What would you reccomend/use for an alienware laptop m17r5 with amdcpu (idr) and gpu 6850mxt. Idc about adjusting the keyboard lights, I changed it once and never touched it again. I play games like cities skyline, noita, etc. and some vr stuff rarely like vtolvr and warthunder. I use blender and houdinifx.
I’ve seen PopOs reccomended for Blender users but I think thats because it comes with a lot of stuff you need for Nvidia, which isn’t relevant to me with an all amd setup.
Cachyos seems to be the move for best performance with rendering and simulating, was wondering about other options I have since I dont need to worry about nvidia drivers.
I dont like the idea of using ubuntu because of snap packages, but its not a big deal.
While I like tinkering, I do want it to be relatively stable, not suprising me with issues when I need it.
Currently Interested in: CachyOs Debian (leaning towards here if I go the stable route) EndeavorOs Mint (seems popular, is it just simplified?)
EDIT: Went with CachyOs for now, works well, only issue was auto install didn’t work and I needed to manually partition and set the flags for boot and the os drive, other than that it’s been very fast and intuitive using KDE plasma. Recently tried Hyprland with the JaKooLit config, since ML4W didn’t want to work and had bugs, , I like it more than I thought I would.
Might try EndeavorOS and Bazzite on another ssd, they also look interesting.
Have you checked out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed? Very stable rolling release. I’ve been using it for a couple years without issues.
There’s an atomic Fedora spin made for gaming, Bazzite, and the experience has been to install, and just go. Everything works, everything is set up for gaming and performance monitoring, it’s actually baffling how good this is!
I realise I’ sounding like a shill, but genuinely it’s great and seems to be what you’re looking for. You can always just try it in a VM!
Bazzite seems superior for handhelds or just pure gaming setups, I game like 20% of the time maybe less these days
That only holds true if you choose to download the version with Steam Game Mode, which boots directly to Steam’s UI, this version is called bazzite-deck. If you go with the no game mode version, it boots like a normal PC: to the desktop.
The non-game mode version is a solid choice as a daily driver. I use Bazzite on my main PC, I work by day and do gaming at night. Bazzite excels at both.
Seems annoying for tinkering, but good as a daily driver with minimal issues, i’m going bazzite if I get any issues with cachyos, reccomending bluefin/aurora to family that want to switch depending on if they like plasma or gnome, I like universal blue and how those distros work, if Linux was the only OS on this computer id go bazzite, for now I still have windows as a backup, so i’m going cachyos. I haven’t opened the windows side in 2 days tho, so I might just fully make the switch.
If it’s worth anything I daily drive Bazzite but also only game around 20% of the time. It’s still a great daily driver, does all I need it to do. Let me know if I can answer any questions.
Prob gonna stick with cachy since im not having any issues, why do you like fedora/bazzite over arch/cachy? I cant really tell the difference
Not familiar with either arch or cachyOS, but I’m gonna go and guess that cachy isn’t immutable(?) At least to me it’s nice to know that neither myself or anyone else can break my system as all system files are read only. Additionally I quite like that I don’t have to think about configuring or updating anything - it’s all handled by the devs. That might not be for everyone but personally don’t want to tinker with my PC that much, I have a server for that 😅
Ah, I do use Mint on my dev laptop but Bazzite on my gaming PC, each has their own usage.
It’s really just Fedora with different defaults, pre-installed software (mostly for Steam, MangoHUD, etc.) and a welcome-screen that helps you set up different software.
It’s also immutable
It’s really just atomic Fedora […]*
Honestly you should be getting similar performance and package quality on all modern up to date distros. Pick whatever looks good to you.
Fedora. It just works. I use it for work and it doesn’t let me down. Semi annual upgrading it is easy and it seems to be moving slowly, because gnome/LibreOffice is, to flatpaks. It’s slow to change and stable because of it, they still include Grub when it became a relic since systemd included gummyboot (systemd-boot) many years ago.
Contrast that with ArchLinux which is ‘cleaner’ and a rolling distro which I prefer; Fedora isn’t. I use it for a Rescue USB. I used to use it for work but, and this is long ago, I managed to break it quite easily by ‘fixing it’ too much! ArchLinux doesn’t let me down but I don’t have a gui or Window manager on it, console only, and I know my way around Linux reasonably well.
Debian is still confused about systemd. Run a combination of testing and unstable branches on the desktop and you’ve got a great system but this is before the systemd days where they moved all the systemd defaults to the old/odd places that make no sense. As you say, snap appears to be another mad experiment by Ubuntu, like mir when everyone went to wayland.
If you’re going to use your PC for games, I think there may be better distros than these. I’m not a gamer so I can’t advise.
I’m not a huge fan of derivative distros, like Ubuntu (based on Debian decreasingly) or so on. I’m not one to mess about with screen savers etc and aesthetics though. To me derivatives add bloat and unexpected changes.
Source distros are a rabbit hole I’ve been down. They were fun but I couldn’t get myself to do any work when I had them.
I’ve never tried SUSE, it’s alternative rpm style distro which can be stable as a rolling.
Distrowatch.com is always worth a visit. Find a/several forum that is your intended use and find out which district they use there; if you have issues they’ll know how to fix it.
PopOS is in a rough state. The stable ISO is using absurdly an absurdly outdated desktop, and the beta using COSMIC desktop. I personally love COSMIC, but it is far from stable, so I would not recommend it to most users.
CachyOS is a great distro. The performance gains from its changes won’t be huge, but the people acting like its nonexistent are silly. They also make many upcoming performance improving features like NTSYNC available early in their default kernel.
I definitely wouldn’t go Debian or Mint for gaming personally. I don’t like stable distros with such slow release schedules for gaming, mainly because of stuff like the prior mentioned NTSYNC. You don’t get those new features for a long time.
I saw people recommending Bazzite, which is a distros I highly recommend. The only issue I have with Bazzite is that installing kernel modules they don’t ship is pretty much unsupported and requires a lot of jumping through hoops. Most people won’t need this, but it matters from some use cases like if you need steering wheel drivers.
Have you tried EndeavorOS, any thoughts?
Yep, that was actually my second distros when I switched to Linux a few years ago (right after PopOS). Its a good distro, essentially Arch with a better out of the box setup. If were to go with an arch based distro today, I’d probably choose CachyOS for the package and kernel optimizations, but both are good.
Arch-based distros are definitely CLI centric, but if you don’t mind that then its great! Just keep in mind it is a rolling distro, breakages aren’t super common, but they can occur. A backup using Timeshift is probably a good idea. Also, I wouldn’t rely too heavily on the AUR, remember they are unofficial packages and are more prone to breakage. Id prefer flatpak for GUI apps at least.
You can install them, just not by default and not reccomended*
I think flatpaks aren’t supported by cachy because they inherently have some performance issues?
they work, they just don’t have the same optimizations as the packages in their repo. that’s also true for AUR packages.
I tried cosmic and wasn’t a fan, felt too much like windows, really like kde plasma, like it more than windows, surprisingly like hyprland too, didn’t think I would. Helped that the config I used had a tips/shortcut menu that was obvious to find.
I’m surprised to hear that, I don’t think cosmics default configuration has much in common with windows. It uses a MacOS style dock and and status bar by default. The workflow is also very customizable. I personally use it with just a status bar and always have tiling on, similarly to how one would use Hyprland or another tiling wm, since that’s what I used before cosmic. I love plasma too, but the fact that you can’t have separate workspaces per monitor unfortunately makes it unusable for my workflow.
I see people saying CachyOS is finicky, but I’ve had almost no issues in two years of extensive use.
And anything that pops up gets fixed extremely quickly.
What’s better, everything you need for gaming is in the repos by default and pre-tweaked, no need to fuss with it like other distros. This is my nitpick with Fedora or Arch AUR: once you go outside the curated, officially supported packages, you are asking for trouble.
You want stable and no snaps.
Debian
I keep seeing people recommending Debian. Its a great OS, especially for server stuff (which I use in multiple VMs in my home lab), but I wouldn’t recommend it on a computer you’re actively using. They take so long to update packages you’re always multiple versions behind. This really makes it difficult to get bug fixes and patches for software that you’re using on a daily basis. The hardware support is never as good as other options.
but I wouldn’t recommend it on a computer you’re actively using
Debian is my daily driver on all my computers. Servers, desktop, laptop. Its called the universal operating system for a reason
Packages are regularly updated with bug fixes for security issues. Do you absolutely need the latest features for every software? Debian is fine unless theres some killer new feature you absolutely need.
Hardware support is mostly fine unless you have the absolute latest hardware (which OP doesnt). And backport kernels should take care of newer hardware
Debian 12.9 was released a few months ago based on kernel 6.1 LTS, the latest kernel is 6.13, with 6.12 being the new LTS.
Debian packages are updated for bug fixes and security updates, but they generally don’t update to new versions.
If you’re running KDE Debian, your version is plasma 5.27, meanwhile 6.3 was just released.
There are a massive amount of quality of life improvements that debain 12 stable will never get. Sure you can backport some, but then it’s not really debain stable is it?
Meanwhile there are plenty of other distros that are almost just as stable, but have newer versions of everything. Not to mention the stability improvements of the newer software (one example is plasma 6.3 is a massive improvement over 5.27)
Like I said, I love Debian, but if you’re doing daily driving of the computer, I think there are better alternatives
There are millions of people out there who do 99% of their stuff in browser, and never need the newest shiniest features for graphics, or gaming or whatever. Plasma 5.27 works great for years. People only get fomo if they follow this stuff constantly. And most people dont. Lemmy/linux is a very niche gathering of nerds
To say that debian is not a good daily driver for most people, i still disagree for the above reasons
I’m not a professional or anything, but i get my basic photo and video editing just fine on debian.
For example, i used to chase all the latest and greatest digikam versions because “ooooh! New features!!”… In hindsight, there was nothing really that groundbreaking each update, and i just go back to using the core features that have been stable for years.
But we know based on OPs usage requirements, he’s not one of those people doing everything in the browser.
Updates are important regardless of fomo. They’re not only for adding new features, they’re for fixing bugs and improving stability and these changes rarely get backported unless their critical.
The core Debian might be stable, but, for example, plasma 6.3 is much more stable than 5.27
Debian is stable and will work, but there are other options that are basically as stable and have much newer packages - improving desktop stability and user experience
