedoOS uses an older Linux Kernel 6.1 LTS right? I wonder how different the results will be with a new Linux kernel like 6.8 . The new Ubuntu 24.04 uses Linux Kernel 6.8. For other a1rm4x on youtube shows many other OSs for gaming; he seems to like CachyOS the most and with the new Nvidia drivers 555 his RTX4090 works better using wayland.

[@phillee2814]

He said it is based on Ubuntu LTS but with an updated kernel, so it seems as if that is covered.

[@michadybczak4862]

Tuxedo OS has additional repo and comes with the newest kernel and drivers. That on itself is good for gaming, but in my experience, the old Ubuntu base caused some issue with Wayland, scaling or with tools like Mangohud which was pretty old and once it interacted with the newest Vulkan, it created a massive memory leak. So in overall, I don't recommend Tuxedo OS for gaming, at least right now. After the new Ubuntu based will be used, it should improve, at least for the time being.

[@Invid72]

The point of a gaming distro isn't performance...they all perform more or less the same. It's to save config and install time. Some people think everything they didn't install themselves is "bloat" but many of us just want a system with common gaming utilities pre-installed. That's what I like about Bazzite, it's a solid gaming base with the utilities one would expect of a gaming install.

[@bluebutterfly6394]

Garuda: guess i dont exist

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Their website doesn’t really advertise gaming as a priority

[@kvdrr]

No CachyOS? Even though they have their own proton distribution?

[@deladismarketing]

cachyos has it's own proton ? I didn't know. I wanna try. Thanks for the info

[@kvdrr]

@@deladismarketing don't expect anything crazy, it's just 2 patches away from upstream: nvidia reflex stuff for dxvk and winesync instead of fsync (not ntsync yet, though). the fact that they do it at all is a proof that CachyOS considers itself a gaming distro

[@deladismarketing]

@@kvdrr yeah. It's nothing crazier than before. lol. I'm still using cachyos-rc and I'm happy with it. thanks so much once again

[@CerealforProtein]

Any chance you may be doing a video on the Snapdragon X Elite laptops running linux?

[@fatrat92]

I'd love to see a video on bazzite.

[@Vancha112]

Nice comparison :) Its good getting a general idea of performance differences between distros every once in a while. Its not something thats often covered.

[@2greenify]

Nice, wondered about this myself lately. Investigated it and concluded whats needed is only a simple script for minimal beneftis. Looking forward if I missed something. Going to look the video after this comment 😅

[@pimpatterson]

i installed Nobara last night, didnt think it would improve much over fedora considering i use AMDgpu but yeah no stutters at all, everything runs smooth, also does good quality of life stuff under the hood (like ffmpeg thumbnails installed by default)

[@Nick-bn6ch]

My understanding is gaming distros provide better compatibility?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

No, they play the exact same games as any other distro :)

[@Nick-bn6ch]

I can't speak to the other distros on this list but at the very least Nobara certainly has compatibility patches kernel patched to enable amdgpu for pre-polaris cards by default instead of radeon kernel patched with steam deck support kernel patched with microsoft surface support kernel patched with asus-linux patches for better asus laptop compatibility kernel patched with simpledrm fix/workaround for nvidia kernel patched with Lenovo Legion Linux support kernel patched with customizable USB polling rate support kernel configured with ashmem, binder, and android support for Waydroid QSG_RENDER_LOOP=”basic” set for nvidia cards - fixes nouveau Wayland freezes. The nvidia proprietary driver sets this anyway after installation. This fixes the issue of KDE Wayland often times freezing on first login before nvidia proprietary drivers are installed latest mesa release version provided for AMD/Intel desktop/GL drivers, mesa-git vulkan drivers provided for latest vulkan fixes/updates, built and updated regularly glibc patched with clone3 disabled (fixes CEF compatibility in applications using outdated CEF such as Discord, Steam beta) glibc patched with broken commits reverted to allow EasyAntiCheat to work for Rogue Company lspci symlink from /usr/sbin/lspci to /usr/bin/lspci for Dying Light gnome variable refresh rate patches added for mutter xwayland patched with fix for locked fps on some systems SDL2 patched to fix an nvidia framerate issue with SDL_VIDEODRIVER Davinci Resolve dependencies installed (yes, it works -easily- on a fresh install!) Among more

[@Mishaye]

@@TheLinuxEXP The Nobara list of fixes haven't been updated for a while now, but it does include fixes specifically made to enable some games to run properly, like the vm.max_map_count increase and patched glibc for anti-cheat issues. The user can of course do things like that on any distro, if they know what they're doing, but it's one thing a good gaming distro will do for you.

[@samarthnagar6988]

DID YOU UPDATED THE REPOSITORIES AFTER INSTALLATION

[@cloudcultdev]

Definitely go more into Bazzite and Nobara, please! I work with some of these devs…so I’ll have to forward them your video (if they haven’t already seen it).

[@FengLengshun]

Bazzite is cool. I've been using it with the Blue Build system for a year or so. Ever since I've used Universal Blue, I don't see the point in distro hopping anymore. If I want to change stuff, I just rebase. And for all my setup and configs, Fedora Atomic limitations meant my setups are already portable via Nix Home-Manager, Flatpak, and Distrobox. It's also super stable even with the auto-updates -- worst case I just rebase to an image from a few days ago and tell the maintainers which day's image did the issue started. I would love for you to cover it. In particular, the Blue Build system, yafti, and ujust makes whatever whatever thing I want to set up super easy. I outright recommend it, as long as nothing you do needs kernel modules and such (still haven't gotten around to how to use their akmods plugin for Blue Build).

[@serge_salvatrice]

Always love seeing these kinds of videos. Gaming seems to be covered by Linux for the most part from what I've seen. However, being a digital artist, I don't see much about how Linux handles drawing tablets. I use a Wacom Pro 16 and it looks like it isn't supported officially. My concern would be that the drivers would make it feel not quite right, losing features, or even not working. I'm not worried about a program to use, since I use Krita.

[@qbertguy]

That black screen upon boot was an issue I was having with ubuntu. I had to delete the quiet Splash string from my grub

[@olnnn]

If performance patches in these gaming distros have any significant impacts they would probably mainly affect things in CPU and/or io-limited schenarios rather than when you are limited by the GPU (which you likely will be with this system in most cases.) Granted as you and others have noted I think the main thing that makes a difference is using date graphics drivers and base system. (and also avoid steam snap if using ubuntu.....)

[@aman9das]

Bazzite deep dive please

[@andy-kn2by]

Thank you, Nick, for testing that gaming distros. I was always wondering what is the difference between gaming distros and the usual distros. In the past I also used Regata OS and Garuda Dragonized Linux, maybe you can test this two as well.

[@cybernd6426]

I actually choose bazzite for multiple reasons 1. It isn't just maintained by one person 2. preinstalled steam works without any issue. I installed some other distros before I tried bazzite (fedora, taxedo and opensuse tumbleweed) and they all had problems with steam. I now learned the fix. But on bazzite it just worked 3. The immutable part can be good, because I know it should just work every time I want to use it. This also has some drawbacks, like custom icons not working for me that well 4. It is mostly easy to use. There are some tools I needed to use the command line, but even that is rarely needed So yeah for me, it feels like a normal distro but ready to use the moment you are done installing it

[@RaWActi0N]

CachyOS comes baked with specific optimizations which aparently does increase performance and they also intend to support Steam Deck.

[@zircon7396]

You should consider including systemd-less distros into your benchmarks, like voidlinux, it's also very minimal and such

[@hindigente]

Cool experiment and slightly surprising results. I expected gaming distros shipping kernels optimized for gaming would be marginally, but measurably, better than general-purpose ones.

[@JH_Tech49]

Thank you for all of your videos. If at some point you do a follow-up video, could you test CachyOS?

[@HenriNero]

I've seen opensuse perform pretty well compared to some other popular distros, but that comparison was from a couple years ago. Would be cool to see another video with it, and including 1% lows.

[@dmitryporotov2882]

Does sound work through Bluetooth on Xbox controller on any of these distros?

[@dundyshibby]

Would love to see a deep dive into Bazzite, and immutable OS in general!

[@luizgfranca]

Why ignore Xorg on the tests? Most people who game on Linux still use it

[@TheLonelyMoon]

Been meaning to get into Linux for a while as a Windows user. The recent recall feature really pushed me. I tried Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora on VMs and finally decided to go with Fedora. Downloaded Fedora Worstation 40, burned it to a USB, but no matter what I do, the installer was stuck at "_" and apparently its a common issue for certain generations of Surface owners. Arch installer boots no issue. So I went with the second best in my head, a Fedora based distro. Went with Nobara. Sure, I'm a bit bummed that it ain't Fedora 40, but it performs better than W11 in many ways and I'm just happy to be out of W11

[@v.matthewking-yarde6887]

Quick question, unrelated to the video: Why is your website out of date?

[@auglicious]

Thanks for the video! I admit I hadn't heard of Bazzite before, but I have been considering building a similar machine for my son's birthday. I might just buy the Tuxedo model featured here

[@theJollyPaleGiant]

I was looking for a video like this. Very nice. It would be better to include 1% lows [someone else already mentioned this]. Also, adding a comparison between Windows 10/11 and Linux distros would be great. I'm considering abandoning gaming, on Windows 11, but I'm not 100% convinced yet.

[@Berecutecu]

The main cons about gaming dedicated distros is about reliability. We never know when that single individual maintainer will stop maintaing the distro. The cadency of the updates can be subpar. Why would you be looking for distro copies that adds just applications and take those risks? Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSuse, they all offer a group of people dedicated to pack the kernel and delivers it reliably. A lot of documentation, support for secure boot, etc... It isn't a in dept review. This is more to help to see the non-sense about some of the "gaming" distros. For future content, I'd like to see if we can have some comparison of thunderbolt and oculink setups for eGPUs in linux. Perhaps adding some variants of thunderbolt, 4 and 5 or USB 4 v1 and v2 versus Oculink.

[@wikwayer]

I probably go with bazzite immutable easy to roll back and the KDE desktop.

[@sargetyu]

So coming from.win10 to linux as a total linux noob . I mainly game steam/epic/emulation do some recording streaming amd basic editing. Also browse the interwebs too. With that in mind Whats the go to linux for ease of use/setup/keep uptodate?

[@SildurFX]

Try dual booting nobara to get used to linux. Everthing gaming releated is pre-installed and ready to go, OBS can be installed from their "welcome app". It's based on fedora and made by the guy that makes all sorts of patches for gaming on linux, GloriousEggroll.

[@firebreather4192]

I think that the main point about gaming distros is the user experience, not the performance. I'm using Nobara on my living room console PC and I'm quite happy with it, a dedicated video from you would be much appreciated. :-)

[@JohnDoe-us5rq]

Ok, just out of curiosity. As far as I know, every distribution does provide the Linux kernel with a bunch of tools. The kernel provides some switches that might impact the overall speed. But with all distributions using the same kernel, assuming they did not apply some wonky patches and kept them to themselves. They all use the same infrastructure in the sense of systemd and wayland. So, the only difference would then be the choice of tools, pre-dominatly the desktop. But everything could've been the same. Even the drivers. I would expect a meaningful difference inbetween different kernel releases. I actually won't expect a meaningful difference between those variants and my default debian sid. Although, that would be interesting. The gaming distributions remind me a bit of the tonewood discussion when it comes to electric gitars. They are purpose build, slick feeling things. But at the end it does not improve the perfomance.

[@netrodex]

well that's actually good to know. it doesn't matter what distro (gaming) you use. You know what I think... the Proton was created and optimized for the steamdeck to run Windows games minus the tomb raider that has a linux version. So... the reason that it doesn't matter what system you got, the fps stays pretty much the same or worse, coz it's simulated the steam deck hardware and power. I guess valve played the safer and can't allocate the full power from a windows game which it can reach a whopping 144hz even in 4k if you have the best pc. Still the proton it's a huge mile stone I can't even imagine how hard it was to program it

[@needsLITHIUM]

I use MX Linux KDE and even use the Flatpak version of both Steam and Heroic lol. The main games I play (Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, MechWarrior 5, CS2) work great in either the latest Proton GE (Proton-Up-qt) or the basic Proton Experimental that comes with Steam. They work so well, in fact, that they ALL run better than on Windows, in terms of FPS, which is hilarious, considering CS2 is the only native game out of that bunch, and everything else is running via Proton. RX 5500 XT, Asus 75 Hz FreeSync monitor, and I use the framesync. I was running HoloISO for over a year before packing my computer away to make room for an addition to the family and to move, and as soon as I got setup in the new place, installing MX Linux KDE was first in priority.

[@kentahirono]

Sincerely I tried with both holoiso and nobara, but some games (not from steam) that needs their own laucher didn't want to start or play without issues. I even followed some tutorials online to fix them without success. I decided then to use w10 for that game pc to avoid further issues until maybe the next one (2-3y).

[@drnoone3596]

Hnmmm. Switched to CachyOS and saw noticable framerate improvements over my Arch install... I only play older games though. DOW2 for example.

[@N0strapapas]

I think a better test for this kind of thing would be installation time. Does a "gaming" OS actually reduce the installation time of the OS in any significant way? Even better if you can find a relatively new Linux user (though tech savvy, so they can find the answer) to try it, you already know what you'd need and it probably wouldn't be much faster.

[@logicalfundy]

Interesting case - it looks like a re-branded Terra case by Fractal Design. I'm running a Plex server inside a case like that. Personally, I would use a larger case for a gaming PC, but that's just me I guess. It is a quite flexible case where you can adjust it based on what you have inside.

[@RoboTuxBenchmarks]

There are no performance issues with Gnome and Wayland according to my own benchmarks. KDE Wayland runs just as well as Gnome Wayland. I ran 7 gaming benchmarks the past 2 days on a Gnome Wayland Desktop and KDE Wayland desktop using the exact same hardware. As it was mainly to test differences in two different distributions it turned out that the one using Gnome even scored higher. But I do not expect this to be related to the desktop but rather the distro itself. But also I need to admit that I run a nvidia GPU and not an AMD GPU which might play a role here as well?

[@Mekuso8]

I feel like this video only tests the trivial case, where all distros tested (yes, including TuxedoOS) are focusing on performance and thus have recent kernels and drivers. I think a more interesting experiment would be to compare a more "normie" distro like Mint to something more performance oriented, like TuxedoOS. It's fairly obvious that the latter will be faster, but by how much?

[@fluffy_fluffinity]

Regarding performance it really seems to not matter what you use. However, if you have specific features you want/need to use at least your choice of desktop environment becomes more important. At least for now. An example would be VR which does not work on GNOME currently because they didn't implement an important wayland protocol yet. This will hopefully be resolved in the coming months and in a few years we hopefully just use what we want and have the same gaming experience

[@shApYT]

I like Nobara because it is Fedora with sane defaults.

[@Tux256ND]

I don't get it. I play on Fedora. What would be the difference to any other distro?

[@xperience-evolution]

You could have tried Bazzite with Gnome to see if it is different from KDE

[@JamesMowery]

Really wish there was a baseline distro like Ubuntu to compare. Also 1% lows are what we're looking for. Average FPS is kinda meh.

[@yf4wx]

Hi, thanks for your videos. Please make a video about current state of VR games on Linux with steam

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I don’t own any VR hardware, so that’s not likely for a while, but maybe when I get a good headset!

[@yf4wx]

@@TheLinuxEXP i recommend to buy quest 3. You can play without PC or play with good graphics when connected to PC. Or work in VR with virtual monitors even under Linux (immersed app)

[@TrueBark]

I personally use Garuda in the Gaming version. Personally, I would only care for the ease of install and being up to date very easily. They ship with basically all the stuff I would install anyway.

[@Malix_Labs]

As "gaming distro" is a meme, Bazzite being an image is the only one that makes sense to me