What is a Distro?
Distros (short for distributions) refers to the name of the Linux operating system. Due to the nature of Linux there’s effectively an infinite combination of ways that Linux can be customised and distros are the starting points to where the operating system has been customised. You can then customise that even further.
Think of the Linux Kernel as a blank canvas and a distro as a picture that you can colour in. Someone’s taken the time to put in the drawing for you so that you’re not starting from scratch but you can then draw on top of the picture, replace any of the colours that have been pre-applied or just leave it as it is and you have a pre-coloured picture that’s ready to go.
Distros are built on top of base distributions. The base distributions are built from the Linux kernel or, in some cases, other distros (for example, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian). These include but are not limited to:
- Fedora (for example, Nobara)
- Debian (for example, Ubuntu)
- Arch (for example, CachyOS) – Note that Arch is typically the least user-friendly
The base distributions are typically pretty raw compared with the end distro. The distros that are built on top of the base distributions are more polished versions.
How to Pick a Distro
This is a tough one. Anywhere you look there will be fans of specific distros stating that you should use X over any other distro. If you asked 100 Linux users which distro you should use you’ll probably get 75 answers. However, as you’re looking at playing FFXIV you’re probably after a user-friendly, gaming-first distro, which helps narrow things down. I would still recommend doing your own research but this shortlist should help:
| Distro | Base | Difficulty | Why it’s good for FFXIV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bazzite | Fedora | Very Easy | Gaming-first distro that’s almost “SteamOS for PCs”. Excellent out-of-the-box gaming support. |
| Linux Mint | Ubuntu/Debian | Very Easy | Extremely beginner-friendly and highly stable. |
| Nobara | Fedora | Easy | Fedora optimised specifically for gaming and content creation. |
| Pop!_OS | Ubuntu | Easy | Great hardware support and beginner-friendly. |
| Fedora Workstation | Fedora | Easy | Modern packages with excellent gaming support. |
| EndeavourOS | Arch | Medium | User-friendly Arch with access to the AUR. |
| CachyOS | Arch | Medium | Gaming and performance optimisations built in. |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed | openSUSE | Medium | Very stable rolling release with excellent QA. |
| Arch Linux | Independent | Hard | Maximum flexibility and bleeding-edge gaming packages. |
| Garuda Linux | Arch | Medium | Gaming-focused Arch derivative with lots of tweaks. |
If you’re on Windows the common recommendation is to use Rufus to create a bootable USB from the distro’s ISO. From there, follow the distro’s installation guide.
If you’re not sure I would recommend Nobara. Although it’s not quite as gaming-focused as Bazzite it’s a good all-rounder with excellent out-of-the-box compatibility. For example, DaVinci Resolve is natively supported on Nobara, which is ideal if you want to edit videos. I would recommend Bazzite over Nobara if you want a console-like experience and/or gaming is essentially your only focus.
Important note
You will, most likely, not get the same experience as Windows because the games are often not natively supported on Linux. Due to the nature of the install it has to go through a translation layer to make it so that a Windows game can run on Linux. It needs to go though an additional layer of communication to work like this. It’s kind of like having one person who only speaks English talking to another person who only speaks French and a translator is translating for each person. You’ll be able to communicate effectively but not as quickly and efficiently as someone who speaks the language natively.
Having said that, you might find that natively-supported software runs better on Linux than it does on Windows because there are fewer overheads with running the operating system (I.e.: background services, etc). Linux is typically a lot more lightweight than Windows and can be run on older hardware.
A lot of the time you probably either won’t notice the performance difference or care. For example, if your PC is capable of running a game at 200FPS and you have the game set to match your monitor’s refresh rate of 120Hz (120FPS) then you won’t notice a difference if the game can only run at 150FPS on Linux, because the end result is 120FPS vs 120FPS (due to the FPS lock).
You can check to see what software is natively supported in your Steam library by applying a filter in the “Steam deck support” filter:
For non-native titles you can check for compatibility within Steam via the Proton Compatibility list: https://www.protondb.com/
or, for non-Steam games and software, either search for the software’s official website and see if there’s a Linux install or go to WineHQ and search for the title there.
WineHQ is the free way to get native Windows software running on Linux but does require some fiddling. An alternative to this is Crossover, which is a paid solution that sets all of the required settings for Wine for you: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover – there is a free version, though you might consider the paid version if you figure that the money saved by changing over to Linux frees up some budget to spend on software like that. This is 100% optional, of course. I get no commission, to be clear, just providing options. Be sure to check WineHQ or (if you’re using it) Crossover’s compatibility list first to ensure that it’s supported before committing.
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