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!
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
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. :)
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.
Got to love the wife rating :D
But yeah, I had manjaro on an old chromebook at University, it was pretty nice!
It’s funny, she’s become more of a Linux evangelist than me, she really went all in.
Sounds like a keeper! :)
She certainly is <3 celebrating 10 years this year
Good for you guys!
Thank you!
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.
A very simple, almost stock setup of Arch + KDE.
X11 or Wayland? I find games like csgo stutter on Wayland.
I used Manjaro with Wayland last year and had no issues at all playing games.
Wayland. I’ve had no issues, but then I don’t play CS:GO. However I’ve played Cyberpunk on ultra with no issues, for example.
Make sure you’re running the sdl environment variable that makes them native on Wayland, in my experience when that’s on it makes my games that are native significantly more performant.
Pop!_OS ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ
My last two laptops have been System76 models. The first time I didn’t really love Pop!_OS but the most recent laptop I gave it another shot and it’s come a long way. Really enjoying it overall (still prefer KDE over gnomey stuff tho, lol)
Pop!_OS for life!
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.
I went to dual boot with mint, and I’m really enjoying it so far
Why? Works fine
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?
What are you using to run the VM?
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.
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. :]
Are they providing the arch based version for download now? I was under the impression they’ve only set it up for steam decks but not for general use?
According to the website the public release is based off of Debian still.
Yeah, thought so. Hope they’ll publish their newer versions as well soon.
I tried HoloISO and had pretty mixed results. I’ve had much better luck with ChimeraOS.
The devs on ChimeraOS are excellent too, they take in community feedback and are very helpful.
Ah cool!
Not something I’d use now then but still neat that you can get it :)
I’m really comfortable with mint cinemon
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.
Came here to say exactly this. I’ve hopped distros for years, Fedora is the longest I’ve stuck to a single distro and it’s been fantastic.
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 really should have known better than to expect a consensus in a topic like this 😁 Ask 10 linuxheads which disto is the best and you’ll get 12 different answers
Well that’s what’s fun though isn’t it? :D
I ended up installing Kubuntu 20.04 for now… I was going to install Pop but they require a 1GB EFI partition and I didn’t have the patience to move my Windows partition around to resize it so… Kubuntu it is.
Knowing myself I’ll probably distro hop in a few days again.
Trying out different distros are almost as much fun as actually using them (probably more fun at times!)
I think your next task is to start modding Skyrim so you can have the ultimate experience of spending more time setting something up only to spend a fraction of that time actually using it. XD
That or setting up a retro gaming sysgem… gathering and scraping roms, setting up a nice frontend with cover art and everything just to never touch it again when it’s done. :)
How dare you call me out like this.
Been there, done that eh? :D
I spent a few days trying to get modded skyrim working on linux, but just couldn’t get the nexus mod manager working :(
I gave up, so I’ll probably end up trying again in a few months when someone I know IRL brings it up again
If I were doing it on some spare PC maybe I’d find it fun too but I rely too much on my main workstation to just constantly reinstall stuff on it, and dual booting looks like a risk/hassle too. I am prepared for the inevitable day I take the plunge into linux for good, hopefully the number of distros doesn’t triple by then ^^
Don’t worry!
They’ll quadruple…:)
It definitely feels like they have in the past decade. When I last used Linux everyone would just dump Ubuntu on you, give you a nice pat on the head and wish you good luck. PopOS got big at one point but I think there were some issues when LTT tried it that gave it a bad rep. I haven’t even heard of 90% of distros in this thread.