Best Distro for steam ?

[FatRakoon]

I really didnt think that I would have to ask this, but I am doing so...well?

Anyway as the title, what is the best distro for steam?

The reason I ask this, is because I see that Dawn of war 2 is finally available on Linux now, and so thats gone on and today, I gave it a play for the first time, and I came up with a few things.

1 - The speed that it loaded up, was simply disgusting. Ok, now admittedly, I have just put Linux onto a new Laptop and the second HD that steam is plonked onto, is an unknown speed ( seagate 1.5TB ) and my main / drive is a 120GB SSD.

2 - When the game was starting up, I got a dialog box open up, stating that this version of Linux is not optimial for running the game???

3 - I also got a moan about the GFX, but I have installed the latest nVidia graphics, so Im not sure about that!

I am running Mint Linux 18 KDE so the very latest distro

Any thoughts?

 

[FatRakoon]

I already use PlayOnLinux. Very nice front end for Wine. I have had some good and some bad results with it.

SteamOS - This is mainly a purely front end to steam and not really a full on OS though is it? - I want to use Linux every day and have the ability toi play my games as best as I can, and yes, I have my Windows setups and laptops, with Steam in, but I prefer Linux.

No, admittedly, the game does seem to work just fine, the game itself seems to play as well as I can expect it to, however the loading times are nothing but utterly disgusting.
The trials Laptop specs are more than good enough and there should be no excuses for such horrific speeds, but its an Asus G73SW, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD for root, a 1TB WD Black for the data. There should be no reason for it to be slow. Admittedly, the game I am talking about is Dawn Of War 2 and its not a small game.

Ubuntu etc.
Im a KDE user and so its Kubuntu for me, however, the latest versions have not been very nice to me.

My main choices for a distro right now, are realyl only Mint KDE17.3 as this is the only distro that has installed and updated with 100% success... Every other has had at least some issue, even my most favoured distro Sabayon.

 

[FatRakoon]

Hmmm... Been toying wit h fair number of distros and so on.

Its not the quickest thing in the world to do, it takes a fair bit of time to gethings setup and sorted, so appologies for the delay. I have life to contend with and things get in the way of that, so...

Anyway, I have plopped a new HD into an I5 setup here, and I am using that for the test installs.

The setup is an I5-2550K - AsRock H77M-ITX - 8GB RAM - GTX470

STEAMOS
I have tried a few versions of SteamOS and they all seem to do the same thing...
It goes through I thick is the entire install process, or if not, very near the end, but then the screen goes blank, and nothing I do can bring the display back.

It is NOT at a booting stage there as I have tried, but that is where it ends up, whether I do it Automated or Expert.

Sabayon
V15.02 seems to be the latest stable version of this, but in typical sabayon style, it upgrades to the latest versions and then the stability goes away. It does this also on my Laptop, and my main Linux Desktop PC and for it to also do it on this,. makes me wonder if its not some issue with the files themselves?
But Sabayon has Steam in its own repos and it is well supported.

MiNT
17.3 is the latest stable on this too and I have it kind of trying to run, but otherwise it does it badly, and sometimes double clicks simply dont play ball?

Kubuntu 16.04
I would go with Ubuntu but I despise how Gnome / unity works, but they are basically the same, so why would this be any different?
I have the same results as I do with mint... Half dont want to know.

I am still trying to play with the idea of SteamOS but I really want a proer Linux distro that just does Steam games as good as I can and for that, maybe *buntu is the only option, but for a Media System, maybe Steam will be an idea?

 

[FatRakoon]

I agree about SteamOS, I should have mentioned in the first post that I am wanting it for my Laptop and if good enough, on my Linux Desktop too!

I have had such a horrible mixed array of results from my Laptop, from completely failing to install, all the way up to simply hating me entirely.

I have also had mixed results with Linux when backing the files up and restoring them... Even if I simply reinstall and dont format /home it sometimes wants to reload the entire gam,e all over again, even though I have the same username and the files are all there, but the game still reloads up ( not all the time mind you )

I have NOT tried fedora because like Mandrake / Mandriva before it, it seems to be slightly different formats to what I have madewith any other distros... It will only work if I fully wipe and create new partitions... Never known why this does that, but its always done it on every distro on every machine I have ever owned.
SuSE does a similar thing too!

Anyway, that will have to do.

I am about to give another untested distro a shot, to see what gives.

( Fatty rolls the die to find out which... )

 

[FatRakoon]

You say that, but I have had "friends" considering a Steam machine to replace their desktop gaming PC.

Perhaps a little OTT at this moment, but its certainly becoming a viable option... In many ways, thats half my plan, but I simply want a Linux Desktop that is as good as I can get it for running Steam too!

My Linux Desktop is doing ok, but the steam apps just dont seem to be working quite right.
The Laptop is just being a whore.

That's the beauty of linux, Dive in and play

Agreed, but at the same time, too much choice is also a bit of a bugger when idiots like me end up running around like a child in a sweet shop on crack

Steam on linux ain't doing my wallet any good

You and me both! - snag is, Im buying anything that islinux compatible purely for the hell of it and next to none of them have been play yet?

That said, my steam folder in Windows is just shy of 1.5TB - EEK!