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.
Check ProtonDB, e.g. https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Civilization and that, even though very useful ~~initially started~~ for 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.
ProtonDB is older then the steamdeck my dude, protonb was released alongside proton, which released on 2018, while the deck is from 2022.
In any case, I agree with you, it's a very reliable source of game support. Mainly because it's user reported haha.
Indeed, my bad, what I was trying to say is that I believe most of the efforts put into Proton stems from the SteamDeck, namely that Valve invested resources in the compatibility layer before the console but it really started to gear up then in order to bring value to players.
Edit: post amended.
... 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?
I have a i9-9900K with a 2080ti and 32GB of RAM (I had to check because it's so "old" I didn't remember) and honestly, until I buy the ONE game that needs better specs, not just for ever so slightly better graphics but because it wouldn't run properly without, I'm holding on to this rig.
I don't have AMD vs NVIDIA recommendation. I use both (as I also have a SteamDeck) and have no big problem with either, I just work and play, no worries. For CPU/RAM I don't think it matters much, what does though is making sure the hardware is compatible, e.g. if you have a top of the line CPU with a low-end GPU or vice versa, you will have a bottleneck and won't use one fully. So just be coherent with your purchase and again check what are the recommended spec for your favorite games.
Regarding the distribution, I'm on Debian stable so if you are familiar with that and have no need for anything specific, I don't recommend changing, stick to what you know.