The point of "gaming distros" is that you get the most up to date hardware support and all the other stuff you need installed as part of the maintained and at least somewhat tested package.
The strength of Bazzite is in its stability and ability to rollback easily. You can also try out a beta version without worrying about botching your system. Just pin the latest stable and rebase the beta.
@@bobbybyrne1899That is literally the point. Bazzite is the SteamOS alternative, with more updated packages. It serves it's purpose by simply existing, it never claimed to be THE Gaming Distro.
tbh i don‘t need a gaming distro but gonna say i did switch from a debian based to fedora simply because of the hugely outdated drivers that made some games unplayable (nvidia drivers) then again it also introduced me to the pains that is wayland on nvidia
And Ubuntu please, thats still is the most used distro (unless someone believes the running joke from distrowatch that is bombarded with fanboy server clicks).
@@aspacegamer92Yep. It's all fun and games until you as a Linux newbie has a game that literally won't start for zero reason and no error codes to work with. I have seen people leaving ProtonDB reports in 2024 about Games being borked while running Linux Mint Kernel 5.18 when we are about to hit Kernel 7.0 like good lord. Ubuntu/Debian is for Stability & not for Gaming as a priority, as such when Wine or Proton does something experimental to progress Linux Gaming, you might not benefit from it, even if your kernel is up to date. Gamescope on Ubuntu is literally 2yrs old as a .deb & building it from scratch won't work because the packages you need are literally not downloadable ATM. Tested on Pop_OS.
I don't see why they would be different. If drivers and linux kernel are the same, perfomance should be within marhin of error. Games do not care about your package manager or desktop environment.
@@Fedor_Dokuchaev_Colorin the words of Yosemite Sam, *I hate you rabbit!* 🤣 I care about these things, but you’re absolutely correct, the software doesn’t care. I just don’t like Debian or its grandchildren. Fedora is a love hate relationship. I actually like Arch, but I have run into an issue with a software package I must have for work. I try to avoid distros with only one or two people working on it, ie Nobora seems to have one developer.
If you are going to compare fps in games you need to compera de 1% and 0.1% lows, this is because on the same hardware the average is always going to be under the margin of error, the drops are more interesting to measure OS impact. Other than the point of gaming distros is to streamline the user experience and avoid having to waste time installing or patching stuff so you can teabag some noobs. And completely unrelated I recently discovered PikaOS which is technically a gaming focused distro and has a few interesting thing.
Average FPS is not the only important performance measure (1% low, loading times...), and these distros are not only about performance, there's also hardware compatibility, software compatibility, stability... A comparison with Windows could also have been interesting, just an idea Past this, great video, I was just wondering which one to try as I'm looking for a replacement for Arch (too many arches to manage at once :'-))
You probably already know but, for the sake of any that don't, it was only called Genesis in North America. For the rest of the world it was called the MegaDrive.
I'm honestly not surprised these results are so comparable. At the end of the day, for the most part, it's relatively the same software running on the same hardware, with different packaging strategies, but still the linux kernel running the same translation layers on the same hardware.
The measure, as always, is to check and see how many contributors a distribution has. Most of these gaming distros are very small to one person teams. Debian with flatpak Steam and Bottles for everything else has been perfectly fine for me, performs well, and I know my OS will be well supported and stable. Not to crap on these other distros. The work is needed and vital to grow the gaming space on Linux. I know especially with Nobara, GE is considered an "end user" so he can ship a bunch of stuff in there that would get Microsoft's lawyers angry if those things were shipped with Fedora itself. I personally found Nobara incredibly unstable (and I'm running a full AMD setup 5800x3d and 6950xt). Sleep didn't function at all and sometimes it would just fail to boot completely.
Couple of things: 1. Test Garuda 2. Where is 1% low? It's more worthy info than avg 3. Try this test with different screen resolution if it's possible 4. I've got same problem like you with Holo, but mine problem was with Ubuntu Server. Try different programs to make bootable USB. I've tried Balena Etcher and Rufus on Windows and it doesn't work. Until I've used Unetbootin. Then booting went perfectly without freezes, errors or bootloop after choosing USB in boot menu.
A number of Arch based distros not included here, such as Garuda. I would have been interested to see CachyOS also. They have a customised kernel out of the box and a bunch more customised kernels where that came from, so at least you could see what different kernels offer.
Did you run your benchmarks from gamescope or the desktop environment? That's the actual unique performance feature with these distros since it's just setup to run gamescope in an exclusive mode with all the scripts & patches in-place for gamescope to run well. It gives you a more UI/controller friendly way to launch games at lower resoultions, impose frame-rate limitations, and upscale games with the built in stuff in the side menu. Then there's decky for any extra functionality you might happen to need.
@@TheLinuxEXP Cool, very interesting comparison. So the main benefits are if you want the console-like and controller first UI for a PC at that point. As well as mangohud or other tools built in. The power limiters aren't terribly useful in a non portable use case like this.
Nice, wondered about this myself lately. Investigated it and concluded whats needed is only a simple script for minimal beneftis. Looking forward if I missed something. Going to look the video after this comment 😅
Funny thing is that even TuxedoOS have a non standaard Tweaked kernel. Basically TuxedoOS is in the same category as Bazzite, Nobara, ChimeraOS and HoloISO etc.
5:17 - No, that's not true, it's actually "Phenomenal cosmic POWWEEERR ... ity bity living space". 😉 Negative 15 points from whomever doesn't get the reference.
@@LordHonkInc It got remade and it's an absolute classic, which they probably grew up watching dozens and dozens of times. E2A: And ... they probably have more internet points than they know what to do with, so it'll be like a nepobaby and parking fines. 🙂
I actually choose bazzite for multiple reasons 1. It isn't just maintained by one person 2. preinstalled steam works without any issue. I installed some other distros before I tried bazzite (fedora, taxedo and opensuse tumbleweed) and they all had problems with steam. I now learned the fix. But on bazzite it just worked 3. The immutable part can be good, because I know it should just work every time I want to use it. This also has some drawbacks, like custom icons not working for me that well 4. It is mostly easy to use. There are some tools I needed to use the command line, but even that is rarely needed So yeah for me, it feels like a normal distro but ready to use the moment you are done installing it
What was the reason for running the games from Gnome on ChimeraOS? That's what a ChimeraOS user would do. Not sure if it makes a difference, but the SteamOS-session should be more barebones on the background compared to Gnome which might give some more performance. So it's a bit weird to compare it this way, especially given that the Horizon-result seemed surprisingly lower.
@@TheLinuxEXP not really, it's primarily a gamescope-based distro. Not sure, but I'm guessing all performance related improvements in it were done there. Gnome is only included to also have a desktop for tinkering, but it's selling point is having a gamescope-based setup meant for a console-like gaming PC. That's how its performance should be considered, not as a desktop, which it is not.
It would be interesting to do a deep dive on BAZZITE OS. I use NOBARA 39 for desktop and gaming purposes. I recently had to swap from NOBARA GNOME to KDE base as GNOME will no longer work with my processor (to old). My PC still runs an AMD FX6300 Black Edition processor (overclocked to run 4.5MHz) with an RX580 GPU, 12GB 1333MHz Corsair Vengeance Memory. Running the following trio of games - Battlestar Galactica: DEADLOCK, Control and Talos Principle 2 my computer can still run games a solid 60FPS, or very close to it. It would be interesting to find out if BAZZITE could do the same. I would also be interested to find out if BAZZITE works with older processors and motherboards.
At 0:32 "....three cubic meters worth of space...." You have computer cases that big in France?? Can you post some pictures?? What type of rig are you running inside those cases???? Totally awesome!!
@@TheLinuxEXP I remember a case that I got back in the late 1990s. It was a case that was recommended by MaximumPC. Really nice case!! Came up to mid thigh on me, and solidly enough built that I sat on it on occasion. (I weighed 225 lb, or 100 kilograms) It had four 5 1/4 drive external bays drives, I don't know how many 3 1/2 external 3 1/2 drive bays. It had a huge amount of internal 3 1/2 inch bays. It was also pretty wide....it was huge. I built six different computers in that thing....still one of the best cases I've ever had.
Bazzite is cool. I've been using it with the Blue Build system for a year or so. Ever since I've used Universal Blue, I don't see the point in distro hopping anymore. If I want to change stuff, I just rebase. And for all my setup and configs, Fedora Atomic limitations meant my setups are already portable via Nix Home-Manager, Flatpak, and Distrobox. It's also super stable even with the auto-updates -- worst case I just rebase to an image from a few days ago and tell the maintainers which day's image did the issue started. I would love for you to cover it. In particular, the Blue Build system, yafti, and ujust makes whatever whatever thing I want to set up super easy. I outright recommend it, as long as nothing you do needs kernel modules and such (still haven't gotten around to how to use their akmods plugin for Blue Build).
Been meaning to get into Linux for a while as a Windows user. The recent recall feature really pushed me. I tried Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora on VMs and finally decided to go with Fedora. Downloaded Fedora Worstation 40, burned it to a USB, but no matter what I do, the installer was stuck at "_" and apparently its a common issue for certain generations of Surface owners. Arch installer boots no issue. So I went with the second best in my head, a Fedora based distro. Went with Nobara. Sure, I'm a bit bummed that it ain't Fedora 40, but it performs better than W11 in many ways and I'm just happy to be out of W11
I use MX Linux KDE and even use the Flatpak version of both Steam and Heroic lol. The main games I play (Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, MechWarrior 5, CS2) work great in either the latest Proton GE (Proton-Up-qt) or the basic Proton Experimental that comes with Steam. They work so well, in fact, that they ALL run better than on Windows, in terms of FPS, which is hilarious, considering CS2 is the only native game out of that bunch, and everything else is running via Proton. RX 5500 XT, Asus 75 Hz FreeSync monitor, and I use the framesync. I was running HoloISO for over a year before packing my computer away to make room for an addition to the family and to move, and as soon as I got setup in the new place, installing MX Linux KDE was first in priority.
Nice comparison :) Its good getting a general idea of performance differences between distros every once in a while. Its not something thats often covered.
i can say for myself having just switched yesterday from Win 11 to Linux myself - gaming distros make a massive difference. i run a brand new RX 7900 GRE with my R7 5700X - tried Ubuntu and Mint and fount out neither had a kernel that supported my GPU, it was too new and obscure. so i went ahead and installed Garuda, and it worked smoothly out of the box. if you're running new or cutting edge hardware, you might need a bleeding edge gaming distro, like it or not.
@Cresimi i tried Ubuntu 24.04 first actually, the logic was that it would work with my GRE right off the bat given it's a brand new release barely over a month old - unfortunately it didn't, got consistent game crashes over and over (Resident Evil 4 Remake, Immortals of Aveum, Hellblade 2) and nothing booted. the problem is GRE stands for Golden Rabbit Edition, it's a China exclusive card that just got a worldwide release a few months ago. it's pretty new and (frankly) niche, enthusiast and weird XD it's a cut down 7900 XT that costs about $530 ish and uses a cut down N31 die with 80CU's, so significantly more than the 7800 XT, but it's paired with 16GB of 18GB/s memory to keep costs down. it's a weird card but an enthusiasts dream that overclocks nicely
If performance patches in these gaming distros have any significant impacts they would probably mainly affect things in CPU and/or io-limited schenarios rather than when you are limited by the GPU (which you likely will be with this system in most cases.) Granted as you and others have noted I think the main thing that makes a difference is using date graphics drivers and base system. (and also avoid steam snap if using ubuntu.....)
The point of a gaming distro isn't performance...they all perform more or less the same. It's to save config and install time. Some people think everything they didn't install themselves is "bloat" but many of us just want a system with common gaming utilities pre-installed. That's what I like about Bazzite, it's a solid gaming base with the utilities one would expect of a gaming install.
One gaming centric distro that does have a purpose is lakka. It's perfect for making a custom controller friendly emulator console type thing. You could always just use retroarch too but the idea of having an OS that is entirely meant for emulation means there's no additional bloat and it can even run on a raspberry pi with the ARM ISO. Perfect for making a tiny little console you can plug into your TV and tuck away and game on the big screen. 6:07 i didnt see the sponsor tho, I have sponsorblock... Now I'm kinda curious as to what it is.
Fedora, Fedora, arch, arch, Ubuntu. In general, having a good kernel version and AMD hardware helps tons, particularly on the graphics end. Nobara can game, but it is NOT gentle on light hardware configurations.
Maybe I should give Nobara another shot. 🤔 Garuda is my choice for Arch-based distros and it's been smooth sailing. The opposite of spartan, I'd say. 😅
10:19 I really would love your complete take on the distro in a video, well fedora Silverblue can be rebased to bazzite, pretty rare but good if you think about it
I think that the main point about gaming distros is the user experience, not the performance. I'm using Nobara on my living room console PC and I'm quite happy with it, a dedicated video from you would be much appreciated. :-)
I was looking for a video like this. Very nice. It would be better to include 1% lows [someone else already mentioned this]. Also, adding a comparison between Windows 10/11 and Linux distros would be great. I'm considering abandoning gaming, on Windows 11, but I'm not 100% convinced yet.
I would never dare to change the simple installation of steam and x game on windows for the stability comparation, installation of many apps+thousands dependencies on Linux
Gaming distros aren't about performance, they're about convenience. I've never heard anyone with a clue argue otherwise, except for corner cases like when the Steam Deck first launched. Even the Deck now performs just fine with other distros installed, as long as they're recent/up-to-date enough.
I've seen opensuse perform pretty well compared to some other popular distros, but that comparison was from a couple years ago. Would be cool to see another video with it, and including 1% lows.
I would love to see Garuda Linux and Regata.. not necessarily for performance, but ease of install, ease of getting games up and running with different launchers (Epic, Steam, etc).
@@TheLinuxEXP i recommend to buy quest 3. You can play without PC or play with good graphics when connected to PC. Or work in VR with virtual monitors even under Linux (immersed app)
Running Linux Mint, no real issue with playing games on it, I think i stick with mint because it just works. I did some hooping but always come back to it.
The main cons about gaming dedicated distros is about reliability. We never know when that single individual maintainer will stop maintaing the distro. The cadency of the updates can be subpar. Why would you be looking for distro copies that adds just applications and take those risks? Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSuse, they all offer a group of people dedicated to pack the kernel and delivers it reliably. A lot of documentation, support for secure boot, etc... It isn't a in dept review. This is more to help to see the non-sense about some of the "gaming" distros. For future content, I'd like to see if we can have some comparison of thunderbolt and oculink setups for eGPUs in linux. Perhaps adding some variants of thunderbolt, 4 and 5 or USB 4 v1 and v2 versus Oculink.
Thank you, Nick, for testing that gaming distros. I was always wondering what is the difference between gaming distros and the usual distros. In the past I also used Regata OS and Garuda Dragonized Linux, maybe you can test this two as well.
For very gaming-centric distros that are meant to essentially act like a console, I probably would have preferred the results in gamescope. ChimeraOS especially really isn't meant to be run in the desktop environment.
well, this video has its problems as pointed in some of the comments. like no 1% lows, desktop mode (for distros that are supposed to be gamed on in console mode) and not testing cachyos (which is great in my experience, doubling fps in a 1000fps game (osu!, of course it doesn't scale like that to normal games), and less xruns in music production), Garuda and some others
Ok, just out of curiosity. As far as I know, every distribution does provide the Linux kernel with a bunch of tools. The kernel provides some switches that might impact the overall speed. But with all distributions using the same kernel, assuming they did not apply some wonky patches and kept them to themselves. They all use the same infrastructure in the sense of systemd and wayland. So, the only difference would then be the choice of tools, pre-dominatly the desktop. But everything could've been the same. Even the drivers. I would expect a meaningful difference inbetween different kernel releases. I actually won't expect a meaningful difference between those variants and my default debian sid. Although, that would be interesting. The gaming distributions remind me a bit of the tonewood discussion when it comes to electric gitars. They are purpose build, slick feeling things. But at the end it does not improve the perfomance.
Your TuxedoOS uses an older Linux Kernel 6.1 LTS right? I wonder how different the results will be with a new Linux kernel like 6.8 . The new Ubuntu 24.04 uses Linux Kernel 6.8. For other a1rm4x on youtube shows many other OSs for gaming; he seems to like CachyOS the most and with the new Nvidia drivers 555 his RTX4090 works better using wayland.
Tuxedo OS has additional repo and comes with the newest kernel and drivers. That on itself is good for gaming, but in my experience, the old Ubuntu base caused some issue with Wayland, scaling or with tools like Mangohud which was pretty old and once it interacted with the newest Vulkan, it created a massive memory leak. So in overall, I don't recommend Tuxedo OS for gaming, at least right now. After the new Ubuntu based will be used, it should improve, at least for the time being.
I ended up going with Nobara simply because Fedora 39 had some pretty weird issues "out of the box" where Nobara just worked. Pretty happy with it so far.
As a digital artist I've always been entertaining the idea of switching to Linux. But the performance has to be at least very similar and user experience needs not to disrupt my workflow. As such I've always been hesitant to make the switch as I fear there's going to be lots of errors and barriers. Would love to see how does Unreal Engine, Blender, Houdini and other similar software would work on Linux. If you're interested in making linux videos I'm sure videos about Windows programs running on Linux would get a lot of clicks.
well that's actually good to know. it doesn't matter what distro (gaming) you use. You know what I think... the Proton was created and optimized for the steamdeck to run Windows games minus the tomb raider that has a linux version. So... the reason that it doesn't matter what system you got, the fps stays pretty much the same or worse, coz it's simulated the steam deck hardware and power. I guess valve played the safer and can't allocate the full power from a windows game which it can reach a whopping 144hz even in 4k if you have the best pc. Still the proton it's a huge mile stone I can't even imagine how hard it was to program it
Definitely needs more stats on this video, its missing a lot of critical information such as the 1% lows and frame pacing (those micro stutters, i.e Warframe)
LOL at all the Arch BTW users sitting there, looking at Ubuntu with the highest numbers. You know FOR A FACT they would have just rubbed everyone else's face in that single frame per second if an Arch-based distro had produced it. Naturally since an Arch-based distro didn't win, they're all telling you that you cared about the wrong test, or shared the wrong results. Here's some more straws, boys. Keep grasping.
Bazzite is probably the only thing I'd actually recommend tbh because it focuses on just getting a gaming capable linux setup going easily without yanking your hair out while being rock stable and not going over the top. Now if we're talking about a BAD gaming distro? Fucking Garuda
Interesting that the only distro among those that came with gnome gave lower results. Maybe it could be useful to make performance omparasion of dekstop environments? Also why just average with no 1% lows?
I think Linux will finally see mainstream adoption when people stop making distros for every single use case out there. Hopefully Steam OS or something like it becomes the default Linux based OS so that people don't need to worry about which distro to use.
Go to ground.news/TLE to to know where your news is coming from. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.
The point of "gaming distros" is that you get the most up to date hardware support and all the other stuff you need installed as part of the maintained and at least somewhat tested package.
No 1% lows? Averages mean nothing if your 1% lows suck.
🤓☝️
Yeah having the framerate distribution details would've been nice
True, we need better benchmarks
That's because the real truth is, 1% lows are usually terrible on Linux.
@@mikem9536 can't tell without actual data, they can be good or bad.
Gaming distros all about just have the best preinstalled experience
To be fair to Bazzite, it doesn't advertise above average performance
Oh, yeah it’s not criticism, just trying to compare to see if all these patches actually serve a purpose !
The strength of Bazzite is in its stability and ability to rollback easily. You can also try out a beta version without worrying about botching your system. Just pin the latest stable and rebase the beta.
@@bobbybyrne1899 ostree is very nice
I just like that most things are already installed for me and mostly configured
@@bobbybyrne1899That is literally the point.
Bazzite is the SteamOS alternative, with more updated packages.
It serves it's purpose by simply existing, it never claimed to be THE Gaming Distro.
0:17 You don't have to kill any birds. Just break WINDOWS with one stone . . . Linux, metaphoric, sorry, metamorphic Rock!
Is it a bleeding rock, rolling rock or a stable rock?
@@CathrineMacNiel Cutting rock, btw
@@CathrineMacNiel Rocky Linux
For anyone interested in the case, it's called Terra and is made by Fractal Design
I'd really like to see a comparison between a bleeding edge gaming distro and a more stable desktop one, like Zorin or Debian 12
tbh i don‘t need a gaming distro but gonna say i did switch from a debian based to fedora simply because of the hugely outdated drivers that made some games unplayable (nvidia drivers) then again it also introduced me to the pains that is wayland on nvidia
And Ubuntu please, thats still is the most used distro (unless someone believes the running joke from distrowatch that is bombarded with fanboy server clicks).
CachyOS / Garuda / Nobara
@@aspacegamer92Yep.
It's all fun and games until you as a Linux newbie has a game that literally won't start for zero reason and no error codes to work with.
I have seen people leaving ProtonDB reports in 2024 about Games being borked while running Linux Mint Kernel 5.18 when we are about to hit Kernel 7.0 like good lord.
Ubuntu/Debian is for Stability & not for Gaming as a priority, as such when Wine or Proton does something experimental to progress Linux Gaming, you might not benefit from it, even if your kernel is up to date.
Gamescope on Ubuntu is literally 2yrs old as a .deb & building it from scratch won't work because the packages you need are literally not downloadable ATM.
Tested on Pop_OS.
@@StephenMcGregor1986 I was thinking Zorin/Nobara/Arch or something like that
it would be interesting to see how base distros (arch, fedora, debian) compare to gaming variants of them
yeah...
I don't see why they would be different. If drivers and linux kernel are the same, perfomance should be within marhin of error. Games do not care about your package manager or desktop environment.
@@Fedor_Dokuchaev_Colorin the words of Yosemite Sam, *I hate you rabbit!* 🤣
I care about these things, but you’re absolutely correct, the software doesn’t care. I just don’t like Debian or its grandchildren. Fedora is a love hate relationship. I actually like Arch, but I have run into an issue with a software package I must have for work.
I try to avoid distros with only one or two people working on it, ie Nobora seems to have one developer.
That is literally the Fractal Terra case, I'm baffled that they don't even mention that on their website :/
If you are going to compare fps in games you need to compera de 1% and 0.1% lows, this is because on the same hardware the average is always going to be under the margin of error, the drops are more interesting to measure OS impact. Other than the point of gaming distros is to streamline the user experience and avoid having to waste time installing or patching stuff so you can teabag some noobs. And completely unrelated I recently discovered PikaOS which is technically a gaming focused distro and has a few interesting thing.
Average FPS is not the only important performance measure (1% low, loading times...), and these distros are not only about performance, there's also hardware compatibility, software compatibility, stability...
A comparison with Windows could also have been interesting, just an idea
Past this, great video, I was just wondering which one to try as I'm looking for a replacement for Arch (too many arches to manage at once :'-))
That’s why I specifically compared performance here, I’m not judging the relevance of the other things these distros do :)
Why not? @@TheLinuxEXP
I thought I was gonna see Regata OS and Garuda linux somewhere in this video.
Yes, that are the two gaming distros I was also missing here
From the info I've seen Regata OS seems to be a bad version of OpenSUSE
i wanted to see cachy os
@@sweetsweetkhajoor thanks for the reminder. I often forget I'm using a Hybrid of Garuda/CachyOS
lesson of the video: use kde, the distro does not matter
I could never use KDE 😢
kde doesn't matter neither, use a distro that ship gamescope if you want a steamos experience
A Sega Genesis still hooked up to your TV? That's really cool.
Oh yeah, I still play it often!
@@TheLinuxEXPI low-key hope you are a Comix Zone fan.
I miss my Sega Genesis. I had a ton of games for it. I didn't buy the Sega CD though. I didn't see much of a library to justify the cost of it.
You probably already know but, for the sake of any that don't, it was only called Genesis in North America. For the rest of the world it was called the MegaDrive.
@@robertszynal4745 yes I am aware. I live in South America so technically it is called Mega Drive here, but I prefer the name Genesis, personally.
I'm honestly not surprised these results are so comparable. At the end of the day, for the most part, it's relatively the same software running on the same hardware, with different packaging strategies, but still the linux kernel running the same translation layers on the same hardware.
Someone test Garuda on it, please. Also a gaming focused distribution but not mentioned here.
They don’t advertise as a gaming distro on their website, which is why I didn’t include it :)
@@TheLinuxEXPGaruda offers a „KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition“
Thats just Garuda with steam and other gaming packages pre installed. @@andy-kn2by
The measure, as always, is to check and see how many contributors a distribution has. Most of these gaming distros are very small to one person teams. Debian with flatpak Steam and Bottles for everything else has been perfectly fine for me, performs well, and I know my OS will be well supported and stable.
Not to crap on these other distros. The work is needed and vital to grow the gaming space on Linux. I know especially with Nobara, GE is considered an "end user" so he can ship a bunch of stuff in there that would get Microsoft's lawyers angry if those things were shipped with Fedora itself. I personally found Nobara incredibly unstable (and I'm running a full AMD setup 5800x3d and 6950xt). Sleep didn't function at all and sometimes it would just fail to boot completely.
Really wish there was a baseline distro like Ubuntu to compare. Also 1% lows are what we're looking for. Average FPS is kinda meh.
Couple of things:
1. Test Garuda
2. Where is 1% low? It's more worthy info than avg
3. Try this test with different screen resolution if it's possible
4. I've got same problem like you with Holo, but mine problem was with Ubuntu Server. Try different programs to make bootable USB. I've tried Balena Etcher and Rufus on Windows and it doesn't work. Until I've used Unetbootin. Then booting went perfectly without freezes, errors or bootloop after choosing USB in boot menu.
Oh and the last one!
Which proton did you used on each distro?
A number of Arch based distros not included here, such as Garuda. I would have been interested to see CachyOS also. They have a customised kernel out of the box and a bunch more customised kernels where that came from, so at least you could see what different kernels offer.
Did you run your benchmarks from gamescope or the desktop environment? That's the actual unique performance feature with these distros since it's just setup to run gamescope in an exclusive mode with all the scripts & patches in-place for gamescope to run well. It gives you a more UI/controller friendly way to launch games at lower resoultions, impose frame-rate limitations, and upscale games with the built in stuff in the side menu. Then there's decky for any extra functionality you might happen to need.
DE, the default experience these distros offered
@@TheLinuxEXP Cool, very interesting comparison. So the main benefits are if you want the console-like and controller first UI for a PC at that point. As well as mangohud or other tools built in. The power limiters aren't terribly useful in a non portable use case like this.
Nice, wondered about this myself lately. Investigated it and concluded whats needed is only a simple script for minimal beneftis.
Looking forward if I missed something. Going to look the video after this comment 😅
Funny thing is that even TuxedoOS have a non standaard Tweaked kernel. Basically TuxedoOS is in the same category as Bazzite, Nobara, ChimeraOS and HoloISO etc.
didn't know that!
I'd love to see a video on bazzite.
CachyOS comes baked with specific optimizations which aparently does increase performance and they also intend to support Steam Deck.
I second that, especially their kernel, which is also available for fedora officially
5:17 - No, that's not true, it's actually "Phenomenal cosmic POWWEEERR ... ity bity living space". 😉
Negative 15 points from whomever doesn't get the reference.
The movie is 31 years old, cut the zoomers some slack xD
@@LordHonkInc It got remade and it's an absolute classic, which they probably grew up watching dozens and dozens of times.
E2A: And ... they probably have more internet points than they know what to do with, so it'll be like a nepobaby and parking fines. 🙂
I actually choose bazzite for multiple reasons
1. It isn't just maintained by one person
2. preinstalled steam works without any issue. I installed some other distros before I tried bazzite (fedora, taxedo and opensuse tumbleweed) and they all had problems with steam. I now learned the fix. But on bazzite it just worked
3. The immutable part can be good, because I know it should just work every time I want to use it. This also has some drawbacks, like custom icons not working for me that well
4. It is mostly easy to use. There are some tools I needed to use the command line, but even that is rarely needed
So yeah for me, it feels like a normal distro but ready to use the moment you are done installing it
What was the reason for running the games from Gnome on ChimeraOS? That's what a ChimeraOS user would do. Not sure if it makes a difference, but the SteamOS-session should be more barebones on the background compared to Gnome which might give some more performance. So it's a bit weird to compare it this way, especially given that the Horizon-result seemed surprisingly lower.
I ran all games from the KDE desktop, on all distros, so I felt it would be more faire to do the same on chimera
@@TheLinuxEXP not really, it's primarily a gamescope-based distro. Not sure, but I'm guessing all performance related improvements in it were done there. Gnome is only included to also have a desktop for tinkering, but it's selling point is having a gamescope-based setup meant for a console-like gaming PC. That's how its performance should be considered, not as a desktop, which it is not.
Bazzite deep dive please
It would be interesting to do a deep dive on BAZZITE OS. I use NOBARA 39 for desktop and gaming purposes. I recently had to swap from NOBARA GNOME to KDE base as GNOME will no longer work with my processor (to old).
My PC still runs an AMD FX6300 Black Edition processor (overclocked to run 4.5MHz) with an RX580 GPU, 12GB 1333MHz Corsair Vengeance Memory. Running the following trio of games - Battlestar Galactica: DEADLOCK, Control and Talos Principle 2 my computer can still run games a solid 60FPS, or very close to it. It would be interesting to find out if BAZZITE could do the same. I would also be interested to find out if BAZZITE works with older processors and motherboards.
I probably go with bazzite immutable easy to roll back and the KDE desktop.
1% lows are essential for gaming tests
I like Nobara because it is Fedora with sane defaults.
Would be interested in Bazzite review from Nick, considering installing it myself
At 0:32
"....three cubic meters worth of space...."
You have computer cases that big in France?? Can you post some pictures?? What type of rig are you running inside those cases????
Totally awesome!!
Hahah no, but I wish 😂
@@TheLinuxEXP
I remember a case that I got back in the late 1990s. It was a case that was recommended by MaximumPC. Really nice case!! Came up to mid thigh on me, and solidly enough built that I sat on it on occasion. (I weighed 225 lb, or 100 kilograms) It had four 5 1/4 drive external bays drives, I don't know how many 3 1/2 external 3 1/2 drive bays. It had a huge amount of internal 3 1/2 inch bays. It was also pretty wide....it was huge. I built six different computers in that thing....still one of the best cases I've ever had.
Bazzite is cool. I've been using it with the Blue Build system for a year or so. Ever since I've used Universal Blue, I don't see the point in distro hopping anymore. If I want to change stuff, I just rebase. And for all my setup and configs, Fedora Atomic limitations meant my setups are already portable via Nix Home-Manager, Flatpak, and Distrobox. It's also super stable even with the auto-updates -- worst case I just rebase to an image from a few days ago and tell the maintainers which day's image did the issue started.
I would love for you to cover it. In particular, the Blue Build system, yafti, and ujust makes whatever whatever thing I want to set up super easy. I outright recommend it, as long as nothing you do needs kernel modules and such (still haven't gotten around to how to use their akmods plugin for Blue Build).
I love UBlue distros like Bazzite because they're install and go. PERFECT for new users.
Been meaning to get into Linux for a while as a Windows user. The recent recall feature really pushed me. I tried Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora on VMs and finally decided to go with Fedora. Downloaded Fedora Worstation 40, burned it to a USB, but no matter what I do, the installer was stuck at "_" and apparently its a common issue for certain generations of Surface owners. Arch installer boots no issue. So I went with the second best in my head, a Fedora based distro. Went with Nobara. Sure, I'm a bit bummed that it ain't Fedora 40, but it performs better than W11 in many ways and I'm just happy to be out of W11
I use MX Linux KDE and even use the Flatpak version of both Steam and Heroic lol. The main games I play (Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, MechWarrior 5, CS2) work great in either the latest Proton GE (Proton-Up-qt) or the basic Proton Experimental that comes with Steam. They work so well, in fact, that they ALL run better than on Windows, in terms of FPS, which is hilarious, considering CS2 is the only native game out of that bunch, and everything else is running via Proton. RX 5500 XT, Asus 75 Hz FreeSync monitor, and I use the framesync. I was running HoloISO for over a year before packing my computer away to make room for an addition to the family and to move, and as soon as I got setup in the new place, installing MX Linux KDE was first in priority.
Nice comparison :) Its good getting a general idea of performance differences between distros every once in a while. Its not something thats often covered.
As "gaming distro" is a meme, Bazzite being an image is the only one that makes sense to me
Wouldn't mind seeing some deeper drives. Bazzite and Nobara in particular look like they could work as daily drive desktops too.
i can say for myself having just switched yesterday from Win 11 to Linux myself - gaming distros make a massive difference. i run a brand new RX 7900 GRE with my R7 5700X - tried Ubuntu and Mint and fount out neither had a kernel that supported my GPU, it was too new and obscure. so i went ahead and installed Garuda, and it worked smoothly out of the box.
if you're running new or cutting edge hardware, you might need a bleeding edge gaming distro, like it or not.
Not a bleeding edge gaming distro, just a bleeding edge distribution :)
@@TheLinuxEXP heh, that's fair :)
@Cresimi i tried Ubuntu 24.04 first actually, the logic was that it would work with my GRE right off the bat given it's a brand new release barely over a month old - unfortunately it didn't, got consistent game crashes over and over (Resident Evil 4 Remake, Immortals of Aveum, Hellblade 2) and nothing booted. the problem is GRE stands for Golden Rabbit Edition, it's a China exclusive card that just got a worldwide release a few months ago. it's pretty new and (frankly) niche, enthusiast and weird XD it's a cut down 7900 XT that costs about $530 ish and uses a cut down N31 die with 80CU's, so significantly more than the 7800 XT, but it's paired with 16GB of 18GB/s memory to keep costs down. it's a weird card but an enthusiasts dream that overclocks nicely
Does the Mint Edge iso not work with the GRE? That card is almost a year old
@@motmontheinternet i didn't actually try the Edge iso, didn't know it was a thing - n00b here XD sorry
If performance patches in these gaming distros have any significant impacts they would probably mainly affect things in CPU and/or io-limited schenarios rather than when you are limited by the GPU (which you likely will be with this system in most cases.) Granted as you and others have noted I think the main thing that makes a difference is using date graphics drivers and base system. (and also avoid steam snap if using ubuntu.....)
The point of a gaming distro isn't performance...they all perform more or less the same. It's to save config and install time. Some people think everything they didn't install themselves is "bloat" but many of us just want a system with common gaming utilities pre-installed. That's what I like about Bazzite, it's a solid gaming base with the utilities one would expect of a gaming install.
One gaming centric distro that does have a purpose is lakka. It's perfect for making a custom controller friendly emulator console type thing.
You could always just use retroarch too but the idea of having an OS that is entirely meant for emulation means there's no additional bloat and it can even run on a raspberry pi with the ARM ISO. Perfect for making a tiny little console you can plug into your TV and tuck away and game on the big screen.
6:07 i didnt see the sponsor tho, I have sponsorblock... Now I'm kinda curious as to what it is.
Fedora, Fedora, arch, arch, Ubuntu.
In general, having a good kernel version and AMD hardware helps tons, particularly on the graphics end. Nobara can game, but it is NOT gentle on light hardware configurations.
Hnmmm. Switched to CachyOS and saw noticable framerate improvements over my Arch install... I only play older games though. DOW2 for example.
You should consider including systemd-less distros into your benchmarks, like voidlinux, it's also very minimal and such
Why ignore Xorg on the tests? Most people who game on Linux still use it
Maybe I should give Nobara another shot. 🤔 Garuda is my choice for Arch-based distros and it's been smooth sailing. The opposite of spartan, I'd say. 😅
CachyOS is worth a shot, also Arch-based.
or, at least, their kernel
10:19
I really would love your complete take on the distro in a video, well fedora Silverblue can be rebased to bazzite, pretty rare but good if you think about it
You could have tried Bazzite with Gnome to see if it is different from KDE
I think that the main point about gaming distros is the user experience, not the performance. I'm using Nobara on my living room console PC and I'm quite happy with it, a dedicated video from you would be much appreciated. :-)
I was looking for a video like this. Very nice. It would be better to include 1% lows [someone else already mentioned this]. Also, adding a comparison between Windows 10/11 and Linux distros would be great. I'm considering abandoning gaming, on Windows 11, but I'm not 100% convinced yet.
I would never dare to change the simple installation of steam and x game on windows for the stability comparation, installation of many apps+thousands dependencies on Linux
Missing the 1% low in this kind of test is quite meaningless. If you add that info, then it would give a much clear idea
Gaming distros aren't about performance, they're about convenience. I've never heard anyone with a clue argue otherwise, except for corner cases like when the Steam Deck first launched. Even the Deck now performs just fine with other distros installed, as long as they're recent/up-to-date enough.
IMO the main appeal of Linux distros like Batocera, Lakka, and SteamOS are as console alternatives, capable of being used with gamepads alone.
Nice video. I wish you had added Garuda to this mix.
I've seen opensuse perform pretty well compared to some other popular distros, but that comparison was from a couple years ago. Would be cool to see another video with it, and including 1% lows.
I would love to see Garuda Linux and Regata.. not necessarily for performance, but ease of install, ease of getting games up and running with different launchers (Epic, Steam, etc).
With 1,75x play speed the videos is quite ok to watch. And you can skip first minutes of ad
Hi, thanks for your videos. Please make a video about current state of VR games on Linux with steam
I don’t own any VR hardware, so that’s not likely for a while, but maybe when I get a good headset!
@@TheLinuxEXP i recommend to buy quest 3. You can play without PC or play with good graphics when connected to PC. Or work in VR with virtual monitors even under Linux (immersed app)
Running Linux Mint, no real issue with playing games on it, I think i stick with mint because it just works. I did some hooping but always come back to it.
The main cons about gaming dedicated distros is about reliability. We never know when that single individual maintainer will stop maintaing the distro. The cadency of the updates can be subpar. Why would you be looking for distro copies that adds just applications and take those risks? Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSuse, they all offer a group of people dedicated to pack the kernel and delivers it reliably. A lot of documentation, support for secure boot, etc...
It isn't a in dept review. This is more to help to see the non-sense about some of the "gaming" distros.
For future content, I'd like to see if we can have some comparison of thunderbolt and oculink setups for eGPUs in linux. Perhaps adding some variants of thunderbolt, 4 and 5 or USB 4 v1 and v2 versus Oculink.
Omg, thank you for the effort! Btw, that small case is so damn pretty!
Perfect console like PC! And yes, a deeper dive into bazzite would be awesome!
Input lag and latency should not be underestimated. There might be differences there.
that tuxedo MFF pc looks so sick
Thank you, Nick, for testing that gaming distros. I was always wondering what is the difference between gaming distros and the usual distros. In the past I also used Regata OS and Garuda Dragonized Linux, maybe you can test this two as well.
For very gaming-centric distros that are meant to essentially act like a console, I probably would have preferred the results in gamescope. ChimeraOS especially really isn't meant to be run in the desktop environment.
My biggest takeaway from this is that amd card is way more capable than I originally gave it credit for.
Great video!
well, this video has its problems as pointed in some of the comments. like no 1% lows, desktop mode (for distros that are supposed to be gamed on in console mode) and not testing cachyos (which is great in my experience, doubling fps in a 1000fps game (osu!, of course it doesn't scale like that to normal games), and less xruns in music production), Garuda and some others
Ok, just out of curiosity. As far as I know, every distribution does provide the Linux kernel with a bunch of tools. The kernel provides some switches that might impact the overall speed. But with all distributions using the same kernel, assuming they did not apply some wonky patches and kept them to themselves. They all use the same infrastructure in the sense of systemd and wayland.
So, the only difference would then be the choice of tools, pre-dominatly the desktop. But everything could've been the same.
Even the drivers.
I would expect a meaningful difference inbetween different kernel releases.
I actually won't expect a meaningful difference between those variants and my default debian sid. Although, that would be interesting.
The gaming distributions remind me a bit of the tonewood discussion when it comes to electric gitars. They are purpose build, slick feeling things. But at the end it does not improve the perfomance.
Your TuxedoOS uses an older Linux Kernel 6.1 LTS right? I wonder how different the results will be with a new Linux kernel like 6.8 . The new Ubuntu 24.04 uses Linux Kernel 6.8. For other a1rm4x on youtube shows many other OSs for gaming; he seems to like CachyOS the most and with the new Nvidia drivers 555 his RTX4090 works better using wayland.
He said it is based on Ubuntu LTS but with an updated kernel, so it seems as if that is covered.
Tuxedo OS has additional repo and comes with the newest kernel and drivers. That on itself is good for gaming, but in my experience, the old Ubuntu base caused some issue with Wayland, scaling or with tools like Mangohud which was pretty old and once it interacted with the newest Vulkan, it created a massive memory leak. So in overall, I don't recommend Tuxedo OS for gaming, at least right now. After the new Ubuntu based will be used, it should improve, at least for the time being.
I have extreme bugs with 555 (gtx 1650) in plasma (and some in gnome and hyprland), so I don't like it yet
but I love cachy, especially it's kernel, I use fedora rawhide with their kernel
Maybe check library versions with average FPS and 1% lows next, given that distros themselves are rather less on an issue.
I ended up going with Nobara simply because Fedora 39 had some pretty weird issues "out of the box" where Nobara just worked.
Pretty happy with it so far.
As a digital artist I've always been entertaining the idea of switching to Linux. But the performance has to be at least very similar and user experience needs not to disrupt my workflow. As such I've always been hesitant to make the switch as I fear there's going to be lots of errors and barriers. Would love to see how does Unreal Engine, Blender, Houdini and other similar software would work on Linux. If you're interested in making linux videos I'm sure videos about Windows programs running on Linux would get a lot of clicks.
Exactly what I was just thinking about, good timing
I would like a video on Bazzite and what they offer 😊
well that's actually good to know. it doesn't matter what distro (gaming) you use. You know what I think... the Proton was created and optimized for the steamdeck to run Windows games minus the tomb raider that has a linux version. So... the reason that it doesn't matter what system you got, the fps stays pretty much the same or worse, coz it's simulated the steam deck hardware and power. I guess valve played the safer and can't allocate the full power from a windows game which it can reach a whopping 144hz even in 4k if you have the best pc. Still the proton it's a huge mile stone I can't even imagine how hard it was to program it
Interesting. I wonder what the standard distros compare to these specialized distros. Like Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, Gentoo, Slack ... 😅
Definitely needs more stats on this video, its missing a lot of critical information such as the 1% lows and frame pacing (those micro stutters, i.e Warframe)
That black screen upon boot was an issue I was having with ubuntu. I had to delete the quiet Splash string from my grub
LOL at all the Arch BTW users sitting there, looking at Ubuntu with the highest numbers. You know FOR A FACT they would have just rubbed everyone else's face in that single frame per second if an Arch-based distro had produced it. Naturally since an Arch-based distro didn't win, they're all telling you that you cared about the wrong test, or shared the wrong results. Here's some more straws, boys. Keep grasping.
you are confused, brother
I always considered gaming distros to simply be more "prepared" for gaming, ya know, tweaks and packages that make sense for gaming.
Would love to see a full video on bazzite!
What about “feeding two birds with one scone”?
Bazzite is probably the only thing I'd actually recommend tbh because it focuses on just getting a gaming capable linux setup going easily without yanking your hair out while being rock stable and not going over the top.
Now if we're talking about a BAD gaming distro? Fucking Garuda
No garuda? It’s been around the longest among these distros. Prolly the biggest community too
I didnt realize you had a sega mega drive! woah
5:37 Nice Mega Drive
I love that Fractal Design case.
Interesting that the only distro among those that came with gnome gave lower results. Maybe it could be useful to make performance omparasion of dekstop environments? Also why just average with no 1% lows?
I think Linux will finally see mainstream adoption when people stop making distros for every single use case out there. Hopefully Steam OS or something like it becomes the default Linux based OS so that people don't need to worry about which distro to use.
I just install Fedora Budgie Atomic, and hope I can rebase to Bazzite Budgie when come available
I would love to see fps and input latency comparison between DE's and WM's like gnome KDE sway hypyrland miraclewm etc
Sounds like we need Enterprise Linux distributions for Pro Gamers
The Tuxedo computers are cool as hell, but damn are they expensive. It's not their fault, I know, as all computers are expensive as hell these days.
yes, you could do a review on the ReOS game distribution based on the Rosa Fresh distribution