7mo ago

Sorry I can't do it.

I've been working on converting my gaming PC to Linux for a few weeks, but everything is running, but it all is just a little jankier than I would like.

I have an 8th gen Intel i7 and an Rtx 2070, running Arch linux.

Sometimes I boot up and my mouse doesn't work and I have to restart. Sometimes I launch games and they just don't launch right.

It feels like I'm doing a lot of work for no benefit. In fact, Elden ring runs way worse on my Linux partition than my Windows partition.

I've tried GE proton, gamemode, steam compatibility, everything... I'm sorry but I'm going to have to stick with Windows for gaming.

148 comments

somebody gave you bad advice if you chose arch for your first distro
- I wonder if the Arch bros will ever realize they're doing more harm than good...
  
  Obviously NixOS is the way to go for a gaming OS, just use the right flake and you're all set!
  /s
  
  Honestly Arch-based is a good choice, but straight up Arch for a newbie? Nah.
  I’m running EndeavorOS with KDE and it’s been solid for gaming. A few bugs, but mostly minor, like it picked the wrong default NIC driver (but still worked) and SMB shares wouldn’t auto mount recently until an update a week or two ago.
  My main PC for non-gaming runs Manjaro. I know there are haters about it, but it’s been a solid distro for general use, and I’ve encountered no issues to speak of.
- Yeah, Arch is not a great choice.
  I would suggest PopOS! or Nobara.
  Or just good ole reliable Debian.

Linux may very well not be for you, but using Arch first is like jumping into the deep end to learn how to swim. It's no surprise you're drowning. I'd recommend you try a gaming-focused distro like Nobara before you go back to Windows for good.
- Nobara is great if you're into Fedora. PopOS! or Linux Mint if you're into Debian. Those will take you further way faster and with less pain than any Arch based distro.
  
  So for a linux virgin who is planning to jump in - what's the difference between the two groups?
- Yep give Nobara a shot if you're going to reinstall anyways. Bet you'll change your mind
- I vouch for Bazzite OS. I have Arch on my main and Nobara on a sibling's computer for gaming and Nobara works flawlessly with minimal setup. It pretty much works the same as my arch desktop with all the KDE stuff. Highly recommend, even if you're new or experienced.

Who the hell recommended Arch to you? Arch is for when you've been using Linux for a few years and have gotten bored waiting for the latest updates to hit your repos.
- I use Linux at work, so I am a least familiar with how to tinker with it, but it just can't seem to find the right settings to get things running smoothly. I can't imagine a different distro would be any different.
  
  The problem with Arch is that it's philosophy includes having to set up everything correctly yourself rather than each package you install already being set up and preconfigured the way you'd expect it to be in other distros. You shouldn't need to be fiddling with system stuff at all with something user focused like Pop!OS since I believe it even handles nvidia drivers for you. I wouldn't be using arch myself if I didn't have significant amounts of free time to invest into chasing down every little problem I encountered using it in college.
  Linux is in a weird spot right now where the two ends of the user spectrum seem to be handled well while the middle still has issues since they're not already experts or just need an internet browser to be completely happy.
  
  I can’t imagine a different distro would be any different.
  BZZZZZZZZZZZT I'm sorry but that answer was not correct. Next player!
  Seriously try some of the other distros and you'll have a much more pleasant experience. I already recommended Tumbleweed in another reply but man, anything but Arch is gonna be an improvement for somebody trying to make the switch from Windows gaming for the first time.
  
  Try Bazzite.
  
  Linux at work and Linux for gaming are two very different beasts. For example, you didn't mention which drivers and DE (or WM) you're using which are the most crucial part to how games run, and both of which need to be manually configured on Arch but come pre-configured or are a couple clicks away in other distros.
  
  A different distro like Pop is completely different. My Pop gaming computer runs better than Windows on the same computer and didn't require any fiddling at all. It even comes with the latest stable Nvidia driver right out of the box, and you can upgrade it with the click of a button.

with the issues you've had i think it's perfectly understandable, but I'll agree with other commenters that arch is not a good choice for a first distro. i recommend trying dual booting windows and a more "beginner " distro like Linux mint or pop_os
- What the hell, he uses Arch as a first checkout linux gaming distro?
  Bro, you missed one small but crucial information there just at the beginning of your journey...
- the reason why arch gets recommend a lot as a gaming distro is that it is bleeding edge. Their for has very up to date drivers and parches that can help gaming. But with the current state of gaming on Linux this is a bit less of a requirement. most distros are new enough for most games. Exception might be debian LTS or something.
  So i totaly agree that choosing something other then arch for gaming is a good option if you are rather new to linux.
  
  Funny. I just had to downgrade my kernel from 6.8.9 to 6.1 for my main game to work. So much for bleeding edge... 😅
  (Not on Arch btw, but still applies)
  
  As a longtime Debian Stable user, I can attest that gaming on it works just fine, whether via Proton or natively.
  It was rough at the first half year or so after Steam Linux client launched where system libraries were simply too old and one had to smuggle in libc from Ubuntu, but that got solved by the next Debian release, and it's been smooth sailing ever since. :)
  Of course, I wouldn't recommend Debian for a gaming system for a newbie. It's just what I've been using as my daily driver for decades, so I did not want to switch to something else just for something as unimportant as gaming.
  
  Bleeding edge should still work though. KDE Plasma does not seem ready for Nvidia. They should have a big-ass banner on the wiki that says "this DE will be janky as fuck if you have an Nvidia card".

Arch Linux is great for people that want to do nothing but Arch Linux.
- True. It's also good for people who want to get stuff done. I used it for 5-ish years, and it was an incredibly productive, low-maintenance distro. I only switched because I wanted to run brtfs on root, so I figured I'd give openSUSE a shot since they do that by default.
- Eh, it has a lot of powerful tools for computing stuff. Like today I wondered if I can download the songs from a playlist on YouTube, checked the wiki, and within 5 minutes I was doing it. It worked perfectly. The AUR also saves a lot of time building packages that aren't available through pacman, which means they're probably not available through other distros either. So you can definitely do more than just fiddle with the OS. But getting it working stable with Nvidia cards right now is like a full time job.
- I’ve been daily driving arch for like five years now, and this is just flat out not true at all. I agree it’s not a beginner distro, but if you know what you’re doing and know what you want it’s the best.

Arch Linux
Unless you're on a good downstream like SteamOS, I'd suggest switching to something stable cutting edge (Fedora or Nobara if you want to put in zero effort).
Arch by itself will give you way the hell too many possible problems. You could waste hours on DKMS alone.
Mint will also work, but it has the downside of having slower updates to software packages.
- I've started with Nobara and it's been working great!
- Wait, Fedora is bleeding edge too? I don't know that
  
  Its generally more up to date with newer standards and such than Debian, but it is by no means bleeding edge.
  Bleeding edge is generally bad unless you really need some specific thing for a specific reason.
  If your whole set up is bleeding edge then congrats, you are a basically alpha testing an OS.
  
  Fedora is what I'd describe as cutting edge, but not bleeding edge. It's still behind from source, and is semi-rolling release, so it's further behind than Arch but way ahead of stable/fixed release distros like Debian
  
  It is not

First of all nothing to apologize, no one should be forcing anyone to use any OS.
Secondly, you shouldn't start with Arch, it's a very manual process that has several small things that can be done wrong. I recommend you try Mint, Pop or any other beginner friendly distro, you can still tinker and customize them as much as you want, but you will be starting from something that works instead of having to build a working system from the ground up without knowing what that looks like.
- Even Endeavor would be better than going straight to Arch.
- I second Pop! It's the best UX I've had with Linux so far. System76 really outdid themselves with that distro.

If you're not having a good time, stop. Life is too short.
If you're still interested in using linux, LinuxMint or PopOs! are what most people would recommend to a new user, not Arch.
Arch can be perfect for users with the time, knowledge, and effort to perfectly tailor things to suit their needs. They can make it perfectly efficient, without any excess.
I just want to use my computer whenever I want it to work. I am fine with it having a few extra packages/applications that I might never use. I've being using linux as main (or only) operating system on/off for about 20 years, and I currently use Mint.
- I had to practice in a VM before even considering vanilla Arch. No way am I going to fiddle around with getting everything right on bare metal.

If you're a beginner... or hate jank, don't use Arch. And make sure you're using a desktop environment that supports Wayland (GNOME or KDE). Gaming on X11 can be buggy, janky and inconsistent
- They are running Nvidia. Their only option for Wayland is kde.
  
  What's bad about KDE?

sounds like your problem is likely a combo of trying bare arch and also an nvidia card. i'd recommend Pop!OS as i hear it's the best out of the box experience for nvidia owners, and if you want to stay arch based i'd try EndeavourOS as it's arguably the most mature and stable arch based distro today, it's what i use but i also have amd not nvidia so i can't speak for the nvidia experience for endeavour. maybe you want to wait a while before you try again just so you're not burning out on the frustration, too. good luck!
- Seconding pop os for a solid starter Linux distro.
  Been daily driving it for about 3 years now i think.
- I use endeavorOS with my 3070 and if runs great. Better than what I could get from Pop and nobara when I evaluated them months ago
- Interesting. What issues are there with Nvidia? I was able to get the kernal drivers installed without issue.
  
  I'm guessing you're running either the nvidia open source drivers (way worse performance) or you don't have graphics switching configured and it's using your GPU's iGPU (way way worse performance).
  Bigger distros like Mint will probably configure that for you.
  
  nvidia only very recently opened up their drivers to open source dev, so the open source drivers available right now are still based on reverse engineering and they don't work super great. there are proprietary drivers from nvidia but they are not easy to install and configure and popos handles that for you on install.

Arch for a beginner can be a bit too much.
Try Bazzite.
- I also heard good things about Nobara in terms of gaming. Haven't tried it myself though.
  
  I've been using Nobara 39 for the last month and it has been a smooth ride. I'm playing Elden Ring with 0 issues and no tweaking needed on my part. The only friction I had was with the installer because I have a Nvidia card but once installed and got drivers updated all issues were gone.
- I installed Bazzite on my gaming computer and it just isn't great, there is screen flickering and occasional crashes:( I am not going back to Windows but it has required more emotional energy to troubleshoot than I wanted
  I probably should get an AMD card, but I am going to try Nobara next to see if it just works...

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I plan on keeping Linux on my second drive to continue playing around with it, but my gaming will probably go back to Windows. Might give bazzite or popos a try next.
- I recommend trying another linux distro for a while. Arch has a pretty steep learning curve. So big respect for getting it to work as a first distro, but there is a lot of stuff you have to setup manually that just works on other distros. If you got more stuff working and get a little more familiar you can always go back to arch.
  I use arch nowadays, but the first time i tried to install it i basically gave up a few times. If you just want to try it out in order to learn then it's perfectly cool to take some time. But if your goal is to play games then arch is just a means to an end. Then it becomes really annoying, because you cannot reach your goal.
- Just a heads up, but gaming on an external drive with bazzite is a nightmare (if you end up trying to go that route).
  
  Not an external drive, just my second nvme

I understand your struggle. As others said, Arch is not a beginner friendly distro.
I would suggest trying gaming tailored distros like Nobara, Chimera or Bazzite and see how you feel about them. Don't install your full steam library during these testing period, try games separately and prioritize the games you play the most.
Learning involves trial and error and the Linux ecosystem has a lot of that.
In the end it's ok if you say This is not for me right now
- Do you have any comments/suggestions on picking one of those distros? I can do my own research so no pressure.
  
  It greatly depends on what type of experience you are looking for. Nobara is based on Fedora with pre installed stuff tailored for gaming and content creation, it's very configurable as most Linux distros.
  Bazzite and Chimera are more SteamOS/Console -esque experience tailored. Still configurable but more limited since they are immutable distros. Bazzite is based on Fedora and Chimera on Arch.
  IMO if you only plan to game or mainly game on the PC either Bazzite or Chimera are good options. If you also intend to use the PC as a workstation I would go with Nobara, which is my case.
  PS: For those looking for a friendlier Arch experience try Manjaro.

Lol try Linux mint, it just works

Arch for gaming, what the hell
- Works quite well for me. But I would agree it’s not the best to start with if having little desktop Linux experience.
- Arch is great for gaming, but it’s not for beginners
- Valve thought it was appropriate when they made the steam deck.
  
  Valve pre installs a lot of programs and tools to make it work that stock arch expects the user to already know about or to read the wiki

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to stick with Windows for gaming.
That's ok, I forgive you.
Seriously, Windows works better for a lot of people, and that's fine. I went back to Windows several times before I made the switch permanently to Linux. You just gotta do what works for you.
If you decide to try Linux again, I would recommend a distro like chimera OS, nobara, or just vanilla fedora. I've personally had a lot of luck with those distros.
- I went back to Windows several times before I made the switch permanently to Linux. You just gotta do what works for you.
  This is the way.
  I went back and forth for years. Tuning and tweaking to find what works for me. Spoiler - the fully open source options are what worked best for me, eventually.
  For awhile gaming was the only place I put up with non-Linux anymore. And now with my SteamDeck, I have an easy way to avoid buying games that aren't Linux ready.

I switched my gaming PC to Linux a few months back. I distro hopped for a while due to various issues, and landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. Everything just works (except for the occasional bug in the updates where I have to wait for the next snapshot for a fix, but that's NBD).
Caveat: I'm all AMD so no Nvidia stuff to worry about. YMMV.
- Same here except I stuck with leap as the newer kernel does not play nice with the suspend function. My little travel laptop has tumbleweed on it no problems. I'm surprised I haven't seen more suse recommendations because it's the only one that mostly "just worked" out of the box.

FWIW, I've got an i7-8700k with an RTX 3080. I initially had two major issues when I replaced Windows with Bazzite:
Steam doesn't do great with libraries on NTFS partitions. Supposedly there are workarounds, but I couldn't get them to work for me. I had to reformat a couple drives as ext4 (and do a bunch of file management in the process) before things would play nice.
I had my CPU overclocked to 4.8 GHz in Windows. BG3 kept crashing on me on Bazzite. Finally occurred to me to drop the overclock and I've played 40+ hours since, solid as a rock. Performance is comparable to Windows with OC. GPU temps are consistently better than Windows. Only thing I'm missing is HDR.
Bonus: GreenWithEnvy (for GPU fan curve) won't run in a Wayland session yet, apparently, so I've been running under X11 instead.
Hope this helps. YMMV. Happy gaming, whatever OS you use!
- Are you sharing steam library with windows? Why would you have an ntfs partition?
  
  When I replaced Windows, I had two other disks with NTFS volumes, one of which was full of Steam games, the other with assorted crap. I built this box in 2017. The SSD where Windows was installed is only 256 GB.

Nobara is a very good starting point for Linux. I personally know Linux stuff from an IT perspective, but personal use/driver troubleshooting is not something I care to fiddle with regularly. I started with Kubuntu since it's familiar, but eventually swapped to Nobara when I had some issues with the few games I play.
Nobara has been seamless and easy. Having all wine and proton dependencies preinstalled is much nicer and a lot of games Just Work ™️ out of the box.

Hi there, whoever suggested linux for your switch played a mean joke on you. Granted, arch works well if you know what you‘re doing, apparently. But no way it is a good starting distro.
I‘m not sure how eldenring works on linux but most games run without problems.
One little caveat is this: you need to understand that windows is a billion dollar product while linux is mostly community driven. It costs nothing, except many people donating their time. So I‘d suggest adopting a „its insane that hobbyists are able to build something like this“ view. Otherwise you‘ll get frustrated and will end up im privacy invasive windows territory again.
If you want a more gaming ready distro, try pop os or bazzite. Good luck

Good luck! Linux is sadly not quite yet for everyone, but it’s so much further along than it was when I started in 1999.
I bounced between Linux and Windows for decades, but when the Recall debacle happened, it became clear that Microsoft have lost their collective minds. I wiped my system, put Garuda Linux on it, and everything works quite well for me with no tinkering except with user-level KDE settings. I also changed from an NVIDIA RTX 3070Ti to an AMD RX 7800XT just so everything related to graphics would just work and I didn’t have to wait and hope that explicit sync really does fix everything for NVIDIA on Wayland.
I also use proton-ge for everything (in Steam as well as in Lutris which uses umu-launcher) and every game I’ve attempted to run (thus far on the order of 35+ games), has run great, including Elden Ring. I’ve found in my 25 years experience, the trick with Linux is two-fold: researching hardware to guarantee full Linux support…and having patience. And I’ve fell victim to that last one dozens of times over the years which led me back to windows each time.
No more.
- Wayland and Plasma have not been good experiences for me. Gnome on Pop was awesome. I can't get the flicker to stop. So I'm going to try Gnome on Arch and see if that fixes it. Unfortunately I think it also uses Wayland, so I may have to go back to Pop. I'm not spending another $1000 on a GFX card when I have a perfectly fine 3070 ti already .
  
  Okay.

No point in forcing it upon itself, you'll just hate it Just if you are to try again, remember you can always ask about recommendations, maybe there will be a setup for you which works smoothly and out of the box

Wrong distro. Start again.
Popos
- I had a lot of issues with PopOs I just use Ubuntu for now.

This may seem odd, but check if your mobo has a bios update. Often bios break uefi standards to appease Microsofts non-standard requirements.
These get fixed overtime as ACPI bugs are fixed.

Are you using KDE? I'm on a fresh install of Arch with KDE Plasma on my gaming computer and I agree, it's janky as fuck. I've gone through everything I can find about how to deal with the flicker, but it's still there and it's an awful experience.
I have none of these issues on my Arch laptop with Gnome, so I'm going to switch my desktop to Gnome too when I have the time. Plasma is not ready for mainstream use if this is the best that it gets. Gnome however is awesome!
So, I suggest changing your DE to Gnome. If that doesn't fix the problem then switch to Pop!_OS. It's a completely plug and play distro and I never had a single problem with it. I only switched to Arch because I wanted to get HDR support which requires Plasma. Well, it's not worth it. I can't even use adaptive sync which is a pretty big deal for gaming.
Good luck, we're all counting on you.
Edit: otherwise Arch is an awesome distro. The power you have with all of the available programs is great! So, now it's just about getting the screen rendering to be stable.
- The flickering thing is because you're using Wayland and Nvidia GPU. If you switched to X11 (losing HDR support, unfortunately), the flickering goes away. However! I would recommend updating your system to KDE 6.1, which I believe has the explicit sync fix.
  
  Edit: I just checked and I'm already on kDE Plasma version 6.1. And KDE Frameworks version 6.3. I wonder, do I need to undo some of the settings I made for KDE by following the Wiki if 6.1 was supposed to fix it?
  I've thought about switching to x11 instead of going back to Gnome, but I haven't decided yet. HDR is definitely not worth all of these other visual glitches and latency, so I need to do something. I don't understand how the system can perform so poorly and be considered stable enough to be the default. At least half the people out there are probably using Nvidia cards.
  Is there anything I should know before I switch to x11? Like, do I need to undo all these custom settings I made for the Nvidia driver, or use another driver? I'd appreciate the advice since this is one issue I've encountered that is definitely not resolved by reading the wiki.
- Yes I am using KDE mainly because gnome felt too mac os to me. Also KDE supports HDR (somewhat).
  Is there a way to change distro without losing steam installs?
  
  Edit: I just tried X11 and it seems a lot more stable. I didn't have time to play a game, but I checked a few things that were causing flickering before and they weren't flickering. On the login screen at the top left, pick x11 from the first drop down and then log in. Hopefully that works for you.
  Original message below: If you installed your steam games on a separate partition. Otherwise unfortunately not. You can switch DEs without losing them though. The guy above this said that x11 KDE might fix the issue, and a new version of Plasma might also fix it. Check his comment. Overall though if you want a hands off experience then Pop is going to be a way better introduction to Linux than Arch. Although... Pop uses Gnome. So you would have to change the DE. There are some other distros that are pretty plug and play like Kubuntu or Mint that use KDE. I don't think they're as dialed as Pop, and IDK their Nvidia driver situation though, so check that before deciding.
- I had screen flicker on my endeavour os using kde and had to switch screen dimming off. Haven't had it since.
  
  Cool. Thanks! I'll try that.

Just out of curiosity, is the mouse bluetooth?
I heard there are some intermittent problems with them on linux because of proprietary blobs and similar driver issues, but I've never had one, so I've no direct experience.
- It's a wireless Logitech with a little USB dongle. It works from the bios so I wasn't sure what was up with that.
  
  Yeah I have the same problem, usually you have to turn it on before turning on the pc or just replug the USB dongle

Can't blame you. I put a Windows PC together again just so I could play Helldivers 2 a bit more consistently. There's nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy your leisure time.
- Funny enough, helldivers was a game I didn't have a problem with haha

For a long time I couldn't get a stable distro working on my HP laptop with Intel 4 core & Nvidia 1660ti but after numerous successful daily driving on my desktops + steam deck of course I tried Bazzite which did the trick. Everything runs smoother & I haven't encountered anything unable to run because the steam proton is mature. Lutris is perfect for anything to do with alternative launchers, roms, I even got modded black ops 2 working and I never thought that would be possible.
I wish you the best of luck.

I switched to Linux Mint a few weeks ago and I'm not having any problems with games. Everything in my Steam library plays fine.

To use (and enjoy) Linux properly, you've got to "unlearn" several things including the bad habit of expect everything to "just werk". If you are expecting to "double click your cares away" on Linux, then it's (very) likely you'll be disappointed.
With that aside, your best bet is to go for Linux Mint and not Arch Linux.

Do people not use Manjaro for this?

Allow me to piggyback on this a bit, s'il vous plait.
Is there a Linux distribution that will run Adobe CC out of the box, games from Steam, and VR headsets? I need a new desktop badly, but I need to be able to use Adobe products as part of my job. (No, I can't switch to GNU products, because I get files from clients, and I have to be able to work to industry standards.) I've used Tails before, which is not a user-friendly product, and it doesn't play nicely with any other software.
- Pretty much any major distro is going to have similar support for all of that. And for Adobe CC, that's going to be limited at best. You didn't specify which part of CC you need, but here's an option for installing Photoshop 2022 on Linux. Trying to get the latest is likely going to be painful, since WINE would probably lag with supporting all the new updates.
  Steam works pretty well pretty much everywhere. I've used it on Fedora, Arch, and openSUSE, and I'm sure it works fine on any Debian-based distro. VR support is similar, you're going to have a much better time with SteamVR headsets. That said, here's a guide to VR on Linux, stick to "confirmed working" sections for minimal tinkering.
  Tails
  Yeah, don't use that for regular work, that's an uber-paranoid distro that's intentionally locked down, which means things are likely going to be more difficult to get working.
  Try Linux Mint or Fedora (or Bazzite if you want gamer flavor), they're both solid and tend to work pretty well out of the box. Software and hardware support doesn't vary much between distros, so if it you can't get it working with one of those and it's not "officially supported" (i.e. instructions aren't in one of my links), distro hopping probably won't help.
  
  I have to use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro every day for my day job. I have to keep up-to-date with my versions, because clients send me files that use features in the latest releases, and not being up-to-date means that things don't render correctly. (I'm super-pissed that I have to update since Adobe dropped all support for Pantone colors abut a year (?) ago.)
  I use Corel Painter 2022 and a Wacom pen display for fun. My guess is that a pen display might get a little weird in Linux, but the one I have is not cutting edge at least.
  Yeah, don’t use that for regular work, that’s an uber-paranoid distro that’s intentionally locked down, which means things are likely going to be more difficult to get working.
  I know, I know, but I liked being functionally untrackable online, and not getting ads shoved down my throat (...despite working in advertising...) all the time. It's neat, but almost everything online seems to have privacy-invading features so deeply embedded that the browser built into Tails just can't use them at all.

As someone who recommends Arch to new users that have some familiarity with CLI AND also likes to tinker, I will always advise to check their wiki and forum. Check for the very specific problem you're having. Even the model sometimes helps. From other comments, I see you're mentioning logitech, maybe this wiki entry will help, but maybe it won't. In which case, search for more information. Check their wiki entry for other logitech mice, for wireless mice, for general mice.
Now, onto the next issue, what do you mean by not launch right? From there, maybe I can help with the issue.
This is also why I recommend this to someone that would like to tinker with their system. Arch requires a lot of reading. But once you understand it, it becomes "yours" and you obtain a lot of knowledge about the system that you're using.
Now, for everyone who doesn't like to tinker, use bazzite. I heard that it just works™.
- That's exactly the reason you shouldn't recommend Arch for new users. New users, even those who like to tinker, don't want to read pages upon pages of wikis to get basic shit working. They want something that works that they can tinker with.
  90% sure OP installed the wrong drivers, probably because he missed some note on which to install or a configuration to switch them. Also very likely the mouse issue is related to some random udev rule or package he installed trying to solve something, Logitech mouses just work out of the box.
  Don't get me wrong, I love Arch, have been using it as my main distro for over 15 years, but it's definitely NOT for new users, even those who like to tinker with their system, Ubuntu is just as tinkerable, but Arch you need to build up. Imagine someone saying they are interested in decorating their home and you recommend them to build their house from scratch while having nowhere to live. This is why it's important that new users have a comfortable place they can go back if things don't work, and if you don't give it to them they'll obviously return to Windows.
  
  Yeah, I may need to rethink my recommendation for the future. Especially their willingness to read and patience. I am happy to guide anyone if they asked and hence why I usually recommend it.
  Regarding the random udev rule, I doubt it was that. Cooler Master mouse has known issue in Linux in which they don't wake up from sleep when using the dongle. So it could just be the mouse regardless of the distro.
  As for the wrong driver, the OP stated that he experiences stutter for certain games but not for others. As I said, I am not an expert for troubleshooting stutter as it could be from a lot of factors. But I doubt OP installed the wrong driver. Wrong drivers usually lead to more uniform glitches across the board.
- Thanks for the reply.
  My main issue is stuttering with baldur's gate 3 and elden ring, both performing worse than their windows equivalent installations. Also I got HDR working in the desktop with KDE plasma, but the option just isn't available in games.
  Finally, the brightness on my monitor seems to be all over the place.
  For now I plan on keeping Linux on one of my drives (maybe try another distro, or just stick to less demanding games) and using Windows for AAA games.
  
  Alright, the stuttering is not my forte for troubleshooting. It could be from the driver but it could also be just the compatibility layer or myriad of other factors. I don't play those games myself too. However, you can try searching for protondb to see the state of the game support on linux. Here is for Elden Ring for example. And be sure to actually check the review as it really reflects the state of games. You can also try looking for those with the same hardware and see if they comment on any issue. That can at least help weed out some potential problems.
  And regarding HDR in KDE, have you also read the wiki regarding HDR in game? more info also available on the HDR monitor support page. HDR is still experimental so you still need to install packages from AUR for games.
  Lastly, the brightness issue. Can you describe it in more detail? Like, does it happen when you are turning HDR on or is it happening regardless of HDR? And what does it mean the brightness is all over the place? Is it happening when you are consuming video content? I have an OLED for example, and the black is always the same regardless of the brightness. So are you sure it isn't from the content itself?

Shit that's crazy, I'm ryzen 3800x with 2070 super and Elden ring runs BETTER on manjaro Linux (arch based) than windows!
I really couldn't believe it.

Y u no SteamOS?

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