Tim Harrison

All in on Linux Gaming.

I love video games! I remember playing "Dizzy" on a Spectrum ZX, which for the too young was a computer that utilised tapes to load games, it sounded like the old school internet dial-up when loading. Over the years I've had many consoles, mostly playstation, until the steamdeck this handheld linux based gaming console changed my gaming future.

For those who haven't heard of the Steamdeck, it's a handheld devices that plays 'most' games from Steam (A gaming store and platform similar to the playstation store), this includes some AAA games, on the lowest settings of course. But still I couldn't believe the capability of such a small device. For 3 years I've had no other gaming console except the deck.... until recently.

I decided to go all in on linux Gaming and build a gaming PC.

I asked for building advice on Lemmy, an Opensource alternative to Reddit, as I've literally no experience building a PC, let alone a gaming PC. With the help of the linux gaming community I made a decision with my hardware spec before delving into learning how to build a gaming PC.

The hardware spec I went with was:

Now I understand this is not the highest end nor is it the lowest end hardware, but I have been blown away by its capabilities, the AAA games, I've played so far all have been on the highest settings possible and it hasn't scratched the limit of this machine. Before I talk more on that, back to the build process. After hours of watching videos and scouring articles I had a reasonable idea of how to build a PC. That being said I was still really nervous, especially about mounting the cooler on teh CPU with thermal paste. However for anyone on the fence about building your first PC, don't be! I had literally no experience building one and with a spare day and a lot of research, I managed to build the entire unit and install an OS.

Speaking of the OS I went with BazziteOS an immutable distribution similar to SteamOS on the Steamdeck. BazziteOS makes everything extremely simple to setup, so much so, not only have I been gaming like mad on it, I have also been using it as my daily driver as well, even this post has been written on it.

It's still early days using this Gaming machine but I can't believe how enjoyable the build was, how easy the OS was to install and setup, but mainly I'm impressed with with how far Linux gaming has come. I've honestly never used windows to game, but from previous consoles I've had, this PC blows them all out the water!

I'm starting to believe that "2025 may be the year of Linux gaming"

Looking for comments? There are no comments. It's not that I don't care what you think, it's just that I don't want to manage a comments section.

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