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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Does StreamOS count?
Sure does!
I’m really comfortable with mint cinemon
Fedora, KDE spin. Been working great, and I’m kinda liking DNF
Love Fedora, soooort of regret using KDE. Once I started messing with it the way it encourages you to it kept having moments where it totally crashed and the taskbar equivalent wouldn’t move, windows wouldn’t move, or anything else… made me feel like resource-strapped open source projects should stick to a coherent vision over trying to support every style of desktop interface under the sun.
It seems alright - but absolutely bonkers that there’s no GUI method to upgrade releases on KDE, especially with the way Fedora releases work
I mean I usually update via terminal anyway. But makes me feel second class when something so basic isn’t supported.
But I really don’t care for GNOME, and nothing else supports Wayland. So what can I do.
Endeavour OS (PC and Laptop) and Steam OS. Very happy with both.
I’m using Manjaro KDE - working well with Steam Games with Proton for must games.
Im running good old Ubuntu with gnome. I mostly play terraria, minecraft I and Bethesda rpgs these days so it does everything I need.
I’m starting to realize that *buntu LTS with snaps and flatpaks should work pretty well… the OS itself is kept updated until what… 2032 with Ubuntu Pro I think? And the flatpaks keeps their stuff up to date on their own. Pretty nice combo, shouldn’t have to reinstall any time soon (unless I want to try something new…)
On my gaming desktop, I am using Fedora currently with the Awesome WM. That might change though with all the RH stuff going on. On my gaming laptop I switch between Arch and Void with Qtile on both.
I use Arch with XFCE. Yes, it took a while to get running properly, and just the other day I went to print something and realized cups hadn’t even been installed yet, so I spent 15 minutes getting my printer up and running, so I totally get that it’s not for everyone. I like it because of the detailed wiki with great tutorials and instructions on getting things working, like the one I used to get a nextcloud installation working on my computer. And I like it because of the extensive Arch User Repository, so I know I can install whatever I like. I mostly just play Stardew Valley and trackmania on it. I’ve used Manjaro before and enjoyed that too, and it comes with all the benefits of arch.
I installed Mint on my friends computer, which works totally fine, but I don’t know how it is for gaming; she definitely doesn’t game.
Arch really is a documentation project rather than a distro, their wiki tops most everything out there :)
Seriously, ArchWiki has taught me most of what I know about Linux.
Yeah, that’s basically where you go if you ever have some obscure problem, it’s incredibly useful really.
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.
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. :)
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.
Pop!_OS. It just works, it’s easy, and it makes me enjoy using my computer.
I’m starting to want to try Pop… they seem to have quite a few fans around here!
It is one of the simplest ones to play games on
Yup, Pop!_OS is virtually flawless for me on my Nvidia laptop. It can run every game that I play for hours with no crashing including Tears of the Kingdom on the yuzu emulator.
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?
NixOS, not going to lie to you and say it’s always easy to get games running on it though. Sometimes it’s a complete pain in the ass.
I would take a look at pop_os. It’s Ubuntu, but without Snap and a closer to mainline kernel version. They have a lot of great usability tweaks too.
I run Arch BTW. I just like to make things difficult :)
I installed Kubuntu… I couldn’t be assed to resize my efi partition to a gig and disrupt windows… Done that in the past with varying results. Wish they didn’t require it to be that big tbh.
I do miss Arch… wouldn’t surprise me if I’ll install it again soon.
Kubuntu works. But where’s the fun in that? :)
It’s like… I installed it, messed with lutris a bit (needed a newer version) and installed Diablo 4, everything works… and now I feel like I’m missing out somehow. :)
You’re missing out on chasing the dragon for the latest and greatest. :)
Arch is fine once you get it setup, but I feel like the nerd in us can never just leave it be. I’ll probably go back to pop_os next major release they have.
Sometimes I wish I had a machine dedicated to nothing but reinstalling different distros. :)
It can get a bit disrupting to do it on your main rig too often.
Use a VM?
I know, I do that too but it’s just not quite the same for some reason.
VMs are great for that
