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Some thoughts on switching from Ubuntu to Antergos for Linux gaming

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I did it, I jumped ship from Ubuntu to Antergos and I honestly can’t see myself going back. Here’s some thoughts on that.

Why I switched
There’s many reasons for my switch, but the main one has been stability. Ubuntu has been getting more problem-filled with every new release for me so I had enough. Not only that, but due to it being dependent on GNOME packages, stuff was being stripped away too and it’s just a mess now. Some applications have normal title-bars, some have GNOME’s new styling with everything sodding hidden and it’s just all mashed together.

Audacity would constantly screw up and just skip over audio while trying to record or playback, or just flat out not work.

Multiple games wouldn’t give me audio until I killed PulseAudio and reloaded it or did other trickery. It was becoming a nuisance, especially when I want to livestream and “oh sorry guys, let me fix my audio, fuc…”.

It seems Ubuntu has a lot of problems with their setup of PulseAudio. I don’t know what they’re doing to it, but they’re murdering the poor thing.

Antergos, I choose you!
If Antergos is anything, it’s like walking in heavy rain without a coat and — suddenly the clouds part and the almighty sun is shining down on you to make everything better. Something like this essentially (thanks Samsai):
image
I’m definitely probably not overselling it — okay maybe a little.

I adore the Arch User Repository (AUR) and have found it so incredibly useful for multiple applications I use on a daily basis, especially when those same applications on Ubuntu could be out of date for weeks and months. The brand new Minecraft launcher was in it the day it was release by the official developers, the itch.io app is in it, everything I need is right there and tested by tons of people. It’s essentially a far better PPA-like system. It’s easier to understand too, thanks to a much clearer layout on the actual website.

Just don't outright trust everything on the AUR, make sure you read a few comments before installing a random package. I'm sure you're all smart enough to know to do that anyway.

Getting used to KDE after being on GNOME or GNOME-like desktops for many years has been a challenge by itself, but wow, it’s actually a lot nicer. Things aren’t hidden away where I don’t expect them to be, if I want something it’s usually right where I would expect it in a proper menu.

There was two “gotchas” I had to sort out. I couldn’t figure out why OBS Studio wouldn’t pick up any video, so eventually I tested gaming and games ran at 5 FPS. Turns out that installing the nvidia drivers didn’t come with the 32bit libs as a dependency. So, if you do decide to check out Antergos with Nvidia, make sure “lib32-nvidia-libgl” is installed too. This took me a good day to figure out too, as I didn’t think to test games until the next day and that made me realize it was a driver issue.

The second was that one day I booted up to a black screen with a cursor, as the system booted so fast that LightDM didn't load (Arch Wiki entry). I had to edit "/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf" to include:
[LightDM]
logind-check-graphical=true


I also learnt about bash aliases thanks to being on Arch, so instead of running something I can never remember like “Yuarty -sYusudaadasdas” to update, I have it setup so I just run “upall” in terminal and it updates everything for me — glorious! It’s easy to do as well, simply edit:
~/.bashrc
Add at the bottom:
alias upall='yaourt -Syua'
You can substitute “yaourt -Syua” for anything, like “apt-get update && apt-get upgrade” for Debian/Ubuntu and so on.
And then save it.

Lastly, enjoy a shot of my KDE Antergos dual-desktop:
image

Seriously, you should give Antergos a try. It’s Arch, but a more tame Arch since it has a live-media option and you can pick what desktop you want from the installer. This was a key selling point for me, and the installer was a breeze too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
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139 comments
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Liam Dawe Jan 20, 2017
Quoting: jlacroixReason being, gaming on Arch/Antergos is just a pain in the behind. It's not Arch's fault, but game devs only target Ubuntu, which means the fact that Arch having newer libraries constantly gets in the way. In order to use Steam or GOG games, I find myself having to write scripts with export commands to use different libraries or bypass things, and it just doesn't work all that well.
This is somewhat fixed with Valve's latest Steam client which fixes a bit of the lib mess. Antergos also included the option to launch with either Steam or Native libs, which also helped solve the issue.

Personally, so far, I haven't had an issue with any game not running and I do obviously test rather a lot in my time.
zilot Jan 20, 2017
I still find it funny that people recommend Ubuntu as a user friendly distribution, while it have so many issues...
Liam Dawe Jan 20, 2017
Quoting: zilotI still find it funny that people recommend Ubuntu as a user friendly distribution, while it have so many issues...
It's still the distro to go to for newbies, despite problems, it does require far less manual configuration, which is the main point for people new to Linux.
MrTennessee17 Jan 20, 2017
Has anyone tried Void Linux and how well does it do as a daily OS for gaming and whatnot?
pete910 Jan 20, 2017
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Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: zilotI still find it funny that people recommend Ubuntu as a user friendly distribution, while it have so many issues...
It's still the distro to go to for newbies, despite problems, it does require far less manual configuration, which is the main point for people new to Linux.


Odd point, The vast majority of distros are also th same, Infact a lot require non. Put the disk in, install, done .

That's all I did for Antergos on my daughters, Also mageia for me, Even Mandrake was disk in, install, done and that's 15 + years ago

Unless you are including clicking a package to install like say steam as manual config.

Admit, laptops are a different story
siphr Jan 20, 2017
Tamed ARCH??????
I say humbug to you .... you puny mortal. gods cannot be tamed, they tame you-
You will eventually heed... and when you do the Arch god will be waiting for you at the gates of enlightenment ...
:D
amckinnon Jan 20, 2017
I am curious, has anyone ever done a gaming benchmark between ARCH, RPM and DEB distributions? It would be interesting to see which provides the best performance.
STiAT Jan 20, 2017
Quoting: amckinnonI am curious, has anyone ever done a gaming benchmark between ARCH, RPM and DEB distributions? It would be interesting to see which provides the best performance.

There isn't much difference between distributions since they all base on the same software. With newer graphics drivers you sometimes see different performance on some cards, or with a newer Mesa-Stack you'll see a lot of improvements to radeon and intel performance.

The overhead for gaming a distro provides is rather small. What can make a difference is the window manager, especially if games do not flag their application appropriately so that the window manager isn't bypassed for the game execution.
Aryvandaar Jan 20, 2017
Welcome to the Arch world! :D

I do love the convenience of Manjaro. Mhwd, mhwd-kernel and OpenRC version.

I never really liked Ubuntu and it's derivatives. I started out using Debian.

I've tried Antergos, I just don't see what makes it different from every other distro out there. In my eyes it is an inferior distro to Manjaro.


Last edited by Aryvandaar on 20 January 2017 at 5:21 pm UTC
amckinnon Jan 20, 2017
Quoting: STiATThere isn't much difference between distributions since they all base on the same software. With newer graphics drivers you sometimes see different performance on some cards, or with a newer Mesa-Stack you'll see a lot of improvements to radeon and intel performance.

The overhead for gaming a distro provides is rather small. What can make a difference is the window manager, especially if games do not flag their application appropriately so that the window manager isn't bypassed for the game execution.

I would have thought a distro that comes preloaded with a bunch of stuff would be slower for gaming than say native Arch given that the end user decides what he/she like installed.
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