tldr:
What reliable, up-to-date, linux distro would you recommend a gaming softwareengineer and privacy enthusiast?
Full text:
Hey all,
I know this is the age old question, but I would like to ask it anyway.
I am currently switching from windows to linux on my main pc and am on the hunt for a fitting distro. I am a software developer and used to working with wsl, debian servers, etc. I selfhost a bunch of things and know my way around the linux commandline and would call me privacy enthusiast that uses a lot of FLOSS software. I also do occasional gaming but I guess that should work on any distro with enough work.
My thought regarding a few distros:
- I like to live on the edge of time and therefore have the feeling that debian based distros (although being very stable) are too “old” for my liking.
- Ubuntu - Canonical is out for me.
- I also looked at fedora, and liked it, but after reading more and knowing it is backed by IBM and that is US based I am not too sure anymore. I ideally would want to have something independent. Although being backed by a company promises continuous work in the future (with the risk of becoming bad).
- OpenSUSE tumbleweed seems promising (german origin!) but also quite intimidating as it is apparently mostly targeted towards power users and I am not sure if it fits an all purpose desktop pc.
- Arch based distros seem great as it contains all the newest packages and is infinitifly customizable. But the KISS nature of arch and the (as far as I understood) high effort to get everything running is a bit intimidating when switching from windows. But I also do like the fact that it ships with only the bare minimum and not anything bloated.
Further more I somehow think that using a base distro (in comparison to a fork of a fork…) is more ideal as they receive updates, etc faster. But that is just a feeling and I couldn’t argue more precisely about it.
Regarding a DE I am definitely going KDE.
I would be very happy for some tips, opinions or pointers in the right direction to continue and finally get rid of windows… Well at least mostly. I guess i will keep it in dual boot as I do play a few games that unfortunately won’t run on linux.
Thanks in advance already!
How about CachyOS?
Tumbleweed absolutely is an all purpose distribution. Most distributions are. Very few are specialised enough to make a difference.
And they really mostly all install the same thing in the end. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Just pick something that’s not obscure and that has a release cycle that works for you.
For kde, I’d say that the best maintained ones are suse, fedora and kubuntu, in that order (although with the latter you still get Ubuntu, so ymmv).
Doesn’t seem like anyone mentioned it yet, so I’m gonna chime in: Bluefin-DX by Universalblue might be worth a look.
It’s a special developer version of their already interesting and rock solid atomic distro, meaning it’s not rly meant that you do much with the OS part of the filesystem (I’d recommend you read up on it, since I xan’t explain it that well) It has VSCode preinstalled (you can replace it with VSCodium tho with a simple command IIRC) and allows you to doing up virtually endless Linux environments where you install your additional programmes that aren’t available as a Flatpak (you can still use them in the CLI, DW)
I’m on bazzite which I believe is like a sibling or derivative of bluefin. All based on atomic fedora. Atomic means the base system is immutable, which should help with stability. As mentioned elsewhere, for bleeding edge you use flatpak or distrobox. Its been a pleasure to use, I’m very happy.
Based on your write-up, one of the Arch based distros is likely your best bet. My strong recommendation would be EndeavourOS. It is awesome.
If you use EOS, install both the current stable kernel and the LTS one. Use current day-to-day. In the very rare instance that you have a kernel or driver issue, boot into LTS.
Fedora is a great distro. As a non-American, I would say that you do not need to be so focussed on either IBM or the “American” control over Fedora.
1 - Fedora has a great community and a strong commitment to Free Software. Independence from Red Hat’s commercial agenda is the very reason it exists.
2 - Even in a worst case scenario, you are not locked into Fedora and switching is low risk and easy. There is little downside to enjoying Fedora now even if something was to happen later (however unlikely).
3 - modern Linux distros are almost all built from the exact same base elements. Fedora is really no more exposed than anything else.
4 - Red Hat is a driving force behind half the technology at the heart of whatever distro you will end up on including SystemD, Wayland, Pipewire, Glibc, GCC, and the Linux Kernel itself. To repeat point number 3, you are no less exposed to the influence of IBM/Red Hat on Ubuntu or even Arch.
I mean, you could use something like Chimera Linux that avoids SystemD, GCC, and Glibc. But you would still be using Wayland, Pipewire, and of course the kernel. And Chimera does not sound what you are looking for.
I would recommend EOS but I would not avoid Fedora for the reasons you cite.
Good job eliminating Ubuntu.
Seems like you answered your own question. If a gaming software engineering privacy enthusiast isn’t a power user, I don’t know what is.
Also, Tumblweed really isn’t intimidating. Give it a try.
Well from what you’re saying I’d go for something like EndeavourOS.
Based on arch, usable out of the box but without much preinstalled so that you can do your own mix. Manjaro is a bit similar but with more preinstalled (and maybe more bugs from what I read).
I NEVER recommend Manjaro. They hold back packages for “security/stability” reasons which is antithetical to Arch’s structure. This can cause stability issues (happened to me) and even breaking your system.
Endeavouros is useless, there is no reason to pick it over Arch. It offers no valuable additional features.
EndeavourOS is almost indistinguishable from Arch once installed. On that we agree.
The idea that getting it there has no value is something we can disagree on. You do not have to agree with me. That is not a problem.
I just installed EndeavourOS on a 2020 T2 MacBook Air the other day. All the hardware worked flawlessly after the point and click install. Read the vanilla Arch instructions for that hardware sometime.
EndeavourOS offers a path to installing Arch that is painless and offers a high chance of success. It configures the system well. It is easy to recommend.
Same kernel as Arch, 99.9% of the software is installed from the same repos. AUR is enabled out of the box. Just works. No brainer.
And even though Arch only adds about a dozen optional packages on top of Arch, some of them are pretty useful.
Wanted to just chip in and agree that EndeavourOS deserves enormous praise for how much it gets up and running for you straight off the bat.
I run Linux on a 2012 MacBook Pro, more as a hobby than as my main computer.
It’s about the only distro that actually near-enough just works on that particular Mac at this point, with Linux Mint a close second. If I install it from the live image then change my network settings to use WPA 2 security rather than WPA 3 then I have a fully working computer.
Most distros fail to even boot to a working live image on that Mac. And if they do, then I can’t for the life of me get the WiFi working after that.
Being “terminal centric” scared me off at first, but I finally realised how little you actually need to know to install software and keep it updated once you’re up and running.
It’s an amazing distro.
It offers a good installer, a decent out of the box setup, useful helper scripts, and a helpful community. That’s a lot more than Arch!
I’d just go Tumbleweed
Give NixOS a look-see. Takes a different approach to package management, but for an engineer that want’s customization abilities it’s probably one of the top choices. I don’t usually recommend this for newbies, but if you’re an engineer it won’t be too bad and simply using it may give you more skills to add to your repertoire when looking for work.
A lot of people put time into maintaining their dotfiles, but NixOS takes that idea to the infrastructure-as-code level when you use it as your daily driver.
ETA: in terms of gaming, with Wine/Proton + Steam/Lutris/Heroic pretty much any distro will be workable
This mentality that “Corporate backed stuff is bad” should be thrown out of the window. Alot of evil corporations have contributed to make Linux better for everyone.
Regardless, have you tried Debian Stable with Backports?
Have you looked at Linux Mint or other Ubuntu derivatives that have programs compatible with Ubuntu without all the scuff Ubuntu is known to do bad
Again, are you sure affiliations with IBM and Redhat makes Fedora worse? Can you justify this statement?
An even better question might be, what is present in Fedora that is not also found in Debian?
Is it RPM? Because RPM was Free Software and GPL licensed for over a decade already when the Arch Linux project was started. And of course, RPM is used in many other distros including the apparently totally European driven and unfettered SUSE distro.
Someone else mentioned it, but another vote for Aurora-dx (-dx for the developer version). It’ll give you the KDE experience without having to worry about your underlying system, leaving you time to work on software dev in a containerized environment of your choosing. Arch is great if you want to customize and tinker with everything, but given your parameters, I think not worrying about that bit will make your life easier as you focus on what’s more important to you. As long as you reboot your computer from time to time, you’ll always have the latest version and can rollback easily if something goes wrong.
And as is tradition with Linux, it’s not like you have to use whatever you decide forever. Distro hopping is a time-honored tradition!
I would recommend Arch, EndeavourOS or Garuda (awesome KDE gaming ed,) and a lot of peeps like CachyOS, mostly for their customized kernels/CPU optimizations. You can get CachyOS kernels inside of Garuda as well.
Cachyos convinced me to be arch based for the first time since 2010.
You sound like a perfect fit for Arch.
But arch seems so overwhelming in comparison to something user friendly like fedora :D And everytime I read something about arch, people complain about its complexity and their tendency to easily break things. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.
You can try void. It is something between arch and traditional distros.
It’s not all that different. Give it a try.
If arch seems interesting to you, you can ease setup using arch-install, and you have access to its magnificent wiki and aur that arch provides.
Otherwise fedora is pretty much on bleeding edge and has all the niceties too
Also Slackware current if you want kiss but without dependency resolution and stuff.
This is a totally real question that I am hoping you can educate me on.
Why would you want to avoid dependency resolution?
So, in slackware you get dependency resolution via sbopkg which installs any third party tool, but it’s done by maintaining a list of dependencies for each thing in a file, parsing that and then creating a DAG (directed acyclic graph) as needed. It keeps the system simple and manageable as most tools if not all are bash scripts.
Cons include having to manage it yourself and needing to install the full base to ensure you’ve got all the assumed packages installed.
There is no right and wrong answer tbh kinda just a matter of taste.
The thing that I like is that it since most third party packages are built from source I can force it to compile on my single stack of tools. I don’t need to have multiple versions of a library installed cause a package needed different version of something. Things stay fairly coherent. And maintaining a mirror becomes easy as you only need a couple of GB for a release compared to the terabytes needed for an Ubuntu as you’ll need all the various packages available to resolve all possible dependencies. This to me is doesn’t make sense from a maintenance PoV. Also your system doesn’t do things you’re not aware of.
Tho arch kinda does something similar by offloading third party packages to the aur. Where things are compiled by source mostly
Here’s some thoughts from someone in the community https://docs.slackware.com/slackware:package_and_dependency_management_shouldn_t_put_you_off_slackware
I hope my word salad makes sense!
I’ve pretty much run every distro under the sun. From arch to Gentoo to Debian and all of the middle ones. I then landed on endeavour OS and used it for around 3 years. It was great until it broke.
Every couple of months something breaks and I can never fix it. Nothing fixes it, even a timeshift restore. I just had to reinstall, and that was painful. I’ve then set out on a new hunt.
I’m now experimenting with Nobara OS as it is a better Fedora and comes with some goodies for gaming. It’s been ok so far besides this occasional random freezing that I can’t figure out. It goes away by either rebooting or switching to a tty and back to GUI. I’m still experimenting with it. If it works well, I’ll keep it, if not, my next experiment will be BazziteOS. I did try mint for a little bit, too, and liked it, but I wanted to explore more.
I cannot imagine what happened that required having to re-install EOS.
To be honest, I don’t remember exactly, but I remember that I couldn’t ever log into my desktop anymore. I was stuck on the login screen. I tried x11 since I was on Wayland, and it just wouldn’t let me log back in. It was like the plasma session dies then spits me back into the lock screen. I can log in in a tty, but not through GUI. I remember reinstalling the whole plasma desktop with everything and I was still not able to log in. It was like it got possessed or something. lol. I want to go back so badly, but I’m scared. I’m at a point of my life where I just want my computer to work. I don’t want to run around fixing things, hence why I’m even thinking of an immutable distro.
I like to live on the edge of time and therefore have the feeling that debian based distros (although being very stable) are too “old” for my liking.
Nowadays, with Flatpaks, so many software providing binaries, etc. this does not matter so much. If you want, you can even use something like Distrobox to have containers for tools using whatever bleeding edge distro you want, but still have a solid stable underpinning.
Debian also has more stuff than you would expect in backports. The main sticking point is yes, you’ll be stuck in Debian 12’s KDE until 13 comes out. But that might be sufficient for you?
(You could also use Debian Testing, which is basically a rolling release. But I’d consider stable first.)
