Debian Gaming Guide using Nvidia GPU

Why should I use Linux for gaming?

• All big game-engines are supporting OpenGL
• with SteamOS Valve will force publishers to port there games
• playing windows games pre-DX10 is possible with WINE
• use the GPU manufacturers linux drivers for full use of your high-end hardware

Why should I use Debian rather then Ubuntu or other distros?

• Calling Debian better than other distros would be wrong.
• Debian is one of the oldest distro and offers a lot of useful packages.
• It is well known that all updates are kept back for a while for security and stability reasons.
• Debian is the root of some other linux distros like Ubuntu and SteamOS.

Installing some basicly required packages

• g++
• make
• linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Installing the Nvidia manufacturer driver

• download your matching version from nvidia.de
• start debian in command-line mode (select the bootmenu option)
• login as root and navigate to the download directory
• chmod +x the downloaded file and execute it

Install Steam

• "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list", go to the first line starting with "deb" and add "non-free" after "main"
• "sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386"
• "sudo apt-get update"
• "sudo apt-get install steam"

Fix the tearing problem

• modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• add the two Option-Lines into the "Screen" section

    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"
    Option         "TripleBuffer" "on"

• reboot

Improve GPU-Fan control

• If games are crashing or start lagging after a long time maybe your system is getting very hot and you never heared your GPU-Fan doing any work.
• By default the GPU-Fan control may vary between 20% and 30% of the maximum fan speed which is not enough for high-end games.
• It is possible to use a script that will adjust the fan speed to reach the target temperature automaticly.
• To allow scripts to change the GPU-Fan speed add the following line to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf into the Device-Section

Option "Coolbits" "4"

• I created "gpu_fan_target.sh" to do this. You can download it from this repository and add it as an systemd service
• to add the systemd service copy "gpu-fan-control.service" from this repo to /etc/systemd/system/
• edit the path in "gpu-fan-control.service" to the script

sudo systemctl enable gpu-fan-control
sudo systemctl start gpu-fan-control

• You can edit the "target_temperature" in the script if you like

Common Problems

Debian ist starting in Command Line mode. There is no GUI anymore.

Solution: Reinstall the graphic driver. It must be rebuilt after x11 updates.

There is an error on installing the graphic driver related to linux-headers

Solution: You have to add the latest linux-headers to build the graphic driver successful

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)