Keep noticing that when taking about Linux distro recommendations (on Reddit) users recommend Mint and Ubuntu for gaming.
Now don’t get me wrong, they’re great distros and with a bit of work are great for games, but I feel like theres better recommendations for new users looking into getting into gaming on linux.
“support” being a vague term. Steam runs everywhere, they don’t even use Ubuntu for SteamOS. And it’s actually easier to install AMDs rocm on other distros and ofc Ubuntus drivers are outdated.
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Mint is a straight swap. Knowing everything about your PC is so much work. I would rather just game and not have to be a programmer to not see ads every 5 seconds.
There are better “gaming” distros, but unless someone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, when it comes time to install other kinds of software for school or work or whatever, they’re going to get thrown in the deep ends of Linux.
But guess what does have two decades of software and tutorials to set up just about everything in existence? Ubuntu, and by extension Mint.
Sure you can squeeze more out of your games with something like Bazzite, but the general platform that anything Linux-native targets is usually Ubuntu. Sure there’s distrobox and stuff that’s like telling the average gamer to go set up WSL. It’s not hard per-se but the amount of things to learn increases very quickly.
Thus, even though Ubuntu is very average these days, it’s still a safe bet for new users.
I just want to point out that even bazzite comes with the productivity basics: full libreoffice, Thunderbird, gimp and other graphics software available on installation. VSC has an official (and inofficial) app available as well.
Not saying you’re wrong of course, but as someone who uses his computer to game, consume music and media, and dabble in coding and game modding I haven’t missed anything so far (am very new to Linux myself). Though I’m sure that a more discerning user may find those essentials insufficient.
Probably not the best example in retrospect, since its only gotcha is that it’s Fedora Atomic.
Mainly my point is if you Google “how do I install X” you’ll get plenty of Ubuntu results out of the box, which when you’re an overwhelmed newbie is very helpful. Like, if you start with nothing, you just kissed goodbye to your Windows 11 install, you dive head first into Bazzite and you’ve got Firefox, Discord and Steam going, everything feels good. Then you start looking up “how to install X on Linux”, first you get a bunch of Ubuntu results, then you swap Linux for “bazzite”, nothing because it’s fairly new, but it’s Fedora so you look into Fedora but you realize Bazzite is actually Fedora Atomic and it’s a whole other way of installing things, maybe you just try running a .run or .sh file, or you give up and try to just make install from source but t̶h̴e̸ ̵f̸i̸l̸e̷s̸y̶s̷t̸e̶m̴ ̴i̶s̸ ̷r̷e̴a̴d̴o̷n̶l̷y̷ a̴n̵d̸w̷̪͊h̵̟̏y̴̻͛ ̸͉̒i̶͖͆s̸̪̎ ̸̗̏Ḷ̴͌i̶̞͑n̶̫͂u̵̯͋x̴͓͋ ̵͈̀ŝ̴̗o̴̱̒ ̴̭̎d̸̨͊a̷͙̽m̵̘̈ṇ̸̐ c̷͓͝ò̵̙m̵̲͛p̷̖̓ĺ̴̰ĭ̵̥c̵̰̽ă̸̩t̷͗ͅe̵͈̍d̵̻̃.
I would argue Ubuntu kinda sucks, but it sucks in a familiar windows-y kind of way where pretty much everyone knows how to fix it or make it work usually by blindly executing stuff. Not great, but it works, and it doesn’t require much thinking. Ubuntu is pretty much the only distro you can find your way without caring what a distro is just by the pile of tutorials for Ubuntu or assuming Ubuntu. Case in point: Linus from LTT when he tried to apt install steam on Manjaro, after nuking his entire DE on Pop_OS using the same command. It’s entirely his fault, but that’s still a common and frustrating experience and they add up.
Same reason sometimes I just tell people honestly, just stick with Windows. Linux would be a good fit, it would be way better, but they’re not willing or accepting of the learning curve. Sometimes you’re just better sticking with what most people use, so everyone knows how to fix your problems.
I’m fairly tech-savvy and have double-booted Arch in the past, but I’m still having headaches trying to understand how my new Atomic Fedora (Aurora) install works. I love the idea but a little documentation wouldn’t hurt.
Debian. Same base, no extra bs. Rock solid and reliable. Outdated packages are a non-issue for a casual user. Gaming needs a bit of configuration but it perfectly doable. Installation is apparently difficult but… I don’t know where that comes from. It may not be Calameres-smooth but it’s perfectly understandable even to a novice.
Mint and Ubuntu are easy to setup, and will generally work well out of the box, so great recommendations for people who have to ask.
Personally I use Manjaro, which also works out of the box, and I like the rolling release scheme, my wife uses Debian and both work great for games.
My wife had some initial problems with Debian and PipeWire sound system but it works fine now, and in fairness she is a musician and uses some weird audiosystem that can record 8/16 channels. So I bet “normal” systems wouldn’t have noticed any problems.
I still use pulse audio because I’m lazy, and if it works don’t fix it.
Microsoft has been radicalizing me more and more these days.
I have an i7-12700k and an RTX 3080. I heard Nvidia is tricky because of drivers, but any issues with using intel CPUs with Linux?
Where should I, a complete noob, begin? I’m intermediately technical, moderate/semi-intermediate with command line, etc. Is Mint the best way to go?
I tried pop_OS! a few years ago but my computer couldn’t run it well for some reason - lots of lag despite having an i7 7700k at the time and installing it on a separate spare SSD. Reinstalled it twice but still had issues with noticeable lag in the OS. My specs were great, but that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then.
that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then
That was my experience with Pop!_OS too. I tried switching to it after finding that Ubuntu has a lot of bloat.
In the end, I went back to Ubuntu, because it works right out of the box - even with my Nvidia graphics card! (only from 20.04 onwards; 18.04 and older versions were problematic)
When I reinstalled Ubuntu, I chose the custom / minimal installation option, and that cut out most of the bloat.
not so much as Mint being the “best way”, but Mint being a safe, friendly starting point – once you get your feet wet, you can start looking around at the other options (which can be pretty overwhelming initially) – and just as a lot of people use Mint as a jumping off point, a lot of people also stay with Mint
and yes, despite distro-hopping being a running joke, it exists because Linux distros make it relatively easy to do
the biggest change to keep an eye on is the development of atomic (“immutable”) distros – anything that makes it harder to bork your system and easier to recover afterwards (including recovering all of your configurations and customizations) is getting a lot of attention
I’m personally not a fan of Mint - tried it for a month or so. My impression is that if it works with your muscle memory, it works well. If not… then even Windows ends up more user-friendly.
I’m particularly not a fan of the “start menu” because you don’t really get a lot of space for pinned apps, and there’s no way to really modify that. I ended up liking KDE quite a lot more. It takes a bit longer to set it up to what you like, but its customization means that while there’s a bigger upfront cost to setup, it’s much smoother once it is set up.
I’m using KDE Neon (Ubuntu + KDE), which I’m pretty happy with. But I’m also debating whether to switch to Kubuntu (also Ubuntu + KDE for some reason)
They’re simple to get into for anyone with an introductory interest in Linux, although I haven’t liked Ubuntu in ages. My Mint setup took a bit of effort but it does game pretty well. Fedora could be a good recommendation too, I liked that when I tried it out. There’s some gaming focused distros like Bazzite or Nobara, but I feel like I can get a “normal” distro working to a similar state for games, and I don’t have to hope that a small team doesn’t fold and my distro loses updates support.
I’m trying out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed this week, wanna see if it’s a good alternative to Fedora.
I don’t dare try Arch yet, and thus I also wouldn’t recommend it to any new user.
I switched to Tumbleweed from Mint a few months ago (having toyed with many distros over the years, and recently Nobara and Manjaro).
I like Tumbleweed - it’s a good mix of up to date packages, system stability (so far, I accept rolling release is inherently always going to be risky) and a good ecosystem. I find it very user friendly thanks to Yast, but with lots of freedom for power use.
I also like that it’s a an offshoot of a European Linux company rather than a big tech company like IBM. I’m not a fan of the direction redhat has taken and the impact some of its priorities seem to have on Fedora. I’m sure SuSE impacts a lot on OpenSuSE but of the big enterprise Linux ecosystems I currently prefer it over Ubuntu and Redhat.
people asking for those recommendations are newcomers to Linux and Ubuntu and Mint (especially) are both very newcomer friendly with large support communities when any questions come up
once they become more familiar with their system, they can turn to the Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Handbook as they fine-tune things
but neither Mint nor Ubuntu are going to hit you with any big surprises – unsupervised access to AUR in Arch, long compilation times in Gentoo, obscure (and semi-documented) programming language in Nix, or dealing with commands that are a little bit different in BusyBox, musl, or OpenRC systems …
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