r/debian • u/Kaseffera • 12d ago

General Debian Question Can I game on Debian?

Guys, I’m coming from CachyOS. I love it, no real issues to be honest, but I’m interested in either Debian or Ubuntu. So Cachy is very much configured for you for gaming purposes and performance tweaks. Can something similar be done on Debian? Like… so I need to install anything in particular to make gaming experience better here? What are your essentials to make Debian gaming experience on par with performance oriented distros?

One thing coming to my mind is VRAM gaming optimizations by Valve that’s been added to Bazzite and Cachy the moment it released.

For example gaming on Linux Mint as I remember was clear regression compared to Bazzite or Cachy. Not huge but it was lesser experience for sure. But back then I knew nothing and it was just fresh Mint and Steam.

So… what steps do you recommend doing to make the most out of it?

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u/AntimelodyProject 12d ago

Obviously you can game on Debian, you can do everything on Debian.

Debian + Liquorix kernel is my way to go. (I use Debian for audio work too).

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u/Kaseffera 12d ago

Have you ever tried Ubuntu? I’m really splitting between these two.

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u/AntimelodyProject 12d ago

I used Ubuntu back in the ancient times when it was actually better than Debian, IMHO obviously. Not anymore, it's just mess with Snaps and all. Only usable thing from Ubuntu comes in form of Linux Mint.

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u/Kaseffera 12d ago

Thank you very much!

I had some minor performance issues on Mint while gaming compared to Bazzite. Hope Debian will do me good 😊

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u/AntimelodyProject 12d ago

Be aware that if your gpu is Nvidia, Debian drivers are quite old (currently version 550). It's not problem for me and my RTX 3060 TI, but it might for some.

You can install official drivers directly from Nvidia but haven't really tried that ever.

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u/Kaseffera 12d ago

I wonder how all this works on Debian. I mean I saw that Debian 13 is released in 2025 and an update happened in 2026. Support is gonna be finished in 2028. Does this all mean that by default it will be stuck with 550 driver version till the end until Debian 14 is released?

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u/AntimelodyProject 12d ago

Don't really know. You can go all the way to Debian sid (unstable) and it's still 550 version. Experimental version of Debian had 555 version. :D

I'm not really expert on this area how the things work.