[Update: I went with CachyOS instead, it looks like a great option for gaming with general usage and has a really good wiki]
A coworker of mine asked me to help him install Linux, he hasn’t tried Linux before but he’s sick of Windows.
He is very much into gaming, so gaming support is the first priority. He is also a developer/tester so I suppose that he will also want to have access to dev tools, languages, and other packages like that for personal projects.
My first go-to when recommending to newbies is Mint because it’s simple, tried and tested, but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience. However it scares me that there’s no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks and brew, or even podman images. Will this be a problem as he uses the OS for general usage besides gaming in the long term, would it be better to just go with Mint and set that up for gaming instead?
Feel free to also recommend other distros, but keep in mind that while he is technical, he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
Recommend the one you use yourself so you are able to help them in the best way possible.
This is usually a good idea, but I think Arch would be a bit too much for him
Still, any Debian derivative would be just as easy for me to help and also for him to find help online, so that’s the main reason I’d choose Mint over Bazzite
I moved my gf to Kubuntu, all she knows is double click starts her games, open konsole - press up arrow - hit enter to start the G13 kb and every so often click that round icon with the blue dot for updates whenever she feels like it (or something stops working). Oh yeah, kernel level anti-cheat is a dead stop under linux, if he plays any of them, he needs windows so far as I know.
I put flatpak as the default instead of snap (10 seconds), she is now as comfortable as she was under windows, I have also not needed to support her much (except for the stuff I forgot to setup). and for the love of god make sure you show your friend “TimeShift” can’t say enough how great that app is, you can
break almost anythingtinker to your hearts content and recover in minutesThis is the correct approach, OP. Bazzite is good, but its immutability is an aspect one needs to get used to and learn to work with. Since you’re not (and I’m not saying I am ;), rather stick to something you feel comfortable supporting, because you’ll be the one they’ll come running to if they have a problem.
Definitely not bazzaite, it has lots of unremovable bloatware and since it doesn’t have native package manager it will be a problem. For gaming i propose cachyos, it focuses a lot on performance in games. They have their own proton, kernel and they even had their own browser
No native package manager? How does Bazzite manage packages then?
Using something called rpm-ostree. rpm-ostree is a hybrid image/package system. It combines libostree and libdnf to provide atomic and safe upgrades with local RPM package layering. Still that isnt real package manager since you cannot remove or install anything from fedora repo, it is only used for updates and thats all
I’d say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he’s a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he’s looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that.
That being said as a dev and gamer myself if my first linux experience was Bazzite I might get annoyed. Mint is a great first experience. when I originally tried it well over a year ago though I did have issues with my Nvidia GPU on it and gaming wasn’t super great BUT it’s been awhile since I’ve used mint so that may have changed.
Honestly I would suggest start with Mint and just drive it for a couple weeks. If he likes it but feel it’s limited for some things then that’s when he can expand out to different distros. And like I said maybe gaming on Mint has improved since I last used it. But if he’s comfortable with running distrobox and containers then Bazzite is fine.
I’d say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he’s a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he’s looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that
That’s what I figured, I would be very annoyed to have to use images for software I would simply do an apt install for in other distros, so I’ll leave out Bazzite from my options definitely
If he’s a dev, he might actually prefer it. Just explain and let him decide which one he wants to try first.
You might just want to recommend fedora with the caveat that he’ll need to do a little setup with drivers. Bazzite and nobara are both fedora distros.
So, all downstreams have no added value?
That’s not what I said. My experience with nobara personally hasn’t been great and while I use bazzite at home for gaming PC but wouldn’t recommend it at this moment because it seems that the dev team is having some drama. I use cachy daily and find it wonderful and super easy. Not the arch difficulty that I was expecting. It’s a downstream.
Oh yeah I was quite annoyed with bazzite initially with embedded toolchains… The default arch distrobox also runs vscode variants horribly with tons of freezing for some reason. I had to create a new arch distrobox.
Also Saleae Logic2 has a Fedora bug where it takes between 2 and 10 minutes just to open because of logfiles and errordumping and timeouts that is very annoying.
Also menu shortcuts for distrobox only work like for 20% of programs (luckily code-oss is one of them)
And don’t get me started on running a VM that can see the local network…
After you get a setup going though, then it is breezy though.
Bazzite 100%. It’s the best out of the box gaming distro, and bonus points for immutability (not that your friend needs to know what that is).
I’d actually recommend whatever it is that you use, OP. Having a friend who is intimately familiar with your distro is way more helpful than one that’s theoretically even better but you have limited support for. If they want to make the jump later, they can always do what I did and somehow accidentally become an arch (btw) linux guy after a year in the ecosystem (goddamnit how did this happen, i just wanted to keep using my old craptop, not become a thigh high socks guy).
edit: I’m reading that you’re also an archfreak, so I’d suggest Manjaro instead. It’s got an easier learning curve and guis, but is arch-based.
Mint for the community support. He’ll have tons of resources if he runs into anything and you’re not available. As a dev he should be resourceful in that regard.
But definitely check the kinds of games he’s playing. Modern multiplayer games will be a big hurdle if they’re not steam verified.
People who want to play games with kernel level anti-cheat won’t be happy with Linux. If that’s a must, they’d need to look for other solutions. For all others, Mint is great to get started. Most people just want their computer to work with minimal hassle. That’s what Mint excels at.
I use CachyOS for over a year. Mainly for playing.
I’ve been using bazzite for going on 2 years now and it’s still as good and as easy to use as it was the day I got it. I wouldn’t want to use anything else.
I do not have first hand experience, but have been told that while Bazzite is excellent for gaming, the immutable nature of complicates matters when it comes to software development, dev tools and stuff of that nature.
Try both, test it yourself. And then try CachyOS as well. I do recommend and use Bazzite and cachyos. Both are great. But it takes time. Like the first time with windows. Its a totally new chapter, if new to linux. Try all 3 for a week. See how it works.
If he’s a dev, he probably is able to follow this guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guideThe result is a system, that has virtually every package you can imagine in the aur, always the newest packages - which is quite important for gaming performance and a really slim system.
For the gaming part I recommend Gamescope:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GamescopeAs desktop Plasma is a good choice for beginners. However I personally use Sway.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Plasma
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SwayI installed Arch for the very first time this past weekend. I am a software engineer with almost 30 years experience and some time less with Linux. I did my research beforehand: I watched a manual installation on YouTube and I went over the wiki.
And the manual installation was hard. I would not recommend it to a beginner.
he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
This isn’t Arch, sorry. My own Arch didn’t boot the first time (but yes I was able to fix it quickly).
This was my opinion too. However like a year ago my best friend asked me: “Hey, I want to try linux. Which distro do you recommend?” I told him, that I recommend Linux Mint for beginners. And that I use Arch. Like a day later he wrote me again: “I’ve installed Arch, lol. Wasn’t that hard. The guide is actually very straight forward.”
This changed how I see Arch today. Arch isn’t super complex or hard to use. It’s just a bit more time consuming to set up. On the other hand it just works once set up.
If you are afraid of being limited by flatpak for bazzite, (or any other distro but arch), you can use this :
an Arch container using distrobox that can run in every distro.
This way, you’ll have access to the AUR and arch repos in general.
After I left Bazzite as “my first Linux” I landed on Garuda. It is Arch based, is gaming and performance focused, comes with different desktop environment options, has pacman and works well with pamac, and has been noob friendly.
No ragrets.
I just switched to bazzite a couple months ago after switching away from kubuntu. I love it, don’t expect I’ll ever go back, and I’m not interested in trying any others. It’s kind of a pain if you want to do things outside of gaming, due to the immutability of the os, but anything is still possible.
One thing I haven’t figured out yet is theming grub, nothing I’ve tried has stuck.
Garuda linux everyday
