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?
Arch. Bazzite/Nobara are for noobs (in a positive way, don’t get me wrong).
Gaming is in spot where you want stability but also a rolling release, since we have daily improvements on essential packages; as an experienced user you can use Arch for that; consider also even Valve is on it with the Steam Deck (Arch-based).
My first and current distro is Pop_OS and it’s been a bit of a pain in the ass. I need to run terminal commands to get Bluetooth to work, Rocksmith is a lost cause, my display signal dies randomly, forcing a restart.
Thinking about Bazzite, but read this article and maybe Ubuntu is just easier, for now?
(Nvidia gpu giving me pause over which will support it better)
I tried bazzite and nobara which are both the big gaming distros. Bazzite worked the best but I had a ton of just weird little issues with stuff randomly not working unless I restarted it. I don’t have much to say about nobara because I couldn’t actually get steam to work for some reason.
I went back to mint and honestly it’s been the smoothest and easiest to use distro, plus it has a larger user base so it’s easier to find help.
Nobara is very good for middle user that just want a ready-to-game distro; Bazzite is best for noobs, thanks to immutability; for an experienced user there are no reasons to not use Arch.
Gentoo lets you trim the fat even more by adjusting your packages at build-time. It has great KDE support. It comes with LTS kernel, but lets you opt for newer ones.
The USE flags (feature compilation option) can be a bit tricky to manage, but they’ve tidied up the defaults quite a bit.
The one thing that might still be hard to get right is having all the media codec you need. I wish they’d include it in the default so I didn’t have to fine tune it myself, but well, that’s just part of the fun, and I already got my battle-tested set, so I got nothing to complain.
Ok I tried a gentoo setup this week. 8 hours in was able to build a kernel and get a cli on my box. But I’m failing at my attempts to get xfce or KDE or even startx to work. 😅 debating if I should keep it at this weekend or go back to my arch or simple eos.
I like emerge and I like the philosophy but gotta get a bit more knowledge on this use flag thing.
Non-running software doesn’t affect performance as it isn’t anywhere near your RAM or CPU. What often people perceive of bloat is frequently software dependencies that are likely to be used over the course of the OS’s usage.
Often I have found bloat free setups end up taking hours of digging out dependencies on multiple occasions. Life is too short. I have things to build.
It still takes space on the drive. It takes an icon on the start menu.
And then there’s that little devil in me that I don’t want to send feedback back to servers of what I do with my system.
Maybe I’m paranoid or maybe I just want to squeeze all the pure power (and space) I can. It’s like an old hot rod, there’s no radio; there’s no heated seats; it’s made to go fast and have fun.
It does take space on the hard drive. Can easily remove desktop shortcuts. Telemetry on open source software doesn’t usually happen without consent and you can turn it off (Firefox for example).
This is more of a feeling type thing. If it makes you feel good though, go ahead.
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I use PopOS on my rig which is primarily gaming. It does great and gets out of my way.
Thanks for your response.
Arch, void, fedora, parabola are pretty good
Thanks
Arch. Bazzite/Nobara are for noobs (in a positive way, don’t get me wrong). Gaming is in spot where you want stability but also a rolling release, since we have daily improvements on essential packages; as an experienced user you can use Arch for that; consider also even Valve is on it with the Steam Deck (Arch-based).
Thanks, I was leaning towards arch. I like it’s wiki.
Anything popular enough that you can easily google any issues you need to troubleshoot. Beyond that it truly doesn’t matter.
My first and current distro is Pop_OS and it’s been a bit of a pain in the ass. I need to run terminal commands to get Bluetooth to work, Rocksmith is a lost cause, my display signal dies randomly, forcing a restart.
Thinking about Bazzite, but read this article and maybe Ubuntu is just easier, for now?
(Nvidia gpu giving me pause over which will support it better)
Well, one could make the argument about driver support.
how has no one rec’d bazzite, yet? It’s literally ‘THE’ KDE/Gaming linux distro lol
i wish i could like fedora based distros, but they always make my hdd unmountable and it’s really hard to revive it :(
Interesting, built off fedora, I’ll check it out.
I tried bazzite and nobara which are both the big gaming distros. Bazzite worked the best but I had a ton of just weird little issues with stuff randomly not working unless I restarted it. I don’t have much to say about nobara because I couldn’t actually get steam to work for some reason.
I went back to mint and honestly it’s been the smoothest and easiest to use distro, plus it has a larger user base so it’s easier to find help.
Nobara is very good for middle user that just want a ready-to-game distro; Bazzite is best for noobs, thanks to immutability; for an experienced user there are no reasons to not use Arch.
Gentoo lets you trim the fat even more by adjusting your packages at build-time. It has great KDE support. It comes with LTS kernel, but lets you opt for newer ones.
Hmmm… thanks for the response, I like how it’s more built for your system since you compile it locally.
The USE flags (feature compilation option) can be a bit tricky to manage, but they’ve tidied up the defaults quite a bit.
The one thing that might still be hard to get right is having all the media codec you need. I wish they’d include it in the default so I didn’t have to fine tune it myself, but well, that’s just part of the fun, and I already got my battle-tested set, so I got nothing to complain.
Ok I tried a gentoo setup this week. 8 hours in was able to build a kernel and get a cli on my box. But I’m failing at my attempts to get xfce or KDE or even startx to work. 😅 debating if I should keep it at this weekend or go back to my arch or simple eos.
I like emerge and I like the philosophy but gotta get a bit more knowledge on this use flag thing.
Try getting the sddm (for KDE) instead and run it thru the display-manager service.
is also quickest penguin and best meta-distro (only one of it’s kind really)
Right, built for my system.
Rolling distro, up to date kernel, very good KDE support, stable?
OpenSuse Tumbleweed has got you covered.
Though this weird bloat fetish usually leads to Arch…
Understood, not really a fetish, more of I don’t want extra stuff that I don’t want to use or take space for no reason.
I want to use every drop of my system for performance, maybe that’s from my “old person” in me.
Non-running software doesn’t affect performance as it isn’t anywhere near your RAM or CPU. What often people perceive of bloat is frequently software dependencies that are likely to be used over the course of the OS’s usage.
Often I have found bloat free setups end up taking hours of digging out dependencies on multiple occasions. Life is too short. I have things to build.
It still takes space on the drive. It takes an icon on the start menu.
And then there’s that little devil in me that I don’t want to send feedback back to servers of what I do with my system.
Maybe I’m paranoid or maybe I just want to squeeze all the pure power (and space) I can. It’s like an old hot rod, there’s no radio; there’s no heated seats; it’s made to go fast and have fun.
It does take space on the hard drive. Can easily remove desktop shortcuts. Telemetry on open source software doesn’t usually happen without consent and you can turn it off (Firefox for example).
This is more of a feeling type thing. If it makes you feel good though, go ahead.
On the other side: point-release distro, LTS kernel, also very good KDE support, practically unbreakable?
Debian to the rescue.
This one won’t lead to Arch.
Isn’t debian a bit behind on graphic drivers?
They are, but for AMD, it won’t matter much as the driver has matured by kernel 6.1
you must have missed the part where OP said he was going AMD this round lool
What’s amd have to do with graphics drivers on debian? I’m out of the loop.
I’m just fanboying for amd and an idiot. please disregard my trolling
Does amd have better or faster support for drivers then nvidia?
ime yes, but only because well…there is no such thing as nvidia driver support
Fair enough, but that is OP, my friend
it would seem I missed that point entirely bahaha
fitting username to you sir