I’m ditching Ubuntu. Thinking of switching to Debian.
Has anyone used this, or something similar to set up their Debian gaming setup?
This got me thinking. Do I need to install anything special to Debian 13 to be able to play games? Or can I play them with a normal Debian out of the box?
If you’re using Nvidia graphics I suggest this piece of documentation for driver installation.
Essentially if you’re running Debian 13 (Trixie) then run these commands;
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ trixie-security contrib non-free main non-free-firmware deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie-updates non-free-firmware non-free contrib main sudo apt update -y sudo apt full-upgrade -y sudo apt install linux-headers-generic nvidia-kernel-dkms nvidia-driver nvidia-cuda-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkit sudo apt autoclean sudo apt autoremove -y sudo rebootOptional for RTX graphics cards, this enables the ray-tracing engine.
sudo apt install libnvoptix1Just remember to disable secureboot if you haven’t already, otherwise the driver module will fail to start when you boot your computer likely throwing the kernel into a panic.
Oh cool!!! Thank you!
How easy is it to get HDR and VRR support working?
From a KDE Plasma desktop, the version provided is still to old, I found. It’s not yet available.
But even on Kubuntu 25.10, enabling HDR crashes the whole system.
I’m going to preface and say that I don’t personally use HDR/VRR and have not attempted to use it on my system.
From what I know a couple of conditions need to be met to achieve this, tailor your setup towards Wayland opposed to X11, if you’re unfamiliar with the differences here’s a comprehensive run-down, you’ll need to follow those steps above I mentioned in regards to installing the Nvidia drivers as well as enable certain configuration options.
For a desktop environment i’m personally more familiar with KDE and know that they ship Plasma 6 with partial HDR support in Wayland desktops, granted Plasma 6 released in 2024 so support is likely to be more accessible now.
Not too sure if much else needs to be configured but to my knowledge that’s the gist of it.