I’m going to be building a new computer soon for myself. (Going AMD for the first time, since intel microcode issue.)
I would say I’m an expert or advanced user, as been using pcs for 25 years and set up arch and slackware in the past. I have tried many distros and would like some feedback.
I mainly use my pc for gaming. I want something customizable, KDE ish, and without bloatware. A good wiki is a plus.
I think that i may end up with arch… is it better for gaming since it’s bleeding edge and isn’t steamos built off it?
Side question is distro chooser accurate?
I always come back to OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Once I have everything setup, it’s stable as a rock and kde works really well on it.
Not many of you left these days it feels, any debate I always see openSUSE is missing, I don’t use it myself atm, but it was my rock in the past. Either openSUSE community is not vocal or it’s just very tiny on lemmy.
Look into:
- Bazzite (Fedora Atomic)
- Nobara (Fedora)
- ChimeraOS (Arch, AMD-only)
- Garuda (Arch)
All are preconfigured for gaming. Bazzite and Nobara use the fsync kernel, not sure what Chimera uses, and Garuda uses the zen kernel.
Otherwise, Arch is still the most popular choice for gaming if you look at the statistics.
Thanks, I’ll look into them.
I game on arch (btw) But honestly I don’t think the distro itself really matters for gaming? Just choose the one you want and give er
It kinda does matter if you want updated drivers and packages and stuff. I use Debian because I love its bare bones, generic approach and I’m used to it, but I’d never recommend it for anyone playing the latest games unless they like cruising five years in the past.
That’s what I thought about debian is that it’s very stable, but this causes drivers and possibly other stuff to not be updated as quickly.
Valid point.
I kind of wanted to see if there’s something I wasn’t aware of.
Have you perused Distro Watch?
Lots of good info & news, and info on just about every distro there is, stuff you’ve never heard of. Years and years ago this was my introduction to FreeNAS that made a huge difference in my life. You should check it out if you haven’t already.
I have forgotten about that site. Thanks.
Arch w/ KDE gamer here. I have generally had a good experience with it. I think everything you said is generally accurate. In terms of customization, lack of bloat, and a good wiki, Arch is generally considered to be all of those things. A rolling distro like Arch I believe will also be getting the latest proton updates, which may help with sooner game compatibility/optimization updates on more recent releases.
I say go for it.
Thanks for your feedback.
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As a Linux only user, I totally agree with your message.
People who downvote you aren’t of good faith, are delusional or just dumb.
Linux is better in every single category except ease of use for non-technical users and gaming.
Let’s stop with this bandwagon of MS bad, Linux good; Linux is good enough for us to not lie and speak the truth…
Yeah, there’s some issues with it, but I’m really tired of windows and don’t really want to install 11 or pay for it.
Thanks for your response.
Check out Garuda Linux. Comes with a preset catalog of gamer related nonsense on KDE - or - they offer a minimal KDE version as well if you’d rather set things up your way.
I started with the preset one and then switched my machines over to the barebones one once I had a handle on Linux. It’s been a smooth ride. Things only break when I break them touching things unnecessarily out of curiosity because I don’t know what I’m doing.
Garuda is arch btw
Why not just install arch then?
Easier install and a cromulent setup out of the box. It’s why I went with Endeavour.
Rock solid suggestion too
EndeavourOS, Simply Arch with an installer, has KDE as an option for DE.
I use it, I love it. Arch is great. E-OS just cuts out the first few hours/days of set up.
Lol that’s on my current rig. It’s not bad, but I feel if that I’ll end up back on arch instead of having the endeavouros overlay.
Why?
As I said, to avoid bloat, why run an os over an os? Endeavouros has its update but there’s also an arch update. I don’t need hand holding for the install and that’s one of the benefits of Endeavouros, at least that’s my understanding.
It is not a OS over an OS just some packages that are preinstalled
EndeavourOS has its own packages ( https://github.com/endeavouros-team/PKGBUILDS ), but they are mostly driver stuff and some presets for the different desktop environments. Rest is all from arch, arch extra, arch extra multilib(32bit) and AUR.
And yea, you understand it right, if you don’t want help managing arch, it is not for you.
EOS is about 24 additional packages on top of the 70,000 Arch already offers, many of which are already on the AUR ( like yay and paru ). EOS uses the real Arch kernel. Once installed, EOS is Arch in my view.
There are not “two updates”. It is not an OS over an OS. EOS is awesome but it is a glorified Arch installer with opinionated defaults.
Endeavour is really good
Endeavour is great but it’s not simply Arch with an installer. Quite a few things are configured differently under the hood.
Personally, I find Debian pretty good these days. I used to default to Testing, but I’ve gravitated towards stable.
Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and Steam, almost any distro works.
Funny, flatpak works on MX, but it kills performance. I launch any flatpak program and it’s literally up to five minutes to launch. After re-imaging and using AppImages instead, it’s blazing fast. There must be something about the way MX implements flatpaks that screws the pooch.
Ok thanks. Good to hear.
I use Debian stable because I’m tired of constantly twiddling with breaking stuff, I just want a distro that keeps working without issues and tinkering.
If you still want to learn Linux stuff and debug packages, then go for a bleeding edge distro.
I’ve bounced around alot, have numerous distributions on my Proxmox Hypervisor, but my favorite daily driver, for a really old computer, is ( MX Linux ) I’ve twice tried other distros to see if I could improve upon the stability and performance, as well as the very convenient availability of a feature rich KDE Desktop environment, and I came back to MX twice now. When I get a new fast computer, I’ll switch to Qubes OS, for it’s built-in hypervisor and security/privacy and isolation features, but until then, I’ll stick with MX.
IMHO, there are excellent reasons why MX ranks highest. I think it’s original roots in AntiX with the elimination of systemd has afforded it a substantial advantage over stock-standard Debian, my last daily driver which always had performance issues. With MX, on same hardware, system lock ups are far less frequent when the system is overtaxed.
I run ubuntu’s server base headless install with a self-curated minimal set of gui packages on top of that (X11, awesome, pulse, thunar) but there’s no reason you couldn’t install kde with wayland. Building the system yourself gets you really far in the anti-bloatware dept, and the breadth of wiki/google/gpt based around Debian/Ubuntu means you can figure just about any issues out. I do this on a ~$200 eBay random old Dell + a 3050 6gb (slot power only).
For lighter gaming I’ll use the Ubuntu PC directly, but for anything heavier I have a win11 PC in the basement that has no other task than to pipe steam over sunshine/moonlight
It is the best of both worlds.
If you are an expert, why are you asking pee ons like us?
Things change, the reason linux exists is from communities. I wanted to see what this community was running and get a feel from others. Also, I like experimenting and wanted to see if there’s a distro I didn’t take into account.
It looks like arch, debian, and gentoo are the main ones I’m looking at.
Each with pros and cons.
Anything arch based. :)
Would 2nd this suggestion. It is also often possible to swap to using the arch repos after you’ve got the install setup and you are happy with it on these distros.
Yeah, if going arch based, whya not arch itself?
I don’t have anywhere near your experience, but the key points (customizable, no bloat, good wiki) all scream Arch, as you predicted 🙂
Understood
