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?
So you have a lot of suggestions in this thread.
I have an unconventional one:
Red hat.
You can use it for free as long as you register on their website.
The benefit: lots of documentation, a significantly different way of thinking about things (it asks you to define a compliance posture out of the box lol) and a package manager that does a lot of things right.
You said yourself youve been in the game for a while. Why not try being agent smith instead of neo?
No, thanks.
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.
Understood, thanks for the response.
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.
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.
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.
i use a minimal arch with the zen kernel and hyprland for home, work and play. no kde/gnome. for me it’s just right. except screen sharing in teams or discord, which haunts me… now it works, now it doesn’t.
Unpopular opinion but for gaming I believe windows it’s better than Linux, I use Linux but I’m not a gamer.
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.
Aurora is cool, if you’re okay with using an immutable distro. It is Fedora Atomic-based with KDE on top, so it is stable, but relevant. All necessary drivers are set up out of the box, but less pre-installed apps than Bazzite.
I just installed NixOS and the repeatability of it is pretty neat. I like the idea of having one file that sets up 90% of any pc going forward. Not sure how often I’ll use it, but feels neat.
Interesting, the coders use it at my work for easier rolling out the setup. I didn’t think about using it as a gaming pc.
I switched to it also because my debian host got out of date and now it’s difficult to upgrade and I’m scared to reinstall it. If it was NixOS I would be able to redo the whole thing in a few minutes. So I’m creating / learning how to create a template to roll it out to my other builds.
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.
We are not worthy!
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
