My current rig is featuring an I7 10th gen and a nvidia 4070ti. Is there a distro that you recommend me to use as a linux beginner that is also good for gaming and streaming, that will work with my pc parts? Because I heard that intel and nvidia are famous for causing issues on Linux.
Haven’t had a problem on Bazzite. Intel i9 and nvidia 3060.
First pick a desktop environment, currently KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon are the best.
- Gnome: Opinionated design like apple
- KDE: tons of options.
- Cinnamon: A bit fewer options than KDE but still a lot.
All of them are very robust and have a massive user base.
Then pick a base to operate on. Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint are all good options.
- Fedora and Ubuntu are good for newer hardware and 99% of the time just works.
- Mint just works all the except for newer hardware.
Nvidia GPUs are not a big issue but you have to install the proprietary driver yourself for best performance and fewest bugs.
My pick for you is something your friend uses if you have a friend on Linux otherwise Fedora KDE or Kubuntu.
There’s a lot of info in these comments and a ton of it is good.
I will say that the best advice is to boot from a USB and try out a system for a bit. You can easily swap around that way without a commitment.
I will also say that my opinion is to start with Mint. It’s similar enough to windows in layout/workflow to feel familiar and is “boring” in a stable, easy to use way.
Use it and learn Linux. I say learn, because it doesn’t matter what the OS looks like as much as how it works, and Linux (any flavor) works differently than windows. Learn those idiosyncrasies and then of you decide you want to try something else then you’re up to speed to move on and judge a different system with a baseline.
Any and all advice anyone gives you is going to be heavily weighted by their personal experiences, which is not bad, but also may not be your experience. Truly the best thing to do, if you are willing, is to try a bunch.
Download several different distributions. Get as many USB sticks as you reasonably can. Flash a different distro to each drive. Boot to them one at a time, and try them out. See what you like about one versus another. Hopefully you find one that just “clicks” for you, and then you actually install it to the computer. From there, if everything works, great - enjoy your computer. However, if you immediately run into problems, just go install your number 2 favorite and see if those problems exist there. There’s a reasonable chance they won’t.
Good places to start:
- Mint
- Debian
- PopOS
- Fedora (check out their “spins”, there are a lot of flavors of Fedora)
- Bazzite
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
- Cachy
- Endeavor
- Garuda
(There is a thing called Ventoy which kinda lets you use several distros from one usb stick, but I’ve also seen several distro’s instructions warn against using it so maybe it isn’t the best choice for a new convert). Also, obligatory stay away from Manjaro. It isn’t worth it as a new convert…
This should be the answer to all these questions!
From my experience running a setup with a RTX 3080, I recommend CachyOS. It has all the latest Nvidia drivers out of the box and you can download additional gaming packages in the “Hello” window. You can try other OSs but I found this one to be the most capable and versatile for me. As long as you make backups regularly and customize your experience with caution you’ll have a good time.
Just use Fedora.
Fedora Atomic! Kinoite rocks
I went straight to uBlue Aurora and I’m very happy with this distro.
any modern distro should work so if you want þe go to beginner distro try mint!
I have similar specs and use pop!_os with no problems. I’ve found it to be great for gaming.
I started with a Steam Deck. Now I’m running PopOS on my Framework 13 and Bazzite on a home theatre PC. I’ve had far fewer issues with them than any flavor of Windows.
I can’t go back. I won’t.
The desktop environment you choose is really down to what you prefer:
Like trackpads? Gnome
Like the Windows desktop (and/or like customization)? KDE
Like windows XP flat UI or brutally simple UI? Cinnamon/XFCE
Want to dive into the unknown cutting edge? Cosmic
Since you specifically mentioned gaming and streaming, a great option for you as a beginner is Nobara.
It is built specifically for gaming and streaming and has many of the tools pre-installed and makes DaVinci Resolve setup really easy (is a challenge otherwise lol). It’s based on Fedora, heavily modified kernel for performance and makes Fedora ready for gaming out of the box (which is why I discourage Fedora for gaming as a beginner, that takes a lot of set up for gaming and nvidia).
Nobara is also great for beginners because it comes with some brilliant GUI options - apps that let you click onto the specific drivers, packages you might need and the Welcome app includes options step by step of what to install. You will mostly use such an app for updates, so it takes away a lot of the fear of the terminal (but you can still use no problem). It also includes some great options for streaming apps you’ll need.
Also comes with KDE as its main suggestion (Nobara version of it or pure KDE, very little difference, basically the same with a few extra Nobara icons added i think). KDE is a fantastic DE, the workflow is similar to Windows out of the box and you won’t be unfamiliar with it, great one to start with. Plus its so customisable so you can get it looking very different from windows if you wish (which i did with mine).
They have a great Discord too if you wanna ask any questions about specific games or issues. It’s basically Fedora but gentler learning curve and everything you need ready to go out of the box
For us dummies that are just getting started, and most of us are only doing it now because gaming has kept us on Windows, it would be nice if there were a Linux distribution that was singlularly focused on gaming.
bazzite
I had very few issues with a GTX 970 and i7-4790k. The only issues I hear about with either any more is the linux kernel not supporting some of the features of newer GPUs (e.g. I know ray-tracing was a pain-point at one point).
I don’t like recommending distros based on such a general use case, mainly because every distro can be tweaked and configured to exactly what you want. Instead, you should research the different mainline distros that have been around for decades—Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, NixOS, OpenSuse, Slackware—and see what they’re about, what sets them apart from others, what the maintainers’ philosophies are, and what kind of package management system they work with. Once one sounds better than the others, look into it and try it out.
#Dos and Don’ts:
Don’t try a niche distro. They are harder to troubleshoot and less likely to be actively maintained.
Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.
Don’t dual-boot with windows. This just solidifies your reliance on windows, especially if you’re the type to give up on problem-solving issues that you didn’t have in Windows. It also can cause issues with making Linux unbootable.
Do try a live usb with persistence before you commit entirely. It’s not exactly the same as a complete install, but it’s close enough to let you know how the OS feels and what hardware will or won’t work with it. Some people say try a VM first, but that won’t have direct hardware access.
Do problem solve the little things. Anything that irks you or bothers you or just slows down your workflow. It doesn’t have to be an actual bug or glitch, just anything that could be better. This not only solidifies the feeling of ownership over your OS—you no longer have to settle for anyone else’s lousy design choices—it teaches you the resources for troubleshooting larger issues.
Do plan around things not being plug and play at first. Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working. This won’t always be the case, but it will irk you a lot less when it is if you expect it. The more you make time for solving these issues now, the less time they’ll take up in the future (either they’ll be gone, or you’ll immediately know how to fix them, or your troubleshooting will be more streamlined).
Do set aside time to learn about Linux “under the hood.” You don’t have to become a computer scientist, but it will save you a lot of headaches, show you cool things you can do, and make your computer a smoother experience. It especially helps if you take the time to learn as they come up: e.g. installer asks you what “bootloader” you want, but you’re not sure what that is, what it does, or why it’s necessary? Now’s the best time to take a little learning detour.
Do ask questions on forums.
Don’t listen to the people who shame you for asking.
Do listen to the people who try to show you a better way of doing things, even if it’s not your way.
Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.
As a reasonably new Linux user, who’s merrily used Kubuntu for the past year, what makes Ubuntu sucky? Aside from dabbling in Asahi and a little bit of Arch, just to see why everyone loves it (I don’t think my use-case is advanced enough to really tell the difference), my only real experience with Linux has been Mint and Kubuntu, both of which have been fine for me.
This isn’t a bad-faith query, btw, I’m genuinely interested in what the actual differences are between Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora.
There’s nothing I can say to convince you Ubuntu is sucky if you don’t personally experience problems with it/have the occasional “I wish I could do this, but I guess it’s not possible” thoughts—spoiler: it’s usually possible, just not with that distro; this is true for all distros though, there will always be things they cannot do that others can.
That being said, my biggest gripe with Ubuntu, besides canonical’s geologic-paced attempts to make it profit-driven (which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned user-friendliness), is Snaps. I understand the motivation behind them, but the implementation was just sucky for many nitpicky reasons that I don’t really care to enumerate rn.
I also just don’t see much value in downstream for my needs. I can basically turn Debian into a Ubuntu clone if I want to, and my packages will still largely be supported by upstream maintainers. For bespoke distros it makes sense, but those are usually ill-maintained or hobby projects that update at glacial speeds.
I’m not saying that Debian >>>>> Ubuntu. It’s better just enough that I’d recommend Debian before I would recommend Ubuntu.
People don’t like Ubuntu because they’re(Ubuntu) trying to make money with it. For end users, it’s can be a non issue because “pro” is free for 5 computers. But seeing the paywall for some is really off putting to some (myself included).
Snap really sucks and is Ubuntu’s attempt at a private garden. I hate it so much.
But yet I still use Ubuntu because it works, and if it doesn’t work there’s a post somewhere with details on how to fix it.
I’ve been using Linux off and on since Red Hat 5.2 ish era. I can handle the tech geek stuff. I just don’t want to.
+1
Hate pro, but more than that - hate Snap! Switched to Mint and couldn’t be happier, it was seamless. I already only use none of Ubuntu defaults, so switching to mint and copying my dotfiles was almost as if I didn’t even do anything. On my other machine, I just uninstalled Snap, which is close, but I feel like switching to Mint entirely would be even better. I just can’t bring myself to backup everything to do a fresh install.
I just deal with snap and don’t use it unless I have to. The pro thing is kind of stupid. I have 6 computers and vms on pro. There is no actual check preventing it from working. They have some bug where it appears like your have double the computers checking in sometimes. So when I had 5, it’d show 10 sometimes. So now it just shows 6 or 12.
Everything works fine. I’m ignoring it for now.
Someday I’ll switch, but until that day, I’m chillin’.
Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working.
Alternately, install Linux Mint. Search the software store for Steam. Click Install. Let Steam do it’s first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.
It usually is this simple for any distro anymore. My advice is mostly tailored to worst-case scenarios so that people don’t get overly pissy when things don’t Just Work™
Yes. Great point. I do try to give each game a test run before I schedule a group of friends to play it together. I guess I did that on Windows, as well.
When I was a big windows gamer the result tended to just be it works or it doesn’t, on my current hardware. But maybe that’s just gaming today. I think we have better optimization options, in general, now.
I’m not sure when things changed, as my journey was Windows PC Gamer to console gamer to SteamDeck to Linux PC gamer.
I think PC gaming, in general, got much nicer while I was only playing consoles.
Check https://bazzite.gg/
I use open suse. It’s fine https://news.opensuse.org/2025/01/16/gaming-on-linux-how-os-stacks-up/
