Bazzite or Cachyos. One is designed for Gaming and be harder to break, One is Designed for Performance.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Linux Gaming
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I've been pretty happy with Garuda Linux, Arch based. You'd be fine with near any of them though. Fedora base is amazing and stable and as well as the Arch based systems I use.
In the end it comes down to your hardware and what kind of gaming you want to do.
AMD gpus seem to work the best next with Intel GPUs. Nvidia can certainly work and be stable but has some drawbacks with Wayland from what I remember. (Maybe have been fixed?)
Anticheat is a crap shoot sometimes
I use Zorin OS, which is based on Ubuntu. Never had to set anything extra up, just installed Steam and everything worked.
I use Nobara and I recoomend it to all my friends (the ones who like linux anyway).
while its true that really no linux distro will have any significant better game performance than another, Nobara stands out to me because its made by GloriousEggroll (the same guy who makes the protonGE patches for steam) for his dad so that his dad can have a simple no-fuss gaming computer they can use to game together.
the specific things I like about it are how it helps you get the correct graphics drivers and game/controller fixups at installation, and comes with steam preinstalled. I also like how the Nobara software updater also handles flatpaks as well as regular packages, its my one stop graphical (or CLI) shop for downloading or updating any new programs.
I also like its themes and that its based on Fedora.
Another vote for Nobara.
Everything is packed in and ready to go. No having to install extra shit, no having to download and compile shit. Its just all there, and it works.
And has been not only the smoothest, easiest experience with linux gaming that I've had.. but just in general the everyday usability is smooth, easy and great too.
My only significant complaint is that all the tech help is on a discord. Which means its not indexable, archivable, or searchable via your search engine of choice... so if you don't have discord, or if the discord goes away... So does all the knowledge base and help. but thats a complaint I have about discord in general.
I'd stay away from Manjaro, personally. They've had a number of organisational and security fuck-ups that in my opinion makes it hard to take them seriously. Once is forgivable, but when they make the same mistake 3+ times it's just completely unforgivable and unprofessional.
Plus there's the whole "we hold Arch packages back two weeks but not AUR packages" - which means there could be dependency issues if you like installing stuff from AUR. In fairness though, they do request that users do not install AUR software on their site, so people do get warned about that.
Endeavour is good. If I was to go back to an Arch distro, it's what I'd use hands-down. Fundamentally just Arch with a better installer and a nice theme.
I'd also consider something Fedora based, like Fedora (duh), or Bazzite (if you want an atomic/immutable OS). Up-to-date, extensively tested. Bazzite even allows you to install it with out-of-the-box Gamescope support (in simple terms, you get some of the performance options and performance overlays that the steam deck has).
I can vouch for Fedora, I used plenty of distros from Arch to Ubuntu (and many of it's forks) and even weird outliers like Solus and Fedora is the most boring distro out of all of them, and I mean that in the best way. To quote a certain Todd: "It just works!" Do note you will probably want to enable RPM fusion (basically mandatory if you use nVidia) to get access to useful non open source and license encumbered packages Fedora can't ship by default (like media codecs). Other than that, install Steam and whatever other launchers you want and enjoy a boring, reliable distro.
Manjaro was the first distro I used and it happened twice that it wouldn't boot anymore just because I installed updates. To be fair, I did use the AUR but that's like half the reason to use Arch in the first place IMO.
After that I installed EndeavourOS and that always worked fine but nowadays I use Fedora.
I just installed EndeavourOS on a virtual machine to see what it was like. I can confirm, it's easy. It's definitely similar to other distros. Didn't feel like Arch at all.
If "more stable Arch" is why you're considering Manjaro, consider openSUSE Tumbleweed. They're rolling like Arch, but openQA and rebuilding everything after a compiler update seems to catch a number of issues.
If you want easier to install Arch, consider EmdeavorOS.
Manjaro is pretty much never the right answer.
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Bazzite if you want ezpz. CachyOS if you like tinkering, learning, and want to squeeze out that last bit of a peformance boost.
Bazzite. I’ll now accept my ban from the moderators.
Bazzite
Haven't used it myself, but I wanted to recommend it too. I've heard it's basically SteamOS for anything that isn't a Steam Deck.
Not only that. It can either be an almost 1:1 replacement for SteamOS (if you choose the -deck variant), or just a normal desktop distro with a lot of gaming optimizations, like the fsync-kernel, gamescope, hardware enablement, and quite a lot of QoL improvements.
It's basically a "Download the iso and begin gaming in 30 minutes"-distro.
It also ships some additional software that is optional, but quite neat. For example, I discovered LACT through it, which made over a year of GPU humming gone by allowing me to set fan curves.
For some diehard Arch users, it might be "bloated", but I find it just right. I never had the feeling that the included tools are useless, and those that might be (e.g. Discord, OBS, etc.) are only installed when you tick the checkbox in the installer.
Not if you play rocket league lol. Bazzite has an inexplicable bug where rocket league specifically only uses 40% of your GPU and 25% CPU regardless of any graphics settings or launch options. With occasional drops to 7-10fps.
EndeavourOS is the closest to vanilla arch, so i'd recommend that. There's no good distro for gaming, as long as the packages are up to date (so no debian) it's perfectly fine.
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I'm quite new to linux gaming, and so far I've only used CachyOS and EndeavourOS.
I have a dedicated gaming computer with an AMD GPU, only one hard drive and no critical data. Both were easy to install but I just used the default options, didn't try to do anything complicated.
Performance-wise, I didn't see any difference (but I don't care enough to run benchmarks so maybe one gives me 3% more FPS than the other). I play in 1440p.
I've had a few mishaps on CachyOS regarding updates (2 years ago) so I tried EndeavourOS and it's all been smooth since then.
I guess the answer to your questions depends a lot on your gaming style and on what is important to you.
If you're like me, you just want it to work and you do nothing else than gaming, then all the distros mentioned in this thread are about as good.
If you want to squeeze that extra 2 FPS, or if you want to game on older hardware, or if you also use that computer as part of your homelab... then there are going to be differences.
You might want to consider giving us more information on your needs/projects so that we can adjust our answers.
Welcome to linux gaming :)
EndeavourOS is what got me to daily drive Linux finally.
The installation is easy, it's got sane defaults and pre-installs most common dependencies.
I'd give Nobara a try. I've been using it for about 2 years and it's been pretty seamless. Already comes with a bunch of Linux gaming related software, like Steam, Lutris, Proton-up, etc.
It also has a bunch of gaming performance patches automatically installed.
If you're not technically inclined at all and want a console style experience, Bazzite is probably your best bet.
All that said, most mainstream distros will give you a fine gaming experience, you just might have to do some manual fiddling and installing yourself depending on the distro and the games you're playing.
A distro that comes with the latest video drivers.
Hannah Montana Linux
Ah, a connoisseur.
I have good experiences with both bazzite and nobara.
Bazzite is an immutable OS though. So installing additional packages requires you layering them on top. It works differently than the traditional OS. Though if you just use it for gaming and browsing you'll likely never notice the difference.
Garuda also markets itself as a mainly gaming distro. I don't have any real experience with that. I tried it, but it didn't feel like it was for me.
I've happily used the former two though.
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I made the mistake of installing Kubuntu 24.04 when I wiped Windows off my gaming machine. I regret it. It's not SO bad, but I don't like having Snaps shoved down my throat. Otherwise it's OK. And you still have great support online and tons of documentation.
The best alternative in my opinion would be Arch via the Endeavor OS distro. It's easier to install than standard Arch, it has an increasingly large community, awesome documentation (Arch Wiki), and is packages are up to date. And I think it's a rolling release? (Correct me if I'm getting)
Otherwise if you want stability, I'd suggest Debian stable. They just released a new stable version not too long ago so it's not too outdated. It's incredibly stable. However, over time the software isn't updated to the latest releases for stability's sake. It takes two years before they release a new version kinda like Ubuntu LTS.
Edit:
I should add that with flatpaks you don't really need the latest and greatest packages in your distro anymore. It's not really a big deal if you're not on the latest GNOME or KDE Plasma. It still works fine. Application wise you can get all the latest apps on Flathub anyway, regardless of distro or how outdated your Linux is.
If I need to reinstall, I'll be using Debian (stable). I don't want any hassle.
Archlinux
Imo. You shouldn't worry about "which distro is best for gaming" since they are all the same under the hood (mostly). There are no real performance benefits with different distros, so just pick one that feels and looks the best for you. I've heard that PopOS seems to be quite friendly for newcomers so it should be a good place to start exploring.
Pop_OS?
Edit: Apprently the anwer is "no".
So far so good for me. I switched last week after dual booting Pop OS and Windows 10 for a few months. I used to use Mac OS X back in college and missed the interface, so Pop OS's implementation of GNOME felt good.
As for OP's question, someone else with more knowledge can answer if a specific distro has the best drivers/compatibility with games. Pop OS comes with NVIDIA drivers which works for me.
I also wanted a full desktop OS. Some of the distros will focus on being a controller-friendly frontend for gaming rather than a desktop OS.
It might be helpful to try something like Ventoy for any distros that support a live CD. You won't be able to fully test gaming performance, but Ventoy lets you try multiple distros on one disk.
Other questions for OP: What type of GPU are you using? What is your current OS?
Whatever works best for you. No distro is fundamentally better suited for gaming than others.
The only one i used is CachyOS so its the best out of the three
My best experience with gaming on linux was on nobara(gnome)
I run endeavourOS and has done so for a few years already. I love it. For convenience sake I recommend you install flatpak and a kde-discover/gnome-software just for your everyday apps.
I game on a 1070ti and Nvidia is working fine for me on x11 Gnome. Give it a try :)
Personally gaming on Fedora without trouble. I've heard good things about Nobara - https://nobaraproject.org/author/gloriouseggroll/
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