EndeavourOS styles itself as Terminal-centric Arch based Linux distribution, which means that you will be expected to use the Terminal for installation of everything from drivers, software, and kernels.
Since EndeavourOS is classed as a rolling release distribution, this does mean that your system will be frequently updated, and from a gaming perspective, this will give you access to drivers and bug fixes faster than other distributions such as Ubuntu.
To update EndeavourOS, open a Terminal window and run the following command.
yay
This command does two things, first it will check if there any updates to EndeavourOS itself, and second check if there any updates for any packages installed from the Arch User Repository or AUR.
If you use AMD and Intel hardware, you will already have the latest drivers preinstalled, but for Nvidia GPUs, you will need to manually install the full driver package, as you will only have the basics required to boot the operating system.
This can be done with a single Terminal command.
Once done, reboot your system to finish the process.
To install Steam in EndeavourOS, run the following Terminal command.
sudo pacman –S steam
Once installed, launch Steam as normal from your application launcher, apply the Steam update and sign into your account.
Next, we need to enable Proton support for your entire library.
First, navigate to Steam, Settings, Steam Play, and tick both Enable Steam Play for support titles and Enable Steam Play for all other titles.
This should select Proton Experimental as the default Proton build, which is what we want to be using.
It is rare but some games may work better with older builds of Proton, but this can be selected on game-by-game basis rather than globally.
Once done, click the OK button and restart Steam.
Now when you select a game, click the Install button, follow the usual prompts and once installation is finished, click the Play button to launch the game.
A great website to check compatibility with your game library is ProtonDB, simply search for the game you wish to play and see what people have said about running it on Linux.
You may need to scroll down on some game pages, as many of the most recent reports will be about running that game on the Steam Deck, which usually means it will work without issue on desktop Linux as well.
For some games you may a prompt to compile shaders before the game launches, I recommend doing this as it will cut down on the stuttering that may occur when shader cache is compiled in game.
However, you can cut down on some of the compilation time by navigating to Steam, Shader Pre-Caching and ticking both Enable Shader Pre-Caching and Allow background processing of Vulkan shaders.
Finally, if you are using the 525 or newer Nvidia drivers, the shader cache stutter has been resolved with Graphics Pipeline Library, for Direct X 9, 10 and 11 games.
You can install all Wine dependencies for Lutris and third party game launcher with the below Terminal command.
Once installed, to install Lutris, use the following Terminal command.
sudo pacman –S lutris
Once installed, launch Lutris using your application launcher.
The layout of Lutris is simple but effective, on the left-hand side, you have a list of shortcuts to install additional game services, which will appear under the Library / Games tab near the top.
Once installed, launch them as normal, sign in using your account, download the game and play as normal.
Alternatively, you can install games or game services manually, by clicking on the + button at the top left, click on Search the Lutris website for installers, and then select what you wish to install.
Once the installation process has finished, launch as normal.
To install Feral Gamemode on EndeavourOS, run the following Terminal command.
sudo pacman –S gamemode lib32-gamemode
Once installed, this will be applied automatically to anything launched through Lutris, although this can be toggled off in the menus.
Alternatively, to enable for Steam games, right click on the Properties of the game, and under the Launch Options, type the following.
gamemoderun %command%