Hello all,
At around the mid Nov this year I had enough with Windows especially the latest 23H2 pack that forced a lot of what I call malware back on my system when I had put several blockers from being re-installed.
A bit of a background. I have been using Windows since 3.1 with MSDOS 6.2 since forever and I have seen everything from Microsoft. At the same time I'm a senior Microsoft engineer and have been for more than a decade.
Back in 2018 I decided to maximise my hosting game server and installed Ubuntu. I didn't have the greatest of times but I always enjoy the tinkering process of solving something, so I stuck with it.
Fast-forward to Nov this year, by chance I stumble upon a YouTube video show-casing Garuda Dragonized edition and how it performed in gaming. I was very skeptical as I tried gaming on Linux back in my college days and it was unworkable and unplayable.
Having had enough with Windows, I took the plunge. Now something about me, when I take the plunge on something, I'm going in both hands and legs. There isn't a compromise.
Created the boot drive, backed up my data to my NAS and purged the system from Windows. Within 30 mins of installing the OS and updating (slow internet, the OS installed everything from drivers to tools that I needed for gaming. I was surprised to be honest and I actually spend the rest of the afternoon making sure that everything was working by running benchmarks and low and behold, everything was. The CPU (5800X3D) was boosting at default values, the GPU (6800XT) was stable with the built in OC profile and was actually pushing better maximums than I had in Windows.
After my satisfaction that everything was good, it was time to test out and real gaming. I installed Satisfactory as that was the game that I was playing just before the purged. I didn't have hopes as it is still really access, but to my surprise, worked first try (to add, I did follow the Proton instructions on how to setup Steam prior).
I tried several other games such as Borderlands 3, Hunt Showdown, Assetto Corsa and Planetside 2 and all worked. The only issue I have is that Forged Alliance Forever is currently bugged on Arch and I'm unable to launch custom games but weirdly enough, I can play the game no probs without FAF.
I know this is a Linux forum but to anyone that is browsing, thinking of taking the plunge. Do it! But make sure that you prep before doing so as without prep, you are not going to be smooth sailing.
Nobara, but yea it's a good choice for gaming.
But if you don't have any complex software requirements besides gaming and the usual desktop apps, then Bazzite is a much, much better option. It gets updates much more earlier than Nobara (which is still stuck on Fedora 38), and is much more stable (immutable OS) and more gaming optimised. You can even boot directly into "gaming mode" for a Steam Deck-like experience, with all the same (+more) optimizations that you'd get from the Deck.
@Ultimatenab@beehaw.org
+1 from my side for universal-blue.org, where Bazzite is part of.
@Ultimatenab@beehaw.org I often see Garuda and other distros like those appealing to newcomers, because they come themed ootb and look fancy af. Don't forget that you can get every tweak of that by just installing a theme, which is a matter of seconds.
Garuda is based on Arch, which is known to be not as highly noob friendly as some others.
For "normal" users like us especially, who just want to game and do other normie stuff, the immutable Fedora variants are excellent. uBlue fixes some of their minor issues, and they run wonderfully.
They work just how Linux should do it as desktop OS imo, and how other non-Linux-OSs should supposed to be too.
Also, there will soon come a time where you begin Distro-hopping and reinstall your OS every weekend. On immutable Fedora, you can change your DE (the GUI/ desktop environment, which often defines the distro) with one command cleanly and switch from KDE to Gnome for example, which feels like a clean reinstall, but keeps your data and config.
I do enjoy a challenge and having to use cli is what got me into my profession. I did my research and found Arch to be one of the better distros out there, but I didn't want to start at the deep end as I don't have time like to fully delve into it like I used to.
I'm already thinking of Nobara....
You can always use Fedora Atomic with an Arch Distrobox.
Silverblue and the Arch container update themself, and you can always enjoy your Arch CLI if you want :) I wouldn't say Arch is unreliable, but it won't intervene if you do something stupid.
SB on the other hand is almost unbrickable and extremely low maintenance, which I like a lot.
But if you did your research and enjoy Arch/ it's derivatives, then have fun! Arch is great and if it suits your taste, then that's wonderful! 😊
Thank you for the suggestions. I'll def be looking at new flavour of distros as my knowledge of Linux expands. Garuda was just the first one that made me jump.