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PayPalHere is your up to date list of what distro you should be picking if you want to start gaming on Linux in 2026. The latest edition of you telling me I'm wrong.
Back in the 2025 edition of the article I suggested Kubuntu, and while it worked reasonably well overall it feels a bit like an unloved child. I used it for a long time and was mostly happy with it, but times change and so does the Linux and open source world.
Despite what you read elsewhere - you don't need to go with the latest random "gaming" distribution. The best thing to do is to stick with the crowd, and go with the bigger more well-known distributions. Most "gaming" distributions just throw a few random tweaks and a new theme on top of something else, they can usually just be ignored. Don't fall for their hype. There are literally 100s of Linux distributions, so GamingOnLinux is here to help you just cut through all that noise.
Desktop
My overall recommendation for 2026 on desktop? Fedora KDE. Fedora is generally a lot more up to date than Ubuntu / Kubuntu while not being constantly bleeding-edge like Arch Linux, and apart from an unfortunate snafu with a Mesa driver update, it has been one of the most pleasant and stable experiences I've ever had in all my years running Linux. With Fedora KDE also now promoted to a front-row seat too, it has never been a better time for it.
You don't get the multiple-year long-term support that you do from the likes of Ubuntu, so you need to jump between Fedora versions more often but that's not exactly a bad thing. Fedora is a lot more leading-edge with updates, and for gaming with system updates that's actually quite a nice bonus.
Fedora do a new release around every 6 months, with ongoing updates to each release for around 13 months. So realistically, you can do a major upgrade only once a year and be done with it.
An annoying downside to Fedora — Installing NVIDIA GPU drivers on Fedora still needs more steps than it should. Hopefully with the rise of better open source drivers for NVIDIA eventually this will be a thing of the past. That, or the Fedora team just make it easier out of the box. Not a huge downside though, with the right instructions for GPU driver updates you can be done in a couple of minutes.
Handhelds and TV PCs
An addition for this year is the Handheld and TV PCs suggestion, because it's a rapidly growing segment of the market. With the Steam Deck, Legion Go, ROG Ally and many more. That and small form factor PCs for hooking up to your TV - there's need for something a bit different here. You want an experience that's good with controllers.
For all of you, I will definitely suggest you go with Bazzite. It works very similarly to Valve's own SteamOS including booting into Steam Big Picture Mode, but comes with various tweaks and tools to make the experience great across many different devices. It's also updated a lot faster than SteamOS, so fixes and improvements for newer handhelds comes a lot sooner.
You still get a full desktop mode with KDE Plasma too for all your work, web browsing and other uses. Bazzite has been growing nicely through 2025 and I fully expect 2026 to be an even bigger year for it.
I've been using Bazzite on my Lenovo Legion Go with the Z1 Extreme processor and it has been overall really great. Bazzite is a wonderful replacement for Windows on handhelds.
If you need help and support for Linux and Steam Deck gaming, you can try asking in our Discord. Don't forget to follow me on Bluesky and Mastodon too while you're at it.
Don't agree with me? Am I so wrong that you just have to do something about it? Leave a comment below.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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You can also find comments for this article on social media: Quoting: LoftyThat friend was already a linux user. He wasn't "dipping his toes" in linux through popOS as its first adventure, so I doubt I've driven him off.Quoting: Cley_FayeWhen a friend came to me about PopOS telling me "now I can switch between the integrated GPU or the Nvidia one in one click!" I put my ubuntu laptop in his face, clicked on "nvidia-prime" in the menu, where I had that exact same feature.tbh your attitude seemed a little condescending towards your enthusiastic friend. If they found a solution to a problem on linux no matter how inelegant it was then that's a good thing, because they are more likely to stay on linux.
That said i wonder in the past just how many excited newcomers got bummed out by the well known "smart ass know it all" linux user and went back to windows or migrated to Mac?
(or console if they were interested in linux gaming).
Thankfully a lot of that elitism has died down now.
Please don't think that internet memes and caricatures are that common. If anything, I'm happy to help. Showing someone that software and features aren't distribution specific does not sound like a bad thing to me, and if it was someone just trying to move away from windows/macos, my first reaction would not have been "YOU DID IT WRONG IDIOT". In fact, I would never say that. The point was comparing distributions, and the futility of specific distros that embed the *same* software with different settings.
But I guess rationale discussion between people is a thing of the past, and if I said something not utterly positive about their choice, I'm obviously mocking them and trying to push them down the pit of idiots that obviously exist, right?
Thankfully, neither he nor I reacted this way.
I stand by my point that *changing your whole OS* for a glittering title bar or a two-step process becoming a one-step process is not that interesting given the alternatives. If you think that's some elitist behavior, then so be it.
mr-victory a day ago
Quoting: XpanderThat being said, I honestly don't know what to suggest to new users these days.Me neither, I typically suggest bazzite however bazzite being unique in a lot of things makes you dependent on their docs & community. If you look up something for Linux, chances are what you find won't work on Bazzite. Doubly so when asking LLMs (I rarely do that but plenty of people use them often)
My actual daily driver runs Arch and I'm afraid of even shutting it down, but I can't move it to another distro either.
We are in a mess of wayland transition also. Lots of edge cases where things are buggy on wayland when it comes to gaming and at the same time x11 has its own quirks. So we basically have 2 "broken" systems.Yep I suffer from that. I can't turn off vsync for moonlight on wayland and have extra latency, but I can't use my beloved touchpad gestures on X11.
mr-victory a day ago
Quoting: clatterfordslimWould love to get Cachy OS's tuned Kernels going though. Games would flow better.Afaik CachyOS optimizations or any optimization for that matter can backfire and reduce perf depending on situation. That's partly why bazzite doesn't use optimized kernels. So I don't bother with custom kernels typically
Quoting: CarollyHonest question for you, why is it that year after year you stick your nose up in the air over great distros like Nobara, CachyOS, and PikaOS, in favour of large corporate-backed projects? Any of them are excellent distros for gaming and more than just "a few tweaks and a new theme" (and generally they make it very easy to install Nvidia drivers - Nobara and Pika even offer ISOs with the Nvidia drivers preloaded!)I'm not the OP, but the question is a good one. For me, at least, the more niche distros seem to fall into a narrow and interesting category of target user: Experienced Linux users use a stable (*buntu, Fedora, etc.) or a more new-feature focused distro (Arch), then simply layer packages to meet workload needs (gaming, server, ML, editing, whatever).
I'm curious if you've tried running any of the three in recent years. You might actually enjoy using them if you gave them a shot.
Inexperienced Linux users may initially want something shiny and niche and novel, but my experience is that willingness to tinker simply isn't that common amongst that population; they want Windows. Windows familiarity, Windows stability, Windows compatibility, Windows ubiquity. Either the requisite learning curve to hammer the distro into the expected shape of OS is low, or they reject the distro and return to the familiar (read: Windows).
The author's recommendation for a larger, better-supported mainstream distro absolutely makes sense in that context; you may not wring the final 3FPS out of your GPU, but deadend package dependencies, fiddly CLI syntax fixes and not-so-edge edge cases are encountered with less frequency. All that reduced friction drives better adoption; as a painted-up OS, that's crucial.
Quoting: Brandon MMaybe it's just a matter of my being at a different stage in life than many (as I enter middle age,) but in spite of being quite techie and having used Linux for some time now, this is still about what I want from a Linux distro; I don't want to have to fiddle with it too much. I'm glad that I know enough to customize some things but I really don't care to get deep into the nitty gritty.Quoting: CarollyStuff Wot I SaidInexperienced Linux users may initially want something shiny and niche and novel, but my experience is that willingness to tinker simply isn't that common amongst that population; they want Windows. Windows familiarity, Windows stability, Windows compatibility, Windows ubiquity. Either the requisite learning curve to hammer the distro into the expected shape of OS is low, or they reject the distro and return to the familiar (read: Windows).
Honestly I think part of the problem we run into is that as a community we're susceptible to conflating "experienced Linux user" with "basically a full-stack developer" and that's no longer anywhere near true, and shouldn't have to be! I'm glad that my OS handles most of the grunt work so I can get to the parts that actually matter to me (i.e., using it!) It saves me time and energy that I don't want to spend, particularly when I have other things that I'd rather be doing.
Months later and both are happy as they could be. Only had a minor issue with the Mint install, which was quickly fixed, then nothing else. They both say they wish they'd have dumped Windows earlier, but oh well. Happy linux users!
Caldathras a day ago
Quoting: eggroleAs more "normies" come over to linux and want one-click everything, you will get a more windows like experience whether you like it or not. ::SNIP::What an oddly binary point of view. Either this or that with no grey areas. Linux has always been about the grey areas. A hardcore enthusiast distribution like Arch isn't going to disappear just because former Windows users want a less complicated experience. As always, Linux will provide both and then some.
It will move linux in general from an enthusiast OS to an everyman OS.
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