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!

  • thayer@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    All of my workstations are now running Fedora Silverblue. Steam is installed via flatpak, and GPU is a Radeon 6800 XT. I also have a Steam Link for couch co-op. All is well on the gaming front!

    Debian Sid and Arch have run equally well with this setup. Your choice of distro matters much less now compared to a few years ago, especially if you favour a flatpak workflow.

    Edit: typos!

  • simonced@lemmy.oneEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

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

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

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Any particular reason for Fedora or is that just what you are comfortable with?

      • simonced@lemmy.oneEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        No real reason I think.

        I had problems with PopOS, but I could have gone Mint since it’s the one I knew the most.

        But since I was reinstalling, I gave Fedora a try, and I liked it so I kept it.

        • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Feels like that’s pretty common these days. Most of the big distros are polished enough to get the work done without jumping through too many hoops really.

  • lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com
    0·
    1 year ago

    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. :]

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • lertsenem@mastodon.lertsenem.com
        0·
        1 year ago

        @nlm You’re right, but there is an unofficial version (with some tweaks to work on standards PC) available here.

        It works as intended, but I would only recommend it if you intend to use your PC in a console-like setup (ie, plugged to a big screen, with a game controller).

        • jakepi@beehaw.org
          0·
          1 year ago

          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.

        • nlm@beehaw.orgOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          Ah cool!

          Not something I’d use now then but still neat that you can get it :)

        • nlm@beehaw.orgOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, thought so. Hope they’ll publish their newer versions as well soon.

  • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Been gaming on Gentoo for over a year, even if I haven’t found much time for gaming in the last few months.

    Don’t do it if you’ve gotten too lazy for Arch though. Try Pop!_OS or Linux Mint or something. Enjoy an easy distro for a bit, till you get the itch for Arch back.

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Oh I’ve tinkered with Gentoo plenty in the past (I still miss OTW if that rings any bells) and no, I really don’t have the patience for it these days. :)

      And yeah, I’ll probably end up installing something a bit more fancy soon-ish… for now I plopped Kubuntu 20.04 on there and Diablo IV is downloading as we speak!

  • 20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    garuda, it’s just a fancy arch install with the ugliest, bloatiest, default theming you can imagine, but once you get rid of it it’s pretty solid.

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      You’re really selling it :D

      …I looked it up. You’re correct. That… was flashy.

      • TrontheTechie@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’ve been using Garuda as well. It’s solid, and I like the fact they have a gaming variant that takes a lot of the nitpick presetup out of the picture.

      • averyfalken@beehaw.org
        0·
        1 year ago

        Truthfully it comes with nvidoa drivers pre installed.

        Personally I run mint and its just a couple of clicks to get it installed in mint. I tried pop is didn’t like it that much and gave me less stability with some of my use cases

        • nlm@beehaw.orgOP
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, that’s basically what I figured. Plus some bells and whistles in the design department. Might just as well go with *buntu and install drivers then.

          • averyfalken@beehaw.org
            0·
            1 year ago

            Don’t know how different it is with buntu I know mint does extra things. I’d you like the cinnamon desktop mints the best bet

  • TrinitronX@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    In the past, I had been using Ubuntu LTS releases for my main HTPC. That original install had been upgraded many times, but actually started out as an Ubuntu spin-off called Mythbuntu. Of course since Steam on Linux was first released, Ubuntu was the most well-supported distro at the time, and still technically is (Look in Steam’s .local install directory and you’ll still find ubuntu12_32, ubuntu12_64 folders which are pre-packaged dependencies & libraries for steam-runtime built against Ubuntu’s core libs for each architecture). It ran many games fine, and the added bonus of a distro focused on being an HTPC meant that I could use mythgame as a frontend for emulators, steam, or whatever else needed a launcher. Meanwhile, the main focus of MythTV was being an OSS DVR that supported TV capture cards, commercial skip, and transcoding.

    It ran all those things well, except trancoding (no VAAPI, only VDPAU & not many codecs), up to a point when my original Nvidia GT240 card became deprecated by Nvidia’s binary blob drivers. Thanks to the version-pinned 340 proprietary drivers not being well supported on newer kernels, I have been forced into a hardware upgrade cycle. Decided to go with AMD this time around, but the first card has some kind of hardware issue (9 times out of 10 after a reboot, the amdgpu driver says the SMU won’t init properly… same on windows but no helpful error messages, just doesn’t work at all). The card arrived without an OEM box, and seemed suspiciously in used condition although it wasn’t sold to me as a used model. Thanks to testing in a rolling-release distro based on Arch, I was able to prove that it wasn’t due to software, but instead was a hardware issue. I’m going to send that GPU back and get another one to replace it once prices get less insane.

    I tested out various Manjaro LiveCDs to check if it was a software or driver problem, and did get the GPU working about once every 10 reboots. I decided to go with a full install of Manjaro Sway edition to try and test out wayland & a more minimal window manager. I didn’t think I’d like it at first, as I’d always avoided using i3wm in the past… but actually it’s starting to grow on me and I think I’ll try this out as a daily driver for a while. After following some instructions on the Arch wiki to identify missing steam-runtime dependencies and installing them via pacman, everything works, including Proton-based games. Technically Steam is still running under Xwayland, as evidenced by xlsclients output, but it works and seems much snappier than running on Ubuntu with X11.

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOP
      0·
      1 year ago

      Geez… you guys are making this hard… now I’m bouncing between ubuntu, pop, endeavour and manjaro…

      Nicely formatted post by the way :)

  • dewritoninja@pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Im running good old Ubuntu with gnome. I mostly play terraria, minecraft I and Bethesda rpgs these days so it does everything I need.

  • Lexi Sneptaur@pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I use Arch with KDE. I don’t recommend Manjaro because it has historically had some serious problems, so for people who want Arch without as much hassle, I’m recommending EndeavourOS. It’s what Manjaro should be like.

  • Xeelee@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been using Mint without any issues for a while now. I only play Steam games, though.

  • nadiaraven@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Arch really is a documentation project rather than a distro, their wiki tops most everything out there :)

        • nlm@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, that’s basically where you go if you ever have some obscure problem, it’s incredibly useful really.