If you’re a Coder Radio listener, you already know the deal: when a new Linux machine lands on my desk, there is roughly a zero percent chance I’m only going to use it for “serious work.” Yes, the Thelio Mira is officially my workstation. It’s going to spend its days running dev environments, local AI experiments, containers, VMs, and whatever other nonsense I’ve managed to convince myself constitutes “billable infrastructure research.”
But let’s be honest, Steam was getting installed eventually.
In my first look at the Mira, I focused mostly on the hardware itself, the new case design, the fan noise, and whether System76 had finally built a machine that felt truly premium compared to the older models. But after spending some quality time using it as a gaming box, my takeaway is pretty simple: Linux gaming has officially crossed the line from “surprisingly good” to “boringly good,” at least for the titles I play. And honestly, I mean that as a massive compliment.
Steam On Linux Is No Longer A Science Project
The biggest shift over the last few years is that Steam with Proton has turned the Linux gaming experience into something that feels almost normal. It still feels a little weird to say that as someone who remembers the “bad old days” where gaming on Linux meant scouring forums for obscure launch flags, praying to the Mesa gods, and just accepting that half your library was purely decorative. Today, you just enable compatibility, hit play, and the game runs.
On this machine (which is packing a Ryzen 9 9950X, 96GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti) performance is exactly what you’d expect. If a game struggles on this rig, I’m definitely not blaming the CPU.
What I appreciate most isn’t just the raw power, but how civilized the experience is. I’ve owned plenty of desktops where gaming felt like sitting next to a jet engine preparing for takeoff. The Mira, however, stays remarkably quiet. System76 deserves some real credit here; the redesigned case and airflow improvements aren’t just quality-of-life wins for developers compiling heavy code. They matter just as much when you’re pushing the GPU under a heavy gaming load. The machine feels like it has plenty of headroom, and it doesn’t scream at you while it’s working.
Anti-Cheat == Anti-Fun
Proton is absolute magic for single-player games and indies—the best compatibility layer is the one you forget exists—but the “Anti-Cheat Wall” is still very real. If your gaming life revolves around a specific competitive shooter or a live-service title with aggressive kernel-level anti-cheat, you still need to do your homework before ditching Windows. This isn’t a System76 or Pop!_OS problem; it’s just the current reality of the ecosystem. I’m not going to oversell it: if you need those specific titles, Linux might still be a hard no. It’s annoying, but it’s the truth.
The Weird COSMIC Issue
I also ran into one of those “only on Linux” (in this case only on Wayland / COSMIC) quirks that makes normal people think we’re all insane. Using the new COSMIC desktop, some games would launch stuck in the bottom-right corner of the screen instead of properly centering or going fullscreen. It wasn’t a performance issue or a driver crash; it was just the window manager getting a bit confused.
Thankfully, the fix was a simple Super+F11 shortcut, but it’s a reminder that COSMIC is still young and again it’s pretty much a known Proton x Wayland issue. It’s a great daily driver, but gaming tends to expose those rough edges a lot faster than a terminal window does.
So, Is The Thelio Mira A Good Gaming PC?
Absolutely. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to someone looking for the best “frames per dollar” value; you’re paying a premium for the System76 integration and support. It hits the perfect sweet spot for someone like me. It’s a powerhouse dev machine and a local AI box by day, and a top-tier gaming rig by night. If you want one machine that can do it all without turning into a jet engine, the Mira makes a very strong case for itself.
P.S. If you’re spending more time wrestling with your company’s actual legacy data than I do with COSMIC window placement, you should probably check out the Alice Legacy Data Diagnostic. We specialize in untangling those ancient systems so you can finally focus on the future.
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