When you use open source drivers, Intel in your case, it's always a good idea to use the most recent version of your favorite distro, since it usually offers better performance. When you use proprietary drivers it doesn't make any difference.

I wouldn't buy a Steam machine, you can build a better computer for the same price, or even less. The desktop environment doesn't really matter, it's all about your personal taste, the performance is pretty much the same, as long as you play with composition turned off. This feature is known as "unredirect fullscreen windows", some DE's like Unity and Gnome do this automatically when you launch a game, in others like XFCE and KDE you have to do this manually. I prefer Unity for the convenience.

I personally dislike Fedora, I don't like their policy of forbidding proprietary software, this is not freedom to me. You can install proprietary software on Fedora, but you have to rely on third party repositories, and Fedora often breaks proprietary drivers pushing updates that aren't supported yet, like a new version of X.Org or Kernel.

If you are happy with Ubuntu just stick with it, and perhaps upgrade to Ubuntu 15.10. And if you decide to build a computer, go with Nvidia for the GPU, since it offers the best performance and drivers on Linux.

Drivers aren't a problem because Intel only makes open source drivers so no need to worry about that as long as you stay up to date.
Distro preference is gonna come a lot down to personal choice, but Debian tends to be to be less up-to-date while Ubuntu and Fedora are quicker to release stuff. Another thing to note is that Debian and Ubuntu might be easier for you because tons of proprietary stuff is packaged as .deb (for example Humble Bundle games might be harder to run on Fedora).
If you are planning to use a controller set up on your tv, nothing is like steamOS though, unless you do some crazy stuff with xboxdrv to emulate mouse and use an on-screen keyboard.

I don't really like Ubuntu, but if you are happy with it, there isn't a compelling reason to switch to Debian or Fedora. But it is Linux, so you might as well download those iso files and give them a try for yourself.

I think Arch works the best for Intel GPU's do to them keepiing the drivers Etc up to date hell you can run SteamOS in Decktop mode as well

If your only consideration is gaming and you are limiting the options to those three distributions, I think Ubuntu is the obvious choice. It'll be the most widely targetted and tested by Valve/game developers and has the best support for closed source video drivers. That said, Linux Mint and SteamOS would be my preferred options for that purpose. Plus if you buy a Steam Machine, SteamOS will come preinstalled on it.

To answer your second question, I game on Fedora. It's a slick distro, but it is bleeding edge, which is both an advantage and disadvantage. You'll get the latest OSS drivers and performance fixes but it can cause problems with library compatibility or whatever. Those kinds of issues can require research and effort to resolve, but usually a google search of the error will bring up a fix. AFAIK Arch is similar in this regard with tracking very closely to upstream. As another recent example, Fedora 23 runs xserver 1.18 which is not supported by the most recent ATI closed souce video driver (but you should be going with NVidia anyway if you are building a linux gaming rig).

Ubuntu (or derived distro) for completeness, Debian if you want to base your own (such as SteamOS).

I use Mint, as a lot of people do, it is one of the top distros.

For building a configuration for Linux gaming, AVOID AMD (processors AND GPU's).

Intel (for TDP profile range selection) and Nvidia for driver support.

Unyieldingly の投稿を引用：

I think Arch works the best for Intel GPU's do to them keepiing the drivers Etc up to date hell you can run SteamOS in Decktop mode as well

Placebo™ of got empirical data? Have you got a changelog of driver updates that helped? Latest driver is not always the best. Especially GPU driver sets, since they tend to focus on adding new hardware rather than changes to existing hardware.

The Muppet Surgery Special の投稿を引用：

Placebo™ of got empirical data? Have you got a changelog of driver updates that helped? Latest driver is not always the best. Especially GPU driver sets, since they tend to focus on adding new hardware rather than changes to existing hardware.

Now you are arguing older drivers perform better? You never cease to amaze Muppet.

Don't bother replying to him, he's wrong as usual, and probably trolling on purpose.

Maleko の投稿を引用：

Build your own PC and install SteamOS. I shouldn't have to explain why buiding your own PC is better than buying a pre-built one. And you said yourself that you want to have a console-like experience. SteamOS offers that and does a better job than any other distro could do.

Why not have a lightweight Linux distro boot to Steam Big Picture mode, is that not the same effect?

Maleko の投稿を引用：

The Muppet Surgery Special の投稿を引用：

Why not have a lightweight Linux distro boot to Steam Big Picture mode, is that not the same effect?

I'm going to ask you one more time: Please do not quote me or ask me questions. If you don't respect my request I will have to report you on your profile for harassment.

So what is the difference specifically in SteamOS and Steam app Big Picture mode on Linux?

I know SteamOS is Debian based but, what else is different?

Iroas, God of Victory の投稿を引用：

Best Distro for Gaming?

Don't listen to people talking about some specific distros, there is simply no such thing as the best linux distro for gaming. Any distro can be adjusted/configured and you will get pretty much exactly the same performance. If you are looking for out of the box experience then lightweight components like DE/WM/compositors may give a little boost in some cases, nothing significant though. For example I have quite the same performance on Fedora/Arch+xfce/i3 as on xubuntu(xfce), its also the same on kde with compositor off etc.

In case gaming is your only purpose then you may consider sticking with windows for more games and better performance with your Intel gpu (AMD and Intel drivers aren't very good on linux), I haven't touched Windows in many years but still don't consider Linux an equivalent gaming platform. Linux is a damn good work horse and there were made impressive improvements for gaming, but its not there yet, just good enough for console market for now.

Just make a research about some distros and DEs, pick something you like. Throw in latest drivers and see if you need to configure your system a little (DE, compositor etc.) - you will get same good performance in every distro.

Wow! This thread has been extremely helpful! Thank you so much, guys.

Some of you said something about a "compositor" or whatever for my DE/WM. Do I want that ON or OFF if I'd like to play games at optimal performance on Linux?

Sorry to skip past the requested limitation but most of my linux experience is with Mint and Arch. Here's my offering on the topic:

I've been running Mint/Cinnamon on my desktop for a couple years and switched back to it from Arch on my laptop a few months ago after v17 fixed some intel HD graphical issues in Cinnamon. I don't use steam or games often on the laptop. though, and my desktop has an nvidia card, for whatever that's worth.

But as far as distro choice, it really depends on what you want to put in and what you want to get out of it. Mint is very "familiar" and "unobtrusive". That is, it comes with simple tools that are designed to work with minimal fuss. You boot right into a GUI, have all the familiar apps for operating a modern desktop computer. The distro comes with several common non-FOSS codecs which allow for most media types to work with no additional user effort. The software manager provides an easy search tool to find new software or remove anything unwanted, the update manager provides a nice little tray icon whenever updates are made available, the driver manager lets you change graphics drivers with just a couple clicks. I've also never had an update from them (even the level 4-5 "risky" ones) break anything.

Arch is made to foster user-configurability, and the arch way essentially shuns any pre-configuration on the notion that providing such might bias the user base toward options which are not optimal to their usage case. In the arch way, when they stress simplicity, it is in the idea of being able to manually control anything you need to. That is, instead "open this tool, click this menu, go to such-and-such tab, click this check box", it's more like edit this file and change this flag. It is the simplicity of not tripping over possibly convoluted interfaces to do what you want. The bottom line is, to build and run arch, there is a lot more necessary know-how involved. Their documentation to get you to that point is actually really impressive, though. When you build an arch system, the installation guide leaves you with a kernel and command line, and then you're left you're left to gather and configure the rest. The creature comforts you might be used to if you're coming from commercial OS's will have to be found and installed by your own volition, and being a rolling distro, sometimes version upgrades can break things.

If you want to nose-dive into the linux architecture and learn about the how's and why's of the GNU/Linux environment, arch is definitely one of the best ways to go, and I'd recommend reading their installation guide regardless of which distro you choose. If you just want to run linux now and and don't mind the cruft and excess that comes with a desktop user-oriented distro, or that kernel and software updates might not get rolled in for several months when a new version is released, it's really hard to beat Mint. The performance difference between them is likely measureable, but I'd be surprised if you could really feel it all that much.

spr1n の投稿を引用：

Don't listen to people talking about some specific distros, there is simply no such thing as the best linux distro for gaming. Any distro can be adjusted/configured and you will get pretty much exactly the same performance.

At the very least, for gaming, you're going to want to find a distro that maintains closed source video drivers. All distros are not the same in this regard for the reasons I stated in my initial post.

Depends on how indepth you want to go.. LFS with no not display manager and just steam would be the way to go since all you would have would drivers + steam nothing else you wanted. except for the needed depancies.

If you just want to go easy , ubuntu distro.


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thor27-gmail/steam-desktop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install steam-login

maxRunner の投稿を引用：

spr1n の投稿を引用：

Don't listen to people talking about some specific distros, there is simply no such thing as the best linux distro for gaming. Any distro can be adjusted/configured and you will get pretty much exactly the same performance.

At the very least, for gaming, you're going to want to find a distro that maintains closed source video drivers. All distros are not the same in this regard for the reasons I stated in my initial post.

It's a legitimate aspect of comfort which is not my angle there and doesn't define "best gaming distro"... And still there are really not that many distro branches that don't have any maintained closed source driver repos and such or even incompatible distros, but even then in most cases vendor distributed drivers can be applied with enough effort etc.

In a year or two it may not matter but for the moment it is a reality of gaming on linux.