If you're okay with something other than vanilla Debian, give Linux Mint Debian Edition a look. I used it for years without significant hiccups playing a wide variety of games. I switched to Bazzite after testing it out and liking the immutable aspects of it (though as another commenter mentioned, there is some pain involved in the learning curve), but I still keep LMDE around on my old gaming rig and on a couple other computers of mine.
this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Just use PikaOs if you want a gaming oriented debian base. It's essentially cachyOS on debian rather than arch
Yeah it looks alright
All you need is proton qt (update and get geproton), faugus (I like it for installing nonsteam stuff) and steam. Maybe heroic for epic games, lutris for niche stuff. Just check out flathub for most stuff and before you install check if it has a deb first.
Games will work fine on Debian as-is, but if you want latest-greatest-optimizesest the get either Nobara (stable, based on Fedora) or CachyOS (rolling, based on Arch) Or if you enjoy pain - Bazzite (immutable)