Operating Systems

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 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.

I've been on Manjaro for 3 years, honestly love it, it's treated me great for gaming and given me so little to have to fix that my wife has also been running it for 2 years.

I use Pop!_OS and have been happy with it for the last couple years or so.

A very simple, almost stock setup of Arch + KDE.

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

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

I'm currently running Nobara and I really vibe with the Gnome desktop and Fedora in general. However, I recently installed Linux Mint for my girlfriend's gaming rig and I was surprised by how lightweight and responsive it felt. It was also dead simple to use during the entire setup process and I can absolutely see how you'd never need to enter a terminal if you didn't want to. If I ever have a reason to leave Nobara, I'm definitely going to go with Mint!

Ubuntu's done. Use Mint now.

Does StreamOS count?

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've been running Linux Mint for a few years now and it's been really good for me. Runs games through Steam and Lutris about as good as I've had it.

I've also run other distros like Pop! and Fedora here and there but they seem to give me more issues.

I've been evaluating NixOS to make sure I can run games on it. I've only tried a machine with Intel graphics so far, but I see that AMD and Nvidia drivers are packaged. It seems convenient now that I've figured out the setup.

Vulkan is set up out of the box.

It's necessary to enable 32-bit DRI support by adding this line to /etc/nix/configuration.nix:

hardware.opengl.driSupport32Bit = true;

To use Lutris install the package and use its UI to install runners. I didn't have to configure any extra libraries to get Battle.net running. You can configure the "system wine" that Lutris sees, and extra libraries your games might need like this:

home.packages = with pkgs; [
  (lutris.override {
    extraLibraries =  pkgs: [
      # List library dependencies here
    ];
    extraPkgs = pkgs: [
      wine-staging
    ];
  })
];

Those lines go in a Home Manager config file, like ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix. That installs Lutris, and any listed dependencies at the same time.

NixOS does not put dependencies in the file paths where programs usually look for them. That traditional directory structure is called the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, or FHS. But Nix packages can create a virtual FHS where needed, and that is what the Lutris package does. That lets software that isn't built for Nix work, like Lutris' Wine runners. That means that for games to access libraries those libraries must be listed in that extraLibraries option so that they are included in the FHS.

32-bit libraries are in pkgs.pkgsi686Linux.* if you need them.

I haven't tried Steam yet, but I think it has an option similar to the extraLibraries one for Lutris.

A nice feature of NixOS is that if you add a bunch of libraries to your config trying to get a game to work, those libraries are automatically unlinked when you remove them from your config so your system stays nice and tidy.

EOS / Arch.

I use Arch with KDE. I've been daily driving Arch coming up a decade now and despite testing various other distros on laptops over the years, I haven't seen anything yet to tempt me away. I heart Pacman.

Personally I find most of the laziness factor with Arch is a non issue once you get installation done. My previous install was 6 years old and the only reason I reinstalled was because I got a new PC.

That said if an installer is a must-have then I would recommend Endeavour OS or Manjaro for best of both worlds.

A little background for context. I’m gamer and professional software developer. I’ve been dual booting windows 11 and pop os for awhile. Windows for games and pop os for everything else… Over the weekend I switched to NixOS. This came with a learning curve which I spent a day or so learning. I’ve been getting the hang of it now and I love it so much. I definitely recommend it. I managed to get steam working without much fiddling and my emulators. It’s been great! The benefits for programming are obvious. Allowing me to basically stop using docker dev containers.

I completely removed windows from my computer and I’m very happy.

I've been running Pop for a bit over a year now and am (mostly) satisfied with it. The only issues I had were due to kernel updates, it would cause flickering on my screen and (like someone else mentioned) had to revert to an older kernel until the situation was resolved.

I'm really comfortable with mint cinemon

I've been on arch with swaywm for about 3 years now, have't really had to tinker with it at all after getting everything set up. Mesa drivers with amd cards are awesome. Biggest issues I've had were not with gaming but with proprietary codecs in firefox or getting MS Teams to play nice for work. Other than that once in a blue moon the gpg keys for pacman may need to be updated before running the regular update command. I don't recommend sway for everyone, i just find it convenient for me, gnome or kde is fine too.

Fedora, KDE spin. Been working great, and I'm kinda liking DNF

Tumbleweed, but waiting for VanillaOS 2.0

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 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.

I've been using base Debian with KDE Plasma for the past month or two and gaming on it, and it's worked really well, about as good as any other distro I've used. I always eventually end up back on Debian regardless of what I try using. I could technically get a better experience on rolling release because of mesa and kernel updates, but I've never noticed much of a difference, ymmv depending on hardware though.

They recently started supporting closed-source firmware officially so there's no longer that notorious hunt to find the right .iso just to get your wifi and nvidia GPUs to work.

As a former Arch user, Fedora has been so amazing for me. It's so rock solid and simple to use. It also has great software compatibility because lots of software is distributed as rpm due to businesses using CentOS and RHEL.

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

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.

Not at all an expert, but I'm doing fine with most games on Manjaro. Most things worked out of the box with Proton on Steam. I also liked Arch before I got old and lazy, and Manjaro seems to be a good way to get most of the benefits of Arch with lazier upkeep.

I'm on Arch right now, migrated to it after almost 2 years on Fedora. I'll probably still go back and forth between the two.

I use a steam deck.

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

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

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.

Ubuntu 20.04lts

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

Running Ubuntu 22.04

I've been using PopOS for about 3 years now. I found it easier to get Steam to work compared to Linux Mint (can't remember why though). I've never tried Ubuntu or non-Debian based systems.

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.

I use Arch, but I have two graphics cards in my system and I run a stripped windows VM for any game that I want ray tracing or 4k in.

My arch setup has an older Nvidia Quadro card and can run everything on like medium settings, but my virtual machines have a 3080ti. I didn't want the wear and tear on my 3080ti just to watch YouTube or play indie games that don't need the horsepower, but I still want to try stuff like portalRTX or stable diffusion and the like that needs an enthusiast graphics card.

This to me is the best of both worlds. I can run the VM in the background so I can use my desktop(connected to the TV) as a media center and have cyberpunk playing totally hidden and streaming to my steam deck for ray tracing maxxed settings.

Hell I even play Half life:Alex VR in a virtual machine and stream it over wifi to my Oculus quest.