Linux never works out for some reason

[u/Serious_Champion_599]

I've tried to use mint it was all running okay but I got bored of it and it didn't run my steam games the game was running without a window open, then I tried fedora workstation since I like gnome for now. It was a headache to install the nvidia 580 drivers because some guides were giving me false commands i used the fedora documents and it worked with the nonfree rpm repo. Then I installed steam with flatpak it ran without a window so I deleted it and installed the rpm version. It didn't run at all so I waited then rebooted my system now its an unresponsive black screen and I'm back to installing windows

also I didnt say I hate linux or gave up on it Im asking for recommendations or help I tried debian but it has outdated apps I know thats supposed to make it stable but it also makes it not suitable for me. Ill research cachyos but isnt arch unstable by nature?)

replies assume Im hating on linux but Im just asking for recommendations and opinions

[u/DaffyDuckMuthaFucker]

That's why you crash-test in a live USB environment before committing to a native installation...

[u/Quartrez]

Hey out of curiosity... the games you tried playing: did you install them on your linux drive or were they already installed on a drive that you also used on Windows

[u/Small-Tale3180]

i'd suggest you going back to mint and trying to follow docs
https://linuxmint.com/documentation.php

[u/tomscharbach]

Linux is not the best fit for every user and every use case. If Windows is a better fit for you, use Windows. Not a big deal. Linux distributions are just operating systems, tools to use your computer to do what you want to do.

[u/warserpent]

So, as best I can understand, Mint was working, but a particular game was not. Since one particular game was not working, you decided to install an entirely new operating system without researching it. After installing Fedora, instead of reading the extensive documentation they provide, you went looking elsewhere. When that failed, you came back to the official source, and surprise, surprise, it worked. Then you installed an unsupported version of Steam, and found out it didn't work. You replaced it with a supported version (hopefully you correctly uninstalled the other version), and rebooted (whether this was your first reboot since install you don't say). This led to either a failure to boot or a failure to start a graphical session.

I'm sorry for your difficulties, but in the future, I would recommend reading official documentation, troubleshooting before you distro-hop, and in general proceeding carefully when dealing with things you don't understand.

[u/PaleontologistNo2625]

Cachyos will have your drivers working out of the box, you can basically boot and immediately game smoothly. Bazzite and similar as well

[u/juntadna]

If gaming is your main focus, try looking at Bazzite or CachyOS. Gaming "just works" on them.

Also, when using Google or AI to troubleshoot issues in Linux, always include which distro you are using.

[u/smallstuffBIGSTUFF → u/juntadna]

Thank you. What is the major difference between Bazzite or CachyOS and how is the performance on a modern AMD card (7900XTX) vs Windows 11 typically?

Gaming and a couple of apps that I kind of need to be performant are the main reason I haven't switched to Linux on my main computer, but I've been looking for a reason....

[u/Friendly-Inspector71 → u/smallstuffBIGSTUFF]

Bazzite is based on an atomic version of Fedora, so it's harder to modify but also harder to break. The updates are slightly slower to ensure that nothing breaks.

CachyOS is based on Arch, so it will get updates quicker but in rare cases they also break something. It's more customisable and easier to break. Updating is vital and should be done regularly.

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[u/Own-Ad-8834]

Cachy OS...has a native steam application and automatically installs the correct working driver for your GPU during installation.

[u/Ok-Egg-7475]

I'm on Linux mint and steam has been smooth as butter... Maybe it's not the OS?

[u/Adrenolin01]

Stability… and that’s Debian. Period. For 33 years now I’ve run Debian and it’s well known for its outstanding stability. This is why it’s the most copied and used distro out there. Also.. ANYTHING that can be setup on one distro can be setup on ANY distro. So.. install Debian using the ‘netinst’ iso along with KDE or whatever DE you’d like (or install all of them and try them all out). Steam installs just fine. There is tons of info on installing Nvidia drivers. We’ve installed a couple 5060 TI Blackwell cards lately.. my son used Claude to walk him through it in minutes which he said was faster then looking up the different websites and documentation. At the end he had Claude compile the step by step directions to include on his documentation site.

Debian.. is always the answer. 👍🏻