Now that windows 10 is end og life soon I want to update my gaming PC to Linux but I am very unsure on how to approach it, even though I’m pretty proficient in Linux. I daily drive Debian 12 on my laptop and have Ubuntu server and truenas on two other devices but those are all for very different use cases than gaming. I’m not afraid of the terminal (I actually often prefer it over GUI) but since this setup is for gaming for both me and my girlfriend I want this experience to be as easy and hands off low maintenance as possible.
My desktop is about 6 years old and consist of an MSI Tomahawk B450 motherboard with an Ryzen 5 2600X and an Asus Nvidia 1660ti and 16GB of RAM. I just recently installed 1TB nvme SSD so I have a decent amount of capacity available, but I’m generally not interested in dual boot since I have bad experience from the past with windows suddenly deciding to take over and ruin it all. For temporary testing it is of course an option but I really don’t like it due to the maintenance of it.
Important games for me is Sims 2, 3 and 4 (with almost all expansions packs on Sims 4) and they are currently purchased through the EA game store. I also have a few steam games and Minecraft but I’m fairly sure they all work decently since I’ve tried on my laptop.
I use steam remote play to stream the desktop to a MacBook on the local network when Sims is played and it works quite well at the moment and it is important that it continues to work or an alternative remote play function to mac is easily available.
Sims is my biggest worry to get working since my girlfriend is playing it a lot and with a lot of custom content (mostly just assets) added along all the expansion packs. Rebying everything through steam is not an option (way too expensive) so I really hope there is a way to get EA GameStore to work without too much effort using wine or some other workaround.
I hope you guys have some ideas on how to approach this and keep the most important functions for me up and running.
I’ve been using Bazzite for a good while. It just turns your PC into a fancy console. Boots right into Steam. Everything can be done with a controller. If you can use a console, you can use Bazzite.
Of course Chimera and Nobara are very similar in that way. Bazzite is just the new hotness.
I agree. If you’re a noob, and want the smoothest path, then Bazzite is the way.
I however, started on Ubuntu originally and you will have to learn the apt repos and install all this on your own. I’m now on Arch which makes you learn more the inner workings of Linux.
So if you want to progress, be sure to consider all the other distros out there too.
Bazzite comes with Distrobox pre-installed, so you can literally try every other distro with it lol
Boots right into Steam.
I guess it can… I have been running Bazzite on my main laptop (including gaming) for like 6 months now, and it does not boot right into Steam, it boots to my KDE desktop.
I love it by the way, it’s been a great experience.
Well you can choose either one when you select the image from their site.
Ah ok, guess I forgot about that
+1 for Bazzite. Atomic distro + NVDIA drivers included 👌
I’ve played all sims games and all work on linux with wine. Sims 1 is the hardest to get to work because you need a CD crack to get it to run. Sims 2 and newer works great in my experience. I’d recommend using Bottles to install Sims 2. You can install it from CD and play it like normal. Need some tweaks to get widescreen though (but you have that issue on windows as well).
Sims 3 I’ve played in bottles through the EA app (I own a digital copy there). Worked out of the box (bottles has a way to install the ea store app easily). Sims 4 I’ve played on steam (using proton).
Protondb will be your best friend here. If I were you I’d look up the games you want to play on there and check peoples comments on how they got them running. Almost everything out of box using steams proton tools but often it needs tweaking. Depending on how much you want to play a game it might not be worth the trouble to setup. For instance I stay away from every live service game now. You should also check out the os people are using on protondb to make sure it works for you I use arch (btw) so I won’t take instructions from a Debian setup if I can find one with a similar os.
Worth pursuing and you sound experienced enough to get it set up. Idk about modding though that can be painful to get setup BC of how wine/proton work.
Also note that, just because Steam itself says a game is unsupported, does not necessarily mean that’s true. Always check ProtonDB. There have been several occasions where “unsupported” games have worked just fine for me (sometimes with minimal tinkering, sometimes none).
Proton is awesome.
The Sims 4 is gold on ProtonDB, so it should run just fine. Check out some of the comments in ProtonDB about running the game, if not purchased through Steam.
Edit: Start out with Linux Mint. It’s very user friendly.
I got both Steam and EA App versions running on my Steam Deck and desktop (the latter runs Bluefin). For the EA app I used Lutris, it works like a charm.
Does everything work on the EA app for you? I’m having issues with the friends list, so I’m not a to play some multiplayer games unfortunately :(
Almost everyone here recommends Lutris, but I had a far better out-of-the-box-experience with Heroic.
Seconding Heroic. Lutris confused me too but I was able to connect Epic and GOG to Heroic.
Also, when you’re not using steam remote play Sunshine/Moonlight works wonders for remote streaming.
