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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I am on Mint, but I have a GPU accelerated VM running Windows 10 for gaming. It performs very well, but you run into the occasional game that detects VMs and will refuse to run.
You get a decent performance out of that? Sounds like it would take a bit of a hit?
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
gentoo!
i love the versatility it offers, but it’s very much so DIY. it has great documentation. anyone who considers themselves a “linux enthusiast” should try an install in a VM at some point or another, if nothing else it’s a great learning experience.
for gaming in particular: flatpak steam / lutris / bottles. it’s great because it’s completely distro agnostic. i can take the $USER/.var directory and put it on any distro with flatpak installed and it’ll just work.
I am starting to realize how handy flatpaks can be!
I’ve been distro hopping like a madman these last couple of days and it’s gotten so much easier to get going with my games now!
Save yourself a lot of trouble and get a secondary SSD to put Linux on instead of doing a traditional dual boot. Normal dual boots with windows suck ass and lead to problems.
As for a distro, I keep going back to endeavourOS. It’s just so minimal out of the box, and I still can’t find anything to match the convinience of the AUR + Pacman for package management.
It’s on a laptop. I do have an external usb that I have linux installed on but it feels like a hassle to connect/disconnect every time I need to switch OS. Maybe it could’ve been worth staying on it though?
I actually usually run linux on a USB SSD myself haha, but I am on a desktop so I can just leave it there. For you that’s definitely a hassle.
I mean it works I suppose, at least when I’m at my desk at home which is where I mostly use it, but still. It’s not quite optimal. :)
I use Pop!_OS and have been happy with it for the last couple years or so.
I think I just might have to give pop a go and see what all the fuss is about. :)
Nobara, Gnome version. I had tons of problems with PopOS on Nvidia GPU with a HiDPI monitor. X11 for whatever reason was completely borked when it came to gaming - I am 100% positive it was a niche issue with my machine, but it happened - and switching to Wayland also caused a bunch of issues.
Nobara worked out of the box with no struggles.
Arch on my laptop but Pop on my gaming rig. At the time I installed it, I wanted the extra relative ease of Pop’s handling on video drivers. I have since switched to AMD, so no driver woes at all since they’re in the kernel, but I have stuck with Pop for that system. If it ain’t broke… who am I kidding, I’ll probably switch to Arch soon.
I am currently using Pop!_OS, which is based on Ubuntu and comes with GNOME but because I don’t really like GNOME’s interfaces, so I swapped it with Sway and i3bar.
I never played modern games on this thing, so I don’t really know how well it does, but I heard it’s pretty good for gaming.
I use Arch with KDE Plasma for that comfy desktop environment feel but switch to BSPWM ever so often for productivity or to use my pc as just a media center
I have been quite happy with Arch Linux, up until I got my Steam Deck, at which point I stopped playing on my non-Deck PCs, so… SteamOS, I suppose.
… which is an immutable variant of arch.
It is, but I still count it as it’s own thing, in the same way most people count Debian and Ubuntu as two seperate distributions.
Yes, you’re correct, just a little funny that you moved from arch to basically steamarch, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, arch plus steam
Came here to say SteamOS as well. I am surprised more people aren’t saying it. But the thing is, the Steam Deck works so well I have to wonder how many people don’t know/care the OS it runs, or maybe they have forgotten it’s running Linux, or maybe they know but don’t consider themselves “Linux Gamers” just because they are using it.
Sort of like how people playing on a Switch or PS3/4/Vita are technically FreeBSD gamers deep down.
garuda, it’s just a fancy arch install with the ugliest, bloatiest, default theming you can imagine, but once you get rid of it it’s pretty solid.
You’re really selling it :D
…I looked it up. You’re correct. That… was flashy.
I’ve been using Garuda as well. It’s solid, and I like the fact they have a gaming variant that takes a lot of the nitpick presetup out of the picture.
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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.
I am on Manjaro. To be honest there isn’t a big difference between distros nowadays because more and more apps are on the web or deployed via AppImage/shell script. Manjaro does rolling updates, makes it easy to install drivers and the install is easy, but you can still follow the Arch wiki and use AUR.
It runs Steam totally fine. Thanks to Steam (and WINE) I basically don’t use Windows anymore.
I do remember enjoying Manjaro when I ran it back dutin Uni studies… I don’t even remember what made me switch tbh. Probably some distro hopping itch. :)
As my main I’m currently running EndeavorOS. I’d say it’s pretty good. It does all of the legwork of installing Arch, but comes with minimal bloat and really lets you make it your own.
I have tried it but it was a while ago.
When it’s installed, what’s different than pure Arch?
