TL;DR: Is there really a performance benefit to a gaming distro over a regular distro? Or is it more of a “this is the least work” to get setup?

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I run EndeavourOS on my desktop and haven’t had any issues with performance. I just like playing with new things and learning from the experience.

I’ve seen loads of people recommending Bazzite as a gaming distro for various reasons. It’s gotten to the point that I installed it on a second SSD to do my own testing but I’d still like to see others perspective.

From my research, there doesn’t seem to be that much performance to be gained (generally speaking). I’ll be testing this on my own hardware but is this generally true?

I think a big draw (especially for new users) would be that these distros would require very minimal work to get up and running into a game.

I think the TL;DR at the top best describes my question. I’ve just been thinking about this and haven’t been sure how to express it in a clear manner for others to understand. Also, this video got me thinking more.

EDIT:

Glad to see that I’m not alone in my thinking. Biggest benefit of a “gaming distro” is the convenience of having everything setup and there is no real performance difference.

  • Dremor@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 months ago

    Phoronix many benchmarks proves the opposite. There is differences, even at the same Mesa/Kernel version.
    The difference between an hyper optimized distro, like Clear Linux (optimized for Intel CPUs), and more general ones (Ubuntu, Fedora) can be huge.
    Even between those general purposes distro, the technology choices (filesystem, scheduler, etc.) can make a considerable difference in some games/workloads.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
      11·
      6 months ago

      Please read what I said again, and don’t confuse the situation. You’re discussing performance differences of an overall system being benchmarked. I’m discussing gaming performance. No one distro will outperform another in any meaningful way. Don’t start being pedantic and throwing around minor benchmark differences to be “that person”.

      • Dremor@lemmy.world
        4·
        6 months ago

        Pedantic? Say the person that immediately assume anyone with a different opinion than his is a morron and did not read his previous message ?

        Here is some gaming benchmark. It is from 2022, sure, but is still relevant today to illustrate that gaming performance on Linux isn’t as easy as being the “same software with different configuration”.

        And I could go on with other games, which had different results.

        There are many variables that can affect those performance. Obviously, the Kernel, Driver and Mesa version has a big influence, but so have some less obvious causes like the filesystem used, the compiler options used, or even the compiler itself. That’s why those performances can vary so much in benchmarks.