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!
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).
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.
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!
It all comes down to how “techie,” you are. If you want something safe, than Debian is fine. All you have to do is not use Debian Stable and use Debian Sid. There are also many other Debian based distros that are excellent for new comers. Many are likely to recommend you Mint, which is a fine distro for people how are new to Linux.
OpenSUSE is pretty good if you are into rolling releases. Fedora is excellent if you want to be building your own apps from source and know how to use the proper flags when building. However, if you want something that is a bit faster and simpler to use, then I would suggest something else.
If you want something independent and you say that you know your way around computers then either Arch or something Arch based, so you are not going full on KISS. In the end, it all comes down to how much of a DIY system do you want and much of a system you want to just work. Do you wan it be rock solid or with a higher chance of breakage.
Personally if you want to go pure, then go Debian Sid, it is a good mix of rock solid along with some newer packages and it is way more stable --statically speaking, or sort of-- than Ach. Again, this is anecdotal as you will have a number of people say that they had been on Arch for a while without any issues. So, people’s mileage may carry.
On one of my old machines, I have been testing Q4OS and Mabox, which are Debian based and Arch based respectably and they have been border line perfect for years. Q4OS uses KDE out of the box. Mabox uses Openbox, so it might not be something you are looking for. Both are very light on resources which you can use for running all the apps you want.
However if you have copious amounts of RAM and you want something a little more known, then check out Mint, or NixOS. The latter requires a bit of a learning curve but if you already work with computers, and have no issue reading documentation then you won’t find it difficult.
I’d just go Tumbleweed
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!
Just because nobody’s mentioned them yet and they are worth trying out: Solus & Void. Both are independent and rolling distributions.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been recommending Fedora.
You summarize it quite well. But I would still recommend Arch (but as an Arch user since 2008 I am biased on this). Why?
- Lightweight, ideal for gaming. My full-featured Wayland-setup with labwc runs with ca. 2 gigabytes of RAM, including Firefox, which on it’s own currently takes up 800 megabytes. Not that RAM would be an actual issue on modern gaming setups, but still, this shows how little resources the system needs for itself.
- Gaming on Linux is pretty much solved nowadays thanks to Valve (Steam, Proton, etc.) and Flatpaks. Games that do not work are intentionally made to not work on other platforms than Windows due the games using ring0 spyware as DRM and for anti-cheat.
- Privacy by concept – while there are no specific measures taken regarding privacy, the default installation just does nothing except initializing the hardware and allowing the user to sign in. Everything else is up to you.
- Software development is – like gaming – a no-brainer. All common tools work on Linux. Even more: Dependency handling, setting up the environment, using different compilers – all this feels much smoother than on Windows.
- Maintainability is great. Since there are no package changes from upstream, you can be sure that bugs are typically bugs in the software and not coming from Arch packaging.Thanks to rolling release you get much less updates at the same time compared to fixed release distribution – ganted you update regularly. I check the news and update every 1-2 weeks at the weekend.
And since you’re coming from Windows, you have to learn new stuff anyways. So why not dive head first into Arch?
Like others have said Arch is not as intimidating as it would appear to be. Over the last couple of years, they improved IHMO the most difficult process for the average user of installing Arch. You now just run
archinstallThen follow the system prompts. It’s constantly being improved. If you do go with Arch, aside from using Pacman to install apps, you can use “Yay” or “Paru” or others which pull from the vast AUR repository.I used Arch for a few years and recently moved over to Aurora Linux (Immutable KDE distro adapted from Fedora’s CoreOS and uBlueOS which is an offshoot of CoreOS) Specifically, I use the Developer experience of Aurora which gives you a VSCode type of editor as well as Podman desktop included as well as other items. It’s meant for those who wish to develop and not have to worry about keeping the system up to date. It runs updates in the background and rebooting your system will run the updates.
The reason I left Arch was simple, I used to like to live on the edge of software as well, until it took one too many hastily released updates which borked my Arch system. My home PC has morphed from being my dedicated computer to my wife’s and my computer which is fine, but I’d like to keep it available for her avoiding the need to do a repair because an update broke it.
Keep an eye out for the KDE Linux OS which they have in development and not yet for use, but is earmarked for being the official immutable OS for KDE which will receive their bleeding edge updates. https://linuxiac.com/kde-announced-its-kde-linux-distro/ https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux
I plan on migrating to that once it’s finished. :) I’ve become a fan of immutable OS’s because they allow you to roll back if something should go wrong. Which it rarely does :)
until it took one too many hastily released updates which borked my Arch system
That is one of the major fears I have with arch, as arch is apparently the distro where this is the most likely to happen. Is there something to recommend to minimize these risks? Just use btrfs and do a snapshot before doing anything :D ?
yep, btrfs snapshots. If you find setting that up difficult, Garuda OS comes with btrfs set up out of the box.
Remember that you can always have current versions of programs by using flatpak and appimage on Debian.
I’m currently on Fedora because my hardware was not supported yet by Debian when I got it. I’ve had a lot more problems with Fedora than Debian though and intend to go back to Debian when 13 comes out and use flatpak for the applications that I really want to be at their current version.
I have similar values to yours re community and privacy.
