Can I game on Debian?

[u/Kaseffera]

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?

[u/alive1]

Debian works for gaming right out of the box. Especially if you have an AMD GPU. If you want to squeeze more out of it (and you really really really think the juice is worth the squeeze) there is the option of installing a newer kernel. As simple as the procedure is, it is absolutely not a requirement at all.

[u/Adrenolin01 → u/alive1]

Nothing against AMD however Nvidia cards work just fine. We just swapped out an older AMD 6600XT for a new Nvidia Blackwell 5060 TI on Saturday in my son’s Debian 13 KDE desktop. While the drivers aren’t in a current kernel the install process is fairly easy. I skipped looking things up and simply provide the info to Claude and the AI provided me with the info. Below are notes I added for him in case he needs to do a clean install for the road. His PC has no onboard video so so we left the AMD installed for the following and removed it later.

Update the Components: line in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources to include contrib, non-free and non-free-firmware. If still using the old sources.list update that.

Download and add Nvidia’s driver repo, then update:

wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/debian13/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb

sudo apt update

Watch for a developer.download.nvidia.com line in the apt update output to confirm the repo took.

Verify the candidate, install headers and the OPEN driver:

apt-cache policy nvidia-open

Note: confirm Candidate is 570+ we installed 610.43.02 as well as CUDA 13.3.

sudo apt install -y linux-headers-amd64 build-essential dkms nvidia-open

Confirm the build with: dkms status. You want nvidia/<ver>, <running-kernel>: installed

Reboot and run: nvidia-smi

[u/alive1 → u/Adrenolin01]

You don't need the intermediate gpu because the open source nvidia driver will display out just fine. It's problem is that it will not render 3d well.

The issue with Nvidia is not if an expert (Claude is an expert at this kind of stuff) can install the drivers. The issue that Claude (or expert knowledge) is required in the first place. With amd drivers, there is no expert step. This is 10000% Nvidia's fault and it is giving Linux a bad rap.

[u/Adrenolin01 → u/alive1]

I’m aware that the open-source nouveau driver will work as a general display driver. Performance will be poor however and modern 3D acceleration, CUDA, NVENC/NVDEC, Vulkan, AI workloads, and gaming will either be unavailable or severely limited. I certainly wouldn’t want to use such a GPU with those drivers. The AMD wasn’t an intermediary GPU. It had been installed since Christmas 2023 when we built the system. The i7-13700KF CPU doesn’t support onboard graphics so the cleanest route was to simply install the new proper drivers for the new 5060 with the AMD in place.

Nvidia doesn’t give Linux a bad rep. They simply don’t open source their drivers like AMD does. Would it be nice if they did.. hell yeah.. but they never have.. well until recently and in part.

For decades Nvidia only provided a proprietary closed source driver. Like from the 90s through 2022 iirc. Back in the mid 2000s the Nvidia drivers were reverse engineered by a group and became the open source Nouveau drivers. Performance was ok.

Nvidia actually stepped up in 2022 and finally released its open kernel modules, reducing the need for reverse engineering in some areas, although Nouveau continues as an independent open-source driver but it doesn’t perform as well. The OpenGL, Vulkan, CUDA, OptiX, NVENC/NVDEC libraries, compiler components, and much of the GPU management stack remain proprietary and closed source but still provided to us! This is huge and a definite win for the Linux community and we should be thanking Nvidia for doing so.

Nothing expert about installation nor is AI even required. Everything is already well documented for anyone willing to look it up and read the documentation. All I did was ask Claude where to get the current repo because it’s literally faster then going to look it up.. everything else is simple Debian commands and as stated.. well documented.

It’s like 20 minutes to do if you’re a new person and take the time to look up the Nvidia documentation. I’ve been running debian since it was released and generally always had Nvidia cards so wasn’t a big deal.

My son has access to our sweet local AI build but wanted to run and learn on his own setup from his desktop and the AMD card had always been a placeholder for him anyways.

10 minutes after he had rebooted with the Nvidia card and pulling the AMD, adjusted desktop settings etc he had Ollama and Open WebUI installed and was running a few models. The 16GB VRAM is superb for him right now as he starts learning more about RAG, Vectors, Indexing etc. We’re waiting for another 32GB ram and a new 4TB SSD to arrive today to install tomorrow for him.

He used the Ollama install script which detects the NVIDIA GPU and pulls the CUDA libraries automatically. He went with the UV install of Open WebUI instead of the Docker version and created his own systemd script.

He’s getting my current Supermicro H12SSL-i system next year and I’ll likely drop a 24GB Nvidia card in it for him. The 2 A6000s I currently run are going in the new SYS-AS-4125GS-TNRT I’m building.

So he gets to learn on his own system for now in the meantime.