Like, why Valve? I was so close to clearing out all the games I was partway through, now I need to add some demos to my backlog (not many, this Next Fest is kinda weak).

Probably could’ve made it but I haven’t picked a distro. I’m planning on turning my desktop into a dedicated gaming computer and not daily driver, because of the malware risk. I wanted something not finicky, something devs would test on as a known quantity, and preferably something Arch-based like SteamOS.

  • Garuda (Arch-based)
  • Bazzite (Known quantity, immutable, Fedora-based, I don’t trust it for some reason)
  • Nobara (Proton-adjacent distro, Fedora-based)
  • CachyOS (Super fast, Arch-based, presumably finicky?)
  • Windows 7 (Based, unsupported by steam, insecure)

BTW I have an AMD CPU and GPU. Figured I should’ve mentioned that.

  • Metju@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    From your list I ran the following:

    • Bazzite: worked AMAZINGLY (to the point of me double-checking whether I’m getting any updates 😆) until some image screwed up the boot process (some versions I could boot into, some were crapping out right after GRUB). Can recommend if you have a relatively normal hardware configuration (so, as long as your machine is not a Clevo-reseller laptop with NVIDIA GPU and Intel CPU, you should be fine).
      • Addendum: some binaries might not be available for you OOTB due to Bazzite’s root filesystem being immutable. Read their docs on how to run packages / binaries that do require root access (or learn basics of self-hosting, I guess…?).
    • Nobara: FUBAR’d it myself through… Well, being an idiot (had SOME regrets about that 😅); ran into some small issues with GPG keys, but otherwise used it w/o any major problems (see above) for… I think a year with some change? Can wholeheartedly recommend it, as long as you’re somewhat familiar with what RPM packages are and how to work around issues with their signatures (usually - a trivial matter); updates are not as smooth as on Bazzite.
    • CachyOS: my current daily driver. Barring some extremely minor issues in some games (usually solvable through Proton options- and versions fiddling), as was the case with Nobara - can wholeheartedly recommend it (this time, without caveats; despite the memery around Arch, it feels stable; the updates by default are a bit more annoying than on Bazzite though, similar in nature to Nobara: you get a notification “X packages have updates”).
    • xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day
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      18 hours ago

      I’m currently using Nobara. I shifted from Bazzite to Nobara because I also use my PC for work and package installation was a pain if it was outside flatpaks.

      Nobara is only an issue if you are using very old Nvidia GPUs. It’s been working fine for me.

      as long as you’re somewhat familiar with what RPM packages

      Agree. It’s very similar if you know apt

      how to work around issues with their signatures (usually - a trivial matter)

      Haven’t faced this so far.

    • Tenderizer78@lemmy.mlOP
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      22 hours ago

      I checked the Steam Hardware Survey and CachyOS is the most popular distro on my list so as the sheeple I am I’m probably gonna go with CachyOS now. Probably gotta look up how to configure it properly first though.