If gaming with Nvidia hardware is your primary concern, then maybe Bazzite would suit you. It's based on Immutable Fedora, with tweaks to give it a SteamOS like experience. It offers Gnome or KDE for the desktop, and supposedly has everything dialed in for gaming. I've heard a bunch about it doing great with Nvidia cards and gaming in general, I suspect that you'd be able to do everything else you might need via the desktop it provides, but I have no knowledge of how it handles multiple monitors so maybe therein lies the fatal flaw.
this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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+1 for Fedora Atomic.
Especially Bazzite comes with Nvidia drivers already built in and everything should just werkβ’.
It's very modern and reliable. If it doesn't work with that, nothing will.
To be fair, the use case is very demanding. Just 2 years ago, we were glad that we can play more than one game on Steam, and now, we're complaining that our triple monitor setup with Nvidia and VRR/HDR doesn't work perfectly. I'm happy we're at this point, but some things, like that, may hinder the wide spread adoption...
Thats fair. And for that reason i just keep going back to windows after trying out linux and waiting for it to catch up. Its come a looooooong way. I guess with the accelerated enshitification of windows i feel like i would like to get out asap. :P
Maybe consider buying hardware with better Linux support in the future, e.g. getting an AMD GPU instead of a Nvidia if you want to get a new one anyway.
I personally have zero issues with my (relatively normal) setup.
Even more, I have better hardware support on Linux than on Windows!
For example, I noticed that I can dim my monitor, which doesn't work on Windows!
Or, my GPU is more silent, because Bazzite and the Linux kernel ship some tweaks that make the energy draw and fan curve more efficient in my experience.
Again, I think it's just your hardware, especially the multi monitor. Multi monitor is supposed to be fine on AMD (can't confirm, I only have one ultra wide), or single/ dual monitor is also supposed to be almost great on Nvidia, with the proprietary drivers.
If you have a spare laptop with proper Linux support (most ones do, even with Nvidia, Surface, etc.) consider installing it and just try it out. uBlue (Aurora/ Bluefin, Bazzite, etc.) is great for that, so, maybe check that out.
If not, then we'll welcome you again in a few years. The OS is just a tool, use the best suited one for your use case. In yours, it may be Windows currently.
Never saw that one before. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.
I'm now deeply curious if it works for your use case. Hit me back if you give it a go and let me know if it works out or not.
So far i've actually been pretty impressed. I got it up and running pretty seamlessly. Displays are still a bit weird. One of my displays seems to not want to come on at boot, but just turning it on from standby mode once its booted and it works fine. Was able to install a few games via lutris and steam with no issues. Everything is running pretty good so far, but its literally been installed for a couple hours only. So it will be interesting to see how at least the next few days go.
Definitely keep us in the loop!
You should, it's amazing for gaming. Especially steam, everything just works.
Gave this a try today and actually am pleasantly surprised. So far its been pretty solid and i'm enjoying the feel of it.
and a Nvidia 2080ti
Do you know which Nvidia driver you're using currently?
There's an established open-source Nouveau driver that Ubuntu & Mint probably defaulted to, a bleeding-edge open-source NVK driver that is still very early in it's development, and a proprietary Nvidia driver that Nobara probably tried, as it's kinda what you'd want for gaming.
The other question would be if you're using Wayland or X11 underneath your desktop environment?
It should be listed in Settings > System > System Details, under the heading "Windowing System" if you're using GNOME.
Wayland has better multi-monitor support than X11, but the proprietary Nvidia driver has a few teething problems with Wayland at the moment - a new 555 beta driver update should be coming this week with proper fixes for the sync/screen-tearing issues people have been experiencing.
I never used the nouveau driver. Always the proprietary or the one bundled with nobara. One of my first headaches under proxmox was gpu pass through on a Nvidia card that necessitated blowing away all the nouveau drivers in the system. Basically scared me away from every using it. π
But whether a few hours or a few days, eventually I start having issues with the displays. Monitors will black out. Not boot. Eventually the whole system just stops working in a way that I can figure out.
This sounds more like a hardware issue than software. Can you provide more detail? Have you done basic troubleshooting steps like trying different power cords and surge protector/power strip? What is the full list of hardware for your system? Have you reseated the RAM? Replaced the CMOS battery? (a dead CMOS battery will prevent system boot)
I honestly never tried this because everything worked perfectly when I would eventually switch back to windows.
Huh... and that's repeatable? How long could you go on Linux before the blackouts, and did you run on Windows for a similar amount of time with no issues? also, when the blackout happens does it recover after a little time, or do you have to reboot to get video back? (is it just a screen blackout, or has the system crashed?) When the screen is black, can you reboot with busier backwards?
One issue that I've had on Linux installs is that the system doesn't recover properly from hibernate. I've seen this on laptops and desktops over more than a decade. When this happens the screen goes black and the system doesn't respond to any keyboard or mouse input, the only way to recover is to force a reboot. Maybe check your power management profile and disable hibernation.
Otherwise there are a lot of reasons that the screen might black out:
- power issues - what is your PSU model? Linux installs are frequently not as power efficient as Windows on the same hardware, generally because Windows does a lot more throttling by default.
- overheating - Windows (and the Windows hardware drivers) might be configured to throttle the CPU and/or GPU to manage the temperature automatically without telling you, while Linux might be giving you the full unthrottled system power and overheating.
- video drivers & multimonitor - as others have said already, this could be an issue with the Linux video drivers. You should verify which driver you're using as [email protected] said. Are all your monitors the same resolution? I've definitely had trouble with mulitple monitors if they were mismatched.
- bad CPU core - this one's a long shot, but Windows tends to be a lot more single-threaded while Linux is more likely to try to balance operations across all CPU cores. Maybe one of your cores has an issue, and when Linux tries to use it it triggers a system crash, while Windows just never gets around to using that particular core for anything critical (and so never triggers the crash).
- SSD/swap file issue - most Linux distros will configure a swap partition on the root hard drive by default, which is used as an extension of the RAM. Windows doesn't use a swap file. You have plenty of RAM so there's not really a need for it, so you should try just disabling swap.
Had the hibernate issues on my work laptop so I have run into those before. I made sure to disable it. It's a custom built Watercooled rig so I have a Corsair 1200 watt power supply in it. Heat has never been an issue. It's getting a bit old but it's been pretty rock solid. This machine was only ever a gaming machine. It ran steam and that's about it. It was even powered off most of the day. Only ever turned it on when I was playing something. So the wear on it hasn't been too intense. I have only really used the proprietary Nvidia drivers so I'm not sure what the alternatives are (nobara I think has some custom ones but had lots of performance issues with nobara). My monitors are different sizes/resolutions/refresh rates. One is 5120x1440 120hz and the others are just generic 1920x1080 60hz When it would happen, It would boot to a screen that wasn't the default. At least one screen would be black. So I would log in and try to get it to recognize whatever monitor or monitors were missing. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes a reboot would fix it. Sometimes the system would hang or take several minutes to boot. It's been a couple weeks since I got frustrated and tried to use it so I can't remember what was making the boot hang. When all I use it for is to play games and I get random monitor disconnects it quickly becomes useless when something doesn't work right on every boot. I really don't know what changes tho. When it's first installed everything works. It lets me set up everything. All I really do is updates and then start setting up steam. Install some games through lutris and then will shut down. Sometimes I'll get a day or two of working fine out of it, then monitor issues start popping up. And I haven't really used Linux for entertainment before so I switch back to windows for a while and everything works. But. Windoze. So every once in a while I try Linux again and am not really sure how to deal with it as a gaming device. Read it would be better if I was running an AMD video card but just not in the budget for a rebuild right now, but I am due for one.
Just use Mint.
I'm on Mint 20 and had an unreasonable number of monitor configurations. Initially tallscreen + square, then tallscreen + square + 32-inch HDTV, then tallscreen + widescreen + TV, then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV (because I ran out of desk), then tallscreen + 42-inch HDTV + widescreen on the floor as a dedicated AGDQ window, and now I'm only using an enormous 4K TV.
I've had issues, but never "it can't handle it" issues. My little RX 580 occasionally produced a black frame on one monitor or other - I assume because none of them ever had identical refresh rates. The larger issue was instantly forgetting my monitor configuration every time one of them was unplugged or lost power. As if losing the square monitor caused the rotated screen to fall over.
Mint or Zorin for those with windows experience, Ubuntu for those used to Macintosh, are all great "just works" distros. Don't overthink it, OP!
Ubuntu for those used to Macintosh
Still sour about one fucking guy deciding to flip the interface to left-handed the day before a long-term feature freeze.
Can you list the distros that you tried?
Monitor handling will mostly depend on the desktop environment and X11/Wayland, but different distros will ship with different defaults for these.
Ubuntu and Nobara both come with the GNOME desktop environment, which uses Wayland by default.
If you've tried anything with e.g. KDE Plasma as the desktop environment, that would already tell us a bit more...
Ive tried nobara, I've tried Ubuntu, I've tried popOS, and I think also tried mint. I'm not 100% sure on that one tho... I feel like alot of my attempts have just blurred together at his point...
Well, Pop!_OS uses COSMIC, which is a customized GNOME, and Linux Mint uses Cinnamon, which is kind of GNOME under the hood, too. (In technical terms, Cinnamon is a "fork" of GNOME.)
So, yeah, that doesn't allow ruling out that you're always running into the same bug.
You should still try what the others are suggesting, though, before you go reinstalling or installing a different desktop environment. You're certainly not the first person to use GNOME et al with 3 monitors. This should work.
Honestly the desktop environments is where I kinda get spacey with linux. The cli makes sense to me. Installing different desktops hasn't been very successful for me. Which distros use KDE plasma?
You can kind of think of a desktop environment as everything that's needed to turn a server OS (which has only a CLI interface) into a desktop OS.
So, it contains (or pulls in) all the stuff for displaying any graphics at all, but then also a panel/taskbar, audio support, icons, global keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Tab, a settings menu and some utility programs like a file manager, a text editor, a calculator etc..
Switching desktop environments is kind of like switching between Windows 7 and Windows 8.
You can still run the same programs, all the CLI stuff and OS internals work the same, but the UX for interacting with that is different. Admittedly, though, different desktop environments usually have more differences than there are between Windows 7 and 8.
As for KDE Plasma, it's available on lots of distros, but to name a few:
- Kubuntu is just Ubuntu with KDE preinstalled.
- Nobara has a KDE version.
- Personally, I'm on openSUSE. It is a somewhat more niche distro, relatively different from Ubuntu and Fedora. They really make KDE shine, though (with lots of detail work).
I always opt for Pop!_OS if NVidia is in the mix.
Ive been using 3 monitors on gtx1060, runining popos
Try Fedora's KDE spin (which uses Wayland).
I always thought it has the best hardware support.
I run a dual monitor setup, with no issues, and game often.
The monitors blacking out and the system not booting is suspicious.
I think you've said you tried a few distros. Does the exact same behaviour happen on all distros?
If possible, I would suggest giving it all another go with x11 instead of Wayland. Nvidia is still the worst for using with Wayland. It's gotten a lot better, and it's almost there for complete support, but there are still some issues here and there.
Kinda the conclusion I reached as well. Next build I intend to go with Radeon specially so i can try and get rid of windows but that's not really in the budget right now
Don't use Wayland. I've had a very awful experience with Wayland and external monitors on an Nvidia with the proprietary driver. Because Wayland is the default in most modern distros it might be that all of the ones you tried used it. Try Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, it's using X11 as the default and it's Ubuntu based so it should be familiar grounds.
Yeah. Wayland + Nvidia seems to = sadness it seems. Might be worth a go.
Set up a usb with ventoy and try a bunch of distros. If you have 64gb ram you should even be good to download a game and try it out from the live environment
Have you tried Mint, specifically LMDEΒΉ? It (Mostly) Just Worksβ’ like Ubuntu, but without the Canonical baggage. It handled my weird Lenovo Carbon X1 slate out of the box. Stable like Debian, progressive like Debian isn't.
ΒΉ Linux Mint Debian Edition
Never tried that one. Might be worth a go.
Once again for gaming I'll vouch for Nobara, not because I've tried too much else but everything just worked out of the box. No monitor issues, no driver problems, fixes, patches and tweaks pre-applied. Just all around a good experience.
All distros are free -- just choose whatever you find interesting, give it a spin, see what happens.
Are you using Wayland when you run into these monitor issues?
I believe so. That is used by default in Ubuntu yes?
I can't really give you advice but maybe my current set-up can give you some ideas.
My desktop has an AMD Ryzen 5 3500 for my CPU and an AMDβ Radeon RX 7600 for the GPU and some 16GB of RAM. I have two cheap monitors both connected via HDMI and are 1080p 75Hz. My desktop runs Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 6 Wayland, and aside from some minor keyboard-related issues, it's running fine. My desktop set-up could be just bog-standard that things just work, but there ya go.
I am not telling you to install Arch Linux, not unless you're willing to dive into the Arch Wiki, lots of forum posts and the occasional Stack Overflow thread whenever you've got a problemβnot to mention dive into the command line and read lots of arcane logs to even start to know what to search for online. However, if your problems are due to lack of software support or something similar, then with Arch (or really, Arch-based distros, just stay away from Manjaro) and its wide array of packages, you might just be able to make things work for your hardware.
Honestly arch always sounded exhausting to me. I'm fine with cli interfaces but arch always came across as requiring a lot of personal investment that I wasnt really ready for. Might be my best option at this point tho
Regardless of what distro you do end up using, the Arch Wiki is a great bookmark to have. The info is like 90% relevant to Linux in general, and at worst you might need to figure out what a file path or package might have changed to in the likes of Ubuntu or Fedora.
Yeah, using Arch is a commitment. On top of having to keep your system relatively up-to-date (this is probably the easiest part though), you also have to be ready to do some work in resolving problems when they do crop up (usually after an update, lol).
However, I think most of the work in using Arch is the installation process, making sure things run smoothly after installation, and hammering out the kinks that may arise. After that, so long as you keep your system relatively up-to-date (and having resolved any issues resulting from updates), it's mostly hassle-free.
The only other distro (or rather, OS) that I think has as wide a source for installable software is NixOS, but not only I haven't any experience with it, it's still relatively new and wouldn't recommend it for daily-driving, much less gaming.
But yeah, Arch is definitely not for the faint nor half-hearted, but it might just work out for you. Good luck and may you be able to find a Linux distro that works with your hardware.
Trial and error.
Distro hopping and land where you like the most.
You can try most distros from bootable usb.
Wait for NVIDIA 555 driver release, use a bleeding edge rolling release distro (like Arch or OpenSuse tumbleweed) to get explicit sync support and use Wayland instead of X11. Soon the pain will be overβ¦