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Distro for a local "cloud gaming" no monitor desktop (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm looking for a specific distro to handle some tasks.

I got a second hand rig with Nvidia GTX 1050 that I want to use as a home server. I wanted to use HoloISO but it doesn't support nvidia. If someone says "do it anyway, it's fine" I'll install it though.

The idea is to support a Jellyfin server and Steam Link gaming but steam is not big on Nvidia so it's hard to narrow down "black screen" issues etc. I'm also planning to manage it via VNC and SSH.

I'm familiar with Ubuntu based systems since I develop software on Ubuntu based KDE distro but never had a graphics card.

So it boils down to:

  • Ease of setup including nvidia drivers
  • Ease of update via command line (I'm not going to download nvidia drivers from their website to update proprietary drivers)
  • Graphics performance
  • Prefer Ubuntu based

I'm up for Gnome, Xface, Cinnamon, KDE or whatever DE.

Edit: Changed title to better reflect requirements and not have misleading "headless" and "server" in it

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[–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

Yeah, I didn't know those requirements were a thing until a few hours ago. I've been running Steam on KDE Neon with Intel embedded graphics and everything is great out of the box or easily installed. I just had a feeling that there would be "SteamOS but with Nvidia" thingy for Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora that has some nice features.

I mean, Linux gaming is moving so fast it's hard to keep up. I wouldn't be surprised if in 2025 we'll have a distro that has "run as game server" and "use Steam" toggles in the installer and you can access it from an Android TV from first boot.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Bazzite user here. For gaming it's great... Until it's not. Let me explain.

    Out of the box, as pure steam machine is fantastic. Everything just works. But if you try to deviate, thighs get hairy.

    It's inmutable, so almost all your apps need to be flatpack/appimages. If those don't work, you need to pray distro box can help. For some uses I had to do a lot of weird workarounds.

    The main problem I have is that every now and then an update breaks the system. It's not a big problem as you can rollback easily, without affecting home, but it's a learning curve and very infuriating to see AGAIN boot to black and hope next update will fix it.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I installed Bazzite on my system and experience so far has been great. It's not what I would choose for a day-to-day workstation but for a computer that mostly just runs games and servers it's been really nice.

    Setup was super easy, installing packages with rpm-ostree works very similar to dnf just takes very long. That's a small price to pay for Sunshine/Moonlight with VAAPI hardware encoding and Steam optimisations in my case.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I do use it for day to day, even work. Not saying it's bad, but when you have an issue, you're basically alone. For example I'm still using the image from Feb 14th because all the newer ones boot to black (clean image, nothing layered).

    I'm hoping at some point a newer one will eventually work, the same way it stopped working on Jan 16th and worked again early Feb.

    I can sort of deal with it, but wouldn't recommend based on my experience.

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  • [+] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    You should, but every single one I've tried resulted in no boot (printer drivers, zoom application because flatpack doesn't work well with SSO...) Also, it's yet another way of installing applications to learn. And if anything goes wrong a few image updates later, good luck identifying what the reason was. Definitely wouldn't recommend for beginners

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