Linux gamers, what distro are you currently on?

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!

lertsenem,
@lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com avatar

I weirdly did not see anyone mentioning SteamOS? Formerly based on Ubuntu, now based on Arch, I believe.

It's the distribution that the is packaged with, and so it's become my main gaming distrib now. :]

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Are they providing the arch based version for download now? I was under the impression they’ve only set it up for steam decks but not for general use?

EmpiricalFlock,
@EmpiricalFlock@beehaw.org avatar

According to the website the public release is based off of Debian still.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Yeah, thought so. Hope they’ll publish their newer versions as well soon.

lertsenem,
@lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com avatar

@nlm You're right, but there is an unofficial version (with some tweaks to work on standards PC) available here.

It works as intended, but I would only recommend it if you intend to use your PC in a console-like setup (ie, plugged to a big screen, with a game controller).

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Ah cool!

Not something I’d use now then but still neat that you can get it :)

jakepi,

I tried HoloISO and had pretty mixed results. I’ve had much better luck with ChimeraOS.

The devs on ChimeraOS are excellent too, they take in community feedback and are very helpful.

Sharmat,

Currently running Fedora on my laptop and Arch on my desktop, though I’ll probably migrate from Fedora to openSUSE next month.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Oh, an openSUSE fan! There’s dozens of us! :)

I do really enjoy Tumbleweed with Plasma to be honest. It just feels so polished.

ANuStart,

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.

Sharmat,

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.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

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

winged_fluffy,
@winged_fluffy@kbin.social avatar

I'm currently on Pop! OS 22.04 LTS. For me it worked out of the box. That installer with the NVidia drivers already included was a dream, so I didn't have to set up anything special. I did end up preferring the KDE desktop over Gnome, so I just went screw it and installed KDE plasma on top of it. It's been my daily driver like this for years.

Though, honesty requires me to mention that over the 4-ish years I've been using it they pushed a kernel update twice which killed the nvidia drivers, causing you to be unable to boot to the desktop. Solution was as simple as just rebooting into the previous kernel for a while and waiting for an update which fixes it, but still...

Other than that, pretty happy with it and I'm unlikely to change anytime soon.

ezri,
@ezri@beehaw.org avatar

I tried PopOS but had several issues immediately, including the display flickering despite updating my Nvidia driver. Other than that it just felt like a somewhat worse Ubuntu to me, so I quickly went back to Ubuntu

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

One thing that bugged me last time I wanted to try out Pop was that my Efi partition was considered too small. It was 500mb, you’d think that’d be enough?

noodlejetski,

EndeavourOS with Plasma. migrated from Manjaro after one too many questionable decision on their side.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

What bugged you about Manjaro?

noodlejetski,

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.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Sure, there are some bad mistakes in there but that site feels like a personal vendetta though.

regulatorg,

PopOS is best for out the box gaming, its similar to Ubuntu so you'll be familiar with it

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

What’s their biggest advantages against Ubuntu?

averyfalken,

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

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

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.

averyfalken,

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

simonced,

In my case, I use Fedora exclusively (no dual boot).

I tried PopOS, but I had problems with each update.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

Any particular reason for Fedora or is that just what you are comfortable with?

simonced,

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.

nlm,
@nlm@beehaw.org avatar

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.

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