Which Linux to use for couch gaming setup including VR?

a year ago by Lemmchen to c/linux_gaming

Please don't say Bazzite as I wasn't able to get SteamVR working on it. I'm looking for alternatives. The current plan is to try plain old Ubuntu instead.

just_another_person 31 points a year ago

I'd use Fedora over Ubuntu now. Ubuntu has lost the crown of cleanest and most usable with all the Snap BS.

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ag10n 6 points a year ago

You can remove snap easily thankfully. Agree tho, Fedora is the best OOBE.

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Sebbe 12 points a year ago

Having to remove stuff from a fresh installation doesn't really feel acceptable. That's the kind of BS Windows users put up with.

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caseyweederman 8 points a year ago

Agreed. And Canonical routinely tries to sneak snaps back in, to the point where the official Firefox instructions include instructions for pinning their deb repo above the Ubuntu one:
https://support.mozilla.org/...

(see step 5)

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warmaster 2 points a year ago

Damn.

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who 5 points a year ago

Ubuntu has lost the crown of cleanest and most usable with all the Snap BS.

For anyone else reading along, Fedora isn't the only good alternative. There are also distros without the corporate ties that Fedora has. For example, Mint and Mint Debian Edition, both of which are will be more familiar if you're coming from Ubuntu.

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woelkchen 6 points a year ago

There are also distros without the corporate ties that Fedora has. For example, Mint and Mint Debian Edition

Both are literally corporate products by Linux Mint Ltd., registered in tax haven Ireland. They make money by setting their own affiliate IDs for web search etc. (money that would have gone to the upstream projects by default). At least Fedora has people working on the distribution that are actual contributors to the Linux stack.

Also, regular Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. For gaming more recent versions of gaming-related components, mostly Mesa, are preferable to long term support. That's also the reason stated by Valve why they switched to Arch as upstream for SteamOS after using Ubuntu and Debian before.

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just_another_person 3 points a year ago

I downvote this every single time I see this. This is just not true.

In the same way Mint relies on Canonical to keep Ubuntu chugging along, Red Hat contributes to the Fedora community. It's a symbiotic relationship, so think of that what you will, but there is functionally no difference between RedHat<>Fedora and Canonical<>Mint.

Both Mint and Fedora are community projects licensed and attributed as such, and neither corporate entity could take ownership or close either one.

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gigachad 8 points a year ago

Yep, that's absolutely true. They mentioned LMDE however, which is based on Debian, meaning it's independent from Canonical.

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just_another_person 1 point a year ago

Sure, parts of the project have nothing to do with Canonical...exactly the same as Fedora 🤣

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who 4 points a year ago

Both Mint and Fedora are community projects licensed and attributed as such, and neither corporate entity could take ownership or close either one.

I wasn't suggesting that they would. Rather, I was referring to the strong influence that Red Hat has over Fedora. It might be fine for people who love Red Hat's design choices, but not so much for people who don't. That's why I mentioned Mint as an alternative.

there is functionally no difference between RedHat<>Fedora and Canonical<>Mint.

There is, because Debian is upstream of Canonical/Ubuntu. This means Mint can easily sever ties with the latter. In practice, Mint has opted out of Ubuntu-isms more than once, and already maintains a distro based directly on Debian.

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Lemmchen 3 points a year ago

I concur, but for a Big Picture couch setup, I do think the Snap nonsense is irrelevant.

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communist 2 points a year ago

They said not bazzite, which is fedora with minor tweaks

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just_another_person 1 point a year ago

No. Fedora is Fedora. Bazzite is an immutable spin based on Fedora. World of difference.

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communist 2 points a year ago

https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/

No, it's just fedora atomic with some qol... which is in fact, fedora.

Bazzite didn't even add immutability, the only things they added are a few packages for gaming, steam, and patent-issue free ffmpeg. It is really just fedora with some preinstalled packages.

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bisby 22 points a year ago

Interesting. I use Bazzite for my SteamVR setup. Though I do have to swap to desktop mode for VR, otherwise works great (I have a steamdeck build installed because HTPC, so it boots to big picture, but the desktop mode still works).

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Lemmchen 8 points a year ago

Which headset are you using? Valve Index?

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bisby 4 points a year ago

Yeah. Valve Index.

I originally got it working on a Ryzen 1700, and Vega64. But Vega64 is old GCN architecture and it performed poorly.

I have since upgraded the VR setup to Ryzen 5950x and Radeon 6900xt, and it works quite well. I just played an hour of Beat Saber actually.

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Lemmchen 3 points a year ago

That's very close to my setup of Valve Index, Ryzen 5700X and Radeon 6900XT. Maybe I should spend some more time investigating it.

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jlh 4 points a year ago

Try using the monado runtime instead of SteamVR.

See Kawane Rio's 15 minute lightning talk about VR on Linux from this year's FOSDEM:

https://fosdem.org/...

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bisby 3 points a year ago

Is your issue getting it to start at all, or performance issues?

For me it wouldnt start at all in the default big picture mode and would only start in desktop mode.

I made a few tweaks to get performance tuned up when I was on the Vega64, but I don't remember what all I did there.

edit: Also, I'm the KDE desktop (i wanted my HTPC/VRPC to be as steamdeck similar as possible, and also I have strong anti gnome feelings).

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ISolox 8 points a year ago

I've never had good experiences with VR and Linux. Godspeed soldier.

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retro 8 points a year ago

Truly the best of luck, I hope your results are better than mine. The experience I had with SteamVR using Linux (Bazzite) with both a Valve Index and Quest 3 was inferior to Windows. It definitely worked, but out of the box Windows was much smoother. There may have been more tweaking I could have done but I had wasted so much time getting it to run as good as Windows that I gave up and dual boot now only for VR.

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Dr2Potz 6 points a year ago

Nobara has been great for me. I've been using it nearly exclusively for probably two years. SteamVR works for me without any trouble.

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philpo 1 point a year ago

Yeah, Fedora over Ubuntu/anything Canonical any day now. And Nobara is what Fedora should be for gaming.

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ElectroLisa 4 points a year ago

SteamVR on Linux as of now is a joke, features necessary to experience VR without getting nausea are missing, namely working asynchronous reprojection and correct vsync_to_photon timings.

I'm using HTC Vive Pro on Arch Linux (one of 4 SteamVR native headsets) for context.

There is an open-source alternative called Monado which does work better than SteamVR, but it's game compatibility is a hit or miss, and you don't get features like Chaperone/Guardian on it

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JoMomma 4 points a year ago

Ive had really good luck so far with CachyOS. Have it on my desktop and laptop both for gaming

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Lemmchen 4 points a year ago

VR as well?

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squinky 3 points a year ago

I used Ubuntu for years and snaps have driven me crazy. Recently I switched to LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and I really like it.

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scrubbles 3 points a year ago

Too bad about bazzite. Maybe chimera? I think it's Debian based so it might be slightly better. I've always liked pop, but I use it desktop, and it's just a fork of ubuntu

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gnarwhal 2 points a year ago

Pop!_OS is great if you want Ubuntu without snap. I also like that you can choose an iso with Nvidia proprietary drivers included. It's been a very stable work+gaming distro. I've not tried big picture mode or VR though.

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Lexam 2 points a year ago

Mint works for me.

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secret300 1 point a year ago

When I tried VR a couple years ago I had to use x11. Maybe you still do and bazzite is on wayland by default right?

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IEatDaGoat 1 point a year ago

Na use Fedora based distros. I recommend Nobara.

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