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Removing Windows. Choosing a new daily driver for a gaming PC (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by cyborganism@lemmy.ca to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world

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For context:

I've been using Linux since 2000. Started with Mandrake Linux (Helios?), then I moved to Ubuntu in 2004 and alternated between Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE for a time until I settled with Kubuntu for the last few years.

Ubuntu has been rock solid for me for the past 20 years and I'm used to the APT package management and Ubuntu/Debian environment overall with all the various services and configs, setups and release cycles, etc. The stability allows me to enjoy my spare time playing games and doing other important tasks instead of troubleshooting my system and figuring out how to make something work. Ubuntu has been awesome in that regard.

I've also been dual-booting this whole time with Windows. Gaming on Linux simply wasn't up to snuff up until very recently with Steam working on Wine and Proton for the Steam Deck and Bottles, which makes running Windows games on Linux almost comparable to Windows.

Windows 10 was a great OS, except for a few flaws and privacy issues with the introduction of mandatory Microsoft accounts and One Drive integration. But you could work around those things. It was supposed to be the last Windows we would have to install with perpetual rolling releases, but apparently they changed their minds about that. Windows 11 was released and reading about it gives me nightmares. Using it for work also has been an incredibly buggy and frustrating experience. The invasion of privacy, data collection, screen monitoring and AI integration plus the additional advertisement are all reasons for which I will never install this OS on my personal computer. And some of these features have started to leak into Windows 10.

So I've made up my mind. I'm wiping Windows from my PC and will be running Linux only. I believe it's become good enough to use as a daily driver for a home gaming desktop and for productivity. But... Which distribution should I choose?

The dilemma:

There's been a whole slew of new Linux distributions that have come out lately. Some have been early in the Linux gaming aspect such as POP! OS. Others have tried to become a solid replacement for the default immutable Steam OS such as Bazzite. And there are now some pretty awesome sounding gaming-focused distros such as Nobara. And that's on top of the various existing Ubuntu flavors, Fedora's spins, OpenSuse and the many Arch variants that almost seem to pop up monthly.

I've been shopping around for a distribution to become my daily driver from now until who knows when. I'm expecting to stick to that distro as long as possible. Here's some of the things that I am looking for:

Not immutable : I find this to be adapted for devices like tablets, IoT devices and handhelds instead of an actual PC. I'll need to be able to change my system configs as I please and an Immutable distro seems like a pain in the butt to deal with that.
Rock solid : This is the most important aspect and is why a lot of the Arch or other bleeding edge distros won't do. (With some exceptions)
Hardware support : The second most important aspect. I think that's pretty much covered by most popular distros, but some have better support than others. Especially for ease of getting the right drivers. (Especially for NVidia GPUs, or gaming controllers and devices.)
Performance : Most popular distros offer ok performance, but some have been enhanced to provide improved performance according to the hardware. This is a very big nice to have, especially for gaming.
Desktop choice : I'm really not a big fan of Gnome 3. It seems nobody really is. Many Gnome based distros come with quality of life extensions out of the box to fix that. Not a big fan of GTK apps' UI ergonomics either. That's why I prefer KDE over Gnome or Cinnamon. Budgie seems like a great alternative as well. Also having a PowerToys-style FancyZones tiling system is a big big plus (KDE has that OOTB)
Applications : The thing I love about Ubuntu is the amount of available applications in their repos. I'm hoping to have the same availability in my next distribution.
Online community/support : Having a great online support community is very important. The more users, the larger the knowledge base and the easier you can find answers to questions to troubleshoot problems.
Online services integration : Optional but a very nice to have would be to have integration with Google apps like GMail, Calendar, Keep and Google Drive to name a few.
Customization : As funny as this sounds, I want to use the desktop in its most vanilla form as possible with as few customisations as possible. Over time I found that having extra customisations like extensions, applets, etc tends to break things because of lack of support over time. It's also more difficult to troubleshoot when very few people are using them.

The distributions that ended up meeting my requirements are the following in order of preferences :

Kubuntu : So far its been working great for gaming but I think there could be some performance improvements. It's my first choice because I'm just so comfortable with it already. Zero effort, but with some compromises in performance.
Nobara with KDE Plasma : This looks solid and ticks all the requirements. I think there's some amount of learning to do for using YUM/RPM packages and to understand some of the customisations, but I think this effort will be minimal. I am concerned about long term support however since this is a fairly new distro supported by individuals.
Ubuntu Budgie : I really like this DE, very simple but elegant. But, like Kubuntu, I don't know how it's going to fare performance wise. And I don't know what kind of tools there are to configure gaming controllers, etc.
Ubuntu (I'm willing to deal with Gnome 3 for simplicity's sake)
Fedora KDE Plasma spin : Everybody is raving about Fedora so maybe I'll give it a shot as an Ubuntu replacement.
~~Manjaro~~ Endeavour OS with KDE desktop :Possibly the only Arch distro I'm willing to install because they focus on stability, however learning about the packaging system and configs/environment feels like a drag. But with the great community and documentation I'm willing to make an effort for this one.

What are your thoughts on this? What are your recommendations based on my requirements?

EDIT:

Thank you very much for everyone's input. I've spent a good part of the day installing distros in a VM to check out some of your suggestions and reading more about my choices.

I can't believe I am saying this, but I am reevaluating my choice of using Kubuntu. After some reading I have found out that Ubuntu and it's flavors will not be supporting flatpaks starting in 23.04. And there are several known problems with snap, such as serious performance issues. A task that would take 1-5s as a regular .deb installed app, would take up to 10 times that time to complete. Canonical is also working to modify apt to use snaps instead of installed .deb packages. They are aggressively pushing snaps to a point where they'll want to replace the majority of the software with snaps eventually.

Yeah there's security features built-in and all, which flatpaks don't necessarily have. And the security is tighter around Canonical's snap repos compared to flathub for example. But I don't know if I'm ready to move to that new way of doing things. And Canonical is going against what the community wants.

I don't know. I think I'm more confused now that I was when I started...

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

For gaming you want the latest updates. Of all the major distros, only Arch, Suse and Fedora provide that. Arch requires you to learn to about and fix breakage. Fedora has a gaming spin which works like a Steam Deck: Bazzite.

I've distro hopped between 10+ distros, and Bazzite has been the only one that gave me a rock solid stability and latest drivers simultaneously. It's not purely immutable, Fedora calls it Atomic.

I suggest you try it, and tell me if there was anything you couldn't do.

Also: I don't support Canonical's walled garden

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

I hear a lot of people say that you need bleeding edge distros for gaming. But the Steam Deck uses and old Debian release and it works just fine. Granted they have their own proprietary drivers and all.

Gaming on Ubuntu works just fine. Others reported using Debian stable too and it's fine. I don't think you need to be bleeding edge. In fact, I think it might bring instability. You gotta make a compromise between the two in my opinion.

I have to add, regarding Canonical's walled garden, that's not necessarily a bad thing for the vast majority of people out there. It might even be a big advantage, espeically for non-tech people.

I've enjoyed Ubuntu distros for 20 years. But it's Canonical's attitude that's off putting.

By the way, I've tried Bazzite and it's too bloated with too much stuff OOTB. But it's great though otherwise. I'm a bit skeptical about immutable distros however.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Steam OS was Debian based in the Steam Machine era, Steam Deck uses an immutable Arch based image, and it's not rolling release. They moved to Arch because Debian took ages to update. Now they release quick and stable updates, That's the ideal compromise.

Regular Arch is bleeding edge, Debian is old. Fedora sits in the middle. And Bazzite makes it rock solid.

About the Bloat: after installing, you are greeting by a first run wizard, where you choose what gets installed. If you don't install anything else, you are left with KDE & Steam, nothing more. Where's the boat?

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[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

This might not help, but I'd seriously recommend reconsidering Arch derivatives.

I've been 100% Linux for almost 2 years now, with Garuda Linux on my primary desktop and Fedora on my laptop. I've had zero major issues with Garuda (and very few minor ones, to the point I can't think of any specific problems in the moment), gaming performance has been fantastic, and the availability of software in the AUR is nothing short of amazing.

In my experience, keeping up with updates is not at all an impediment to use, and I've yet to have stability issues of any kind. I've been seriously considering replacing Fedora with Garuda on my laptop, the experience has been so smooth.

Just stay away from Manjaro. I feel like Arch fan-boys being dicks and people recommending Manjaro to new Linux converts are the only two problems with Arch (or at least its derivite distros, I haven't raw dogged vanilla Arch before).

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[–] LargeMarge@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

+1 for Fedora KDE. I've been daily driving it for 2 years now and its given me very little problems. I stopped using Windows about 5 years ago now and haven't looked back, and after distro hopping for a bit, I'm pretty satisfied with my experience with Fedora. Initial setup can take a little bit because theres some repos you need to add/enable to get nonfree software (including video/audio codecs that basically every website ever uses), but once you do that its pretty solid. You get pretty up-to-date software without it being so new that things break after every other update. It strikes a nice balance.

However, if you're familiar and comfortable with Ubuntu, you'll likely be just fine sticking with that. You probably won't notice huge performance differences between distros. It sounds like the bigger concern is if you're safe to just nuke Windows and I'm not going to be the one to discourage you from doing that. Up to you if you want to try something new or not.

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[–] zecg@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Nobara is nice.

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[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I just started using Bazzite. It's my second attempt at a Linux gaming setup (Pop_OS was first, Bazzite is working out much better).

What made you lean away from Bazzite, if you don't mind expanding on that?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's an immutable OS. That's not what I'm looking for. I find it too restrictive. Plus it comes loaded with way too much gaming software. I don't need all that stuff. I'd rather install as I need.

[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 days ago

Thank you for the reply.

I’m just getting into these things. And immutability seems like a double edged sword.

[–] maxwellfire@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Re the flatpak issue, what you linked is just saying that flatpak won't be a default installed program and packages provided by flatpaks won't be officially supported by Ubuntu support as of 23.03. I don't think this effects your use of Ubuntu in any way. If you want to use flatpaks, just install the program. It will still be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories. 23.04 was over a year ago. I still use flatpak without a problem on my kubuntu 24.04 system. It's just a one time thing to do sudo apt-get install flatpak and maybe a second package for KDE's flatpak packagekit back end and it's like canonical never made that decision.

The push of snaps instead of debs is a bit more concerning because it removes the deb as an option in the official repositories. But as of right now I think only Mozilla software has this happening? If your timeline is 5-10 years though, this may be more of an issue depending on how hard canonical pushes snaps and how large their downsides remain

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

Great reply! Thank you for the clarification.

What's your opinion on Canonical's behavior with snaps? Like having Mozilla software exclusively as snaps? Are people making too much of a big deal?

[–] style99@lemm.ee 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm a die-hard Ubuntu fan, but just use whatever works for you.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

Same. But I've been questioning my loyalty lately because of their obsession with Snap. Canonical has been increasingly imposing their business decisions on their users and it's a bit off putting.

I'm considering moving to Fedora or maybe even OpenSuse. Possibly even Endeavor! I can't believe I'd ever consider an Arch based distro.

Honestly this research has left me even more indecisive about what to install. But I have an increasingly big feeling that I might be ditching Ubuntu. I don't think anyone should be messing with APT in such a way that it would end up installing snap packages instead of debian packages. This is too much.

They should simply provide the option to use snaps to users in the app store and not enforce it like with some apps, such as Firefox and Thunderbird.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You're wrong about immutable, nixos is extremely configurable, I'd say even more than a normal distro

https://www.howtogeek.com/why-i-use-nixos-and-why-you-should-too/

check them out, I actually think there's no downside these days, I say this with a customized down to every detail setup that I moved from arch, no reason not to go immutable these days if you're new to linux especially

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Since your main priority is stability, I'd suggest either Debian Stable or Mint. Debian Stable is rock solid, but the software is ancient; Mint is a good compromise. They both have a nice package selection.

The reason why I don't recommend Ubuntu itself is snaps. Huge downloads with lots of wasted disk space, wasted memory, less user control, mismatching themes, larger loading times... urgh.

Desktop environment is such a personal matter that it's hard to say which one would be the best for you. I'm a big fan of MATE - it's small, it's nice, you can reasonably customise it without new extensions or applets. Xfce would be also a good performance-focused choice.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I agree about the Snaps. But isn't it kind of the same deal with Flatpaks? The whole objective is to deliver the application with all its dependencies packaged in, and running in a pseudo fenced environment. So of course it will take up more storage space. The speed issue is because some of these are compressed to take up less space. It's a compromise.

Worst case, you can disable snaps easily. But, I've found using Snaps and Flakpaks somewhat easier, especially for when it comes to removing the software. I dunno. I might stick with Kubuntu or even Ubuntu Budgie. (Still testing some distros out in a VM.)

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The problem is that Ubuntu overuses snaps, even when there are completely acceptable .deb alternatives, that will perform consistently better; typically distros using appimage and flatpak don't do the same.

That said if this isn't a big deal for you Ubuntu might be still an option. As the saying goes, better the devil that we know.

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[–] Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've been thinking the same thing lately, and based on my recent Linux usage on my other machines, I would probably pick something Fedora based with KDE. I've been using Arch on my "work" laptop and it's been really fine and fun, but also a LOT of work (especially when I break something myself). Having a ton of very up to date packages to install, plus the AUR and Flatpaks to shore up anything that might be missing makes for a very "compatible" system. And of course, the freedom and courage to set it up just exactly the way I want.

I used Linux Mint for several years, it's the one I can say I'm most comfortable with. If I had to set up another low power laptop or a computer for a family member I'd either use that or MX Linux. They just don't break. I have also tried Fedora for a short time, and it made me start liking KDE Plasma, and it was honestly the easiest one to set up for Steam out of the box. And it had more in variety and more up to date packages than Mint, and also easily augmentable with Flatpaks for what's missing. OpenSUSE was similar, but the package manager was excruciatingly slow, and there were no good mirrors for fast downloads, dropped that very quickly.

Although, overall from your past experience in the post and other responses in the thread, I think you'll do just fine with Kubuntu. You're already plenty familiar with how to use it and how to set it up the way you need it to. I've been considering Nobara for my gaming PC as basically a better Fedora, but I'm afraid of projects with so few people taking care of them fizzling out in a couple years, and it's not as simple as just replacing it with base Fedora if that happens. So yeah, my personal choices would be Arch, Mint or Fedora. But my case is not the same as yours.

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