this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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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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My example applied to all distros, the difference would be the time it takes that code change (which resolved a critical to me bug) takes to actually be available to use.
There's also very little that's specific to me about that, it's a real use case that comes up repeatedly for new releases that tend to push things graphically. I'm only going to recommend distros that minimize the time to get those fixes because it's a better user experience for the target demographic with little downside.
I'm sorry but I might be totally out of the loop here, do gamers use Mesa? I thought proprietary drives from NVIDIA and AMD, sadly, was what most people actually used nowadays. Again to be clear I'm NOT saying it's a good thing (it's not!) just wondering what's the actual share of users relying on it.
Edit: oh, looks like Mesa is now the default for AMD "AMD promotes their Mesa drivers Radeon and RadeonSI over the deprecated AMD Catalyst" (via Wikipedia), then yes it's a big deal. Still makes me wonder what's the current share but mostly out of curiosity.
Mesa has been the defacto standard for AMD for years. It's always performed better than the official driver. AMD just made it their official recommendation recently.
I think Intel also uses Mesa, with Nvidia being the odd one out