[Soapbox] Distro Gaming-Hopping

[Shibblet]

So, I've been a Kubuntu user since 2010. Don't get me wrong, I've done my fair share of distro-hopping over the years. I actually have two computers. One runs Kubuntu (religiously), and the other I try different distros on. But my fallback / daily-driver is Kubuntu.

Something I have noticed over the past few years with all of these new "gaming" centered distributions that come out. Namely CachyOS, Bazzite (Fedora), PikaOS, and other similar "gaming-spin-style" distributions. They are all touted as being superior for gaming... but what I have noticed, is that these Distros all seem to have a neat features.

CachyOS has packages that are optimized for Zen3 and Zen4 architecture, which would give better performance overall... but not necessarily for the Windows game you just downloaded in Steam.
PikaOS is streamlined, and has a minimal DE, but again, minimal doesn't always mean more performance for a Windows game running under Proton.
Bazzite might have a bunch of extra game-compatibility features built in just to make it so games will run by default, but this is not always the case either. Some games just require a little tweaking (Thank you Glorious Eggroll!)

Then there is Manjaro, Endeavor, Garuda (Arch based) with access to the AUR. Again, the AUR has many helpful tools for gamers, but they don't actually assist with better performance.

An finally, I come back to Kubuntu. I always fall back here, because to me, it's stable, runs all the apps I use, and the performance is just as good as all of the other distros listed above... Seriously, within 2-5 fps (averaging around 90) of all the games I play. I know gamers are all about performance, but at what cost? Installing a new OS for every game you install? Manjaro gives me 113fps in Tomb Raider (2016), Kubuntu gives me 115fps, CachyOS gives me 117fps, and Garuda gives me 112fps in X11, but 43 with Wayland... Come on... I mean, buttery-smooth FPS is (generally) 60+ fps, for enthusiasts 90+, and for competative gamers 120+

Regardless, we are distro-hopping to get ranges between 110-120fps... and at this point, it really doesn't matter. I mean 10fps is a big deal if you're normally getting 30fps, but not if you're over 60fps...

So, I ask... is it really imperative we pick a gaming centric distro to get the absolute best performance? Or is it better to stick with a tried, tested, and true OS like Kubuntu?

[die.boer]

i play tick tack toe ...sometimes till 7 at night

[skyfishgoo]

> So, I ask... is it really imperative we pick a gaming centric distro to get the absolute best performance? Or is it better to stick with a tried, tested, and true OS like Kubuntu?

you have hit the nail on the head.

i don't need and won't miss a few FPS while gaming, but i will miss the time i wasted trying to get one if these nich distros to work properly.... not worth it, spend that time gaming instead.

kubuntu is life!

[claydoh]

No it isn't imperative, though on the surface at least it can depend on how current the hardware is. Newer kernels and the freshest Mesa (AMD and Intel Arc) do often provide noticable fps differences, though not always major.

The tradeoff is that *everything* is going to be at the most current official releases, which is not always the best thing for daily usage.

We do forget that a LOT of PC users are expressly and extremely gaming focused, so those few FPS are going to be very important to them, valid or not. More so if they are looking for the same performance they see in Windows, and arent seeing it in Linux. It is often all they care about.

I game, or attempt to act like one despite the grey hair and arthritis 😆. I use an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS based system but I do upgrade Mesa and sometimes to a third party kernel.

I have tested the still-trendy CachyOS, but it gave me nothing useful for my particular hardware, just bloated installer options, and utilities and tools I don't need. and identical performance on the 2 games I tried. Resident Evil 9 and Doom Dark Ages ( the latter runs like @$$ on both, due to GPU specific raytracing issues in Linux ). But this is with upgraded mesa stack.

But someone with current Gen hardware might benefit, for sure. A somewhat experienced Linux user will probably know how to get and tweak things to get to the same place without needing to install a new OS and learn a new set of distro tools, though. This is one reason I'm why I never moved to Arch, myself to be honest. I decided all I care about on my main PC is to be on the current official Plasma, and to have some decent gaming experiences. And I know how to do that without having everything on my system being a moving target.

Right now, Kubuntu 26.04 is actually quite current in terms of gaming support, but this will change over time, even with HWE support,

[claydoh]

And forgetting to mention Bazzite, at least this one, being "immutable" thus similar enough to the Steam Deck, at least offers an ostensibly safer/more robust platform for the new Linux gamer from this feature, It is at least more unique, unless you have already used Fedora Kinoite/Silverblue.

[vanadiumboy]

Thanks for the info. I was wondering if the OS can be optimized more for games. if it was a 10% increase, it would be interesting. Getting 119 instead of 117 FPS isn't much.
I know that Intel made their own optimizations and said they were generally getting 5% increase in performance compared to Windows. It is a descent number.
Having better instructions sets would be nice. Processing 16 or 32 or 64 floats at once would be nice.

Then there is LibreOffice. I install the DEB myself from the official website. It turns out that they compiled it for x86_64 version 2. In other words, it doesn't run on my old PCs like Athlon II X2 and Phenom II X4.
Come on! It is just a word processor.