I have a home built PC that I want to get off Windows 11.
Specs:
- Ryzen 3700X, upgrading to a 5800X3D soon
- RTX 2080 Super
- 500GB NVME for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for files, programs, etc.
- 1440p Ultrawide monitor
- an 8bitdo Ultimate controller
Usage:
- I usually play indie games, emulators, and occasional AAA games. Most of my library is on Steam, with some games on GOG, e.g. Cyberpunk.
- I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
- I also write game mods, so I need a distro that is a good fit for software development (C++, Python, and Lisp).
- Random miscellany: I use mullvad VPN, stream movies from a friend’s plex server, and use an SFTP client to back up photos and videos from my phone.
I’ve been an on/off Linux user in the past, so I know my way around basic/intermediate terminal usage and configuration. Buuuut every previous attempt to move to Linux ended in disaster, so I have little patience for asterisks, strings attached, etc. If you’re offering a distro I’ve never heard of before, you’re probably gonna be hard pressed to convince me.
Thanks for the help!
Having read through some of the comments I just wanted to add one thing. If you find that one distro doesn’t quite do what you need, don’t be afraid to wipe it again and install a different distro. I migrated from windows 10 to Linux mint, I found it frustrating for gaming, and then from mint I switched to cachyOS, which is built from the same OS that the steam deck uses. I haven’t had any similar issues since. Find what works for you, and don’t be afraid to try something else
That was adorably fun.
Narrowed down to the one I chose, and now I have my next choice if to test run.
I’m curious what the attach rate of these suggestions are. For anyone who already knows what they want, its just fun. But for anyone who really tries to find a suggestion, I wonder how good it works. Also the stats https://distrofighter.com/stats are fun to look at.
First time I’ve seen this! Tried it out and it was entertaining to root for my favorites, and a lot of fun reading the various jabs they make at each other!
My winners were exactly the ones I use, so I’m happy (Fedora + KDE Plasma)I just learned about it from Brodies channel (a Linux YouTuber). As you say, its entertaining. It may or may not get a good recommendation. Some questions aren’t really suited to ask beiginners, but that’s okay. And some questions like what the use case is, would need 3 answers to me: Gaming, Development and the regular Daily stuff. But I love the idea how its presented and the audiovisual style. Pretty cool.
Fedora KDE.
upvoting the bazzite. if you want to play steam games its the obvious go to. I went to it from zorin and enjoying it.
I heard CachyOS is quite popular these days. Other dedicated gaming distros are Bazzite, Nobara, Garuda Linux …
I’ve been running Garuda with KDE (dr4g0nized gaming spin) for over a year and have had a great experience. Arch gets a bad rep for breaking updates, but I’ve never experienced any. My Steam Link in the living room has mostly functioned fine, but it has been a bit finicky lately. As for the AUR, I think I have maybe a dozen packages from there in my machine, partially because Garuda ships with Chaotic-AUR, which has a more robust (read: existant) review process for submissions. I have used both Nvidia and AMD GPUs and both have worked flawlessly. I don’t game as much as I used to, but I’ve been nothing but happy with my Arch gaming experience.
+1 for CachyOS
My PC has an AMD CPU / Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU which was fine when I originally set it up with Kubuntu but had some unrelated issues. So I took the opportunity to try it with Arch and had an absolute bastard of a time getting the Nvidia drivers to work. Cut my losses and tried CachyOS instead and pretty much everything just worked from the off.
Pick one, that is the one
Yeah I feel like you can game on anything these days. I’m on Arch, which is what SteamOS is based on afaik. Works great. Gaming on Steam and Heroic launcher for Epic games. No complaints.
On other comments and what you’ve said in your other comment, I think you’d be just interested in Nobara or CachyOS. At least, if you want an out of box working experience but still have the ability to tinker and develop relatively easy.
You might prefer Nobara because it’s Fedora based rather than Arch, and your hardware specs aren’t bleeding edge anyway. If you want a bit more stability than that though, and don’t mind doing the set up yourself, plan vanilla Fedora could also work and you just add what you want / need.
I’d avoid any recommendations for immutable distros like Bazzite because they’re best for beginners that aren’t too tech savvy, or people very familiar with Linux and have no issues mucking about with OS-tree or running a distrobox. Really no in-between.
I also have 8 bitdo controllers and I do recommend updating them on Windows before you get rid of it, depending which you have - some can be updated via a Chrome based browser but others only through Windows really.
I’m currently on Linux Mint, works pretty well out of the box. Steam games and indie games and even old windows game work (with lutris and/or bottles).
However I should warn, I also have a Steam Link. It does stream, but depending on the game the framerate can get very laggy. I’m running on a RTX 2070 tho. Not sure I can recommend steam link on Linux yet.
Everything else works great.
Bazzite. Fedora based, “atomic”, has nvidia drivers and windows compatibility utilities preinstalled. Atomic means easy rollback after update in case if something breaks, and it probably doesn’t expect you to use command line much. It is expecting users to install apps with flatpak so make sure flathub has the software you need (I think it does).
I have never personally used Bazzite, but atomic distros and namely Bazzite are known to be very user friendly and breakproof.
Steam Link is available for Linux. I suppose that most Steam-things are.
Not sure why you got downvoted. Bazzite is great.
Plot twist: it was I, OP, all along! Let me explain why.
Whenever I see these distro recommendation threads, all kinds of people come out to make a comment. Many if not most are well-intentioned, but the kind of person that bothers me the most is the evangelist. The kind of person who’s blind to the limitations and drawbacks of the thing they are espousing.
If you’re gonna recommend a distro, I sure hope you’d have some personal experience with it. Otherwise, how do you know what it’s limitations are? So to admit you’ve never used Bazzite even though you’re recommending it, it just seems irresponsible. “You have a peanut allergy? Try this Pad Thai restaurant! I’ve never been there but I hear it’s great!”
After discussing with a few more developer friends of mine, they advised me not to use an atomic/immutable distro, because setting it up for development is a chore. I’d apparently have to learn how to use distrobox, set up containers, and learn an entire other flavor of linux to set up a development environment. As a reminder, I did say in the OP that I needed something I could program on as well, and Bazzite sounds like a poor fit for that use case.
I can understand and respect your points here.
To be totally fair, Bazzite can be used to do anything any other Linux distro can do, it’s the beauty of Linux. I’ve set mine to run .NET, PHP, and node. Had to use containers for SQL server, but got that going too.
Yes, it’s a bit of a pain, but it’s been my favorite Linux experience so far.
Maybe some haters of atomic distros. Never imagined people hating them more than me. But what if not this…
I suspect it’s the recommendation from someone who hasn’t used the product.
What is there to hate? I understand if you don’t prefer how it works, or if you’re used to doing things a certain way which doesn’t work on atomic… But hate seems a little extreme
Atomic distros are not my cup of tea. They are perfect for certain cases, but, you know, I kind of feel irritated by how often I see people overpraising them. It’s like, this is just an option, that is useful in some cases, and useless in other. Why am I sometimes seeing people making a holy grail out of atomics?
Bazzite is my first one. Was a kubuntu user before it, and sabayon way back in the day.
I’ll say this one thing: bazzite is super great if you’re keeping it simple. If you want something “weird”, you’ll need to be ok following directions and editing config files.
The immutability means some things are a few steps harder to setup. For example, today I was installing a service that will let my bazzite machine always be available as a Spotify Connect target so anyone in the house can play music through the living room speakers. The Spotify connect server will be always running in the background, even after reboot. Installing it took 3 extra steps than doing it on Ubuntu, Arch, or Fedora. Not impossible, just a few extra steps to make a distrobox and connect into it, and then connect that into a service on the bazzite side.
I will say though, Kagi Assistant has been a lifesaver for me for getting all my Linux machines setup. I’ve done more in the last year with Linux than the 20 years before of using it as my home OS.
It’s so easy now just to ask a chat prompt how to do something and then get help if it doesn’t work perfectly on the first try. Taters gonna tate, but I absolutely love AI tools for learning how Linux works, especially the trickey immutable ones like bazzite. Even though I’ve been using Linux for twenty years, I’d have dropped bazzite in the first week if it wasn’t for AI chat tools helping me bend it to my designs. I just can’t be bothered spending a lot of time learning an immutable OS when I’m happy with Arch and Ubuntu. However, now with chat tools, I’m loving bazzite and have no plans to switch off it as my daily driver.
editing config files
I’ve got no aversion to it, but this isn’t something you really need to do in Bazzite.
I wouldn’t say things are harder with immutable, per se, just different. If you don’t already have years of Linux workflow programmed into your brain, then it’s just as easy as learning a regular distro.
And no, you don’t need to use ChatGPT, just search google. If you’re not finding help for your question, replace “Bazzite” in your query with “Universal Blue” or “Silverblue” as they will almost always have identical solutions.
It’s definitely not needed for the average person trying to install and play games and watch Netflix.
I wanted services for Spotify, Hone Assistant, ssh access, syncthing, jellyfin. Those were just slightly more effort than in Arch, but I am extremely happy with bazzite and plan to stick with it (or other immutable OSes) going forward.
Linux Mint!
It’s based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.
Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.
Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.
Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It’s a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.
However. I might not be as ‘cool’ as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.
Mint is not something that I use myself, but it’s what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.
I use Mint for gaming (Steam), some light development and AI work and all everyday computing tasks. It works really well and with minimal hassle. The cool kids will scoff, but for people who just want to get stuff done it’s great.
Second that, ubuntu sucked, but mint is great so far.
Fun story about why I’m such a curmudgeon about this:
Long before Proton even existed, I once researched how to run a Windows VM for gaming on a Linux host machine, with GPU passthrough. At the time I had an Intel iGPU and an Nvidia discrete GPU, so I figured the iGPU could run the host, while the discrete GPU could run the guest.
I asked around reddit and some of my tech savvy friends on what the best distro would be to accomplish this. A few people steered me toward Debian, because I expressed concern that the system wouldn’t be stable or would be difficult to work with.
Well, turns out Debian was a fucking terrible choice. First I had graphics driver problems, naturally. Secondly, I couldn’t even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn’t in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian. So I had to learn to add those. Then I had to learn how to stop Debian from recognizing the nvidia GPU during boot, so that the PCI device could be reserved for the passthrough. That was a monumental headache to figure out. And finally, once everything was set up, I learned that nvidia had more or less disabled their consumer-grade cards from being used in a virtual machine. I spent over a month trying to get that working, and eventually just said fuck it and stayed on Windows. And I caught a ton of flak for that, because obviously I should have known that nvidia was a bad choice of GPU, and I should have just purchased an AMD GPU instead… in the middle of GPU mining bubble, when cards were going for $500 a pop.
I’m really hoping to not have a repeat of that experience.
Secondly, I couldn’t even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn’t in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian.
Debian has a non-free repo containing non-open-source software that it hasn’t historically enabled by default, but I don’t think that that’d apply to qemu. I’m pretty sure that’s all open-source.
goes looking.
qemu’s been in the Debian repos since…checks sarge, which was released as a stable release in 2005.
And it was in main, not non-free, so it should have been there as an out-of-the-box enabled repo:
https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20050312T000000Z/pool/main/q/qemu/
QEMU only came out in 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU
QEMU is free software originally developed by Fabrice Bellard; the first preview release was in 2003.
It looks like it was packaged in Debian unstable since 2004, though I wouldn’t recommend jumping right on unstable to a new user.
$ apt changelog qemu-system 2>/dev/null|tail -n 15 -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org> Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:56:25 +0100 qemu (0.5.2-2) unstable; urgency=low * Fix build problem so bios.bin etc. can be found. (Closes: #237553) -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org> Fri, 12 Mar 2004 05:43:00 +0100 qemu (0.5.2-1) unstable; urgency=low * Initial Release. (Closes: #187407) -- Paul Russell <prussell@debian.org> Wed, 3 Mar 2004 02:18:54 +0100 Fetched 314 kB in 0s (1,431 kB/s) $I don’t know, maybe I’m misremembering a detail, it was 10 years ago. I think I needed KVM as well, maybe that’s what was missing. Either way, I had to add newer repos to an older version. I think the codenames were Jessie and Wheezy.
I’m currently running qemu in trixie because one of my bosses demanded me to run office. It was pretty straight forward, but for some reason i had to create a group and do some permissions tinkering for it to work… nothing too complicated. I dont really remember what issues i had with it.
Currently i managed to set a share folder, keys to give orders to the host (mainly to switch back to civilization quickly) and also i convinced my boss that internet isnt working (it’s working from day 0) so she cant force me to use one drive.
I will say it was a good decision to just separate my work PC from my home PC. I didn’t want to end up like that guy who got his company hacked just because he was running a vulnerable version of Plex Media Server. So I have a Windows laptop just for remoting into work and nothing else.
Yeah, some people are really bad at recommending a Distro for specific usage.
When I started with Linux, quite a while back, I was recommended gentoo.
It’s now my least favorite choice 😁
When I started with Linux, quite a while back, I was recommended gentoo.
Are you sure that wasn’t just a cruel joke? Lol
Actually, I’m not really sure. I mean I was sure at that time that it was a recommendation but as I am an autist (unbeknownst to me at that time) it could’ve been one of those ‘obviously’ not serious recommendations.
bazzite is really great and user friendly
highly recommend and run it myself for years
Love Linux Mint for the easy transition away from Windows.
My go-to advise for people new to linux or just wanting something that works is Linux Mint (Or Ubuntu if you don’t mind the commercial aftertaste). End of discussion.
It is based on Ubuntu packages which are well maintained (things just work), it has been around and popular for a very long time, has a big and active community, and it prioritises ease of use.
The only downsides are support for brand new hardware (<6-12 months) which takes a while to be supported. But that doesn’t seem to apply to you.
If you want bleeding edge, extensive customizations, or a cool unconventional desktop you can check out any kind of desktop.
I like discussing distros as much as the next person. But in my long distrohopping career I realised that with new or novice linux users it’s best to stick to the easiest, most out of the box experience. I would argue this is linux mint.
I’ve seen too many times that people send new linux users to the most wild distro’s and then be suprised that the user gives up on linux completely after a week.
If you want to get some terminal/technical experience or like to make your hands dirty feel free to experiment.
But make your feet wet in the shallow well known puddles.Can second this - My PC is Arch BTW but my partner, on my recommendation, installed Mint. Smooth af install and I almost never taught them a terminal command because it has this easy enough repo library app, and prompts for updates. Things just work.
Thank you for understanding where I’m coming from lol. Mint supposedly, with enough tinkering, can handle all my use cases?
Don’t end up in the Ubuntu train, just avoid from the start. If you want Mint, go with the debian based Mint. Ubuntu was good 15 years ago. Don’t get yourself involved if you’re starting out. Mint DE is good. I think Fedora with KDE is honestly the best place to start. Then just turn on Flatpaks in Discover settings if they are not on by default.
Fedora flavors are a good mix of quicker updates and also very stable. KDE Plasma is a very well thought out desktop environment and familiar to Windows users. I’ve been using Mint and it feels dated. Also I recommend not using anything from Ubuntu as they keep enshittifing.
Fedora Aurora might suit you. It’s immutable but you can still install Mullvad via ostree or a community Flatpak.
Needing Ostree is probably not a good newbie experience, and VPN’s in particular should only be installed from secure sources, not an unverified community package.
its as easy as:
rpm-ostree install https://repository.mullvad.net/rpm/stable/x86_64/MullvadVPN-2026.3_x86_64.rpm
with the last version link from https://repository.mullvad.net/rpm/stable/x86_64/
and then
systemctl enable mullvad-daemon
systemctl start mullvad-daemon
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/rpm-ostree/#__tabbed_2_2
Without meaning to offend, I think your experience in both using an immutable distro as well as your general knowledge of how to use Linux from the commandline may be clouding your perception of how intimidating that would look to an inexperienced user.
As an example, despite using Linux for many years, I have never had need to interact with systemd, and thus I wouldn’t have known to start it with systemctl or to use -daemon. I could learn that if needed without any hesitation, but to someone way less experienced in Linux? That would more than likely just reinforce the perception of Linux having a high learning curve or only being good for people who like to tinker and fiddle in the command line.
In contrast on a normal Fedora install, the user can just copy and paste the commands on the Mullvad website without having to research or look through a specific distro’s manual, and at the end the app will be added to their launcher for them to use as normal. That method is likely to give a better impression, especially if they feel like their previous Linux attempts were janky or didn’t go well, as the OP has mentioned.
In contrast on a normal Fedora install, the user can just copy and paste the commands on the Mullvad website without having to research or
This is bad advice.
That said, I’m having a hard time figuring out why it’s any different than just pasting what the commenter above wrote? It’s like 3 commands, and two of them are for starting a daemon.
It’s not rocket science. I feel like it’s the same as when people convince themselves at a young age that they’re just not good at math, and never will be. So any time they see math as an adult, even the most basic arithmetic, they shut down and instead of even like reading the actual math equation, they just say “oh I’m bad at math” and don’t even bother.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stop being intimidated by the command line and maybe try reading the words before just copy and pasting them. If you don’t know what a daemon is, that can be answered in 3 seconds with a google search.
I dunno, it’s just frustrating to see I guess.
This is bad advice.
In general, yes, but that’s usually considered bad advice to do from untrusted sources, where as the main Mullvad page would be considered a trusted source, IMO. I understand the sentiment in general isn’t a good idea, though.
I dunno, it’s just frustrating to see I guess.
I think sometimes, depending on what is going on in someone’s life, you simply do not have the energy, time, or inclination to learn the intricacies of how to use a new technology.
As an example, if someone has kids and is fairly stressed out from their job, and thus has limited free time, it would likely not be at all appealing to have to dive through a manual to learn the intricacies of a still niche distro to learn how to install their VPN (as someone would have to do if they were using it on their own, and not just following the commands of an internet stranger without researching it).
While I do think it’s generally good to challenge yourself and be willing to learn new things to avoid learned helplessness, realistically all of us have limited time, and depending on someone’s goals and inclination, learning more in-depth sysadmin skills may not be desirable, and different people have different tolerance levels for troubleshooting; some find it fun, other may find it infuriating.
As an example, a professional musician who wants to switch to linux likely would prefer not to have learn the intricacies of Jack, how it’s replaced by Pipewire, how to configure the kernel to perform best for low-latency tasks, ensuring their user profile in the correct admin group to access the correct permissions, etc. They very likely instead just want to get back to making music so they can do their job without having to divert from their main task just to learn how to go back to doing their main task.
I think it’s quite reasonable that some people may prefer the most direct path to the tasks they normally perform, and may become frustrated at having to learn a totally new skill set to go back to performing their original task.
Far from it tbh, I’m mostly a newb in Linux wizardry too. Everything I learned from linux is by making mistakes and learning from those. If you go in with the expectation to never making any compromise or touching anything its not realistic imo. I thought this is the perfect opportunity to show how it’s done in case someone is looking for the way.
I had multiple failed attempts with non immutable/ rolling releases before, they do break from my experience and the frustration that comes from those broken promises might lead to the frustrating Linux experience you described more so than stating realistic expectations. I’m not trying to trying to show that Linux is bad or complicated, I’m just trying to say, you learned windows for decades to make it yours, you have to learn a couple of things for Linux to do the same. Thinking different is not realistic.
If you go in with the expectation to never making any compromise or touching anything its not realistic imo.
I agree, but I would argue it doesn’t really make sense for someone to recommend a distro that is more likely to need tinkering and research over one that is more likely to not need much intervention, especially to someone who is averse to needing too much tinkering.
Immutable distros have great promise, and I believe in the future they will become the standard, but right now their potential benefits aren’t likely to be realized by most average users yet, as the ecosystem isn’t quite ready for them to be as easy as a normal distro is currently, IMHO.
It’s kind of the opposite. Bazzite pretty much just works. It doesn’t need tinkering, and in fact many people who consider themselves “power users” seem to take issue with this because they want to tinker.
The reality, of course, is that it’s absolutely possible to tinker, it’s just done slightly different sometimes.
But you 100% do not need to tinker with anything.
From what I understand It doesn’t generally need tinkering as long as everything you need is a flatpak. I also read that it can require tinkering to install 3rd party printer drivers.
I mean we are kinda splitting hairs at this point, would you rather check, how to install something on a system that doesn’t break, or check how to restore your system that broke from you installing something once the next major update came along. This happened to me before and from my experience that’s exactly where the stability of immutable Distros shine.
Both can be argued for and against, I’m not saying one is better than the other.
If I were op I’d probably go cachyOS keep my eyes out on major e.g. fedora release updates and make at least manually important backups of the home folder. Just learn the feeling of Linux for a while. Given that OP stated they have little patience for fiddeling I’m sure they will come around to stable Debian or immutable releases eventually.
OP should go with Bazzite if they’re going immutable since they specifically mentioned gaming
He also stated a distro good for software development hence why I mentioned Aurora. Both would work
I’d recommend a glibc edition of Void. Dev tools and libraries aregenerally up to date; there are exceptions like some zig related stuff but you can generally work around such issues with anyzig. Also has a framework for custom builds via xbps-src in the package repo. Packagw management is very easy via xbps, and purging obsolete packages is trivial.
