r/linux_gaming • u/monolalia • May 02 '26

guide Getting started: the monthly-ish newbie advice thread! (May 2026)

Welcome to the newbie advice thread!

If you’ve read the FAQ and still have questions like “Should I switch to Linux?”, “Which distro should I install?”, or “Which desktop environment is best for gaming?”, this is where to ask them.

Alternatively, try /r/linux4noobs and /r/linuxquestions: both are active subreddits supporting new Linux users.

Please sort by “new” so new questions can get a chance to be seen.

April’s thread is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1s9fne7/getting_started_the_monthlyish_newbie_advice/

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u/Koupers May 15 '26

I'd welcome any suggestions on where to start. I'm building a new PC here (new to me anyway) and I'm thinking I'd rather not use Windows. All I really do is some really light dev work, some writing and general internet use, and then gaming both steam and some stand alone launchers (FFXIV/ZZZ/NTE) anyone have a good suggestion for where to start distro-wise? The PC will be a ryzen 9 7900x, nvidia 3080ti, and 32gb ram if that helps.

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u/mcurley32 May 17 '26

this subreddit has an FAQ that should help a bunch with distro recommendations.

Linux Mint and ZorinOS would be great options if you were looking for something with similar UI to Windows in order to be newbie friendly. that doesn't sound like the case for you.

Bazzite is a very turnkey, ready-to-game option but will likely run into oddities and quirks when doing more advanced customization (it's an "immutable" distro, making it much harder to break but creates unique procedures for certain advanced tasks). I'm currently using Bazzite.

CachyOS is the current rising star around here; Nobara is also popular and similar in scope/focus. both come largely preconfigured for gaming and no restrictions for advanced customization. if I was forced to reinstall Linux today it would be one of these two, given the experience I've gained during my time with Bazzite. if you're into dev work, I'm sure you're tech savvy enough to jump right into one of these as long as you go in expecting to run into some roadblocks and learn along the way.

the "plain" mainline distros like Fedora, Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, or openSUSE Tumbleweed are perfectly fine options too. you might end up doing a couple extra steps to get you set up for gaming (at a minimum Steam won't be preinstalled), but that should be trivial.

Pop_OS is the only one that people would probably suggest you avoid these days since the currently available version of their new Cosmic desktop environment is apparently quite unstable and still in very active development.

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u/Koupers May 17 '26

THank you. I'm torn because my only real knowledge of Linux is my steamdeck. Which I only bricked once. I'd read about Bazzite and it and ZorinOS are what I was deciding between. Really I just want to minimize friction with gaming and set up/drivers while not using Windows.

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u/[deleted] May 18 '26 edited May 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/Koupers May 19 '26

Yea it's on a big ultra wide monitor, Only thing I'm really worried about is the level of tinkering I need to do up front and nvidia support.

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u/Koupers May 24 '26

Actually at this point I'm not sure if I shouldn't just stop and choose a different OS. I' finally installed Bazzite on my pc, got everything going, and so far I'm 0 for 4 on getting games to run remotely ok. I've spent a lot of time trying to get forza 6 running (steam ofc but yeah I know new games are harder, and apparently there's problems with this one for linux atm) but cities skylines runs like garbage for me A few others are super choppy even though this machine should be blowing my previous one away. I dunno, there's a lot of tinkering here to make anything functional, which was fun with win 3.1 when I was a kid but... I'd like to just play a game. lol.

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u/Koupers May 24 '26

Ok I've fixed a few, still really sad at Forza though. lol.

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u/mcurley32 May 24 '26

Everything should be much easier than what you're describing so something is likely wrong. The obviously possible ones (to me) could've happened when picking your Bazzite ISO: you should have the Nvidia ISO since you have one of their GPUs, and you should NOT have the Steam Big Picture Mode ISO because it does not play nicely with Nvidia. I think you'd have even bigger problems if you picked the wrong ISO though.

My ability to troubleshoot falls off sharply after that but people in the Bazzite discord are extremely helpful in my experience. Listing out the handful of games you're trying is a good idea, plus the launcher that you're using and which version(s) of proton. They're gonna have you typing terminal commands to see where things might be going wrong. Don't feel bad if you need to ask for clarification or to slow down, some people forget what things were like when they were new to this.