Is Linux ready for this?

Yes, with three specific exceptions that you should check before you commit an evening to this.

That is the honest headline. Linux streaming is no longer an act of stubbornness — OBS is a first-class Linux application, the audio stack is genuinely better than what Windows ships, and the encoders work. But the failure modes are different from the ones you know, and one of the three exceptions below is a hard stop rather than an inconvenience.

The three things that will actually stop you

1. Games with kernel-level anti-cheat. Several competitive titles refuse to run on Linux by publisher choice, not technical limitation. If your channel is built on one of them, the rest of this path is irrelevant — check your specific games first, on a site that tracks compatibility, before anything else.

2. Proprietary hardware with Windows-only software. Some capture cards, audio interfaces and control surfaces ship configuration utilities that exist only for Windows. The hardware often works; the utility that changes its settings does not. Configure it on a Windows machine once, or check whether someone has reimplemented the control protocol.

3. A specific closed-source plugin. If your workflow depends on one, check that particular plugin before switching rather than assuming. Most of the common ones are cross-platform — NDI included, which works fine here — but the long tail is where the exceptions live.

Everything else is a matter of doing things differently, not of doing without.

What is genuinely better

Not consolation prizes — these are real advantages:

• Audio routing. PipeWire lets you route any application's sound anywhere, natively, without a virtual cable product. On Windows this is a paid add-on category; here it is the operating system. This is the single biggest practical win and it gets its own chapter.
• Performance headroom. No background telemetry, no antivirus scanning your recording folder, no forced restart during a stream. A modest machine goes further.
• The updates happen when you say so. Which, on stream day, matters more than it sounds.
• Everything is inspectable. When something is wrong, you can see the actual graph of what is connected to what, rather than guessing at a mixer dialog.

What is merely fine

• OBS is native, current, and packaged everywhere. Same features, same interface, no emulation.
• GPU encoding works on all three vendors, with some setup. Chapter four.
• Discord, Chrome, Spotify, VLC — all present. Discord's screen share has historically been the weakest link on Wayland; check it if you do a lot of collabs.
• Games, other than the anti-cheat cases, run through Proton at or near native performance often enough that it stops being a consideration.

Which hardware makes this easy

If you are choosing parts rather than using what you have:

• AMD graphics are the path of least resistance. The driver is part of the kernel and the desktop. Nothing to install, nothing to break on update.
• Intel integrated graphics are equally painless and have a capable encoder — a perfectly good second-machine option.
• NVIDIA works, and has improved enormously, and still requires more attention: a proprietary driver, and occasional friction on Wayland depending on your distribution's versions. If you have one, keep it — do not buy one specifically for this.

Who should not switch right now

Be honest with yourself:

• You stream a kernel-anti-cheat game.
• You have one machine, a schedule you cannot miss, and no appetite for a week of setup.
• You do not want to learn anything about how your audio is routed.

That last one is not snark. Linux hands you control and expects you to use it. If your preference is for a system that makes the decisions for you, this will be a frustrating trade.

How to try it without risking your schedule

• Dual boot for a month. Keep Windows, stream on Linux twice a week, and switch back when something is broken and you are live in an hour.
• Or use a second machine. An old desktop as a dedicated streaming box is a low-stakes way to learn the stack.
• Do the whole setup and then do a private test stream, end to end, recording included, before you announce anything.

The rest of this path assumes you cleared the three blockers and are setting it up properly.

Next: capture, which is where the differences start.