I got off of using Windows because it’s just too bloated but I still want to enjoy gaming. I like leaning toward min install so the programs I run can have that extra bit of breathing room. I tried using debian testing but I don’t think it has the vulkan/dxvk stuff needed to run lutris without a headache. Is there a recommended distro out there preferably without the bloat of gnome etc?
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I currently run Lutris without problems in Manjaro XFCE build, but have also used in in Debian and Pop! OS. I personally have had very few problems with it in Manjaro. But like everything else, YMMV. 
It worked perfectly for me on Peppermint 9 & 10. It’s a bit more unpredictable on OpenSUSE.
I’m running Lutris on Debian 11.
Getting it to work is straightforward, once you find the right guides.
For example, if you have nVidia graphics, use this guide to install the driver and 32-bit libraries:
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
Then install Lutris from the repository, and it automatically uses DXVK/VK3D.
For extra performance, install gamemode from the repository.
Linux Mint here
RELEASE=21.2
CODENAME=victoria
EDITION=“Cinnamon”
DESCRIPTION=“Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria”
So far so good. Based on a LOT of reading I’ve been doing through this forum, getting the correct versions of lutris, proton-ge and wine seems to be waaaaay more important than the distribution you are using.
It’s funny that linux mint works well for me, because somewhere in my journey I found instructions for lutris/wine/driver/something-or-other that said specifically that it would not work with Mint.
p.s. I’m using a Radeon 6600 video card. My performance in D2R, D3 and Path of Exile(!!) is excellent. Was excellent, the last PoE patch has broken it. Looks like a wine problem not a distribution related problem.
While opinions vary I use Mint 21.x-Xfce (which is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS), 21.2-Xfce currently, as I figure just about anything decent based on Debian/Ubuntu is one of the safer choices in general since they are more likely to be supported and, while there is no strict standard when it comes to Linux, those are probably as close as it will get. but I see Mint as a pretty good option for someone coming from Windows to Linux in general since it’s been around longer than most etc.
it’s also easy to install a NVIDIA driver in Mint through ‘Driver Manager’ as by default it uses the nouveau driver but through the ‘Driver Manager’ one can install a proper NVIDIA driver which seems to be pretty much required for good gaming performance.
when it comes to AMD GPU’s I heard the GPU driver is built into the Linux kernel, so you don’t really need to do anything with these as it will probably just work.
Yeah, that seems to be the general idea. but currently I have to remain on Lutris v0.5.12 instead of the current v0.5.13 due to regressions on at least two games (both have same basic graphics engine) which went from working well in v0.5.12 to basically shot in v0.5.13 as while the games (Mafia: Definitive Edition/Mafia III) technically still start up with v0.5.13, the performance on the main menu is near dead slow, like it’s not using the GPU (as frame rate here is got to be close to nothing), as just navigating the basic main menu with arrow keys is near dead slow where as on v0.5.12 it works as expected with the usual GloriousEggroll runner etc.