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Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux (www.tweaktown.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 30 points 1 year ago (33 children)

Which distro did you go with? I'm looking at switching soon too

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  • [–] 69 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    Bazzite.

    I found it really easy to get started with. Although I’d recommend KDE over Gnome. I tried Gnome for a few hours before changing my mind and it was just a little too different from what I was used to.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    That's honestly the way. Bazzite just works without tinkering. It doesn't eat into your game time with debugging. Plus KDE is very Win10 like, so it's all just familiar and easy.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I'm glad Bazzite is what it is, but I'm hoping some of y'all get interested in other distros in the next few years. There's several great options out there (and I don't want to say … have everyone wind up on Ubuntu flavors and be having the same conversation about corporate overreach in a decade with Canonical as the new Microsoft)

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Eh, I already have a decent amount of skill with running other distros headless. When it's gaming time I prefer a solution that just works 99% of the time.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Bazzite exists because of SteamOS, and SteamOS is Arch-based. If there's a danger of one OS starting to dominate, I'd still think SteamOS is more likely because it has Valve's backing.

    I don't think there's much danger of all other distributions disappearing any time soon, even for gaming applications.

    What I hope is that container-based atomic-type distributions take off. I've been using Linux for decades, and it's such a nice change to have an OS where I don't have to fiddle with drivers or the base OS.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    have everyone wind up on Ubuntu flavors and be having the same conversation about corporate overreach in a decade with Canonical as the new Microsoft)

    Bazzite is Fedora based, not Ubuntu.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yes, I know - but my concern is eventual capture, like Microsoft has done to GitHub or how IBM is 'partially closing' RHEL's source code. My point is that off were all in one basket (Bazzite) it's easier to be taken over and reigned in. Bazzite is fine, but I hope is not the only distro all the influx of Windows users settle on. There's a wealth of great projects - Garuda for example is a great gaming Linux distro.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    if you miss iphone + cydia, gnome + extensions is max dopamine, plus with arcmenu (customizable start menu, many presets) and dash to panel (panel like windows/kde) it's basically like any other de.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The current gnome (3) is very different from previous versions. You might like a modern fork of gnome, like mate. Don't let something that has a gnome connection turn you off right away if all you've seen is gnome 3.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I... don't think Bazzite has a... mate flavor/spin/variant?

    I think its just KDE or GNOME?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    if on cachyos you get like 12+ de options which is nice when initially testing them all out, just demo each for a while

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Thats neat, I didn't know that!

    Yeah, a benefit of arch based distros is that they are much, much more customizable than other OSs... downside of that though is that there are a whole lot more bugs that can happen, whole lot more crazy custom solutions that may need to be figured out.

    I've not used Cachy, but I have used Arch before... if the Cachy people can figure out a way to keep all that just generally more stable, honestly kudos to them!

    Bazzite basically narrows its official support scope so they can focus on a feature set that 'just works'... I am sure I could figure out how to torture a Bazzite install to work with a non KDE / Gnome DE, but it would be a lot of work.

    Or maybe it could set it up with the built in distrobox/distroshelf tools? Not sure, never futzed with a different DE in a distrobox.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Look at the desktop environment first. KDE is like Windows. GNOME is like MacOS.

    Then look at some videos about how to get your GPU working on a distro you're interested in if you have an Nvidia card. AMD GPU works out of the box.

    I would recommend OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Excellent implementation of KDE, GUI tools to do advanced things, rolling release (i.e. constantly up to date) but also thoroughly tested. Rolls back easily if something gets messed up. This gave me the least problems starting and I stuck with it for over a year. It was great.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    I recently switched and have distro hopped a bit, landing on CachyOS which I feel I’ll stick with for a while (though I’m very indecisive and a small part of me wants to change over to Arch). CachyOS is based on Arch but with more ease of use stuff on top, especially for gaming (they have a gaming bundle which is just one command and you’re good to go), plus I’ve heard it’s the fastest or one of the fastest out there. Bazzite is also great (Fedora-based), which I used for a bit, but I started to get into using the command line more and found immutability to be annoying. It does mean it’s harder to fuck up though, but I don’t really care if I break my machine (you probably won’t break your machine regardless, that’s mostly sarcastic). Pop_OS! (Ubuntu-based) is also supposed to be good for gaming but I haven’t tried it. Keep in mind, if you plan on doing more than gaming and decide to use the command line for downloading, most download guides out there assume you’re using something based on Ubuntu or Debian (you’ll see a lot of “sudo apt install _____”), for better or worse. If you scroll down a bit you’ll probably find stuff for Fedora and/or Arch but not always. That doesn’t mean you can’t get the program on those distros, just that you’ll have to either know where to look or download a different way, such as from a digital storefront or manually from the website of the program you’re getting. I’m still a beginner actively trying to get better, but these are all things I would’ve liked to know when I made the switch a little while ago. Another thing to keep in mind is Linux and Nvidia don’t quite get along as well as AMD or Intel. I have an Nvidia card and both CachyOS and Bazzite had no issues, but for whatever reason Mint didn’t like to run steam games, no matter what I did. I made sure to have all the drivers downloaded and looked up a bunch of guides but I never got it running properly. Bazzite just worked straight out of the box, and CachyOS works even better for me after a little tinkering. If you have any questions, I just recently was where you are now so I might have more relevant advice, though I’m certainly no expert. But I’d be happy to help.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    exactly what I ended up on with exactly the same issues with Mint (and Zorin as well). Cachy and Bazzite just worked (bazzite didn't work on live image though), but yeah Mint just didn't work.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Once you know the equivalent commands to search, install, remove, ... packages in your distro, problem solved.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that if someone doesn’t care to learn, it might be more straightforward for them to chose something that uses apt. I’m a beginner and I use pacman no problem, but I’m willing to learn. Lots of folks aren’t.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    honestly i see pacman/yay just as much as I see other stuff when looking at instructions, (paru is pacman/yay in cachyos for that stuff, pacman in cachyos is their own repos)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Cachyos is great if you want access to everything, debtap for the rare ocassion you need to install a deb, can install snaps and flatpak support easily, but you don't really need to mess with all that, mostly everything is available with aur + flathub (have to do one terminal line since cachyos doesn't have it by default)

    Bazzite does have bazaar by default, which i like as the best flathub appstore, aur version stopped working for me.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    For anyone reading this: immutable does not mean you cannot use the command line, and you cannot tinker. It's just different, and you will need to learn a few new commands, etc.

    Additionally, Bazzite comes with Distrobox where you can literally install any software on any distro (including AUR if you want). There's almost no limits.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I should’ve clarified that in my comment, you’re correct. I wasn’t trying to imply it wasn’t possible, just that a lot of people don’t care to learn new things and just want things to work like they’re used to, and the odd time they need to use the command line, it might be more straightforward if they aren’t using something immutable, for better or worse. Immutable has the upside of being harder to fuck up for newbies though.

    I didn’t know about Distrobox, that’s really cool actually. I’m content with Cachy but if I went back to Bazzite I’d be looking into using that for sure.

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