I’m currently on Win11 but I’m getting that familiar Linux itch and want to dual boot a while again. I tend to gravitate towards Ubuntu simply because it’s so big and well supported by most things.
I’ve run Arch in the past but I’ve gotten too old and lazy for that if I’d be completely honest. I have played with manjaro and endeavour though… and opensuse tumbleweed, rolling is kind of nice.
Not sure what I’d try out first this time so I figured I’d get some inspiration from you guys!
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All of my workstations are now running Fedora Silverblue. Steam is installed via flatpak, and GPU is a Radeon 6800 XT. I also have a Steam Link for couch co-op. All is well on the gaming front!
Debian Sid and Arch have run equally well with this setup. Your choice of distro matters much less now compared to a few years ago, especially if you favour a flatpak workflow.
Edit: typos!
Debian
Fedora but I’m about to move to NixOS Unstable or VanillaOS if it gets better NVIDIA integration.
I am on Vanilla OS with a NVIDIA gpu and its running pretty well.
Awesome. I’ve heard there are some problems with hardware acceleration.
I would take a look at pop_os. It’s Ubuntu, but without Snap and a closer to mainline kernel version. They have a lot of great usability tweaks too.
I run Arch BTW. I just like to make things difficult :)
I installed Kubuntu… I couldn’t be assed to resize my efi partition to a gig and disrupt windows… Done that in the past with varying results. Wish they didn’t require it to be that big tbh.
I do miss Arch… wouldn’t surprise me if I’ll install it again soon.
Kubuntu works. But where’s the fun in that? :)
It’s like… I installed it, messed with lutris a bit (needed a newer version) and installed Diablo 4, everything works… and now I feel like I’m missing out somehow. :)
You’re missing out on chasing the dragon for the latest and greatest. :)
Arch is fine once you get it setup, but I feel like the nerd in us can never just leave it be. I’ll probably go back to pop_os next major release they have.
Sometimes I wish I had a machine dedicated to nothing but reinstalling different distros. :)
It can get a bit disrupting to do it on your main rig too often.
Use a VM?
I know, I do that too but it’s just not quite the same for some reason.
VMs are great for that
Currently running Fedora on my laptop and Arch on my desktop, though I’ll probably migrate from Fedora to openSUSE next month.
Oh, an openSUSE fan! There’s dozens of us! :)
I do really enjoy Tumbleweed with Plasma to be honest. It just feels so polished.
While I like Tumbleweed and Plasma, I can’t for the life of me figure out why KDEWallet keeps asking for my password to get on wifi every time I reboot.
Yeah, that happens sometimes for me too. I usually just disable it in the settings, but irrc, if you set the kwallet password and the user password to be the same, it shouldn’t ask for it.
Yeah I remember it happening for me at some point as well and I think this fixed it. It was quite some time ago though so I’m not sure at all. :P
I’m using Gentoo.
If I wanted a smooth no-tinkering experience, I’d use Ubuntu. Or hell, steamos.
NixOS. If you played around with Arch you’ll be fine. My only gripe (although it’s kind of important) is NVIDIA doesn’t work. Call me lazy but I haven’t felt like switching to an other distro, plus I’m not much of a hardcore gamer.
That’s a huuuuuge problem seeing that Nvidia has like an 80% gpu market share.
Unfortunately it’s pretty much impossible to support Nvidia on Linux unless you have a large enough team to test each of their GPUs individually and find workarounds for all of the bugs. Their Linux drivers are really bad.
The bigger projects have been able do that, but if it’s a relatively new project with only a handful of people working on it, and it’s not used on the steam deck, there’s basically no chance it’ll support Nvidia.
Yeah, that’d be a no for me.
Especially problematic since I’m on a laptop so I can’t really switch out the GPU either.
Nvidia drivers works just fine. Well, as “fine” as they work on any other distro.
Only thing you need to do is add
"nvidia"toservices.xserver.videoDrivers. You might also need to accept unfree packages but you’ll need to do that anyways for Steam.
I’m running Gentoo on my gaming PC, and would not want anything else.
It’s very customizable, as it allows to tweak packages’ optional dependencies at compile time. It’s also rolling release, so no stress with distribution upgrades. Despite that, it’s also very stable (most of the time…).
So far the only downside I’ve seen is that updates can take a while, as almost all packages get compiled from source.
Gentoo is… well I wouldn’t exactly call it nice, but neat? :)
I’ve played around with it a bunch but grew impatient with it. The compile times was terrible for me back then.
Gentoo and Arch do have their niche though. Takes a bit longer to set up but they’re quite customized to your liking when you’re done.
The compile times are quite OK on relatively modern hardware. I’ve been using a Ryzen 1700X up to last week, and except for WebKit I had no reason to complain. On my slightly dated Haswell laptop (from 2016) they are now starting to get on my nerves, but it’s still tolerable.
The only exception is WebKit, which takes forever to compile and which also tends to get installed multiple times, in slightly different versions (one version for Evolution, one for Liferea, one for Epiphany - and yes, those 3 programs all belong to the Gnome desktop). I’ve now set up ccache just for WebKit, but haven’t had to install a WebKit update since, so I have no idea how much the ccache helps…
Sorry for going on a tangent here. Back on topic: The setup for Gentoo takes as long as you are willing to invest time into it… The more time you invest, the more customized the system gets.
I’m currently running Sway window manager, with a ton of other not-so-usual tools (some of which I wrote myself, like my status bar application), and I’m really happy with how my PC currently feels. My desktop looks like it just escaped the early 1990s, but it’s so fast and just doesn’t get in the way ever…
I can see the charm in that tbh.
I like the idea of Gentoo, it’s a pretty cool concept. Just a time consuming one as well. :) I remember my problem with it was that I couldn’t really decide how I wanted my system to end up while I was setting it up… which kind of defeats the purpose a bit I felt.
Yeah, and most of the customization you can do on any other distribution too. The main advantage of Gentoo is that it’s Rolling Release, so there won’t be any distribution upgrades breaking the cusotmizations.
The same is true for Debian Testing or Arch too, though.
Or openSUSE Tumbleweed :)
Is Debian Testing actually rolling I thought they froze it before new stable releasea?
Yeah, it’s not fully “rolling”, as new (non-critical) updates can get delayed for quite some time while packages are getting stabilized for a Stable release.
It’s strange really. I’ve used Ubuntu on and off since… 8.4 or something like that but I’ve never tried Debian. Don’t even know why.
A little background for context. I’m gamer and professional software developer. I’ve been dual booting windows 11 and pop os for awhile. Windows for games and pop os for everything else… Over the weekend I switched to NixOS. This came with a learning curve which I spent a day or so learning. I’ve been getting the hang of it now and I love it so much. I definitely recommend it. I managed to get steam working without much fiddling and my emulators. It’s been great! The benefits for programming are obvious. Allowing me to basically stop using docker dev containers.
I completely removed windows from my computer and I’m very happy.
We used to run Ubuntu at my last job, it was so nice! I’m back in Windows land now though…
Yeah my job recently started letting developers choose between windows and Mac now which is a step in the right direction… their excuse is that all their security software doesn’t run in Linux… Ill accept using a Mac over WSL though, that was a huge pain
I’m still happy WSL exists, it’s definitely better than nothing if you’re stuck in Windows land!
Yeah absolutely! I know I dissed it, but I was happy to have it when I was stuck on windows for work.
I use Arch with KDE. I don’t recommend Manjaro because it has historically had some serious problems, so for people who want Arch without as much hassle, I’m recommending EndeavourOS. It’s what Manjaro should be like.
Endeavour OS (PC and Laptop) and Steam OS. Very happy with both.
PopOS is best for out the box gaming, its similar to Ubuntu so you’ll be familiar with it
What’s their biggest advantages against Ubuntu?
Truthfully it comes with nvidoa drivers pre installed.
Personally I run mint and its just a couple of clicks to get it installed in mint. I tried pop is didn’t like it that much and gave me less stability with some of my use cases
Yeah, that’s basically what I figured. Plus some bells and whistles in the design department. Might just as well go with *buntu and install drivers then.
Don’t know how different it is with buntu I know mint does extra things. I’d you like the cinnamon desktop mints the best bet
I’m using Manjaro KDE - working well with Steam Games with Proton for must games.
In my case, I use Fedora exclusively (no dual boot).
I tried PopOS, but I had problems with each update.
Any particular reason for Fedora or is that just what you are comfortable with?
No real reason I think.
I had problems with PopOS, but I could have gone Mint since it’s the one I knew the most.
But since I was reinstalling, I gave Fedora a try, and I liked it so I kept it.
Feels like that’s pretty common these days. Most of the big distros are polished enough to get the work done without jumping through too many hoops really.
EndeavourOS with Plasma. migrated from Manjaro after one too many questionable decision on their side.
What bugged you about Manjaro?
basically every thing on https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/, one by one. I just reached the point when I decided to hop to another distro at the next reformat.
Sure, there are some bad mistakes in there but that site feels like a personal vendetta though.
