Im helping my brother build a pc, and i try to make him try a linux distro before he purchase windows, simply because i regret not doing so.

Now i got some thoughts going tho.. We both have/will have Ryzen 5 CPU and GTX 1060/70/80. Will there be any compatibility issues with some linux distros with that?
Iirc Nvidia cards had some minor issues on linux.
My brother will mainly use it for gaming on a serious level, and i use it for development and gaming for fun.

Also any distros you can recommend? I had a peek at Manjaro, it looked cool.

I am running Ubuntu 18.04 on Ryzen 5 and a GTX 1050 Ti with nvidia-390 driver. Works smooth. CSGO ranges from 130 to 220 fps. No issues so far.

Linux and gaming don't really go together well... Most good games aren't available for Linux and things like Wine on Linux perform poorly if they even work... And even if you do get a game that runs on both windows and Linux, typically the windows version will run. Faster/smoother. I'm sure will get a lot of hate for this comment, but it's the main factor I don't use Linux myself. Every now and then I'll reinstall different Linux distros to see where the state of things are for them in regards to gaming and am always disappointed when they lag heavily behind.

Purchasing windows? Haven't done that since win xp

I’d do him a favor and tell him to use Windows. You’ll turn him into a console gamer otherwise because consoles “just work”. *shrugs*

Linux is not always better

@hexc you right. I could run Payday, Warcraft 3, Heroes of MM5, L4D, Call of Duty 4 and Battlefield with Wine. Easily with Play On Linux.
Worms games were unable to setup a network connection. Age of Empires 2 renders unit models completely black. When steam overlay is enabled when using wine steam any input results in game crash.

It can work out of the box, sometimes just a new wine prefix with a specific dll mapping, sometimes a small thing bugs you and sometimes winehq just says the game is platinum on your platform but it just dont launch.

The only game that went better on my old machine with wine than native in Win XP was Warcraft 3.

Games that were released for Linux are fine so far.

@jespersh no dont be that. If it works on your machine you cannot make it run on others.

Not sure but could you not use a VM for his gaming?
Seems like a system that has the resources to share to be honest.

Not sure about the performance issues, so if it’s a terrible idea lemme know.

You could install a Dual Boot System, but gaming on Linux Distros isn't great at all and I believe it will not change in the near future because gamers aren't the target group. If he is into coding then a VM or Dual Boot should be the better solution for a gamer. (Am self running Windows on my Desktop PC for gaming and Linux on my Laptop i work on)

@forE most hardware acceleration tasks don't work well with VMs, Nvidia has been working with partners to change that, but as it stands currently I don't really know the state it's in. Not long ago it was a horrible experience, and I'm guessing not much has changed yet.

Oh boi. Apparently i was even more wrong than i expected.

Thanks for all the replies, ill stick to Windows myself, and tell my brother to do the same :)

@JiggleTits Glad we could help. :)