I’m ditching Ubuntu. Thinking of switching to Debian.
Has anyone used this, or something similar to set up their Debian gaming setup?
This got me thinking. Do I need to install anything special to Debian 13 to be able to play games? Or can I play them with a normal Debian out of the box?
If you want a Debian based Linux distro that is gaming focused, I would suggest to you either:
PopOS!
https://system76.com/pop/
Made by System76, who also actually make their own hardware as well, pre-built pcs, etc, and also successfully lobbied at least Colorado to not have a law that mandates age verification built into OS’s…
PopOS! Is essentially Ubuntu but less shitty, and is also making their own Desktop Environment COSMIC, that is basically an attempt at ‘GNOME, but better.’
There is also PikaOS.
https://wiki.pika-os.com/en/home
PikaOS is basically to Debian as Nobara is to Fedora: Its the base OS, but with a suite of cutting edge/bleeding edge optimizations geared toward improving gaming performance.
PopOS is in active development and I would strongly recommend NOT using it, especially if you’re not an experienced Linux user.
System76 makes great hardware but their OSs leave a lot to be desired right now.
Ah.
I thought they had actually finally finished COSMiC?
Apparently not?
Back 5 ish years ago, I was able to run Steam and the Index on it, back in Proton 6/7 days, via installing Steam from Debian sources.
(obligatory acknowledgement of meme numbers)
Hell I had RDR2 working on it, even online worked up untill the point Rockstar decided all linux gamers are hackers.
Anyway, back when it was their sort of modified version of GNOME, I quite liked it, because it was both easy for newbie to understand the basics, but also allowed significant customizability and tweak ability for more experienced users.
I had some fun with Pop two-ish years ago. it felt very smooth, until it wasn’t. everything collapsed very quickly after that lol
part of the problem is that its not actually out of active development as you noted, which is definitely a communication issue from S76
their github is absolutely slammed with issues, many of which are problems that would be common for casual desktop usage https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-epoch/issues
I have a lot of hope for the future of pop and cosmic, there’s a good community around it. it just has a long way to go, and is not typically something people who are looking at Debian (renowned for its stability and reliability) would be interested in, in my opinion.
Absolutely fair.
Personally I switched over to primarily using Bazzite… so… I kind of just figured that they… would have basically finished at least v1.0 of COSMIC by now.
Apparently not.
But! Desktop Environments are fucking hard, so I am glad they are still pursuing it.
But but, yeah if its still basically in Open Beta, yeah probably not the best recommend for a fair deal of people.
Agreed.
I enjoy PopOS, but you can see that quite a few things have to be solved for it to be perfectly daily driveable.
For now I only use it on my HTPC as it just has to start Kodi and let it do its thing.