I’ve ordered myself some parts to build a PC for Linux gaming. In the meantime, i’m deciding on which linux distro to use.

For the desktop environment I typically use KDE.

I have used Ubuntu in the past but i’m ruling it out because of snaps and other such annoyances. This also applies to Ubuntu based distros that use the same repos (KDE Neon etc).

I see the wikis recommend Nobara, but I’m reluctant to use a Fedora based distro because I’m so used to Debian/apt (both as a desktop and server distros). I’m not ruling it out completely though.

Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam? Will I be missing out on lots of performance improvements or is this easily addressed by using an additional repo for a tweaked kernel and proton version or whatever?

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    101·
    8 months ago

    Oh man, you’re in for a treat there.

    PopOS is what you’re looking for friend. Debian is a bit too bare and general use-case. Ubuntu is wrong for the exact reasons you laid out.

    Pop is built for the end users, with native integrations for flatpak/deb/whathaveyou. It’s built on top of Ubuntu with all the ubuntu annoyances removed.

    They even have a distro with pre-baked nvidia drivers should you need it.

    I tried it and swapped all of mine over

    • Impound4017@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      8 months ago

      Fwiw I switched off of Pop onto Debian cause I was annoyed with some of Pop’s bloat and I’ve been loving it. I game pretty heavily on Debian and it works just fine. I do mostly play the same older games rather than buying new releases, however, so mileage may vary if you’re looking at cutting edge games, as driver updates can significantly boost performance in that case.

      Make no mistake though, when I say ‘bloat’ I’m mostly nitpicking. Pop is a perfectly valid choice and a good option for gaming.

    • CraigeryTheKid@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      +1 for Pop!_OS

      Using it (as my first real use of Linux) a few months now, and I have yet to find a game that doesn’t work.

      Turned away from mint/Ubuntu because they definitely pre installed more. There are almost no included installs that I don’t use on Pop, very clean.

      It’s also a frequently updated “stable” release- it gets kernel/driver/more updates every 2 weeks or so. They should really add the update# to the iso, because “22.04” alone makes it sound old.

      I have 3 running Pop, soon to be 4. ( Try to switch kids over)