Admittedly, the last time I tried it was maybe 5 years ago. I used ubuntu (can’t remember which distro) but I recall having to fiddle a lot with drivers and WINE. Is the scenario still the same today?
With the horrors of Win11 widely talked about, I’m thinking of flirting with linux once more. Is it a good idea at this time? Or is gaming on linux still niche as it once was?
What is your distro and what tips and tricks/perspectives you can share with a newbie like me :)
Manjaro user here, it works fine for me Using it for years now
This! Manjaro is most of the benefits of Arch (which SteamDeck runs) with easier installation and stability for common end users. One thing to note is that Nvidia drivers still suck on linux. You can make them work, but AMD cards tend to be pretty much plug and play these days
I do have one note of caution for anyone considering Manjaro: For most uses it’s totally fine, but if you plan to make heavy use of the AUR, tread carefully – because it updates on a different cycle from vanilla Arch, there can sometimes be unforeseen breakages in AUR packages. If it’s a gaming-only machine, this will likely not be a problem, but if you plan to also daily drive it as a general purpose workstation, this might be a deal breaker.
@sambeastie @OwlPaste What kind of problems did you run into?
It’s been several years since I worked with Manjaro, so I don’t remember which specific apps I ran into problems with, but the general idea is this:
Manjaro holds back packages for several weeks behind vanilla Arch, so packages from the AUR are often built on versions of their dependencies that aren’t yet available to Manjaro users. This can result in apps not installing properly (or at all), or apps that were previously installed without issue suddenly breaking when they attempt to update.
This isn’t actually specific to Manjaro – other Arch-derivatives like Garuda can also run into this problem. You’ll find that any Arch-based distro that makes significant changes to Arch (like holding back packages, or distributing versions of packages different to the ones in the Arch repositories) can have issues if it’s attempting to use things from the AUR. Arch derivatives that make no changes to the base system, and just use the vanilla Arch repositories don’t have this problem. Endeavour OS is an example of this, as the only changes it makes are additive – they have their own extra packages, but don’t change any core functionality from vanilla Arch.
EposVox on youtube ran into some issues with Garuda about a year ago, and those are of the same flavor as what I experienced on Manjaro, even if they aren’t identical issues.