I'm fairly new to Linux and have been experimenting with Ubuntu 24.04 on several systems for the past four or five months. I have three machines: a gaming PC that mainly runs Steam, my six-year-old daughter's desktop for Steam games and YouTube, and a laptop for general computer use. These systems were freshly installed, and I have barely changed anything beyond installing Steam and the games we play.
Despite that, the systems often stop behaving consistently. A controller may work one day and disappear from Bluetooth or from a game the next. Games that launched previously sometimes stop starting, requiring me to try different Proton versions. A Windows game I ran through Wine worked for several weeks and then suddenly stopped launching. One computer stopped booting after a kernel update, and an application my daughter used disappeared from both the desktop and the installed-app list.
I'm not doing anything unusual on these machines: no dual-booting, excessive software installs, or heavy multitasking. They're intended to work more like simple game consoles. Compared with an older sealed Windows gaming system that ran reliably for years, Linux has required much more troubleshooting than I expected.
Is this typical of Ubuntu, Linux gaming in general, or something specific to how I installed Steam and other software? Would a gaming-focused distribution be more reliable? Should I disable updates once everything works, or is there a better way to maintain a stable system?
3 Answers
For a machine that should behave more like a console, Bazzite is worth considering. It is designed around gaming, uses an image-based system that makes core updates more controlled, and generally requires less manual tweaking than a traditional desktop installation. It cannot eliminate hardware or game-specific bugs, but it may be a better fit than a general-purpose Ubuntu install.
You could also try another mainstream distribution such as Linux Mint, Fedora, or Zorin OS. There is no completely maintenance-free Linux setup, but some combinations of hardware, drivers, desktop environment, and package format behave better than others. If reliability is the priority, keep a known-good kernel available, avoid removing older kernels until the new one is proven, and make system snapshots or backups before major updates.
The behavior you describe is not what I would consider a normal experience for a basic Linux desktop. Debian, for example, prioritizes stability and changes more conservatively, though it may require a little more setup for newer gaming hardware. A gaming-focused system such as Bazzite may be the easier experiment, while Debian or Mint may be better if you want a conventional desktop and maximum predictability.
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