1y ago

Loving PopOS but apparently I can't get the latest Nvidia driver? (Your regularly scheduled "What Distro should I use" thread)

Basically the title. Loving PopOS as my daily, but I understand that PopOS uses their own process and makes sure that only a checked driver gets wide release. Great for stability, less great for playing games that just came out. Is there a distro that this community generally recommends for gaming?

40 comments

Nobara is pretty good for a "just works" gaming-centric distro. The issue that you're coming across is plain and simple, PopOS is severly outdated. Most of System76's dev team are likely working on COSMIC.
If you want the absolute most, contiuously up-to-date packages, then I can't recommend anything other than Arch. I've used it as my daily driver for a little over 2 years now and I've always come crawling back if I try something else. Gaming on it isn't a hassle, most of the time it just works, not to be a stereotypical Arch user but do read the Wiki. Arch was also my first ever distro, a friend got me into it.
If Arch is a bit dawnting for you then something Arch-based is just as good, from experience I recommend EndeavourOS. Do not use Manjaro.
- I second the "Do not use manjaro". It has incredibly many issues that arch doesn't have and the only advantage is that it comes with an installer.
  Arch with nvidia is a bit of a pain though. The nvidia driver updates break my system or some games every 1-2 months.
  
  Also the new Arch install script is very easy and reduces the need for Manjaro, even for new users.
  
  Tell me if I'm wrong or that's not what you meant. But your Nvidia problem should go away as soon as you use nvidia-dkms (or nvidia-open-dkms) instead of the regular nvidia package (or nvidia-open). I haven't had any problems (of that kind) in a long time.
- I use Manjaro, and can confirm.
  Do not use Manjaro.
  
  Friends don't let friends use Manjaro
- I did my personal yearly “year of the linux distro” litmus test with Nobara and I had many problems tbh, two of the most notable ones were fullscreen video stuttering and shader cache stutters.
  So I was like, we are getting close, but I am not sold.
  Then I decided to try arch and shit just works tbh, basically no issues with stuff I play usually, the biggest struggle was getting Battle.net up and all it took was changing proton version on steam to get it installing.
- On my gaming rig I run and love Garuda, which is also based on Arch. I’m technical enough to handle Arch but I don’t like having to search around a bunch to figure out which combination of packages I need to make certain things work. Garuda comes with a ton of stuff preinstalled, which makes it a lot less lean than Endeavour, but I think they generally make good choices for default settings (I love their Fish terminal setup), and things like Nvidia drivers and configuration backups through btrfs snapshots just work out of the box.
  For gaming I think Garuda or Nobara are the best bets, personally.
- The more I read the more I think I should switch from Linux mint to arch. Never tried it before.
  My server is running Ubuntu but I want to switch to NixOS. So switching Linux mint to arch sounds right.
- "severly outdated"? You mean updated kernel, mesa, NVIDIA and other important packages?
  https://github.com/pop-os/linux/pull/282 https://github.com/pop-os/nvidia-graphics-drivers/pull/191 https://github.com/pop-os/mesa/pull/18
- Garuda is great

The kind of game-specific fixes that get added to GPU drivers on Windows are typically added to Proton, not the Linux GPU drivers. Waiting a week for the Nvidia driver so you can be sure it won't break your system is only a plus in this instance.
- Yeah I'm going to echo this. Patience is a good idea on Linux, especially when it comes to proprietary drivers.

Nobara Linux. It's a fedora derivative that's focused for gaming, with regular updates. It even comes with all the important things like Steam and Feral Gamemode installed. Make sure to download the Nvidia version if you have an Nvidia GPU.

SteamOS is based on arch linux, and I joke that when someone merge a pull request on github, Arch starts to build their package.
EndevourOS is basically arch linux for beginners, they have their own repositories but just for some tools, just cool stuff.
About Manjaro I would recommend to not use it, not because of the reasons' ppl common raise, for me, it was actually good when I used it, but they try to be "stable" as PopOS in their default branch, so you will never get the latest stuff.
I don't like Nobara because it is based on Fedora, a semi-rolling-release distro, so some packages don't update regularly and wait until next release, they probably update everything related to graphics and games but I do not only play games on my machine, I never used Nobara tho.
Said that, I play a lot more than I should, and I use EndevourOS.
- I joke that when someone merge a pull request on github, Arch starts to build their package.
  This is ideal if you have sufficient automated testing in place.
- As someone that was on a straight Arch install for years I've come to appreciate Manjaro + their holding back of non-critical updates for a couple weeks for additional testing. Between that and sticking to LTS kernel versions I've run into way fewer issues (not that being on the bleeding edge for updates was that bad, but problems certainly came up occasionally).

Here's my takes:
Ubuntu and derivatives are just FINE
Fedora derivatives have been problematic since F38 for various reasons
Arch is very good, has an immense of knowledge in their docs and forums, but requires you be already adept to keep it rolling smoothly
Endeavor is supposed to be an easier to manage Arch experience, but I'm not sure you'll be escaping any Nvidia issues.
- Fedora is fine, but you want to use flatpak firefox to get easy hardware accelerated video decoding if you're on an AMD GPU.
  I have a lot of love lost with canonical and their shenanigans over the years.

If you need bleeding edge gaming support, is Arch (using Arch-install)or an Arch based distro like Garuda. I believe OpenSUSE Tumbleweed could also be alternative to Arch.
The next best thing is a Fedora based distro like Nobara.
In any case, use KDE Plasma + Wayland.
Anything else is just old software.
- I’ve long been a fan of gnome any reason why you recommend kde + wayland?
  
  Not the OP but Gnome does not support variable refresh rate.

So just to put this out there. https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/
Universal Blue has some really good ideas. I really think immutable and atomic updating linux distros are the future. Most applications have flatpaks available.
Bazzite has alot of gamer forward features, has Nvidia specific builds, and even supports a SteamDeck replacement version of their OCI images.
Even though people may not like Fedora, I think universal Blue solves a lot of the Fedora style problems people experience.
There are also BlendOS and VanillaOS but I haven't tried them with NVIDIA GPUs.

I use Endevour OS, and have no problems with Nvidia drivers, but since its an arch based distro its not as easy or stable as debian based distros

I've had good luck with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but I usually recommend Linux Mint because it's so much more common so it's probably easier to get help. So that's my recommendation, check out Linux Mint.

Garuda

I recommend Garuda. It's an arch based distro with a focus on gaming. Arch is great for gaming and developing as it's bleeding edge. Base arch is very minimal and needs a lot of packages to be installed and configured before you can game. Garuda has all of that installed and configured when you install the distro.
The only complain I hear people have about Garuda is that they find it too bloated. But I find it easier to uninstall whatever you consider to be bloat, rather than install and configure all the gaming stuff you need. As a bonus, Garuda automatically sets up btrfs snapshots when you install it. So if you break something while uninstalling what you don't want, you can just go to a previous snapshot.

ive been using Rhino Linux and have been very happy with it!
- Recommended system requirements for this one?
  
  its a ubuntu based distro using a modified xfce de, so not much i wouldnt think for system requirements.
  im using a modern laptop with 4gb of ram and itspretty smooth.

Games that just come out could be an issue regardless of distro. Sometimes Wine/Proton needs to fix a few things… no distro is going to help, in that regard. I suppose a more regularly updated distro COULD help with getting updates faster… but it’s usually nothing you cannot already solve with Pop. ProtonUp-QT is a great tool to help get you the latest Proton versions, including the Eggroll fork. It’s available as a Flatpak, so it’ll work on most modern distros (including Pop).
If you must switch to a more regularly updated distro, you have a couple of options. Nobara (based on Fedora) will give you a nice middle ground between your current setup and Arch. Speaking of which, Arch is a great distribution, with fantastic documentation. That being said, it IS NOT new user friendly. It WILL break, and you WILL need to look stuff up. You’re on the literal bleeding edge, of Linux. The Arch forums can also be quite toxic, in comparison to what’s available on both Pop/Ubuntu and Nobara/Fedora. If neither is appealing to you, consider OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s very up to date, but I often find it more stable than Arch.

I can’t reccomend arch or arch based enough, it is not that hard, you will become somewhat adept in the terminal in the process. Arch wiki is very extensive and the community is huge, package management is a breeze.

Gentoo. It will be the last distro you hop to. Because it's whatever you want it to be. Don't be afraid. It even has a special command and portage repo to install all the support files and ancient libraries from 2002 your old games need in one shot.
You can snag a binary kernel, browser and some compilers now too if you don't want to deal with that. It's not much more difficult than Arch nowadays.
- Gentoo takes a serious commitment if for no other reason than build time. I would not go around recommending it to anyone who isn't an enthusiast. PopOS to Gentoo is kind of a crazy jump.

40 comments