/games/ - Video Games

That's the old version of Steam OS. The one you find on Steam decks is based on Arch, I believe. It doesn't really matter what distro you choose to game on though, because the experience is mostly going to be the same unless you're on a distro that only allows you to install free and open source software or has some other purpose. For a complete beginner, I'd recommend Mint or Debian, personally I use Debian. Just stay away from Ubuntu, Steam on Ubuntu and any of it's flavours (Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Kubuntu, etc) is absolute cancer.

Another thing to keep in mind, and I can't stress this enough, is that ==LINUX ISN'T WINDOWS==. You will have to eventually learn how to do things differently, and that means using the command line. There's GUI tools for most things now, but the CLI is the best thing about Linux. If you use Linux like people use Windows, it will eventually break.

Try the non-GUI version of Steam

>>61929
>SteamOS

Ubuntu is the first option, specially if you have old hardware. Both Debian Pop OS and Mint have given me trouble recently with old hardware (Basic shit like an old IDE hard drive, probably due to no compatible drivers found for the motherboard's chip set).

Both Pop OS and Mint have good reviews specifically for gaming, that is why I was trying to install those. If you have new hardware you can try them out.

I have never tried SteamOS.

Just use Bazzite.
It's SteamOS but for a desktop.
>But I never heard of–
Yes you did. They used to call it Steam Deck OS.
>Did Valve really
No, Valve KINDA and then the Fedora Project and therefore IBM took ownership.
>Do you use this thing–
No, of course not.
>Then why
It's literally Steam OS but for a desktop. Including not just your Steam nice-to-haves but also important desktop nice-to-haves such as normal usable fucking RPM support which you're not going to get from SteamOS because SteamOS proper is an immutable version of Arch, which are words that should not be used together.

>>61939
This.

Ubuntu is the Linux distro that's best at being a "just works" OS. If you like MacOS use the regular version with GNOME as the DE, if you're more of a Windows user then use either Kubuntu for KDE or, my personal favorite, Ubuntu Cinnamon, which is the better of all Linux DEs in my eyes and feels pretty close to a Windows experience, before Windows started to suck with 8, 10 or 11.

Isn't it nearly impossible to pirate games in linux because nobody bothers to crack it and upload it? Thats the only reason i have a windows installation.

Linux is hard to learn, you will need to study read wikis and learn to use Linux's forums.
Steam os is based in Arch, some of the hardest linux distros, I use Arch Btw.
I recommend you install Manjaro, because is Arch based.
This isn't an easy journey, better upgrade hardware and use W11.

>>62524
You are grown Linux brother, I recommend use old crack from the pirate bay, I use this for al my 2000s and early 2010s games.

>Windows 11 is too annoying to use
Did you try? I like Windows 11 - it is quite usable and pretty out of the box. I wish I could edit context menu, but I don't think I have any other grievances with it.

>>62536
what the fuck are you trying to say?

>>61929
The only 2 games keeping me on Windows: League of Legends and Skyrim. You might say they are garbage games, but I have yet to find games that can satiate me in the same way that those 2 games can. LoL has kernel-level anticheat. Skyrim I might be able to Wine, but it becomes more complicated when I want to run big modpacks.

How about windows 10?
It's pretty good when you remove the bloat.

It's definitely janky and who knows how it'll last, but Steam still works for me on Windows 8.1.

>>61931
>If you use Linux like people use Windows, it will eventually break
not really true. i set up kde neon for my dad and while he's using it just for watching videos and shit it still does it's job (watching shit on youtube or whatever else he's watching). point is that even someone like him can use linux as if it was windows - it's just a matter of configuration of ur system.

>>62567
Agreed, i think it is actually easier than windows. The only issue is that when there's a big version update it's always a bit of a gamble whether it breaks or not.

>>61929
Or you could just instal ltsc but proton just works well nowadays.

>>61929
I use EndeavourOS, it's Arch based and I do recommend it to people.

Checkout the following sites to see if your games of choice will work.
https://areweanticheatyet.com/
https://www.protondb.com/explore

But considering your post is over a month old, I think you've probably made the jump to Linux+GNU already.

>>62542
Nobody says Skyrim is a garbage game.

>>61929
dodge the current steam os.
that is steam os 2.0 and doesnt get love from Valve.

*apparently* there are plans for steam os 3 (the steamdecks steam os) on desktop but there is never word on that in version updates from valve.
I would be on steam os 3 on my desktop if it was out. for now, creaminstaller/ screamAPI are enough of a reason to keep me on windows for free DLC

>>62524
There's plenty of Linux cracks on the web, especially on trackers used by tech savvies like on the I2P network.
Or just learn how to crack game.

>>62336
I really wish they just make some packaged thing with all the changes and let people install whatever needed to fedora directly.
I don't trust distros like this at all and see no real reason for their existence aside from fragmentation.

>>61929
It really doesnt matter, games run the same on all major distributions. However, whatever you do I dont recommend Mint and PopOS becausr they are being reworked and (at least Mint I know from personal experience as one of my friends installed it recently) are in a very broken state.
The only real problem is with Mints desktop environment, it has some major issues rn.
Be prepared nvidia drivers can either be pretty easy or absolute hell depending on the distro.
Dont go for a DIY distro like arch (arch based is fine), nixos or gentoo.
If you choose a rolling release distro like endevouros mame sure to updste VERY often or else it can break the os. Always keep backups of imortant data and keep a bootable linux pendrive handy to recover data.
Its not as braindead as windows but you can game on it perfectly well, I havent used windows in years.
You can pirate games, just use lutris and wine and ypu can play any pirated windows game.

>>62679
Skyrim is a cool, but shallow game, not very interesting, just plain dumb fun

>>62999
If skyrim is shallow to you what game is deep?

I think your view of skyrim is just superficial so you miss what depth is there.

>>62524
>find the place where people distribute clean steam files
>download goldberg steam emu
>copy-paste libsteam_api.so from goldberg to CSF
it's really that simple.

i figure linux cracks are less common because, it really is trivial to do it yourself if you know what you're doing, and in general, you should know what you're doing if you're using linux.

>not YAAAARRRRRRRRRRRing his games


yikes

mega yikes

>>61929
Hey, that's the perfect argument to mock Collective Snout and Vissa tribute system!

You pretty much should make fun of the fact modern computers have no CD drives or floppy drives, while Windows lacks in-built comfy ways of launching PC-98 games or DOS era games as a "XX century 90's guy roleplay"

>>63131
I mean, think about it.

You should make a parody "Collective Snout" meme where some doggy with * for you-know-what hints Vissa to peddle an idea to instal a card reader into every single computer - just like there were CD drives or floppy drives back in the day.


Vissa thinks about turning their cards into DVDs instead and peddles a world of DVDs in computers "for privacy", by wrecking havoc on Steam.

Would be funny, I thinkk…

If you find that "Windows 11 is too annoying" then stick to windows, linux is much more annoying and limited unless you like to tinker. Those who say otherwise are activists. Sometimes you'll need manual intervention to not fuck your system up like this

With `20250613.12fe085f-5`, we split our firmware into several vendor-focused packages. `linux-firmware` is now an empty package depending on our default set of firmware.

Unfortunately, this coincided with upstream reorganizing the symlink layout of the NVIDIA firmware, resulting in a situation that Pacman cannot handle. When attempting to upgrade from `20250508.788aadc8-2` or earlier, you will see the following errors:

linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad103 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad104 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad106 exists in filesystem
linux-firmware-nvidia: /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad107 exists in filesystem

To progress with the system upgrade, first remove `linux-firmware`, then reinstall it as part of the upgrade:

# pacman -Rdd linux-firmware
# pacman -Syu linux-firmware

>>63137
Well you're using Arch, so no wonder your system occasionally shits itself. I'd hope a beginner would use a more casual distro. I've been using PopOS for half a year and it's working pretty well out of the box. Main gripe is the out of date packages, so I plan on switching to Fedora or something for my next distro.

>>63137
try Cedega