Linux Gaming

I use Fedora 37 workstation with the Nvidia proprietary drivers from RPM Fusion. Relatively painless install, with the option to sign the kernel module if you want to keep secure boot on. Only downside is the Nvidia drivers still don't work great with Wayland, so I normally login with Gnome on X for gaming.

I've just switched from a GTX 1080 to a Radeon RX 6650 because of problems I was having with the Nvidia binary drivers.

Games performed just fine, but my desktop performance would slow down dramatically if I had a lot of things running at the same time, especially YouTube videos. This issue seems completely resolved now that I'm using an AMD card.

However, based on what I'm reading online it seems that a lot of people are using the Nvidia binary drivers without any major issues. So maybe my experience isn't very representative either.

nvidia's usually a pain in the ass when it comes to linux. that being said, it isn't too bad. just don't expect good wayland support. stick to x org and you're probably fine once you get the nvidia drivers installed and signed.

as far as distro goes, i recommend fedora. overall really solid choice, had 0 issues with it, gaming included.

I'd highly recommend checking out Nobara, it's based on Fedora but optimized for gaming. In addition to supporting nVidia out of the box, it has a ton of tweaks and gaming related apps pre-installed, such as Steam and Lutris, which is a huge time saver. Should be the most out-of-the-box gamer friendly distro, outside of SteamOS I reckon.

I had laptop with descrete Nvidia graphics card and had no trouble with most of the distros i tried. Theh either offer inbuilt driver app, which let's you choose which driver to use or you google it and follow an uncomplicated guide.

That being said, i always recommend dual booting at first, something might go wrong with your first installation or you just forgot that you had something important on windows. If it's a desktop, i recommend getting and extra ssd. Which you will use for linux (for now). Later it's always convenient to have extra storage. They are not too expensive anymore. You can have your linux playground, where you can test distros and see how they actually work on your machine and you can revert to windows in the meantime.

if you use the proprietary drivers you'll be fine, probably not even noticable

if you go with a Radeon card or try using open source drivers then go with god

I've been using Linux Mint with an Nvidia GPU for a few months now. I have run into a few issues where it hasn't wanted to behave itself, buf nothing major or unsolvable.

You'll want to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers if you want any sort of performance. It can be a pain to get started sometimes, but when you get them working, they work and performance is good.

Personally I'm annoyed because any time I change my kernel version, I have to reinstall the Nvidia drivers. It's quite possible that this is not an issue if you don't use an extremely weirdly configured install of Gentoo like I currently do.

Basically it just works except if you use a bleeding edge distro like Arch where the newest Linux kernels are sometimes still incompatible with the binary only Nvidia driver. Overall the experience is a bit better with an AMD GPU and the open-source drivers though.

I've been gaming on Linux with nvidia gpus for over a decade, it is fine.. There is a lot of negativity about nvidia because the drivers are not open. But they work, and I have not personally had any issues.

If you use a distro that includes Nvidia drivers by default (like Ubuntu or Pop!OS or VanillaOS) it is pretty much a no brainer nowadays. For gaming I've been using Ubuntu with an Nvidia card for the past 3 years, and did not encounter any problem related to the drivers.

It's not great I can't even use nvenc and have to use software encoding for OBS...

I mean everything else works, so I guess this is a high bar? ?

Just try it out. I have a laptop with a 2060. My first Linux distro was Pop!_OS, but I've used nobara, fedora, and eventually settled on LinuxMint cinnamon.

My primary issue with all of the distros I've tried, is the older display server, X.ORG is the only display server that really plays well with Nvidia, the newer and more streamlined server, Wayland, does not. This has lead to a lot of wonky experiences with multi monitor support. Certain resolutions and refresh rates haven't played well together in various power usage profiles. At most, it has lead to a couple hours of headache, googling fixes and trying shit out, until I find something that works. When I find the right fix, I make note of it in case I ever need to reinstall. I've been gaming on mint for about a year now and I'm very pleased.

Great recommendations here already, just chiming in to say that it works great with no issues at all.

Been using Frogging Family Nvidia All drivers since forever :⁠-⁠)

Always worked great with my Lenovo Legion + 3070Ti

https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all

Fears are relatively unfounded. 1660 Ti is still a relatively new card, so you don't even have to worry about having to use legacy drivers. Just install the nvidia driver package from your distro and you should be good to go.

I've been running my 3090 and it's been working well for most games.

My laptop has 1650 and it works fine.

As long as you can get the driver installed, you're fine. The only time that might be a problem is if your distro updates something that breaks compatibility with the existing driver, and X refuses to start. You'll need to know how to install the latest driver from the command line, but then you should be good.

I've been running a 3080 with proprietary drivers on manjaro for a couple of years (I would not recommend manjaro, I now recommend endeavorOS if you want something Arch based) and it's fine. I don't think I've ever hit an nvidia specific bug.

I've been gaming on Nvidia cards since I switched over 3 years ago and only had a few issues.

On initial install, the opensource nvidia drivers wouldn't work - I had to go into the terminal and select the proprietary ones. That's pretty much it, really. Other than that, I've had about the same amount of issues with AMD(integrated graphics) and Nvidia.

On the plus side, Nvidia has a nice little control panel. It's basic, doesn't have all that GeForce Experience stuff, plus there are command line utilities like nvidia-smi(basic info) and nvtop(temp, clock, usage, memory stats). AMD doesn't have a control panel, that I'm aware of.

As far as distro, I'd say just chose the one you're most comfortable with. I don't think there are any huge differences between them concerning gaming performance.

I have 3060 Ti and have had no trouble. I even used it with Arch and Gentoo, and all I needed was installing the drivers (the package manager did it) and it worked out of the box.

I've been gaming on NixOS for a while and it works relatively painlessly though I wouldn't recommend NixOS to linux noobs. I think you should look at stuff like Fedora or distros that automatically install Nvidia drivers like Nobara Linux or Garuda Linux. The ones that automatically install them have no setup or pain to get actual working drivers while I've found in my experience that Arch Linux is the most pain and time to get working drivers.

There are issues with both AMD and nvidia. I've tried both. If you have nvidia then may as well just give it a go. I'd suggest something like Nobara, or EndeavourOS to get started. Use nvidia proprietary drivers for a better experience.

I've stuck with KDE Plasma for the desktop environment over the years.

https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/

https://endeavouros.com/latest-release/

I use GTX 1660 Ti and I had some problems, but nothing of impossible to solve. I use Arch with zen kernel and nvidia-dkms with XFCE as DE. List of games that I play: Apex Legends, Hogwarts Legacy, Grime, Ironsight, Albion Online, Nostale with Steam. League of Legends with Lutris. Vampyr, Bioshock Remastered 1 and 2 with Heroic Game Launcher.

The biggest pain you'll face is identifying which driver version you'll need, and whether you should be on Wayland or Xorg.
Once you figure that out, in my experience (GTX 1060 on Fedora), you're golden. Installation itself isn't hard then.

To my understanding, nvidia gpus mainly have issues with specific things like wayland, it otherwise works fine for the most part.

I still plan to switch to amd eventually, but its working fine. Linux mint has been a plug and play experience for me and is what I and many others would recommend if you are looking for the easiest transition from Windows.

I wouldnt think about it too hard tho cuz you can just install another distro relatively quickly if you dont like it.

@pleasemakesense > Are my fears unfounded/outdated?

They are mostly outdated. Nvidia works just as fine as amd does

Running KDE Neon here, my Nvidia experience has been faultless, adding the PPA and installing the drivers is reliable and straightforward. Wayland works acceptably, but running a single 4k 27" monitor X11 works perfectly, so at this point in time I see no reason to swap to Wayland - I'm sure in time I'll adopt Wayland, I'm simply not quite ready to drop my ability to create custom fan profiles using GWE just yet.

Nvidia X Server settings are nice, as is nvidia-smi.

It's been about a year for me, but I did not have issues using the nvidia version of PopOS.

That said, I still ended up switching to AMD, because the driver is just in the kernel.

I have used Linux (first Mint, later TuxedoOS) for over 7 years with Nvidia cards and it has for the most part worked well. The one exception was a driver update that introduced a bug that stopped me from playing a few games, but i reverted that update with Timeshift and waited a bit for an update without that bug, so it wasn't really a big deal to me.

Gaming is where you will have the least problems with nvidia.