My opinion on Linus and Luke's Linux challenge

[mail929]

If this happens to catch your attention hi @LinusTech and @Slick. I've been using Linux since high school (10 years now) and have experience with almost all the distros on your poll. First off I'd like to give some input on the challenge. I think it's awesome that you're doing this and bringing more attention to Linux and the improvements the community has made in the last decade or so. That being said if you choose the wrong distro you could make all of Linux look really bad. Every distro is different and targeted to a different audience. To explain I will give a brief explanation of each distro on the poll, but I trust @GabenJr will be a good filter for you.

 

Most of these distros have several different versions with different UIs or "desktop environments". For each of them I would recommend the "normal/standard" version.

 

Ubuntu

This is my number one recommendation for both of you it gives the best combination of ease of use, stability, and freshness. Ubuntu is the only distro on the poll created by an actual dedicated corporation with hundreds of employees, plus community contributors. I run Ubuntu on most my machines at work, on my spare machines, and Ubuntu Server on my homelab.

 

Pop!_OS

This is the next best option, if Ubuntu was 100 Pop is at least 95. Pop is a derivative of Ubuntu created by System76, primarily for their computers. It inherits many of the qualities of Ubuntu plus improved gaming support, but it is a little more rough around the edges imo. Pop was my daily driver for the last 1-2 years and I liked it just fine.

 

Arch Linux

As you know Arch is a bit of a meme distro, but it is a very good place to really get to learn the underpinnings of Linux, once you have already got a healthy amount of experience. Many seasoned Linux users do use Arch, it can be very powerful, but it is much easier to break than the other options on this list. I think it would make a very entertaining video for you to try to install Arch on your own, but I doubt you will be able to do it without help from Anthony.

 

Linux Mint

Linux Mint used to be the go to noob distro, but Ubuntu has made significant improvements over the last 5 or so years while Linux Mint has stagnated some. I would not recommend it if you want a "modern" Linux experience.

 

Manjaro

Manjaro has made a lot of noise lately. They make Arch easy to install and more stable while still being very modern. But they also make some bold choices that not everybody agrees with (though what choices do the Linux community agree on?). I feel rather neutral about it.

 

Debian

Debian is the base of many popular Linux distros, most notably Ubuntu. It is incredibly stable but to do so it lacks some of the modern features of other distros. This can actually make it harder to use when you want to work with new hardware or software.

 

Elementary

Elementary is a smaller distro made by a few very passionate and opinionated developers. It is pretty stable and designed to be very user friendly (gets compared a lot to macOS), but it isn't a great example of the Linux experience because to accomplish this it is a very rigid experience. I like it and its developers a lot, but it's not something I would use personally.

 

Drauger OS

I have honestly never heard of this before. I'd guess it provides an improved gaming experience while risking stability. I don't think it's a good sign that their last blog post includes "Drauger OS is NOT being discontinued."

 

Gentoo

Gentoo is one of the earlier Linux distros and relatively few people use it. It is effectively a more intense version of Arch.

 

Other Notable Distros

 

Fedora

Fedora is my current daily driver and despite the name a very serious distro. Fedora is effectively the free beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL (pronounced Rell like Dell not R-Hell Linus). I wouldn't recommend it for a total noob, but one could manage with it fine.

 

OpenSUSE

openSUSE is to SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) as Fedora is to RHEL, I'd say it is a little less noob friendly than Fedora.

 

Ranking

If I had to sort my recommendations:

1. Ubuntu
2. Pop
3. Fedora
4. Manjaro
5. Elementary
6. Debian
7. Mint
8. SUSE
9. Arch
10. Gentoo

 

There are many more Linux distros out there and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me, but that's the beauty of Linux, there is something for everybody.

[Willa]

I second your recommendation @mail929

 

I've used all the distros you listed except Drauger and Gentoo, but settled on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for my daily driver and gaming OS because of that nice combination of "ease of use, stability, and freshness" like you said. I've been daily driving + gaming via Ubuntu since late 2019 (with a few breaks here and there cause sometimes I like to main macOS from time to time) and other than when I used a low latency kernel (don't recommend), I've not had issues and haven't felt like I had to fiddle with it / fix it more than I used to have to do on Windows.

 

Ubuntu does ship an older wine stable version at this point, 5.0 instead of the 6.0 stable that's currently out. You'll use wine a lot while gaming on Linux if playing non-Steam (i.e. non Proton) games. I haven't run into issues with the older version though, thought I'd mention that there's a difference between what the distro package repo ships and what winehq ships since that's possibly useful.

 

Lutris and PlayOnLinux are two helpful / good platforms for assisting with using wine to run Windows games on Linux. I've used both but generally use PlayOnLinux these days since I am more used to it at this point. If there's a program I can't run simply by opening a file manager / explorer app and right-clicking the .exe and choosing "Open With Wine / Open with a Wine application" (this actually works sometimes!), then I'll create a virtual drive in PlayOnLinux, copy the .exe (and supporting files / folders if it has those) to the virtual drive, create a shortcut to that .exe within the virtual drive, and launch it via the PlayOnLinux interface and that works most of the time.

 

I don't exactly play a large games library though, since I mostly stick to non-official WoW servers, Minecraft, and a few titles in Steam that all work with Proton. YMMV depending on what you play, but things seem easier now than even 2 years ago when I first started doing this gaming on Linux stuff.

 

Best of luck @LinusTech and @Slick with gaming on Linux, I hope y'all produce some excellent videos as part of the challenge Excited to see what's to come. Testing out gaming on Arch or at least Valve's SteamOS version of it would also be neat, I'm curious to see what the gaming experience on those distros is like and whether less technically inclined friends of mine could run SteamOS for all their gaming needs and general purpose computing needs too.

[Diffracted]

While distros like popOS is great, I sincerely think one of them should use an arch based distro like (preferably) manjaro.

 

It would be very interesting to see how their experiences differ and they can compare what they liked and didn't like about both in the end.

 

Any thoughts on that?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I'm surprised they didn't mention one that is more welcoming to new users... like... Elementary OS or Zorin OS. 

[Diffracted]

Maybe it's not mainstream/popular enough. Also it's a macOS-distro right? 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, Diffracted said:

Maybe it's not mainstream/popular enough. Also it's a macOS-distro right? 

Yea Elementary gives is MacOS vibe while Zorin gives a Windows vibe. Though Zorin can also take on a MacOS look and feel if you want to opt for the Pro version (which also includes a Windows 11 style layout as well, interesting). Could get my pick if I were to  give Linux a try again. The last time I did... well I couldn't get Linux Mint to boot on anything and that was the end of that. 

[Diffracted]

7 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The last time I did... well I couldn't get Linux Mint to boot on anything and that was the end of that. 

Haha.. I've had nothing but issues with mint in the past as well. 
 

[RoseLuck462]

Someday I’d really like to try a System76 build.

 

Ive had a good experience with Mint already so that’s why I would choose.

[10leej]

Fedora isn't that bad for a new user. Really the struggle is in setting up rpm fusion but really you can just copy paste the terminal commands (every one of them) setup the nvidia driver and assign the package groups properly it'll be no sweat to maintain it.

 

That said, don't use Gentoo. I'm even hesitate to mention Arch to a new user.

[ageekhere]

Maybe use a Windows 10 Theme for Linux

 

https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Windows-10

 

[Conan Kudo]

As someone who uses and helps develop Fedora Linux, I was really sad and hurt to hear @LinusTechcompletely laugh off Fedora Linux as if it was ludicrous. As one of the folks who helps develop Fedora Linux and uses it as a daily driver specifically for desktop and gaming, I was really shocked to hear that neither Linus nor @Slick would even consider it.

 

In the past year alone (with Fedora 33 and 34), we've done a ton of work around the desktop and gaming:

• Btrfs by default with zstd transparent compression to simplify storage and improve I/O performance
• Swap on ZRAM, desktop process resource reservation, and adding systemd-oomd to improve responsiveness in situations with low memory and high memory pressure
• DXVK for Fedora Wine to match Proton for non-Steam Windows games (and non-games!)
• Adding thermald to improve thermal and Intel CPU performance for ultrabooks and other laptops
• Routing all audio through PipeWire to simplify audio and improve the quality of life for pro-audio setups

And with the upcoming Fedora 35 (releasing at the end of the month, beta out now), we've got a bit more in the pipe:

• Adding power-profiles-daemon to extend battery life and enable easy power management flexibility
• Using a shim library to have old SDL1 games use SDL2 to improve game performance and compatibility with newer technologies
• Easier user third-party repository enablement to easily access third-party software like Steam, Google Chrome, and the NVIDIA driver
• Select Flatpaks from Flathub made available so stuff like Zoom, Discord, etc. are all just a click away

Even with that, there's more coming down the pipe in the future, as Red Hat and the community work with folks like Valve, NVIDIA, and others to make the desktop and gaming awesome. Christian Schaller (the manager for the Red Hat Desktop team), wrote a blog post about what his team is working on for improving Fedora Workstation. He's written plenty of blog posts about the state of things and where his team is working to move things.

I wish they would consider using Fedora Linux, because I think we've done a stellar job trying to make an awesome easy to use Linux desktop and I think they'd love the stuff we've done to make gaming on Linux awesome.

[Jimzamjimmyy]

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:

 

As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)

 

My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro. EDIT: after writing this "comment" I watched the rest of the wan show, and I trust Anthony at picking the best distros for them.

 

I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. Also an average user does not have Anthony at home so this support as a service will replace him partially. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.

 

Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.

 

PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.

 

I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.

 

I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and again, an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them at home to fix their problems.

 

I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.

 

I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Jimzamjimmyy
Added mention that I didn't watch the full video before commenting, fixed some brainfarts

[Alexeygridnev1993]

20 minutes ago, Jimzamjimmyy said:

I tried to comment this on YouTube, but it keeps deleting my comments so I have to post here:

 

As a (Fedora) linux user I would say pick RHEL and Fedora (or Manjaro or PopOS)

 

My personal choice is Fedora, but I see a plenty of reasons using PopOS or Manjaro.

 

I really would like you to try Red Hat or SUSE technical support, since I haven't heard anyone trying them. It would be extremely interesting to hear some comments. I picked RHEL, because it is more widely known, but SUSE is great distro too with a support team available.

 

Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.

 

PopOS is great option because it is Ubuntu based and to my knowledge it has quite new packages, not as fresh as Fedora but still. And System76 customizes Gnome quite heavily which is useful, but I do not like.

 

I do not have personal experience with Manjaro, but I expect ithas some greatness from Arch and also the risk of bricking things easily. Sure it would be the closest comparison to the Steam Deck.

 

I would not recommend Arch or Gentoo, because you have to figure so many things out before using them, and your experience would not be standardized like most new linux users have. You can customize other distros extremely well too, but it will be more interesting to see you using some distro which an average ex windows user would choose. The ability to pick and buid your distro is great but it isn’t useful to the viewers whose experience would be extremely different and an average person doesn't have Anthony helping them to fix their problems.

 

I would not pick Mint, yes it is fine distro, but it is based on Ubuntu, so no difference with other Ubuntu based distros and Mint has the oldschool Gnome. I do not see a reason to learn using that, because Gnome 41 is awesome I am just really subjective. Use Mint if you have specific reason to do so.

 

I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

RHEL and SUSE cost thousands of dollars, there is absolutely no point in buying those for a home user. Maybe it could make sense to buy an Ubuntu support subscription, but again, it's a server-oriented service, I really have doubts they'll be able to help you with, e.g., troubleshooting game launching under Wine or Proton.

 

I dislike GNOME for its aesthetic choices, for its usage of resources, and even more so for the arrogance of its creator (who believes that his aesthetic choices are the best in the world so any customization is not officially supported and extremely discouraged). KDE is my favourite because it gives users a choice.

[Jimzamjimmyy]

2 minutes ago, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

RHEL and SUSE cost thousands of dollars, there is absolutely no point in buying those for a home user. Maybe it could make sense to buy an Ubuntu support subscription, but again, it's a server-oriented service, I really have doubts they'll be able to help you with, e.g., troubleshooting game launching under Wine or Proton.

 

I dislike GNOME for its aesthetic choices, for its usage of resources, and even more so for the arrogance of its creator (who believes that his aesthetic choices are the best in the world so any customization is not officially supported and extremely discouraged). KDE is my favourite because it gives users a choice.

RHEL actually has a version which is priced extremely closely to Windows pricing. Few hundred dollars or euros isn't unreasonable in my opinion to having the ability to use an os which you have no knowledge of and you know nobody to help you, but I do agree that it can be expensive for many people. On the other hand some people do not know how to research anything and I would be really interested if they can offer usable os for normies. But you are probably right that it could be completely separate topic.

 

I really would like them to try both Gnome and KDE. Personally I do not customize the looks, only functionality and even that super lightly. Yes sure, my keyboard layout is custom and I have a plenty of Gnome extensions, but I do not really care how it works if it works and I get my work done. I see the appeal of KDE, but when I tried it I wasted way too much time in settings which could have been used for real work.

[flindeberg]

TLDR; SteamOS 3.0 is pacman-based, therefore the obvious distro choice for a gamer is pacman-based. This essentially means Manjaro for most users, and the rest can manage on their own. 

 

I have a hard time viewing anything else than a pacman based distro as a serious choice for the future if gaming is in the picture. The most obvious reason today; SteamOS is pacman based. A lot of the work done towards Linux and gaming done by Valve can found in the AUR (at http://repo.steampowered.com/arch/valveaur/). I want to be a bit technically accurate here, that SteamOS is based on arch is not important, the fact that changes made for SteamOS and gaming on Linux are pacman-package-manager based is important.

 

The rest of this post is concerned with a user who wants to game on Linux just like if it was Windows and also do some light computer work (i.e., browsing, documents, mailing etc). If gaming is not an issue, Fedora is my recommendation for workstation-like work if you do not want to tinker, but anything pacman based is easier to maintain newer releases of software and libraries on (I run arch on my private gaming- / workstation rig with custom kernel and self-compiled Xorg / Wayland and I have never had an issue I couldn't solve in 5-10 minutes). Debian-based distros use horribly old kernels, sure they are good for servers and stability, but for gaming they are a no-go with later Nvidia and AMD GPUs since they lack important kernel support and driver stacks. 

 

But, and this is an important but, I see it as highly unlikely that any distro will have a default configuration (inc kernel modules) anywhere close to the one of SteamOS when it comes to gaming. And kernel features such as F-sync, E-sync, EAC-support, etc are not "+2% improvements", they make or break the gaming experience completely (here assuming that the new EAC-for-Wine patches require a non-default kernel).

 

I.e., for the I-just-want-it-to-work-user Manjaro with Gnome is a good bet. Gnome is better integrated with Feral's `gamemode` (which can be configured to optimise scheduling, GPU-overclock etc and does a decent job out of the box, https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode) than KDE; but tinkering can get KDE to work well as well. Depending on CPU and GPU just enabling gamemode might offer 20%+ performance because your distro might default to powersave CPU governing (especially for laptops). Just using Manjoro + Gnome defaults work surprisingly decently out of the box. I can imagine that SteamOS 3.0 when released will be the best out-of-the-box distro for normal users who sometimes want to game as well regardless of machine. 

 

And for the more advanced user (which to me means that you have at least a decent understanding of llvm vs gcc, DKMS, (x)wayland vs Xorg, mesa-driver stacks vs others, etc), the IMHO best build systems for linux kernels, wine, proton, etc, such as linux-tkg (https://github.com/Frogging-Family/linux-tkg), wine-tkg (https://github.com/Frogging-Family/wine-tkg-git), proton-ge-custom (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom) to name a few, are all geared for pacman based linux distros. And if you are an advanced user, the distro you installed from is not important at all, it is where you end up that matters (which, as a side note, is one of the fundamental commercial problems with Linux). 

 

And ofc, for Nvidia on Linux nothing beats the packager / installer Nvidia-all (https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all), especially if you tinker with Vulkan. 

 

I reach higher performance for gaming on my work/gaming-station with XWayland running latest proton-ge-custom with a custom llvm-based kernel with F- and E-sync enabled optimised for my rig than I do on Windows 10. For my rig, in the context of gaming, default Windows 10 beats default Manjaro with Gnome, but optimised pacman distro beats optimised Windows 10. In the context of actual work (compilation, VMs, etc) Linux blows Windows out of the water, see for example https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=2990wx-linux-windows&num=1, Windows does not handle large amounts of memory and core counts well (Microsoft has somewhat alleviated this since 2018, but not fully).

 

A side-note which might be important here, Xorg does not support monitors with different refresh rates well, the entire desktop will be synced to the slowest monitor (except if you manually install the latest RC for Xorg 21.1), so Wayland is a must for gamers with multiple monitors where all monitors are not 144 / 165 / 240 Hz.

[Conan Kudo]

4 hours ago, Jimzamjimmyy said:

Fedora is great choice, because it has really fresh packages and you can get the latest features of for example KVM there. There is huge community behind it, similar to Ubuntu, you can find solutions to almost any problems on their forums. Another reason to use Fedora is the Gnome, it is extremely close to stock Gnome (think it like clean android with no manufacturer customization which you would find in PopOS and Ubuntu). Fedora is also the choise of the Linux founder: Linus Torvalds as well as seemingly many LTT community Linux users. Fedora is one of the most polished and easy to use distro which actually has plenty of user customizability (in my opinion). @Conan Kudo mentioned plenty of other reasons, some of which I haven't tried.

 

I also forgot to mention that Fedora Linux is also available preloaded on a number of computers from Lenovo (there's a recent video from the Nest with Fedora conference on this) and Slimbook.

 

3 hours ago, Jimzamjimmyy said:

RHEL actually has a version which is priced extremely closely to Windows pricing. Few hundred dollars or euros isn't unreasonable in my opinion to having the ability to use an os which you have no knowledge of and you know nobody to help you, but I do agree that it can be expensive for many people. On the other hand some people do not know how to research anything and I would be really interested if they can offer usable os for normies. But you are probably right that it could be completely separate topic.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available for free for individuals for up to 16 machines, and supported subscriptions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation are US$299/system/year, which entitles you to technical and engineering support from Red Hat as well. There's also AlmaLinux, which has support options through TuxCare (though that's aimed mostly at businesses/servers, I think).

 

Another great option is openSUSE Leap, which is built by SUSE and the openSUSE community as a freely available rock-solid stable and somewhat fresh distribution. For commercially supported options, SUSE offers SUSE Linux Enterprise with a desktop variant that's available for US$120/system/year with support from SUSE. There's a more advanced Workstation variant that's available with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (US$799/system/year) with the workstation extension (US$50/system/year).

 

The benefit of paying for RHEL or SLE is that these companies take that money and pour into further developing the Linux platform. Red Hat and SUSE both spend a lot of time and money on developing Linux for the cloud, the server, and the desktop. This results in Fedora Linux and openSUSE Linux both getting improvements as a result of that money going in, and because it's all FOSS, it benefits the wider Linux ecosystem. Many of the things people enjoy on Ubuntu/Pop, Arch, Manjaro, etc. all start in either Fedora or openSUSE.

[OldTweaker]

Do you have any idea what that support will get you? They are not going to hand hold you in how to use Linux. You may log an issue if something is wrong which needs a fix. But expect days before an answer and they still expect you to understand the basics. This may be useful for companies that need that kind of support, but for home user... You are better spending that money on a book in my opinion.  

 

If you want to switch to Linux as your daily driver, the suggestions such as Ubuntu make sense (I have no experience with Fedora but probably that is a good choice as well). Gentoo and Arch are great if you really want to get know how Linux works, but initially can be frustrating as lots of stuff doesn't work until you make it work. You could run one of these in a Virtual Machine just for learning purposes.   

[tokanada]

One point to add. Will @LinusTech be using Linux on his Framework laptop? Based on the community posts on their website, compatibility between the Intel AX210 wifi card and the older Linux kernel found on the 20.04 release of Ubuntu is relatively non-existent without having to build drivers manually. I doubt he wants to go through that so that invalidates any distro based off of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

[ToboRobot]

I think @Linus should cheat and order a prebuilt rig from System76 and get help from support.

Loser has to daily drive Windows 11 from release day for a certain period of time.  

Then at the end of suffering a fresh windows release, they compare the experience to Linux.

[mail929]

6 minutes ago, tokanada said:

One point to add. Will @LinusTech be using Linux on his Framework laptop? Based on the community posts on their website, compatibility between the Intel AX210 wifi card and the older Linux kernel found on the 20.04 release of Ubuntu is relatively non-existent without having to build drivers manually. I doubt he wants to go through that so that invalidates any distro based off of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

I believe the challenge is for their home gaming machines, so most likely not his Framework.

[mail929]

10 hours ago, Willa said:

Ubuntu does ship an older wine stable version at this point, 5.0 instead of the 6.0 stable that's currently out. You'll use wine a lot while gaming on Linux if playing non-Steam (i.e. non Proton) games. I haven't run into issues with the older version though, thought I'd mention that there's a difference between what the distro package repo ships and what winehq ships since that's possibly useful.

 

Lutris and PlayOnLinux are two helpful / good platforms for assisting with using wine to run Windows games on Linux. I've used both but generally use PlayOnLinux these days since I am more used to it at this point. If there's a program I can't run simply by opening a file manager / explorer app and right-clicking the .exe and choosing "Open With Wine / Open with a Wine application" (this actually works sometimes!), then I'll create a virtual drive in PlayOnLinux, copy the .exe (and supporting files / folders if it has those) to the virtual drive, create a shortcut to that .exe within the virtual drive, and launch it via the PlayOnLinux interface and that works most of the time.

 

I don't exactly play a large games library though, since I mostly stick to non-official WoW servers, Minecraft, and a few titles in Steam that all work with Proton. YMMV depending on what you play, but things seem easier now than even 2 years ago when I first started doing this gaming on Linux stuff.

Reminds me of the discussion of game launchers/stores last night. I believe Steam and GoG partially are the only ones available for Linux, but PlayOnLinux and Steam's non-steam games are both easy options to get the other platforms on Linux. I don't think the Wine version on Ubuntu matters all that much since Steam runs its own version for Proton anyway.

[mail929]

3 hours ago, Jimzamjimmyy said:

I would not pick Ubuntu either, because it is pushing Snap packages and Flatpak is used on almost every other distro. You can install Snaps on almost any distro, but the distro defaults do matter.

Definitely yet another case of Canonical having to do it their way, but I've had no issues with the snaps they default to over apt. Plus, there's no reason you can't install Flatpak on Ubuntu, but I doubt they would ever get to that point.

[mail929]

2 hours ago, flindeberg said:

I have a hard time viewing anything else than a pacman based distro as a serious choice for the future if gaming is in the picture. The most obvious reason today; SteamOS is pacman based. A lot of the work done towards Linux and gaming done by Valve can found in the AUR (at http://repo.steampowered.com/arch/valveaur/). I want to be a bit technically accurate here, that SteamOS is based on arch is not important, the fact that changes made for SteamOS and gaming on Linux are pacman-package-manager based is important.

I didn't know there was an official Valve AUR repo, very cool. But I disagree that means pacman is a must for gaming. If you want the most bleeding edge peak performance gaming experience I'm sure the Valve packages are the way to do it, but you can already have a great gaming experience on many distros without any tuning.

[Conan Kudo]

1 hour ago, OldTweaker said:

Do you have any idea what that support will get you? They are not going to hand hold you in how to use Linux. You may log an issue if something is wrong which needs a fix. But expect days before an answer and they still expect you to understand the basics. This may be useful for companies that need that kind of support, but for home user... You are better spending that money on a book in my opinion.  

I'm familiar with it, as I've paid for and used some of these support options before. Both Red Hat and SUSE include maximum time to response for support cases via email, chat, or phone call. These and the scope of the support are both defined in the subscription agreement. It definitely includes a lot of the basic stuff as well as more advanced stuff in a timely manner. You're paying for it, after all.

17 minutes ago, mail929 said:

I believe the challenge is for their home gaming machines, so most likely not his Framework.

It's too bad, because Framework cares a lot about Linux support, and recently Matthew Miller (Fedora Project Leader) was able to quote Nirav Patel (founder of Framework) as saying "Fedora is definitely the best supported distro on the Framework Laptop."

[Unboxious]

I'm just going to throw my hat in real quick for Bedrock Linux. It's kind of a weird choice, but in my eyes it makes a lot of sense. One of the biggest problems new Linux users run into is software that hasn't been packaged for their OS. With Bedrock Linux, you can have all of the packages for Ubuntu, Arch, and Fedora all on one OS.

 

Edit: I also think it would make great video content because the whole idea of the thing is so wonky.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Unboxious
added in that last line