Background
I use Mac as my daily driver for my work and personal machines, but for gaming I use my Playstation 5 for online or supposedly AAA games (think Call of Duty or Helldivers 2) and I use my Steam Deck for more indie titles. I’ve got some Linux experience, primarily via my old Mac Mini running Proxmox with mostly Debian VMs and messing around briefly with NixOS.
I love our Steam Deck, but it does feel a little underpowered, the battery isn’t as strong as it once was and I don’t love the docking experience with the official dock.
My wife is really into Civilization and similar games and I’d love to setup a desktop connected to our TV to use with a keyboard and mouse on our LG CX. Although I’m tech savvy, I’m not great with knowing what hardware/software to get. It’s especially more complicated with the looming tariffs and trying to make sure I don’t overspend on something I don’t need.
Question
Looking for some guidance on hardware and software to setup for this living room gaming desktop. It’s only purpose is to play games, primarily from Steam and it should have hardware which would benefit speed and performance for the type of games I’m going to list. Obviously we want the graphics to be good, but I don’t need a beast RTX 5090.
What are some hardware and software recommendations in today’s financial climate for playing these games on Linux?
What other accessories would you recommend for couch based keyboard and mouse gaming?
Honestly the game I’m most eager to get into is Dwarf Fortress, but for my wife it’s having a smooth experience with Civ6 (she was playing the Switch version for far too long!)
Games
- Civilization games
- My wife loves 6 and I’m a fan of 5, but we do want to eventually try 7, hoping it’ll improve with DLC updates
- Dwarf Fortress
- Rimworld
- Battletech
- Into the Breach
- Brotato
- Vampire Survivors
- Balatro
- FTL
- Caves of Qud
- Persona 5 Royal (although I’m struggling to get into it, pushing through)
- Blue Prince
- ANIMAL WELL
- Factorio
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- Anno 1800
- Project Zomboid
This is a partial list of some of our libraries and wishlists. As you can see, some of them are more graphically, memory and processor intensive, but a lot of them are low performance indies.
If you feel most familiar with Debian, I recommend looking at Mint. It has great compatibility and is otherwise easy to use, and it handles GPUs well (including Nvidia). In terms of hardware, I’ll agree with the others here–used is the way to go, you’ll get a lot more for your money than buying new.
That being said, you can also look for clearance and/or refurbished PCs. This one would probably be powerful enough.
Anecdotal, but Mint stuttered in games occasionally for me and I had the odd audio blip. I switched to EndeavorOS and its been flawless.
Thanks for the advice! I feel like I will have some flexibility with distros and can switch things out as long as game data is backed up and it works with the hardware.
Unfortunately the Amazon link doesn’t seem to work for me. Can you give me a brief description of what it included?
They were trying to send this link and I’m going to strongly disagree with them - that system is a substantial downgrade from a Steam Deck. The GPU is a GT 1030; on top of being Nvidia, it’s 8 years and 4 generations old and was bottom-tier when it was new.
That said, the idea is sound. Buying an actual gaming desktop PC from a few generations ago can be a very budget-friendly option, but shipping an assembled PC is a nightmare for multiple reasons, and even more risky secondhand. If you’re going to buy a used prebuilt PC, find one locally and pick it up yourself, don’t have it shipped to you.