Hello,
I bought a razer blade 15 laptop a while ago, and world like to install Linux on it, mostly to play games. So, ideally I’d like a distro that can make the most use of the hardware and let me play the most games, while being the easiest to use and lowest maintenance possible. Any recommendation?
I have a Razer Blade Stealth 13 QHD+ touchscreen (RZ09-02393E32) since 2017. Until recently it was mostly Windows and Ubuntu side by side. I realized few months ago I never ever boot on Windows so I removed it. I also got tired on Ubuntu pushing for its own package management system which I don’t find useful. Consequently back to “just” Debian stable and works great for me. Didn’t have to tinker with anything, just works.
Is it easy to get NVIDA drivers, Vulkan, Cuda etc in Debian? I somehow thought that was kind finicky, not sure why …
It is finicky on any distribution because NVIDIA drivers aren’t perfect on Linux nor on Windows.
That being said I’m gaming, in VR and otherwise (using native games, Proton ones, Steam VR, etc), or running local AI models (thus via CUDA) on a daily basis on Debian and have no problems. You can check https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers but it’s basically just installing the driver like any other package. I don’t have more or less problem than with e.g. Ubuntu. It basically works.
You may want to look into something like Bazzite or Nobara.
Generally though, most distros will be perfectly fine for gaming – just note that some distros will need a little bit of extra work done for stuff like nvidia drivers, so if you’re new to linux, something like those above, which have that done already, will likely be best. Bazzite in particular should be very low maintenance.
This person was having trouble with Bazzite the other day. Do you have any idea what the issue could be? Works for me on Fedora
Maybe Garuda ?
I would try with Bazzite or Pop OS first.
I had to set one of these up for my SO a couple of years ago. I dropped EndeavourOS on it, installed btrbk and configured automatic snapshots on a schedule and before package installation/update in case she managed to bork things by pip installing things into system python.
Fedora would probably work well too if you want a lower maintenance burden. I hesitate to suggest Ubuntu or Debian or their derivatives since you’ll probably want to be somewhat current with your Nvidia drivers.
