hey there, im looking for the best distro for swapping entirely from windows 10 to linux, while keeping my steam library useable. i have over 300+ games and would like to use the distro thats most likely to support most of them now, and into the future.
thats basically it. just looking for recommendations, warnings, do’s and dont’s, etc. and maybe a guide on removing windows entirely once its all said and done. i dont want microsoft having access once i make the move to linux.
they disgust me.
edit: thanks for the advice, super helpful everyone!
After doing an exhaustive review of all the latest fully riced out ‘gaming’ distro’s, I found going the conservative route with Debian based the better choice. Because I’m a busy person I chose MX Linux due to the excellent included tools & utilities to make life easier. Steam works flawlessly on it.
There are others worth checking out but I went with Nobara, it’s been the easiest distro to switch to for gaming on my main PC. It’s developed by the same guy who develops Proton (the compatibility layer that Steam uses to be able to play Windows games on Linux) so I trust his work. Lots of tools and configs out-of-the-box. Very beginner friendly and nice looking too.
It doesn’t matter much if you choose a “all purpose” or “gaming” distro. They are mostly the same.
I’m personally a huge fan of Bazzite. It just works and you get a very robust and user friendly piece of software.
if this is your first time, then please buy a new SSD for Linux. You can replace the windows drive with the new drive, and have no worries of deleting data you might have forgotten. Your data is worth a lot more than the cost of an SSD.
I’m using pop os (24.04 cosmic de in alpha state) and it’s been my daily driver for about a month now. Generally everything works without fussing. I’m eagerly waiting cosmic beta, but to be honest I’m not sure I’m expecting anything to get “fixed” because everything is already working.
Regarding games, some things need a tiny bit of fussing (open game, unmaxamize and then remaximize screen… Just as an example) and some don’t work quite yet, but I’ve been shocked at how many games “just work” even though they’re not made for Linux.
Have gnome installed… If you load the game in gnome first time, then it fixes these issues on cosmic too it seems 90% of the time
I just use regular Fedora 42 Workstation and it works without issues. Bazzite is basically gaming focused Fedora 42 Silverblue (immutable) but I personally don’t like immutability.
CachyOS is worth a try as well, that’s a gaming focused Arch distro, though I just like Fedora too much and didn’t enjoy using CachyOS
Honestly though, any of those will work fine for you, especially if you have no point of reference to compare in between them.
Just a reminder that Linux was never intended for gaming and shouldn’t be used solely for gaming. However, you can find distros that claim to be optimized for gaming. If you want a Linux-based console, check out the Steam Deck. You will not be able to play most of the main popular games.
