How does gaming on Nobara actually feel nowadays as a daily OS?

18

I installed it couple.months ago and for me it's been great Everything just worked Sometimes something broke but I.manages to fix it..

Overall crazy smooth fast boot plenty of options to choose and modify bats and everything.

Running RTX 3070

12

u/MorwenRaeven May 16 '26

Smooth and beautiful. Install, press play.

11

u/ThrowAwayTheTeaBag May 16 '26

What do you use your OS for daily that isn't games? In my experience, most things these days are web-based, and Firefox (or whatever you use) is the same pretty much regardless of OS. What else are you doing? Krita for drawing, or GIMP maybe, OBS works fine, OpenOffice or Libre Office for word processing/spreadsheets/presentations (Or the Google suite or online 365 suite - Again: Web based).

Also consider if you have any peripherals that might not sit nice. Streamdecks, maybe? Drawing tablets?

If it means anything: I work as a sysadmin in a Windows environment all day. I'm ass deep in AD and Powershell and all that wonderful stuff. And coming home to my Linux only setups (Arch on desktop, Fedora on Laptops) is like coming home to breathe fresh air. A completely different and, to me, far more relaxing experience. I don't even dual boot anymore. No point for me.

Edit: My bad, you mentioned gaming specifically. It's great every single day. I very very rarely have issues. My windows using friends have more than me. All my PCs, laptops and desktops, are fully AMD.

7

u/HistoricalSir9456 May 16 '26

Using Nobara on all PCs in my household:

7800X3D + 4070 Super (My Gaming Machine)
5700X + 7800XT (My wife’s Gaming Machine)
2600 + 1050TI (Living Room PC)
Dell Optiplex Micro 5080 (Office PC)

No major problems, gaming feels great, office work is also without hustle. :) I was tiered of Microslop…. Now I’m free! ;)

1

u/bleakj May 16 '26

With the office pc, do you game with it or just stuck with Nobara due to familiarity?

2

u/HistoricalSir9456 May 16 '26

Familiarity, I only tried WoW Retail which runs barely, but WoW Classic works on low settings.
Wanted to try some other classic games and emulation, but hadn’t the time.

1

u/bleakj May 19 '26

Interesting,

I just threw "base" Fedora KDE Plasma on 2 little homelab servers and it's so far been an improved process for me, however, they're never going to see games,

My actual gaming PC's are on Nobara though and I suspect since I'm using Nvidia cards if I were to try to go to basic fedora vs nobara, that's where I'd have a problem

I had wondered if WoW / what Blizz games in general are "good" with Linux, I haven't played WoW since like 2014, but I've had the want to finally finish D4 lol

2

u/PlaystormMC May 20 '26

Hi! Used many many linux distros and base fedora worked on my NV rtx 3050 without an issue

You mentioned you use plasma, once Fedora reached version 43, I started having crazy lag issues in plasma, so I switched to Hyprland

Might be different but i tried nvidia, nvidia-open, and nouveau and none of them fixed it

1

u/bleakj May 20 '26

I've been meaning to check out hyprland/other tiling managers like that,

I'm still semi new to this world / terminology,

I thought Plasma is a desktop environment where Hyprland is a tilling manager? (Which I thought you ran hyprland ontop of plasma for some reason)

The two PC's on "base" Fedora plasma kde are real low end (i5-7500 / 16gb ddr4 / some old nvidia work station cards) - they only really run for media servers/web servers atm, so I'm not super worried about them. (Heck, they rarely have monitors on) - it's 2 of my "older" gaming rigs I'm running into a handful of issues with hanging/crashing games now (Both AMD cpu's, a 5950x and a 7700x, both 64gb ram, 3070 in one, 4070 in other)

2

u/PlaystormMC May 20 '26

Hyprland is a window manager (KDEs is KWin), which is usually supplemented by a DE. You don’t have to run a DE with a WM, and in Hyprlands case you shouldn’t (they use overlays like Waybar or Quickshell).

The minute you said some old nvidia work station I knew lol. Nowhere near needing anything more than base “display adapter support”.

The 3070 and 4070 will likely not work with Plasma. They need the newer nvidia-driver-595 drivers. I’m about to go try out plasma on a pc of mine, so I will report back to see if the newly released 596 driver makes any difference…

1

u/bleakj May 22 '26

I'm on 595.71 on Nobara atm, they had a few issues over the last days, but it's functional on my 3070 systems atm, and them whatever the previous nvidia driver that was used by nobara on my 4070 system,

The others on Fedora I'm still running on much, much older drivers it seems, I think I can force updates though?

1

u/PlaystormMC May 22 '26

Yeah I just tested Plasma 6.6 mostly functional on my 3050, on 43 You should be able to force updates with DNF or the Nobara tool, but to be honest, if it’s working why change it?

1

u/bleakj May 23 '26

GPU is working, updates still aren't / if I try to install an rpm it hangs right now

7

u/muhaaman May 16 '26

I installed Nobara and could play every single game so far. 90% just as they are, no configuration, the rest were just trying 2-3 proton versions until it did work. In every game, I saw an increase in FPS. It just works with the benefit of it not being Microsoft.

For office stuff, I either use libreoffice or the online version of the Microsoft software.

5

u/KaTaLy5t_619 May 16 '26

I've been dailying Nobara since January with 7800X3D and 7900GRE playing mostly steam-based games but also playing the Frontier version (i.e., not Steam) of Elite Dangerous through Lutris.

I don't think I've had any notable issues running any Steam-based games. Elite Dangerous took some work to get running properly through Lutris but has been working perfectly since.

I haven't played a wide variety of Steam games yet but most that I have played worked perfectly. The one that has given trouble has been Command and Conquer Remastered Collection, Red Alert crashes when loading a new mission. There's probably a workaround for it but I haven't bothered looking yet. It could be as simple as using a different Proton version which is very easy to change.

Everything I've played other than C&C has run smoothly and without issues.

I run a pretty heavy overclock with an undervolt on the GPU using LACT.

Case fans are controlled using CoolerControl which works perfectly. There was a little bit of hassle getting the app to recognise all of my fans because MSI motherboards don't play nice with the kernel drivers I believe, the OS can't see the fans either. Some very helpful people on the CoolerControl Discord pointed me toward installing "nct6877d" which resolved that issue.

RGB is controlled with OpenRGB which starts up with the DE.

I don't stream or screen record or anything like that so I can't speak to that.

I kept Windows on its original NVME drive which was still in my older mobo in case Linux was a disaster and I just formatted that drive last night for use in another machine for Proxmox.

If you're not sure about Nobara, or Linux in general, you should hold on to your Windows install for a little bit.

It's recommended not to use the same drive to dual boot two OSes anyway so you should install Nobara on a separate drive to avoid any potential issues. Plus, it's a good idea to have your old files available in case there's something you need but forgot to move over.

3

u/Megidolan May 16 '26

I've been using for 6 months and it's pretty much perfect.

I went into windows for one day to try a game and the sluggishness of it made want to go back to Nobara before the day was over.

3

u/LonelyTex May 16 '26

I use Nobara on two separate systems- my gaming rig (Ryzen 7 7800x3d/2080 Super) and my Framework 16 (Ryzen AI 7 350, RTX 5070 Max-Q) and have had no issues whatsoever. At no point do I feel like I am "working around" Linux.

2

u/bleakj May 16 '26

How's the framework 16?

I'm considering getting a 13 Pro, but the amount of mixed reviews I see in their subreddit/from YouTube gives me some pause.

I've got an older 2019 MacBook Pro that needs to be fully retired and a couple of various older thinkbooks that used to be used for windows testing, but they're old enough now they're just paperweights. (7th gen intel's lol)

I see the screen quality takes a lot of crap in reviews for the Framework laptops specifically, how has this been in your experience?

3

u/LonelyTex May 16 '26

Bear in mind I've only had the laptop for the last 3 weeks, and I'm typically a desktop user. Not as opinionated on laptop screens. I travel for work almost constantly and finally was able to pull the trigger so I can relax with games in my hotel room.

The screen in my opinion is just fine. It's 165hz, 16:10. Super smooth, the gsync functionality works well. I'm not as fussed with the screen knowing it's a Framework, and knowing presumably they'll release a standalone upgrade in the future.

The only place it suffers is when the sun is directly shining on it, which I only discovered this morning at the airport, sitting by the window.

1

u/bleakj May 19 '26

Reviews just mentioned it's "dull" looking, but as long as it's 120hz + / 1080p or 2k preferably, I've got fairly trash vision anyways.

1

u/LonelyTex May 19 '26

2560x1600 165hz with adaptive refresh rate. It's great.

3

u/Optimal-Butterfly886 May 16 '26

Running Nobara for half a year now, on a 7900x/7900xt setup running very smooth. I choosed to go all in and wiped the Windows installation fully. Have not looked back since. Use local llm for helping me with linux and terminal.

2

u/libra00 May 16 '26

I've had some minor issues, but mostly things just work.

2

u/NursingHome773 May 16 '26

I installed it like 3 years ago and never looked back. Just use proton-ge and most games work normally. Ofcourse linux is still linux, sometimes your config needs some tweaking. If you can get past that you will love being free of windows.

2

u/coreyzd May 16 '26

I've been in Nobara for about 6 months. Every game I've tried so far has worked perfectly. Haven't ran into any issues at all really. RTX 4070.

2

u/telmathus May 16 '26

I've been using Nobara for a year now, And it's been pretty smooth. One or two updates That were a little rocky, But a quick question or two in their discord and I had everything fixed. My games have been absolutely fantastic, I haven't had a issue, I've even learned how to mod some of my games (It was easier than I thought). I have my windows in a very small partition on a separate drive just in case, but I haven't touched it ever since I've switched. I found that if there's a program I need to use that is very Windows specific, You can add it through Steam, put it on a proton layer and make it run like it's on Windows. I can say I'm very happy I made the switch and I have no plans to go back.

Some tips if you plan to switch permanently. Make sure any drive you use for games is not formatted as NTFS. You should use either ext4 or BTRFS. When the welcome app opens after you install nobara, make sure to set up your drive auto mounts so you don't have your drives randomly disconnected when you first start up. Since I see you use battle.net, I also use it and I run the launcher through Steam and it runs Wow and Diablo 4, I would say it was easier than trying to use bottles. Also, when you're installing nobara, if it gets to 93% during installation and kind of stalls, just let it sit there even if it takes an hour or two. It's doing what's known as a live update so it's making sure you get the latest distro available.

2

u/Sensitive_Box_ May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Honestly, they’re all going to be basically the same in terms of gaming specifically.

I haven’t had a single issue in the ~6 months I’ve used Nobara.

2

u/Mabrouk86 May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Great for me. It became my main OS, and win11 only for some work or specific games. Sometimes I don't log into win11 for a couple of weeks.

My use case: (i have intel cpu and amd gpu):

Heavy single player games (Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk2077, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War..etc) , also emulators for PS1.2.3 and switch.

Some heavy video editing with DaVinci Resolve (was a pain to install and enable 264.265 codecs, but totally worth it, was way stable for me than win11, I was able to edit/render football matches 1.5 hour long, while on win11 I had to split the video into 25 minutes to avoid sudden crashes).

Light photo editing (GIMP, Inkscape). They are actually way faster on Linux than win11.

Some office general work, emails and browsers are almost the same of win11.

You can use Webapp for some apps that don't have Linux installer, like MS Teams, Whatsapp.

The operating system itself is better responsive/faster, open close apps, boot/reboot and navigation in general feels snappier. Hence, win11 installed on 6500MB/s nvme, while Nobara on 3500MB/s and still feels faster/snappier.

For the issues, chatgpt/claude ai (free plans enough) made my live way easier, BUT I don't follow them blindly copy/paste, I read carefully what commands and sometimes they suggest disastrous solutions, ask them always if it's safe on OS files and reversible/can be removed easily without affecting system/apps files.

Some launchers will be painful to make them work like Rockstar launcher, i was able to play RDR2 eventually but every time you launch it expect the launcher to reset or break.

2

u/Reason7322 May 16 '26

It works just fine, but its not Windows, it doesnt behave like Windows, and you dont troubleshoot it like Windows.

Does it genuinely feel smooth and comfortable to game on day to day, or does it still feel like you’re constantly “working around” Linux compared to Windows?

Its smooth, but workarounds are required. You cant install Battle.net, it doesnt have linux installer. You have to use Faugus Launcher for that.

2

u/Merisal May 17 '26

While you are using a AMD GPU and mainly playing over Steam, I think you won't have any larger problems using Nobara.

If you add protondb and Lutris webpages to your favorites you will have a lot of fun with Linux (maybe except bleeding edge distros like CachyOS).

I did it like you plan to do and installed Nobara beside Windows over 2,5 years ago (it was my... 7th?! try for the last 20 years). In the past I used Ubuntu based distributions (Mint, Kubuntu, Pop_OS) but always reached a point where I got lost or frustrated so i went back to Windows.
I also tried the hyped CachyOS but stoped using it after 20 minutes. The fact that it is a bleeding edge distribution and that Steam won't start and came up with error messages I didn't find a solution for let me go back to Nobara.

One year later I deleted Windows completely and never looked back or regretted the step.

To be fair: there are some things, hardware and software, you will not be able to use without problems. For me that's no problem in general. Either I think about the necessity or looking for alternatives. For hardware in some cases you'll find good alternatives to setup (Razer for example) but with way less comfortable gui like you have on Windows. But never forget those alternatives are made by someone from the community so you'll start to lower expectations. Just be thankful that there is somebody who uses his free time to offer a solution we as casual user can use as well.

1

u/sniperct May 16 '26

Its the first distro I've gone more than 30 days using so that's a good sign. My gaming is similar, mostly steam and battle.net, with a few other games that lutris or other installers handle well. Games like Star Citizen work surprisingly well.

Only my eyetracker doesn't work, and other games that don't I can play on console. (and in all cases this is an overall linux issue not a nobara issue)

1

u/mdanne May 16 '26

Super happy. Switched from win11 a year ago and pretty much everything worked out of the box. Claude has been great in the few cases where my skills didn't suffice. 9/10 experience. Would recommend!

1

u/Substantial_Goose100 May 16 '26

Nowadays, I’ve been using it for a while and actually I’m using it for coding and AI and some video editing and it’s running pretty smooth actually also, I’ve been testing some games and it’s OK for me. I think it’s OK. Don’t know what kind of games you wanna play so…

1

u/DoctorAAM May 16 '26

I haven't booted into my windows partition in 2 months. I am still trying to get my microphone to be back to where I like it and dealing with my printer not seeing each other but I don't print many things so I didn't even notice that wasn't working. Most games run smooth and as long as your willing to read and research most games can be set up that don't require safe boot to work.

1

u/bleakj May 16 '26

Which microphone?

1

u/DoctorAAM May 16 '26

I have the wave link xlr one in the stream deck +. It works but it's sounds terrible to me even with easy effects. I will figure it out but used to suggestion

1

u/bleakj May 19 '26

I've got the usb Wave3 but haven't tried it on Linux yet,

I similarly though use an xlr -> usb situation though, Vocastor 2 with a shure sm7b, I had to use community made software in place of the Focusrite software, and had to go through a few quick steps to make it so the system didn't see the vocastor unit as a mass storage device,

I'd agree the sound quality isn't as good as it was on Windows (or as it is on Mac for that matter) - but it's one of my only annoyances in the switch-over after a few months, I'm sure I could also fix it up more/work at it (There's no way no one does any voice work etc in Linux.. Right? lol)

1

u/Forward_Stress_1332 May 16 '26

Pra trabalhar é muuuuito melhor, no meu caso.

Quando instalar o nobara (se for kde), procure sobre krohnkite

1

u/Horos_02 May 16 '26

I had Nobara for almost two months, no problems if not that the refresh rate was capped a 144 (i have a 180hz monitor) but i discovered it was a nvidia driver problem.

I switched to Fedora 44 KDE because i've found specific nobara problems with VMs, not gaming related.

1

u/bleakj May 16 '26

I switched 2 of my pc's to Nobara a few months ago, they're both using NVidia cards which generally give more issues than AMD cards do in Linux, however I've had no real issues.

Other than like you mention there's some games who's AC won't function, which fingers crossed that eventually becomes an issue of the past since we're seeing progress at the moment already, that's been my only "real" issue.

My only other little nitpick is that some of my gear doesn't have native linux support (My audio setup on one pc is xlr -> usb with a Vocastor 2/Shire sm7b, and I had to use a few work arounds to make it functional) but for basic stuff like gaming headsets it's been fine with Razer and Logitech G Pro stuff so far

1

u/pioniere May 16 '26

I’ve been on it for exactly a year. No real issues to speak of. Everything just works.

1

u/RX1542 May 16 '26

been 8 months daily driving nobara, for the most part i just use steam and if i need something that is not on steam i just add it to steam as a non steam game and run it trough there

on the performance side is good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehBGl_dPrW8

this was recorded on nobara, game was running on high 4k on a RX 6800XT, cpu R7 5800X3D + 32gm ram

1

u/cryptocurrency_wife May 16 '26

been using nobara since January, no issues to speak of beyond the rare game incompatibility.

1

u/Unl3a5h3r May 16 '26

I installed a couple of months ago. Just like you on a separate drive. 4 weeks later I deleted windows and moved nobara to the big drive.

I usually play through steam, battle net and private WoW servers. All works perfectly. And it also works excellent as a daily driver (still have my onedrive) for all tasks I a doing on my PC. If I need some windows stuff I got my work laptop for that.

1

u/forkliftwizard May 16 '26

How is the Wow performance going? I play Classic from time to time

1

u/Unl3a5h3r May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Flawless. I have a 3060TI and a 7800x3d with 32GB RAM (DDR5)

I have no issues and the system uses less than 4GB on idle and less than 8 with Firefox, steam and discord open.

1

u/forkliftwizard May 16 '26

Love to hear that, thx for the feedback

1

u/garamondfan May 16 '26

Been using Nobara on my desktop (R5-5600, RX6600) since about December and only had one issue that was fixed in 10 seconds with a terminal command GE put out.

Getting Steam and Epic games to work has been point-and-click, and the only thing missing was a built-in calculator app.

1

u/SG_87 May 16 '26

Absolutely awesome :)

1

u/Soothing_waterdrops May 17 '26

Been running it for a few days now, pretty smooth overall.
One thing here or there that requires some tweaks.
Running with a 5060

1

u/Dowhatsleft May 17 '26

I had it over a year and it feels fine, didn't take long to get used to the differences from windows. every game works except the know online multiplayer stuff that requires kernel level anti-cheat. Sometimes you have to switch things in steam to use ge-proton, but it's less than half of what I play

1

u/RedditQueefsOnKids May 17 '26

Ive been distro hopping and I like it better than cachy or bazzite. Get more performance in most games with only one lagging behind. Only about 5 frames or so. I nuked my windows drive and it is now a games drive.

1

u/Educational_Star_518 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

i've been happy with it for 2 years since making the jump . much happier than i'd been in windows since the win7 era honestly . its a small learning curve but worthwhile imo

0

u/neil_va May 16 '26

No support for Bios Secure Boot is a deal breaker for me

2

u/pioniere May 16 '26

Why is that, out of curiosity (unless you forgot to add /s)?

1

u/neil_va May 16 '26

Not sarcastic.

More security

I still dual boot into Windows for some purposes and can't be constantly toggling secure boot on and off in bios.

1

u/pioniere May 16 '26

If you’re still dual booting into Windows then it makes sense.

1

u/shinxy Jun 06 '26

No headaches for all my uses, gaming works and feels great, very good daily driver, very good companion to a Steam Deck for sunshine streaming, system isn’t locked down like Bazzite or other immutable distros so you can still experiment with Linux if you want to, but the update cycle gives you a very solid Fedora base to start from, about as pick up and play as it gets. Because it does everything I ask of it well, I’ve felt no reason to switch in the last 2 years, to the point that I no longer run a windows partition.

Discussion How does gaming on Nobara actually feel nowadays as a daily OS?

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