GlouOSSupported hardware
GlouOS runs on most PCs from the last decade. What matters most for gaming is your GPU, since that decides which driver stack is set up. Here is the honest state of support, including where it falls short today.
GPU support at a glance
At install, GlouOS detects your graphics hardware and sets up the matching driver. See Graphics drivers for how that stack is chosen.
| Vendor | Generations | Driver | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD | GCN and newer (most cards since about 2012) | Mesa RADV | Supported |
| Intel | Skylake / Gen9 and newer | Mesa ANV | Supported |
| NVIDIA | Turing and newer (GTX 16, RTX 20 and up) | Open kernel modules (nvidia-open) | Supported |
| NVIDIA | Maxwell and Pascal (GTX 900 and GTX 10 series) | Legacy branch (nvidia-580xx) | Planned |
Any GPU with a working Vulkan driver plays games well. If a GPU is not covered above, GlouOS still boots to a usable desktop on a software rendering fallback, but 3D and gaming performance will not be there.
NVIDIA GTX 10-series and older
If you have a GTX 10-series card, or another Maxwell or Pascal NVIDIA GPU, GlouOS does not yet set it up for gaming automatically. Here is exactly why.
The driver autodetection installs NVIDIA's open kernel modules, which only support Turing (GTX 16 and RTX 20) and newer. NVIDIA's current main driver has dropped Pascal from that path, and GlouOS does not yet carry the legacy driver branch that still supports it. On a Pascal machine today, GlouOS boots on the software rendering fallback: the desktop is fully usable, but 3D and gaming performance will not be there.
Pascal is not game-ready out of the box yet
Install on a GTX 10-series machine and you will get a working desktop, but not game-ready graphics until the legacy NVIDIA driver is set up.
The fix is planned and straightforward: detect pre-Turing NVIDIA chips during install and pull the legacy driver branch (nvidia-580xx-dkms), which still supports Maxwell and Pascal, instead of the open modules. Until that ships, a GTX 10-series card can be brought up to speed by installing that legacy driver manually. If this affects you, let us know on the forums so we can prioritise it.
CPUs, memory and storage
GlouOS runs on any 64-bit x86-64 PC from roughly the last decade. On CPUs that support it, the installer selects packages built for the x86-64-v3 baseline for a little extra speed, and falls back to the standard baseline on older chips, so nothing is left behind.
For memory and storage guidance, see the system requirements in the FAQ.