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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Coworker wants to try Linux with gaming, Bazzite or Mint? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by iByteABit@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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A coworker of mine asked me to help him install Linux, he hasn't tried Linux before but he's sick of Windows.

He is very much into gaming, so gaming support is the first priority. He is also a developer/tester so I suppose that he will also want to have access to dev tools, languages, and other packages like that for personal projects.

My first go-to when recommending to newbies is Mint because it's simple, tried and tested, but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience. However it scares me that there's no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks and brew, or even podman images. Will this be a problem as he uses the OS for general usage besides gaming in the long term, would it be better to just go with Mint and set that up for gaming instead?

Feel free to also recommend other distros, but keep in mind that while he is technical, he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

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[–] deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

In order of ease of use; Nobara (Fedora based), popOS (Mint/Ubuntu based), cachyOS (Arch based, easy enough to use but might be overwhelming because of the amount of linux jargon going on) over bazzite, depending on your friend ability and wish to tinker around with his OS.

I have had problems even dragging dropping files across apps in bazzite and other immutable distros like bluefin. If your friend is interested in tinkering just a little bit then he will be be banging his head across a wall with bazzite. The community support for these relatively new immutable distros is also quite bad when it comes to edge cases.

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I strongly disagree with the order. To me, nobara has broken more than any of these (quite frequently actually), pop os is clunky and not intuitive, cachy is surprisingly the most stable for me and easiest despite it being arch based. Bazzite I use on my home living room computer and it's been pretty solid. I'm a little concerned with it though because I believe they are having some maintainer issues that might impact future releases.

[–] Adeptus_Obsoletus@piefed.social 3 points 6 hours ago

At the end of the day, Nobara is pretty much a one-man hobby project. Sure, there is a small community around it nowadays but even then, if the main developer decides to drop it, they'd have hard time keeping up. That's why I'm usually hesitant to recommend these types of distributions and I'd rather recommend something tried and tested with a big community build over many years.

[–] HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I switched from win11 to nobara about 2 months ago and so far am really happy with it. Anything i should look out for that could avoid 'breaking' it?

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Once I tried to install a different desktop environment and that didn't go well. Another time it just... Stopped working? I hadn't changed anything. It seemed like a Nvidia thing but I never did recover it. Ended up doing a fresh install. If you're 2 months in you've done better than I did! It might just not like my machine

[–] HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I’m running on AMD hardware, which might help. However, I thought Nobara offers a special edition for NVIDIA GPUs to ensure better compatibility. Also, from what I understand, there’s a lot of optimization under the hood in Nobara, and it’s recommended not to change the base packages. Maybe this does include the desktop environment as well...

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I thought it would be great and bought into the hype. It ended up being one of the more frustrating distros for me. Maybe your right about the de being included in base packages? Regardless, it lost me after the second issue. On cachy now and happy. Plus I really like the little terminal update animation thing if pacman C eating the progress bar.

[–] HumbleExaggeration@feddit.org 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I would also be frustrated, if it did break twice. Happy to hear you found something that works. I also found CashyOs really interesting. What turned me away was the fact that it is based on arch and I read everywhere that arch is hard for newcomers to Linux. But maybe this does not apply to cachy. If nobara should break some day, i think this will be the next distro I will test.

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I too was scared of the arch but it's been as easy as any other distro so far