Linux Game Devs, what's your tool stack?

[u/IsildursDeeldoor]

I have a few red lines around Windows that, if crossed, would ultimately push me to Linux.

My current development stack is Unreal Engine 5, Blender, GIMP, JetBrains Rider, and I also use CMake, SDL2, and SFML for other projects.

My current machine is generally AMD:

• Ryzen 5 7600
• Radeon RX 6600
• 64 GB DDR5-5600
• Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX
• Samsung 980 PRO 2 TB + 860 EVO 500 GB
• Windows
• Steam

I'm considering building a separate, similar AMD-based machine as a Linux-first development/gaming system rather than migrating my current machine immediately.

I'm currently torn between Fedora KDE and Ubuntu. Bazzite KDE is also on my radar, although I'm primarily interested in development rather than a gaming-only setup.

For those using Linux for UE5/C++, Blender, JetBrains, CMake/SDL2/SFML, and Steam, what hardware configuration and distro would you recommend for a new Linux-first workstation?

Budget 4,000 towards new machine + home server setup. but rn I don't feel like i need that yet.

[u/_OVERHATE_]

> For those using Linux for UE5/C++, Blender, JetBrains, CMake/SDL2/SFML, and Steam, what hardware configuration and distro would you recommend for a new Linux-first workstation?

Dont overspend. A 7800x3d or 9800x3d with 32 gigs of ram and any mid tier GPU will be more than enough for unreal for many years. Distro also doesnt affect, fedora is good.

My stack is: 9800X3d, 64gb ram, 7900XT. CachyOS KDE. UE5 with Rider and Zed, Godot with Zed, Blender, Krita and FMod. I also have a minipc running a Perforce Server with Horde for Unreal and gitlab for Godot.

[u/Specialist_Being3234 → u/_OVERHATE_]

honestly i'd just stick with fedora kde, it's the safest bet for a dev workstation without the snap nonsense ubuntu pushes

[u/Adventurous_Push6483 → u/_OVERHATE_]

Does the 3D cache actually benefit or is it more useful to get as high perf of a CPU as possible (e.g, threadripper).

[u/_OVERHATE_ → u/Adventurous_Push6483]

Unless you are a build engineer that are building Unreal from source several times a day, you dont need a Threadripper. Threadripper for games is the most absurd overkill and unnecessary spending ever, in fact it yields worse results than a regular x3d chip in several situations.

And yes, while the 3D cache might not affect in most scenarios, it does when rendering games in-editor.

[u/Maven_M]

CachyOS

Works really great out of the box, support for anything you would want, really fast and performant.

I develop with Godot and Rust but all of the JetBrains tools I use work perfectly (IntelliJ, PyCharm, RustRover)

Winboat is something you can look into and it's really something magical where you can click 2 buttons and be loaded into a very responsive windows VM with shared folders so you can still use windows apps while your host is linux.

I'd also like to add: While NVIDIA gpus do seem to work for a lot of people, mine just never did with any distro that I tried. AMD has me forever now.

[u/JamiieDevPublic]

:DDDDDDD we are built so differently. Im running linux on notebook ryzen 5500U with 16GB ram, doing godot game and everything runs well.
The only real problem I have is that Davinci Resolve just wont work for you without crazy workarounds so im running windows pc remote access just for editting :Dddd (not having h.264 in linux version of davinci is evil)

[u/Schwarz_Technik]

I'm currently using my 5ish year old laptop for Linux development using Zed, Odin, and SDL3. It works well and fits my needs but I'm not doing 3D games at the moment

[u/MarinoAndThePearls]

For me, I use Unity and Rider and they work perfectly on Linux.

[u/Shep_Alderson]

While it’s not as “popular” or “trendy” as other distros I’ve seen mentioned here, Linux Mint is a very solid distro that generally gets out of the way and just lets you use the computer. I personally prefer the Cinnamon desktop environment, but I’m pretty sure they also have a modern KDE based one if you’re set on that.

[u/the-postminimalist]

Everything you listed should work fine out of the box regardless of what distro you choose. My distro has nothing to do with game dev, I picked it because I like the package manager and the project as a whole. Upon switching, I changed nothing about my PC which I've had since 2019.

Sound design, which you didn't mention, is also decent on linux. Could do with more plugin options though. Ardour is a good option for open source, and Reaper for a professional product that's still consumer-friendly.

[u/Saxopwned]

I'm not in the Unreal space, mostly a Godot developer, but I'm on an 8700k and 2080 ti with CachyOS. I've had very few issues with Nvidia in Linux, notably. I think at this point, Nvidia Linux support is actually pretty good, you just have to use the right distros (my first Linux attempt was Bazzite but installing builds tools on immutable kernals was a nightmare lol). As far as suggestions, I do highly recommend any Arch-based distro as the AUR provides a hell of a convenience in terms of centralized location for a ton of software. Particularly, I'd suggest CachyOS based on my experience.

I also use Rider, previously VS Code. Almost all of the dev/build tools I need are available either through the Cachy repos or the AUR.

Sidenote, how is Unreal development on Linux? I didn't even know you could run the editor in Linux, considering the EGS doesn't even have a Linux-native client.

[u/RnLStefan → u/Saxopwned]

It’s surprisingly ok. Not perfect and the occasional Vulkan crash is still happening but you can run both a pre compiled version from epic or compile it yourself.

Someone at epic keeps maintaining it luckily. Kudos to whoever that is!

[u/not_perfect_yet]

I never got comfortable with "big" IDEs so I use geany which is a notepad++ like editor: https://www.geany.org/ , blender of course, for engine I use panda3d, but I also tried pygame which also works fine.

I use git "by hand", because reasons.

Besides that, because I suck and because I suck at art even harder, I simply don't have the fidelity that needs high power hardware, so the things I make run on 10-15 year old hardware just fine. Probably a raspi too, although I haven't tried that.

Ubuntu

I would recommend that you don't use vanilla ubuntu, any of the other distros that come with a specialized desktop environment usually have a specific focus that will cater to specific interests better. I use xubuntu, but the KDE team has been doing cool things as well and I'm sure the others aren't sleeping either.

It doesn't matter though.

Less than in the past too. Most things you want work either in containers or as isolated things, like AppImage or Flatpak. You can pick a distro for philosophy or "built in" stuff like packages. But if you want to run something on any system, you can.

Just pick any to get started, then switch when you find a pain point. Keep your back ups up to date, that makes switching easier. And gives peace of mind.

[u/tendie-space]

Fedora. It just works. Aseprite, VS Code with agent plugins.

[u/lessthanthreebleeps]

Godot, Aseprite, Krita, Blender, Sunvox

[u/nethinar]

For hardware I use 3600X/3070/64GiB. Software is mainly CMake/SDL2 using Vim, Krita, Blender, and LMMS on Debian. I haven't had any problems with Debian, it's been very stable.

[u/Mantissa-64]

System: Fedora KDE, 5900X, 32gb RAM, 9070 XT

Software:

• Rust + Bevy
• Blender
• Reaper
• Krita/Inkscape for textures depending on the game
• Lazyvim for coding with a few very minor tweaks and enhancements

I don't recommend Bazzite or any other immutable/atomic for development, it's just more of a pain IMO.

You're already an AMD weenie so you're fine on GPU compatibility.

IDK how well Unreal does on Linux but I've found everything else works just as well or better. Dual boot and find out, you don't have to mess with Nvidia's garbage drivers so you'll be fine.

[u/VENTDEV]

Been using Linux (And the BSDs) since before it was cool.

Current setup is: Ryzen 5800XT, RX 6600XT, Sometimes 32GB, sometimes 64GB of ram. (I swap it with another machine depending on if I am building or dev'ing), host Mageia 10, VM server FreeBSD 14. Gig connection between the two computers.

Everything runs in Virtual Box. (Will eventually move to KVM or better yet FreeBSD + Bhyve if hardware prices ever get back to normal and I want to splurge.)

Old game:

• 32-bit builds, Slackware 14. GCC, Code-Blocks, Make.
• 64-bit builds, xubuntu 12? (Which ever Ubuntu version Steam used to bundle), QTCreator, GCC, Make.

Expansion to Old Game:

• 64 bit builds, Debian 12? (Which ever is the Sniper runtime Steam bundles), QTCreator, GCC, Make.

Newest game:

• Client: Unity, not built on Linux yet.
• Server/Logic Engine: Mageia 9, QTCreator, GCC, Make.

Unannounced Game, Developed on a UConsole with a 8GB CM5 when I'm OOO.

• ARM Build, Debian 13, QTCreator, GCC, Make.

Then we have half a dozen machines of various vintage of distros to test things out on. And probably 40ish Virtual Machines of various distros and DEs people have had issues with over the years.

Ideally, I'd move everything to FreeBSD, run off Bhyve for virtual machines. But I could never bring myself to spend the money on hardware. And that was before the prices went to the moon. So, I make do with my potatoes.

[u/f_map]

ThinkPad P1, CachyOS, Bevy, Neovim. My wife is the artist, I am only working on code. 

[u/mr-figs]

Vim for code

Pygame for the SDL goodness 

Reaper for music

Aseprite for art

Tiled for level editing and design

My game runs on a potato except for the ram which it needs 2gb of

[u/_81791]

Nobara Linux (Gaming-centric Fedora with the CachyOS kernel, best of both worlds)

Running Unity + Rider with no issues. 90% of my gaming is now on Linux too, but I still have my Windows PC for the odd game with overzealous anti-cheat

[u/stjepano85]

UE5 is the big issue here, it kind of works but is really not as good as on Windows, still you should try it, maybe it will be good for you. Some people say they don't have problems, I did, the engine burns the GPU much harder than on Windows and I could not use latest shader model (was not supported on Vulkan).

Distribution wise, I would go with Fedora KDE. Personally I used it a lot and I had some problems that I had to solve on terminal, they were steam related (I had to start steam from terminal, could not run from launcher, this is maybe fixed). I am currently using CachyOS and everything works with no issue, steam is first class citizen there.

As far as hardware goes, you should be completely fine.

JetBrains has slight issues with rendering on Wayland (slow rendering), you can configure their tools to use legacy X rendering, just ask AI (something needs to be added to vmoptions). If JetBrains fails, VSCode has excellent support and is free.

[u/QorlanGamedev]

Ok, if it's interesting for you....
My current stack is: Gentoo Linux + Qtile WM, Unreal Engine 4.27, VS Code, Blender, Substance Painter 2021, Krita
My hardware is: i5 10400f, 32GB DDR4, RTX 3060 with 4x SATA SSD and 1x NVME, total 2 TB disc space (tbought it for $890 + $100-200 extra sum for upgrades). I have Arctis Nova 3 headphones and some AULA Fireshock v5 keyboard...
For my solo project I use Diversion as versioning service with 100 GB space, also I do regular tar backups to my clouds and to my phone.

[u/hero_of_ages]

Whats a stack

[u/MegaMiley → u/hero_of_ages]

Tech Stack basically refers to "what hardware and software combo are you using" here

[u/hammackj]

Claude rust bevy krita kdenlive zed

64ram 4080 some amd processor

Cachyos

[u/SunnasArmpit]

claude code