From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
There's an atomic Fedora spin made for gaming, Bazzite, and the experience has been to install, and just go. Everything works, everything is set up for gaming and performance monitoring, it's actually baffling how good this is!
I realise I' sounding like a shill, but genuinely it's great and seems to be what you're looking for. You can always just try it in a VM!
Bazzite seems superior for handhelds or just pure gaming setups, I game like 20% of the time maybe less these days
That only holds true if you choose to download the version with Steam Game Mode, which boots directly to Steam's UI, this version is called bazzite-deck. If you go with the no game mode version, it boots like a normal PC: to the desktop.
The non-game mode version is a solid choice as a daily driver. I use Bazzite on my main PC, I work by day and do gaming at night. Bazzite excels at both.
Seems annoying for tinkering, but good as a daily driver with minimal issues, i'm going bazzite if I get any issues with cachyos, reccomending bluefin/aurora to family that want to switch depending on if they like plasma or gnome, I like universal blue and how those distros work, if Linux was the only OS on this computer id go bazzite, for now I still have windows as a backup, so i'm going cachyos. I haven't opened the windows side in 2 days tho, so I might just fully make the switch.
If it's worth anything I daily drive Bazzite but also only game around 20% of the time. It's still a great daily driver, does all I need it to do. Let me know if I can answer any questions.
Prob gonna stick with cachy since im not having any issues, why do you like fedora/bazzite over arch/cachy? I cant really tell the difference
Not familiar with either arch or cachyOS, but I'm gonna go and guess that cachy isn't immutable(?) At least to me it's nice to know that neither myself or anyone else can break my system as all system files are read only. Additionally I quite like that I don't have to think about configuring or updating anything - it's all handled by the devs. That might not be for everyone but personally don't want to tinker with my PC that much, I have a server for that 😅
Ah, I do use Mint on my dev laptop but Bazzite on my gaming PC, each has their own usage.
It's really just Fedora with different defaults, pre-installed software (mostly for Steam, MangoHUD, etc.) and a welcome-screen that helps you set up different software.
It's also immutable
It's really just atomic Fedora [..]*
That said, it isn't fun for firmware development.
I have daily driven it for 6 months or so. Most things work great but more niche uses like embedded firmware development, digitally signing documents (impossible on bazzite as far as I have found) and anything that requires udev rules or interplay between software.
Otherwise it is great! Much better day to day than opensuse Kalpa.
Ill check it out, only time I heard it mentioned was someone saying cachyos is superior if you dont mind a bit of tinkering
Honestly you should be getting similar performance and package quality on all modern up to date distros. Pick whatever looks good to you.
PopOS is in a rough state. The stable ISO is using absurdly an absurdly outdated desktop, and the beta using COSMIC desktop. I personally love COSMIC, but it is far from stable, so I would not recommend it to most users.
CachyOS is a great distro. The performance gains from its changes won't be huge, but the people acting like its nonexistent are silly. They also make many upcoming performance improving features like NTSYNC available early in their default kernel.
I definitely wouldn't go Debian or Mint for gaming personally. I don't like stable distros with such slow release schedules for gaming, mainly because of stuff like the prior mentioned NTSYNC. You don't get those new features for a long time.
I saw people recommending Bazzite, which is a distros I highly recommend. The only issue I have with Bazzite is that installing kernel modules they don't ship is pretty much unsupported and requires a lot of jumping through hoops. Most people won't need this, but it matters from some use cases like if you need steering wheel drivers.
Have you tried EndeavorOS, any thoughts?
Yep, that was actually my second distros when I switched to Linux a few years ago (right after PopOS). Its a good distro, essentially Arch with a better out of the box setup. If were to go with an arch based distro today, I'd probably choose CachyOS for the package and kernel optimizations, but both are good.
Arch-based distros are definitely CLI centric, but if you don't mind that then its great! Just keep in mind it is a rolling distro, breakages aren't super common, but they can occur. A backup using Timeshift is probably a good idea. Also, I wouldn't rely too heavily on the AUR, remember they are unofficial packages and are more prone to breakage. Id prefer flatpak for GUI apps at least.
You can install them, just not by default and not reccomended*
I think flatpaks aren't supported by cachy because they inherently have some performance issues?
they work, they just don't have the same optimizations as the packages in their repo. that's also true for AUR packages.
I tried cosmic and wasn't a fan, felt too much like windows, really like kde plasma, like it more than windows, surprisingly like hyprland too, didn't think I would. Helped that the config I used had a tips/shortcut menu that was obvious to find.
I'm surprised to hear that, I don't think cosmics default configuration has much in common with windows. It uses a MacOS style dock and and status bar by default. The workflow is also very customizable. I personally use it with just a status bar and always have tiling on, similarly to how one would use Hyprland or another tiling wm, since that's what I used before cosmic. I love plasma too, but the fact that you can't have separate workspaces per monitor unfortunately makes it unusable for my workflow.
Have you looked at tumbleweed? Its a rolling release so its always up to date but opensuse's testing is fantastic. It's very stable and on the off chance there's a regression that impacts usability, it has built in version snapshots. It takes literally 45 seconds to roll back to a previous working version.
I had been rocking CachyOS for a year or so but the recent Nvidia drivers or something caused me a shit load on instability so I'm back on windows for now. Got tired of tinkering. 😅
If you want CachyOS I highly recommend you to have atleast Haswell or Alteast Ryzen If you use AMD due to their Compiled packages and stuff.
Endeavor os If you don't have atleast haswell/Ryzen.
Stock Arch If your fine building it.
Debian I wouldn't recommend to use for a pc you use often.
Popos I never used it before but it seems like a "stable gaming" Distro.
Mint is also a great option I use it on pcs I sometimes use and it's also easy to use.
I'm quite happy with CachyOS but use whatever makes you happy. Just pick something with a desktop envionment you like (KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME)
Have you checked out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed? Very stable rolling release. I've been using it for a couple years without issues.
I use cachyos for gaming and work. It's amazing. Stable, fast, drivers all work with no extra setup. Just select Ext4 during installation if you want the fastest hard drive performance.
Try NixOS. The killer feature is mixing old and new packages because deps are not globally installed
