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 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.
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
Valid point.
I kind of wanted to see if there’s something I wasn’t aware of.
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.
I use arch btw
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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.
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Fedora Silverblue (atomic GNOME) and Kinoite (atomic KDE) have been solid for both work and gaming. System maintenance is largely seamless and automatic once configured. I still use Arch daily, but only in the terminal (distrobox and containers).
Going AMD is so worth it too, I have zero regrets swapping my RTX 2080s for RX 6800 XTs. Secure boot, Wayland, no fuss updates. Couldn’t be happier.
You mentioned needing customization…not sure what you’re hoping for there, but the atomic distros allow for plenty of userspace tweaks. It’s the system-level stuff, like boot and greeter themes, that require a bit more work to implement. My time is too precious to fuss about that stuff these days.
Thanks for your response. I like to fiddle with things. I’m a bit of a tinkerer and like too customize various parts of my os. Basically more user space stuff. How it looks, buttons, themes, and whatnot. Also able to remove/avoid apps that I don’t use. Simple, but unique.
May I ask, why fedora for core system, but arch for distrobox?
I totally get it as I’m a tinkerer too, but these days I spend most of that energy on webdev, house projects, thrifting/restoring stuff, etc. If only there was more time in a day lol.
There’s plenty of freedom to tweak local themes with atomic distros, as your home dir itself is entirely mutable and can be changed to your liking.
As to why Fedora/Arch… I love Arch and have used it daily for almost 20 years. I was an Arch dev once upon a time (Judd/Aaron era), and I designed the logo and web branding in use today. The project means a lot to me.
The inherent benefits of atomic systems caught my attention a couple years ago, and Fedora’s implementation won me over.
My hope is that Arch eventually (and officially) adopts a similar approach as these image-based systems become mainstream, at which point I’ll happily be the first in line for testing!
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 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
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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.
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…
