Started learning Linux with Manjaro a few years ago, but there were always stability issues pushing me away from daily driving. I found when I did have time to use my PC, it was largely for gaming, and when any issue presented and needed to be fixed it was a bit of a barrier to entry.
Because of biases I always leaned to Arch for that ‘bleeding edge’ and rolling updates, so when I gave Linux another shot long term a few months ago I went with EndeavourOS. Everything was rock solid but I found a lot of nitpicks and after a week or so my monitors wouldn’t wake from sleep… I of course don’t blame the OS as more than likely there was a log somewhere explaining my issue, but I really just want to enjoy playing games after a long day.
So I gave up on my faux dream of living on the edge and instead installed Pop_OS!, and to my pleasant surprise it has been rock solid and performant to boot! My preconceived biases against Debian and it’s derivatives drove me to borderline tribalism. Flatpak has remedied worries of outdated packages, and even if I did have an issue (bluetooth headphones defaulting to HSP not AD2P) I found the solution on the archwiki!
The beauty of this ecosystem is that Linux is Linux, we all benefit from improvements so long as they are made open and free, and no matter what flavor you choose, you’ll always be part of the family.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to the contributors who work tirelessly to make an open and free desktop a reality :)
I found the solution on the archwiki!
Never used Arch before in my life, but the wiki is great. Rising tide lifts all boats and all that jazz
Bless the Arch wiki and everyone who has contributed to it
Gentoo wiki is good too
Welcome to the club, good to have you.
Cookies and coffee are in the break room.
Welcome to the club, we’re glad to have you.
I wish manjaro wasn’t so highly recommended to new users. It kept me from fully migrating due to stability issues that I thought were representative of Linux as a whole, but just aren’t.
I agree. Manjaro gives people a poor impression of Linux in general and Arch in particular.
Manjaro was the first distro for me where everything worked out of the box and everything was stable. I used it for 2 years and now I’m on nobara.
I tried mint but wifi didn’t work, I tried Endeavor but wifi didn’t work and it ran and looked like shit. Tried Ubuntu but I didn’t like the name. Tried arch but I couldn’t set it up.
Good on you. It’s about finding what works for you, not what other people think it’s cool.
I’ve been playing with Linux for nearly 30 years and never used Arch or Gentoo for daily work. It’s fun to try, you learn a lot by tinkering, breaking and fixing stuff. But what you really need every day is a solid boring stable distro to get things done.
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Welcome 🙂. I always loved bleeding edge so Arch really suits me well. There’s probably a distro out there for everyone and you seemingly have found yours!
Your rationale for going Pop was my exact one. I knew I wanted the bleeding edge, but this was a device I was going to (mostly) daily drive. I wanted it to be reliable. And Pop fixed that for me and didn’t force my hand with shoving Snaps down my throat.
Glad to have another join the ranks!
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You know, I started with Pop! when I changed my gaming rig over a couple years ago. I always said I’d change over to something else, like Arch, which I use on other systems.
But Pop! has been surprisingly good. It’s a nice mix of stability and ability to swap out parts without issue. For example, I use the Liquorix kernel (similar goal to Arch’s Zen kernel) instead of the default Pop! kernel without any issue at all.
So I’ve just never changed it. I update of course but it’s the same original install it’s always been. Great experience.
If you’re gaming on Linux I can’t recommend Nobara enough. Optimized from the kernel out for gaming and based on Fedora. It autoinstalls graphics drivers on first boot, includes steam, lutris, proton, wine, and everything else you need to play out of the box. Also has Proton-Up, so you have a nice little easy GUI way to install the latest Proton versions. Developed by GloriousEggroll of GE-Proton fame.
For reference, I use a 3060 and play most games in 4K@144hz at medium-highest settings comfortably. I also run a second monitor which Nobara handles seemlessly, so good to go for Multi-Display setups too.
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I have been looking at Nobara. But I do wonder about impending issues with Fedora (on which it is based), and I also really like the custom version of Gnome that System76 worked out for Pop.
I use Proton-Up as well, and your performance sounds similar to mine.
What impending issues worry you?
Compared to almost all other distros, Arch is advanced in the way that it’s the simplest of them all. Nothing except the very basics are set up for you, so it’s tough to start with.
In my own use of Manjaro, I’ve found timeshift to be invaluable. If something breaks at a time when I can’t deal with fixing it, I timeshift to a known good install, and get back to fixing whatever broke in the up-to-date snapshot later.
PopOS is the one that finally made me a Linux fulltimer too, after 15ish years. Welcome!
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Swallowing your pride…
And giving up driver compatibility. And giving up Office. And giving up any kind of compatibility actually. And giving up Steam and Steam games.
And giving up Steam and Steam games.
Laughs in Proton
Laughs in ELF
Have you tried Linux in the last 5 years?
Right? Driver issues were a solid complaint well over 5 years ago, now it’s Windows that has much more driver problems than Linux systems do.
bluetooth works out of the box in most distros ive tried, so does my nvidia gpu, you can use office in a browser or one of its foss alternatives, and ive had no issues with steam either thanks to valve giving a fuck about linux. what are you going on about?
All of the already mentioned + office is a browser tool nowadays. I work in a company that uses MS stack, my only os is fedora and never have I had issues or missed anything.
Office - browser extensions when you have to use them, libreoffice when it’s for personal use
Compatibility - almost all hardware has Linux drivers, or at a minimum Linux has drivers that will be drop in replacements. My 3080 ti just required me getting the appropriate Nvidia package (which mt distro took care of), and nothing else has needed any configuration at all. My case and motherboard rgb lights are all controlled by openrgb (to turn them off, I don’t like rgb) and it worked out of the box.
Steam and steam games - not even close? Steam has official packages on most (or all) package managers so it works natively, and 90% or more games work seamlessly with proton on Linux even if they aren’t verified for it. Basically the only games proton can’t run are games with kernal level monitoring for anti-cheat, but even those are migrating to support Linux slowly. The steam deck even runs arch Linux lol, they wouldn’t sell $400-$650 gaming systems that couldn’t run most games that they themselves sell
Office sux
I’ve been experimenting with Raspbian and RPi compatible distros. Now I needed a PC for some self hosting stuff. I tried Debian and arch with not much success. Tonight I installed Mint then PhotoPrism without a terminal error that I need to google for solution! Even the video card is detected. Everything worked and now it’s chugging away doing all the work instead of me troubleshooting.
