Linux distro?

[Thorfinn]

The hard drive on one of my machines just died, and since it's not going to be able to go to Win11 anyway, thinking of trying Linux again.

This computer doesn't have to do a whole lot, other than games. It's reasonably decent, I guess. Around 65 FPS on Absolute Maximum, with a spike down to the low 40s every minute or so. But VS is not the only game I'd like to have on here.

When I last tried Ubuntu, I wasn't able to get many of the Windows games to fire up through Wine, but I understand there's now a whole lot more out there.

So what distro do you use? Do you need to add things like Bottles or a game manager of some sort? Most of the games I'd want to put on it are from GOG. Or should I just bite the bullet and update my perfectly good motherboard?

[Isif]

I'm personally using EndeavourOS. I like that it's Arch-based and so has rolling release packages and has a nice install process which can be customized with an install script. I don't think game managers are necessary (though I do have Steam and Lutris installed), especially for GOG games, for which I find the xdg desktop files sufficient. I am currently using Lutris exclusively for running programs with WINE but I may drop it... not sure yet.

[LoveWyrm]

I'm one of those rare slackware users...but I won't recommend it anymore. Would have five years ago, but not anymore.

For easy 'wine using' I use playonlinux, sometimes I use steams proton (it can be used as a command line tool to run games too), lutris is said to be good too, but I don't think I've ever used it.

for audio I use jack audio (the best, imho) on top of alsa, I have pulseaudio disabled and use the 'apulse' fake to make programs that want it run anyway. I refuse to use pipewire again, since it made mpd (best music player) stop after each track for some reason.

 

for music/audio production, I use 'yabridge', which allows the running of windows VSTs via wine (and quite well too, JUCE and its stupid rendering often is a pain tho and needs vulkan driver stuffs)

my DAWs of chioce are ardour (free, open source but they try to make you get a subscription, hell naw, a lot of distros can cirumvent this by providing prebuild binaries)

renoise (proprietary tracker based)

rosegarden (for some midi stuff), music engraving with lilypond (yeah I'm not using musescore)

milkytracker (another tracker) seq24 loop based sequencer, hydrogen (drum machine)

surge xt (synth) 'gearmulator' suite (synths) zynaddsubfx (synth)

 

carla and jack-rack as hosts for plugins

 

video editing and compositing I do with natron (foundry nuke clone), a bit if blender, a bit of davnci resolve.

drawing/painting with mypaint (for doodling) krita (For more involved stuff) and opentoonz for animation and some drawing (as well as some compositing)

ffmpeg and imagemagick, too.

and many other programs.

 

Why am I listing all this junk? When I don't even recomment slackware anymore?

Well the software I listed is still good and "linux doesn't do multimedia" is an often cited thing to not use it....the software is available for all distros, not always in the repositories, but you can compile em.

 

I have not used windows in almost 15 years, and it all started with a harddrive that wouldn't work anymore, didn't have any luck with debian and ubuntu, only some weird antivirus cd I had lying around had a linux shell in it, and I figured if something this simple workds, I should go for the simplest oldest distro, slackware, and ...well, I never looked back.

 

P.S.: if you're not into audio stuff, you can totally use pipewire and pulse etc... I can enjoy JACK cause I'm willing to deal with the hYPERCANCER that is audio setting upping on linux.

Edited May 14, 2025 by LoveWyrm

[LoveWyrm]

Oh yeah... if you do end up upgrading your motherboard, and perhaps your CPU at some point along with it. I would recommend going for a CPU that has a crappy GPU integrated into it. I regret not getting that...

 

Why? Cause modern CPUs are really really good at 'virtualization', aka 'using virtual machines' but in a way that is as close to 'the bare metal' as it can get.

HOWEVER! To my knowledge anyway, there still are no virtualization environment (think virtualbox, quemu (some say its the best), etc) that can pull this off by 'sharing' a GPU.

So, when its time for me to upgrade myself, then I will get a CPU with a GPU in it, then that crappy GPU will just be for GUI rendering, and the big boy GPU will do the heavy lifting 'true' processing inside the virtualization chamber, unlocking that true potential of modern virtualization.

 

Then you could run Linux as your main driver (I still don't know what to recommend tho, distro wise, my raspberries are running fine with raspian but I've never even had the luck to install it right on my actual PC) and emulate Windows with near perfect hardware speeds via something like quemu.

That's absoralootely what I'm gonna do, at the moment, I do have windows as a multi boot option (sometimes I do need it briefly to set some hardware, like the fanatec pedals I have, drivers just not up to par on linus) but I haven't used it for work or gaming in..yeah, pretty much 15 years.

 

Also, if you need some software recommendations, I probably have something 'very decent' for you at the very least.

Also, to touch on ardour again. I oppose their subscription scheme, not because I don't think they deserve money, I do not only monetarily support open source projects, but also proprietary software that gets a native release (like renoise, davinci resolve, some games, etc)

 

It's cause they're kind of scummy about it. First of all, they don't offer any support for self builds, and in fact try you to talk you out of it on their website/repo, but one of the lead devs...once posted a topic in their forum titled "do people really want open source software?" where he tried to make a case that that stuff is bad and we don't really actually want it (he probably tried to learn from the muse group, who maintains and runs musescore (rip off sheet music people make and resell them) and audacity) ...so yeah.

 

PLUS! Ardour is a kind of 'development pool' for a parent DAW, proprietary, called 'mixbus'. Granted, they also partly sponsor ardour, but...I personally cannot abide this kind of conduct.

It's a great software, but with a conduct and mindset setup like that, I have a hard time parting with my dosh, ESPECIALLY a subscription, I don't like those on principle.

 

Oh and one more thing regarding jack, pulseaudio and pipewire. Jack, I consider truly the best, but all I'm saying is...it might not be "going through hell as a newbie" better than the rest.

They're not garbage audio backends, or they wouldn't be so widespread, it's that I, personally, get a liiiitle liiiiiiitle bitt more performance out of it. And it does require some awful hacks and configurations (apulse to fake pulseaudio, a2j_bridge to fix some midi issues jack has (hard time dealing with big midi sysex messages)).

So, don't let me scoff you out of a perfectly working audio stack. Especially if you are just in it for enjoying media, and not needing real time recording stuff that shaves off milliseconds ...

I'm paying for those with pain and a required supply of liquid chemo (booze :P)

Edited May 14, 2025 by LoveWyrm

[Thorfinn]

I've got the better part of a rack full of Presonus equipment (with some Yamaha, Behringer and a dozen or so smaller audio and MIDI interfaces) so my DAW of choice is Studio 1. Because why not? It integrates seamlessly with my gear, apart from a few knockoff interfaces that I end up having to emulate as a larger device using ASIO4ALL, and S1 is only a few hundred bucks for the full Pro version every couple years. That's on a different machine, though.

The one I want to set up now will be almost exclusively gaming, with a switch right next to me between rig and router so I can turn the switch off and be pretty secure, or unplug the RJ-45 and be air-gapped. That's how I set up my recording rig, and it's working out fine.

1 hour ago, LoveWyrm said:

I would recommend going for a CPU that has a crappy GPU integrated into it.

Wait, what? Mine has the crappy GPU on the MB. There are CPUs where that's integrated?

17 hours ago, Isif said:

I don't think game managers are necessary (though I do have Steam and Lutris installed), especially for GOG games, for which I find the xdg desktop files sufficient. I am currently using Lutris exclusively for running programs with WINE but I may drop it... not sure yet.

Hmm. My GOG library drops from well over 2000 to just under 300 if I filter Linux. Though seeing the list of native Linux games there makes me want to fire up some I have not played in years. Lutris appears to do the trick for the Win-only titles, at least the ones I'm most interested in, though. Thanks!

[Lollard]

Linux Mint Cinnamon, the old reliable. Has codecs out of the box and a handy graphical driver manager, both of which a surprising amount of distros lack. You can get Bottles, Lutris and Heroic through Flathub which is built into the software manager.

VS is available on Flathub (it's unverified but should work, you have to enable unverified flatpaks in the software manager, which is good for all sorts of other apps also) but also has a native Linux build. If you decide to go with the native build, you'll need the dotnet7 runtime which is EOL since 24.04 but you can add Canonical's backports PPA to install it (works on every Ubuntu-based distro)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dotnet/backports

sudo apt update

sudo apt install dotnet-runtime-7.0

I also hear Steam is used as another compatibility layer option by adding non-Steam games and running them through Proton, but haven't tried it myself.

[Zippy Wonderdust]

Okay, first my Linux pedigree: been using it since the mid 90s both privately and professionally as a programmer/sysadmin/systems architect.

My personal-use Linux timeline goes: Yggdrasil Linux, Slackware, Debian, Ubuntu 6 thru 16, back to Debian, and recently NixOS (because apparently I like pain)

I'm a longtime Debian grognard, and I have run Vintage Story, Minecraft, and my Steam library on Debian Bookworm/Trixie with no problems at all (using Nvidia graphics no less!).

On the other hand, you can't go wrong with Linux Mint.  It's got a really user-friendly installer, has the super-easy-to-use Cinnamon desktop, as well as a great support community with tons of searchable documentation. (I'm running Mint on a laptop in my server room that is a dedicated qbittorrent node.)

Right now I'm using NixOS, which has a number of unique features that really appeal to me as a programmer/sysadmin, but it is not for inexperienced users. That being said, I use it as my primary desktop and play Vintage Story, Minecraft, and my Steam Library without any problems, including running Prism Launcher for Minecraft and VS Launcher for Vintage Story.

Whatever you decide on I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you should install a distro that supports Flatpak apps.  The Vintage Story flatpak just works; one-click-install and you're golden.  The same goes for the Steam flatpak and Prism Launcher if you are into Java Minecraft.  Flatpak is your friend in this.

I hope this helps.   

[Tinkirus]

Personally, I use Fedora at the moment because it's easy (there are a few more steps for certain things, nothing too difficult as the guides for Fedora are A+). Like a lot of people, I do suggest you use a distro that supports Flatpaks out of the box, like Linux Mint or Fedora, for example. You also can't go wrong with Ubuntu itself, as I played games on it for a long time with very minor issues before switching to Fedora (it has a higher kernel version with better firmware and hardware support). Mint is a solid choice though, as it uses the Ubuntu base, but scrubbed of Canonical's 'choices'.

The process of using Mint is so streamlined, I would recommend it over Fedora, admittedly. That is just because I want you to have a better experience, and Fedora has made some 'choices' that are frustrating but not hard to fix after installation. If you do have issues with Mint, because of hardware...Fedora might be the next move for you, as I said the kernel version Fedora uses has better hardware support.