Background
I use Mac as my daily driver for my work and personal machines, but for gaming I use my Playstation 5 for online or supposedly AAA games (think Call of Duty or Helldivers 2) and I use my Steam Deck for more indie titles. I’ve got some Linux experience, primarily via my old Mac Mini running Proxmox with mostly Debian VMs and messing around briefly with NixOS.
I love our Steam Deck, but it does feel a little underpowered, the battery isn’t as strong as it once was and I don’t love the docking experience with the official dock.
My wife is really into Civilization and similar games and I’d love to setup a desktop connected to our TV to use with a keyboard and mouse on our LG CX. Although I’m tech savvy, I’m not great with knowing what hardware/software to get. It’s especially more complicated with the looming tariffs and trying to make sure I don’t overspend on something I don’t need.
Question
Looking for some guidance on hardware and software to setup for this living room gaming desktop. It’s only purpose is to play games, primarily from Steam and it should have hardware which would benefit speed and performance for the type of games I’m going to list. Obviously we want the graphics to be good, but I don’t need a beast RTX 5090.
What are some hardware and software recommendations in today’s financial climate for playing these games on Linux?
What other accessories would you recommend for couch based keyboard and mouse gaming?
Honestly the game I’m most eager to get into is Dwarf Fortress, but for my wife it’s having a smooth experience with Civ6 (she was playing the Switch version for far too long!)
Games
- Civilization games
- My wife loves 6 and I’m a fan of 5, but we do want to eventually try 7, hoping it’ll improve with DLC updates
- Dwarf Fortress
- Rimworld
- Battletech
- Into the Breach
- Brotato
- Vampire Survivors
- Balatro
- FTL
- Caves of Qud
- Persona 5 Royal (although I’m struggling to get into it, pushing through)
- Blue Prince
- ANIMAL WELL
- Factorio
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Anno 1800
- Project Zomboid
This is a partial list of some of our libraries and wishlists. As you can see, some of them are more graphically, memory and processor intensive, but a lot of them are low performance indies.
My rimworld works fine in my 10+ yrs old ddr3 desktop. Amd or Nvidia gpu are all fine. Spend more on ram for Linux built. The estimate lifespan of my new desktop is 10 yrs.
Linux gaming experience is okish. You really have to chk the compatibility because some games claim they support Linux, but not really.
Certainly the best choice for processor and graphics card will be AMD. I would certainly advise you to avoid Nvidia, as it is very poorly supported on Linux, and it is even worth paying extra for AMD if you use a system other than Windows.
NVIDIA is fine.
There were real issues with NVIDIA. They have been resolved.
That said, when something is “fixed” in Linux, it comes to different distros at different times. Some distros will get the fixes almost immediately. Others will not see them for 2 - 3 years. As we are within that window, how well NVIDIA works depends on what distro you use.
If you use an up-to-date distro like something Arch based (maybe EndeavourOS), things work well. Even fairly current distros like those that are Fedora based should be fine at this point. However, if you use something that moves a little shower, like Mint or especially Debian, you may still have problems with NVIDIA today.
AMD has worked well on Linux for many years and so it is a reliable choice regardless of distro.
Don’t forget that Intel exists as well. At the low to mid-end, they represent good value. They have good Linux support.
Nvidia user here. The criticism of Nvidia support on Linux is always blown way out of proportion by AMD fanboys.
The only issue I ever have is needing to prepend
prime-runto each application I want to launch with the dedicated GPU.I’ve had significantly worse problems with AMD drivers, so much so that it really opened my eyes to how stable things were on the green team.
I’m not saying you should get one over the other, but you shouldn’t let fanboys dictate your decision. They will try to do so without admitting they’re fanboys, so we have admit it for them.
Found the nvidia shill, I guess.
When choosing a graphics card, I’ve generally found AMD/Radeon to be a reliable option. I’ve used several different Radeon GPUs in various builds, and they’ve consistently performed well. Nvidia users sometimes encounter compatibility issues, though that isn’t universally the case. Vulkan is a strong API and provides a good experience.
Considering you play a lot of simulation and strategy games, the CPU you pick will probably influence your experience a lot more than usual. This chart can give you an idea of how they stack.
I will say, other than Civ7, you’ll probably have a good time with whatever build people have linked here.
I have a T14 gen1 ryzen 7 (only 16G of ram for now), with integrated graphics running bazzite. Civ 5 and 6, rimworld, FTL run flawlessly. Anno 1800 is a bit laggy, but playable. I also do some sim racing and no complaints there either, if graphics are set just right, so I think that the bar for hardware is pretty low. As for hardware, not sure what I’d go with, but I’m sure there is no need to go overboard. For software bazzite is amazing if you want near hassle free gaming.
As for accessories I have a keychron keyboard which was a worthwhile investment and a Mionix 3200 mouse that’s over 10 years old, still amazed at the build quality and value for money. A good keyboard mouse combo is invaluable.
Check ProtonDB, e.g. https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Civilization and that, even though very useful
initially startedfor the SteamDeck it is also a very reliable source to know if a game will work well on Linux. Overall the vast VAST majority of games do work unless there is a kernel level anti-cheat which is mostly for competitive online games only.Now in terms of performances, get the GPU you can afford but overall its comparable with other OSes (not to name them) and sometimes even better, so on average, you can trust whatever the publisher is recommending.
Source : been gaming on Linux, in VR and on “flat” 3D for years now, pretty much daily.
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Civilization+games
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Dwarf+Fortress
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Rimworld
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Battletech
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Into+the+Breach
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Brotato
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Vampire+Survivors
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Balatro
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=FTL
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Caves+of+Qud
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Persona+5+Royal
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Blue+Prince
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=ANIMAL+WELL
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Factorio
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Return+of+the+Obra+Dinn
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Anno+1800
- https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Project+Zomboid
… so they all look quite promising.
Woah, thanks for doing the searching leg work here.
I’ve been using ProtonDB pretty heavily for Steam Deck research and I think most of the games on the list have good Proton support or even native Linux functionality. I doubt I’ll play many kernel level anti-cheat games on it, I tend to go to the console for those types of games.
Based on the limited research I’ve done in the past, generally AMD is recommended for Linux, so I’d probably go that route. I don’t have a firm budget, happy to save up and attempt to future proof or go with an older/used model for less cost.
Am I right in thinking CPU/RAM are more critical for games like Civ or Dwarf Fortress? More simulation than graphics intensive tasks?
Few months ago I built a gaming PC and chose to not use Windows for multiple reasons. I would suggest sticking to AMD as it would better supported on Linux. For the OS I’m using Arch Linux which is base for a lot of gaming Linux distributions. 99% I have never felt like I was missing out by not using Windows. Wine/Proton works really well OOTB. I highly recommend it if you want to get into Linux gaming. Like others have mentioned, ProtonDB is also a great resource for finding game specific information.
Bazzite is probably the best Linux distribution for this purpose. It’s practically made for it. In terms of hardware, get an AMD GPU. Intel might also be ok, but they are pretty new so might have hidden caveats.
CPU, whatever you can afford I guess.
Do you have a budget?
Thank you for the reply!
Yeah I’ve seen Bazzite come up frequently and it sounds promising, essentially it’s Steam OS. I was also leaning towards AMD GPU due to the compatibility, heard the NVIDIA drivers aren’t the best.
I’m going to be irritating and say “I don’t really know” as far as budget, I’d like to avoid spending $2-3k on something to play Indies. But I’m also ok with under $2k or even less for something that is fairly future proof.
Am I right in thinking CPU/RAM are more critical for games like Civ or Dwarf Fortress? More simulation than graphics intensive tasks?
Just FYI: I’ve never had an AMD Gpu (thanks to Blender’s support seeming poor) and while it j5as been spotty in the past, I’ve used Fedora, PopOS and Bazzite with zero Problems on NVIDIA. Drivers have come a long way in the last years.
That is good to know! I use my Mac Studio for my Blender stuff (works surprisingly well for what I need). Maybe I shouldn’t rule out NVIDIA as quickly as I have!
The NVIDIA problems are historical.
You will notice the people that actually have NVIDIA cards all say NVIDIA works.
The people saying NVIDIA does not work are all using AMD. They may have owned NVIDIA in the past and there may have been issues. But those issues have been resolved.
