[Fletch137]

It's quite surprising that he doesn't mention Solus - quite a lot of effort has gone into making Steam run as well as possible. The readme at the following URL goes into detail about the problems with the steam-native-runtime, and how Solus tries to rectify the issues.

https://github.com/solus-project/linux-steam-integration

[onli]

Oh, that looks very nice. Thanks for the hint.

The article does got not really go into the real issues with Linux gaming and instead just mainly presents some gaming targeting distros. There are only two things that are important:

1. Can you get Steam running?

2. Do you get modern versions of your gpu driver?

Ubuntu is good for both, though you need a PPA to get the current Mesa driver, which is the only choice for AMD gpus (and that driver works great!). Otherwise a rolling release distro like gentoo is actually great for gaming, since you get the current driver, but it takes some effort to get Steam to work (also because of 64-bit vs 32-bit). I needed to delete old steam libs[0], set the LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH for Steam[1] and then, depending on the game, need to re-set the game-specific LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH[2] again.

If Solus integrates Steam automatically and also has current drivers(?), that would make it a good alternative.

[0]: http://www.funtoo.org/Steam#OpenGL_GLX_context_is_not_using_...

[1]: LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH="/usr/lib32/dri" LIBGL_DEBUG="verbose" /usr/bin/steam

[2]: Set `LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri %command%` in the Launch options of the games Steam Properties.

[Fletch137]

For what it's worth, using the solus steam runtime (SLI) I see noticable improvements over steam-native.

When I installed Solus around 4 months ago, steam was noticably faster on the same hardware than it was when installed on Ubuntu.

There are probably ways to get the same experience on Ubuntu, but if I were a non-technical user I think I'd only really care about which gave me the best experience out of the box.

[onli]

> When I installed Solus around 4 months ago, steam was noticably faster on the same hardware than it was when installed on Ubuntu

That's not impossible, but are you sure that did not come from moving to newer driver versions? Especially if you use the Mesa driver each new version in the last year or so brought very big performance improvements.

[darklajid]

Can you explain what that (Solus) is? The website is rather light on details. Maybe a distribution. With three different DE editions, one being 'home-grown'.

I haven't found any information about the history of the project, if it's built from scratch or based on another distribution's work. Can't even figure that out by looking at the 'how to install software' documentation - it just gives a screenshot of a GUI package installer, no clue what the package manager is.

Searching Google for Solus (or Solus Project) comes up empty or with a survival game based on the Unreal 4 engine.

What is Solus?

Edit: While their website answered none of my questions, distrowatch and wikipedia did. Started as Debian based distribution, seems to be something completely new/different now.

[Fletch137]

It's not something I've used to any great extent, just that I use the steam runtime developed for it on my arch system and the lead developer has been a guest on a few podcasts I've listened to. That said, this is my impression of it so far:

Solus is a distribution built from scratch. I believe the main target is non-technical end users, rather than, say, servers or power users. What that quite equates to, I don't really know beyond missing certain development or server software from the base install and in some cases the repositories. I currently can't see a way to install external packages (like the AUR or PPAs). I've had a play with it for a couple of hours and it's pretty slick, with really fast start up times. It's probably not ready for you to hand to your Grandmother just yet, but it seems very user-friendly to me. I have it currently running on a laptop I gave to a friend around 4 months ago, and so far it's the only distribution I've been able to hand over to a non-technical user and not get called to fix/change/etc. every couple of weeks.

[onli]

Till OP answers have a look at https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solus.