Millions of gamers are facing a critical decision; upgrade their operating system, invest in new hardware or explore alternatives like Linux with the end of ...
Depends on what you want to play. If you want to play current games with current hardware then current kernel and drivers help a lot. A base Debian would (if it even works) probably less FPS than an current gaming distro.
A base Debian would (if it even works) probably less FPS than an current gaming distro.
Can you please elaborate on why? I’m running Debian stable with NVIDIA drivers and… it “just works”. I’m using Steam to get Proton and game content (e.g. was playing Elden Ring minutes ago). I didn’t tinker much so wondering what I could be missing.
Throw a distro like Nobara or Bazzite on and see what you get. You might have it optimized quite well, but chances are that the kernel version is far enough behind that many of the graphics tweaks aren’t compatible. nVidia open drivers have come a long way in a very short time, and they rely on newer kernels.
You should just be able to shrink a partition and dual boot between distros, or put another drive in and use that.
Drivers are 535 on stable, cf https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers so it’s definitely not the very latest yet even though drivers are important I doubt (and please share benchmarks if I’m way off) there is a radical performance difference.
Oh I’m not advocating that you switch distributions. If you’re happy with performance there’s no reason to change.
The only thing that gives me pause with outdated drivers is the possibility of being exposed to unpatched security vulnerabilities. But in my experience Debian does provide updates when it’s critical.
Depends on what you want to play. If you want to play current games with current hardware then current kernel and drivers help a lot. A base Debian would (if it even works) probably less FPS than an current gaming distro.
Can you please elaborate on why? I’m running Debian stable with NVIDIA drivers and… it “just works”. I’m using Steam to get Proton and game content (e.g. was playing Elden Ring minutes ago). I didn’t tinker much so wondering what I could be missing.
Throw a distro like Nobara or Bazzite on and see what you get. You might have it optimized quite well, but chances are that the kernel version is far enough behind that many of the graphics tweaks aren’t compatible. nVidia open drivers have come a long way in a very short time, and they rely on newer kernels.
You should just be able to shrink a partition and dual boot between distros, or put another drive in and use that.
Presumably because things like Mesa and video drivers would be somewhat out of date
Drivers are 535 on stable, cf https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers so it’s definitely not the very latest yet even though drivers are important I doubt (and please share benchmarks if I’m way off) there is a radical performance difference.
Oh I’m not advocating that you switch distributions. If you’re happy with performance there’s no reason to change.
The only thing that gives me pause with outdated drivers is the possibility of being exposed to unpatched security vulnerabilities. But in my experience Debian does provide updates when it’s critical.