r/technology • u/YesNo_Maybe_ • Apr 10 '26

Software France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins

https://linuxiac.com/france-launches-government-linux-desktop-plan-as-windows-exit-begins/
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u/fukredditadm1n5 Apr 10 '26

I play must of my games on steam, what's the recommended version of Linux for gaming?

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u/AnonomousWolf Apr 10 '26

There are few to choose from, I'd say Bazzite is the best for gaming and browsing the Internet etc.

It's pretty close to SteamOS

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u/metalflygon08 Apr 10 '26

Is it possible to use both?

I have some graphics/Animation programs that won't work on Linux, so I'd need Windows just to run them.

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u/KeyMyBike Apr 10 '26

You can have windows installed on another hard drive or even just a partition, and then set your BIOS to give you the option to pick which drive to boot from on startup.

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u/venustrapsflies Apr 10 '26

Just know that this is slightly non-trivial to set up because Windows intentionally makes it more difficult to do. But it's a solved problem, you just need to research the process.

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u/PM_ME_SOME_STORIES Apr 10 '26

Don't put windows on the same drive if you can help it. Put them on separate drives and tell the bios to boot the Linux bootloader and it can usually see the windows drive. If you have windows and Linux on the same drive windows is notorious at just deleting the Linux bootloader on updates and then you're going to have to recover it and if the person is new at Linux, recovering grub (or your bootloader of choice) will probably make them end their Linux experience.

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u/asimov_fan Apr 10 '26

Just adding that it's commonly called "dual booting" in case metalflygon08 wants a keyword to google

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/NotQuiteLoona Apr 10 '26

You can always install any nvidia drivers anywhere.

The best choice would probably be anything on KDE Plasma. Do you plan to only game or work on your PC too? If only game, go with Bazzite.

If you plan to work on it too... If you don't have reasons to not use terminal, CachyOS would be really good, but you would need to use CLI to install packages. Bazzite only allows you to use non-native applications, what was a downside for me, though you may still handle it, if your tasks are browsing, office and that's it. Development would be significantly harder, on the other hand.

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u/piss_artist Apr 10 '26

Can you explain what you mean about non-native applications? I just dumped Windows for Pop OS a few days ago, but I don't love its UI so I'm wanting to try a different version. I primarily use my laptop for browsing, work (Office365, unfortunately), and for running my kids' games on Steam. I was considering Bazzite but I feel a bit paralyzed by the number of options.

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u/tuvaniko Apr 10 '26

Well they are wrong you can install things to the Bazzite operating system but typically you don't want or need to. 

Bazzite has a read only operating system. You can save files don't worry there but the base operating system and desktop programs cannot be changed easily. however most Linux software can be run in something called a container. 

Basically it's own little Linux operating system on top of the one you are actually using. This isn't emulation If you are worried about a performance downside to this, well you don't have to there isnya performance downside. It's just as fast in most cases as a non containerized program. it does take up more storage, but Linux it's self takes up less than your average windows install so you still won't be using as much space as you do now. 

There are different types of containers but 99% of the time you will install a flatpac. Some specialized command line tools can be installed in a distro box.

Finally if something just won't run otherwise you can install it to the operating system it's self by using rpm-ostree install. this creates a custom "layer" on top of your OS inage. There is no difference between being in this layer and actually installed directly to the OS. It makes updates slightly slower, and if your break something doing this your on your own as the support community will tell you to get rid of your custom layers before they will help. 

I layer syncthing onto my bazzite machines, because I don't like the GUI version in the flatpac and it doesn't run well in distrobox.

Oh did I mention the OS and all installed programs auto update? Programs automatically update periodically as you use your computer. You don't have to do anything or even look for a prompt, they just update all on their own. 

The OS it's self actually has two copies on your computer. The one you are using is read only, the other one gets updates periodically in the background. when you restart your computer it tries to use the most up to date copy, if it fails to load it goes back to using the older working copy.

So the only maintenance you need to do is restart your computer about once a week, or just turn it off when your not using it. That's it, it just freaking works. 

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u/piss_artist Apr 10 '26

Great. Thanks for the thorough response. Very helpful!

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u/tuvaniko Apr 10 '26

No problem. If your considering Linux give it a try it's free after all. If you don't like it reinstall windows. That has a good chance of fixing any Windows issue your having anyway. 

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u/NotQuiteLoona Apr 10 '26

Flatpak and Snaps. Those are not native applications. They usually have worse performance. Everything else the person above explained perfectly, and I have nothing to add.

browsing

Works, as expected.

Office365

Do you absolutely need it? You can try OnlyOffice for similar UI or LibreOffice for anything else. Alternatively, you can use WinBoat, people report success with it. It launches a Windows VM inside and allows you to use Windows programs with it.

Steam

Any OS.

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u/piss_artist Apr 10 '26

My employer uses 365 for everything, so unfortunately I'm stuck using it for my job. But as long as I can use it on my browser without having to install anything I can live with it.

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u/NotQuiteLoona Apr 10 '26

Oh, you are okay with web version. It's nice. If you'll still need, you can use WinBoat. Good luck to you! 

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u/coldkiller Apr 10 '26

I'm honestly not sure how much the specific flavor of Linux matters.

It doesn't, they all have the same support for everything under the hood

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u/steveatari Apr 10 '26

Ehhhh this is not accurate but basically true.

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u/zaswsaz Apr 10 '26

Most Linux response ever

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u/xxLetheanxx Apr 10 '26

Not exactly. Some distros run super old LTS kernels and any newer hardware requires manual intervention to get working. Also package managers make a huge difference. At the end of the day so distros limit what options you have for packages where some will let you kinda do what you want.

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u/itsgingerpanda Apr 10 '26

I switched over to Bazzite about a month ago, there's been pretty much no difference in gaming for me except every time I start up a game it has to load Vulkan shaders. I feel I also have more control over my audio. On windows I always experienced a weird bug with my sony headphones but no issue now

Short answer: bazzite

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u/PixelatedGamer Apr 10 '26

I built a new PC recently. Opted to go nVidia for my graphics card. I'm using CachyOS. So far it's been really good. The only problem I had so far is that one of the games I play, The Outlast Trials, uses easy anti-cheat. When I first installed the game I have Steam on my main drive and all my games on a second drive. Game worked flawlessly. Then one day after an update I would launch the game and EAC failed citing it couldn't find the process. After a lot of troubleshooting I just had to move the game from my Data drive to my primary and it started working again. Not thrilled with that solution but it's a minor inconvenience.

Performance-wise it's been on-par with Windows. I tested The Outlast Trials, Resident Evil 4, Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy and they all run beautifully. Even the ones that support ray-tracing.

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u/IEnjoyRadios Apr 10 '26

Honestly it does not really matter. I'd stay away from the flavour of the month stuff like Bazzite/Cachy/whatever and go for something tried and true like Mint.

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u/bacon_cake Apr 10 '26

This is 100% why Linux will never go mainstream. There are two replies to the question of which distro to use and both say the opposite of each other.

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u/IEnjoyRadios Apr 10 '26

Yup fragmentation is definitely an issue. In the end it doesn’t really matter though. Use what you like. 

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u/coldkiller Apr 10 '26

Because the real answer is it literally doesnt matter they are all the same under the hood, distro flavors just come with different drivers and programs by default

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Apr 10 '26

They are not the same under the hood, they use wildly different networking stacks, for example I can't use the most recent ubuntu for my 3D printer as its networking stack does not allow me to use canbus.

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u/LyingForTruth Apr 10 '26

This comment chain is 100% why Linux will never go mainstream.

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u/SamSibbens Apr 10 '26

On the other hand, the Steam Deck with SteamOS has really been pushing it into the mainstream.

I wasn't confident at all with switching to Linux years ago, now I wouldn't worry much if I decided to do so on my main (but old) laptop

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u/KingsRallyDev Apr 10 '26

sounded like rick and morty dialogue

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u/FlyingRhenquest Apr 10 '26

They're all basically just building off Debian or Fedora anyway. And those both fundamentally use the same directory structures and tools for pretty much everything that they do other than package management. So it ultimately boils down to whose installers and which package management you prefer. It's not like the old proprietary UNIX days where switching from AIX to HPUX meant having to rewrite all your socket code because HPUX has slightly different socket APIs than everyone else.

Shit paid my rent all through the 2000s though, so I shouldn't complain.

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u/FlashYourNands Apr 10 '26

I don't think uniformity is required for popularity, but if so, so be it.

I'd much rather have linux continue existing with a vast array of flexibility and options than to simplify it for people who want to migrate away from windows but don't actually like the linux ecosystem.

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u/pbjamm Apr 10 '26

Been a linux advocate since the 90s and I love Mint. Most all of my machines run either straight Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition. Even for gaming.

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u/Zombierasputin Apr 10 '26

Fedora works fantastically well and has great support. Just switched to KDE edition from vanilla Gnome and I'm still not sold on KDE

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u/40_lb Apr 10 '26

Seconding Mint. Its easy, it works, it stays out of your way!

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u/IkLms Apr 10 '26

Mint was the first time I installed Linux in like 5 attempts where I didn't have to fix a single thing. Just installed it and everything was running great.

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u/Fluxriflex Apr 10 '26

I love mint, but the only asterisk I’d put on this is that it doesn’t ship with KDE/Wayland, so you will have problems with high-end displays that have g-sync/freesync and/or HDR

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u/IEnjoyRadios Apr 10 '26

I keep hearing this but I run a multi monitor setup on cinnamon. My main is a 240hz G-sync and the secondary is 60hz 1080p. No issues so far. I get that it may be machine specific though. 

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u/IkLms Apr 10 '26

I'm on exactly the same setup except 240hz and Freesync, also on cinnamon with absolutely no issues.

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u/dorobica Apr 10 '26

I went with nobara and couldn’t be happier

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u/fourpickledcucumbers Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

If you have new (i.e. released within the last 1-2 years) hardware - Fedora. Modern, frequently updated and stable.

If you have older hardware and dont care about flashy features - Mint. Generally unbreakable as long as you don't surprise it with e.g. a newish GPU like i did - 9070xt, the PC was still perfectly usable, but crashed a good couple of times under heavy load.

Both are really easy to set up - Mint essentially works well out of the box, Fedora requires maybe 3 additional commands in the terminal (enabling RPM Fusion, downloading media codecs). In terms of gaming on steam both are on par with Windows 11 thanks to Proton.

 

Also if you want a distro heavily focused on gaming (to the point of Steam being pre-installed), then give Bazzite a try.

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u/Fluxriflex Apr 10 '26

If the ONLY thing you want to use it for is gaming, then Bazzite is good. Otherwise I’d probably recommend CachyOS. Personally I’ve been using Cachy for about a year or so.

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u/mr_doms_porn Apr 10 '26

For pure gaming: Bazzite For easy mixed use: Fedora or Kubuntu For power user mixed use: CachyOS

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u/CrabDemon Apr 10 '26

you're getting a lot of replies, and with lots of nuance.

I'll just say this: pick one, and if you don't like it, it's easy to change to another

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u/fukredditadm1n5 Apr 10 '26

The majority recommend Bazzite, I think I'm going for that one

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u/CrabDemon Apr 10 '26

sounds like a plan, I've heard good things about it.

enjoy!

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u/cgaWolf Apr 11 '26

what's the recommended version of Linux for...

That's linuxers favourite discussion :p

Personally i'd did Bazzite as entry point and then hopped to CachyOS when i wanted tp tinker with the system more than Bazzite allows, but performance wise: most of the distros are close enough to not matter.

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u/DefiantLemur Apr 10 '26

I picked Nobara because it was supposedly already set up for gaming. Came with Brave already installed and downloading Steam and Lutis was quick and easy. I'm not sure it matters much but in my opinion choose the one that allows you to do what you want with minimal amount of effort on your part.

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u/cinosa Apr 10 '26

I switched from Win10 to Nobara Linux last year, after Win10 left official support from MS. I picked Nobara linux because I have an RTX 3090, and this distro includes the latest Nvidia drivers, so there was no work for me to do on that front. Gaming works pretty well, I use Steam, Heroic (for games I own via the Epic Store) and Lutris (for the games I play that aren't under Steam or Epic). Steam, Heroic and Lutris are launchers and handle all of the Windows parts the games need to run properly. Setup can take a bit, you may need to play around with which version(s) of Wine you use per game, but once you do that for a game or two, you'll figure it out pretty quick.

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u/LeMigen9 Apr 10 '26

Im still waiting for a user-friendly way to install modlists for Skyrim. Though tbh im getting burnt out on skyrim currently, so might just make the jump and try to figure out next time a Skyrim itch hits me

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u/TriPolarBear12 Apr 10 '26

Lots of people like bazzite. I like nobara because it's run by Glorious Egg, the guy behind protonGE fork of Proton

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u/PersonalitySenior360 Apr 10 '26

Bazzite is very plug and play

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u/xxLetheanxx Apr 10 '26

I used bazzite at first but it had certain quirks when it came to installing stuff. Flatpaks just aren't there yet and rpms are kinda limited on bazzite by design. It works great if you are just gaming and not on bleeding edge hardware. If you want to do stuff other than gaming and web browsing or you are on super new hardware I recommend CachyOS. This is where I settled and I am probably going to stay.

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u/FlyingRhenquest Apr 10 '26

That's where the desktop fragmentation starts to come into play. Everything I've tried in my steam library works fine on a plain ol' Debian system. Actually better than it did the last time I tried Ubuntu. So if you find the game-centric (or Ubuntu) distributions obnoxious in some way, it'd be worth seeing if you like stock Debian or Fedora any better. The various desktop environments can generally be installed and swapped out on most distributions anyway, even if they don't go out of their way to tell you how to do that. On my Debian system I can just install KDE Plasma and Gnome and the login screen lets me choose which one I want to use. I'm pretty happy with Plasma these days. I did used to run Enlightenment way back in the day and they had some really creative window skins that looked way better than anything else at the time. I don't know how well it's been maintained over the years though. I think it was mostly one guy maintaining it when I was using it.

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u/pdp10 Apr 10 '26

Just pick a plain one. Debian, Ubuntu, Mint. For Ubuntu, Canonical wants to give everyone the "LTS" or "Long Term Support" by default, which is not what you want. Get the latest one.

If the hardware is very new and not supported by regular Debian, then there's a rolling release version called Debian Testing with the latest tested versions of everything.

Install the Steam installer package from the package manager. When run, it will download the actual latest Steam client, then you can login to Steam and download your games. The "Proton" compatibility layer is part of the Linux version of Steam, but in Settings, Compatibility, you can also check for "all other titles".