GET AMD INSTEAD OF NVIDIA. While everyone talks about how Nvidia is better than it used to be and stuff, AMD basically has zero problems on Linux.

You’ll get plenty of answers with different suggestions, so I’ll suggest checking in that community for plenty of previous answers. I would say to stick with “main” known distribution and to ditch specialized ones. https://linux-myths.pages.dev/Single-Maintainer https://linux-myths.pages.dev/Distros

I’m on Nobara but despite the fantastic work of GloriousEggRoll, it did had it’s lot of breakage which made me want to switch to the suggested uBlue Fedora atomic builds, per those criterias.

It’s always the top 10 once enough people chime in, because any can work and it’s easy enough to install or select what you need on most of them. (I’d probably recommend mint).

But… hardware is probably more important. Cutting edge GPU might not have good drivers yet. AMD is probably going to be much better supported. Networking you’re probably good now, but getting more popular stuff means it’s more likely to already have had the kinks worked through years ago. If you play popular multiplayer shooters with shitass anti cheat malware it probably won’t work.

Well I had downloaded a few to try out, but the first one I installed (Pop OS) just worked right away so I stuck with it.

Although if you are considering a new PC, do go for an AMD GPU. Will save you a lot of hassle (like it did me).

I made the switch 2-3 months ago, and I went with Kubuntu. It’s absolutely fine, but if I knew then what I know now I’d likely have gone pop or mint, just to not bother with snaps (although they’re pretty easy to get rid of).

As others have said, get Ventoy on a USB stick, use that to have a play with a few live environments and get a feel for what desktop environment you might want to use. KDE and Cinnamon I think are pretty good Desktop Environments if you’re used to Windows, but have some fun with it and also try a few that are very different to windows, you might find yourself liking them (I really like using i3 on my laptop where the screen is fairly low res)

Which Linux OS would folks recommend? OP asking you as well haha.

I’ll throw Tumbleweed into the pile of recommendations.

It comes with a rollback utility called Snapper configured OOTB. This was a big one for me and it’s what stopped me distrohopping. The only reason I didn’t stick with TW the first time I tried it (years ago) was because of issues getting my Nvidia card to work.

You can install Snapper yourself on other distros of course, but I’ve read that it’s sometimes not a trivial undertaking.

Note: Ventoy adds something to the boot params that causes issues for some, so heads up if you decide to try TW off of Ventoy.

I just tried Bazzite on a laptop and doing it to be quite good. I prefer kde plasma anyway, so it’s been pretty awesome. I was even able to install ghost of tsushima via repack, so I’m considering imagining my actual gaming PC…I just want to finish BG3 first cause I’m too deep and would flip the duck out of I couldn’t finish

I’ve gone through several installs (mint, neon, vanilla, tumbleweed, manjaro). The distro I’ve ended up sticking with has been EndeavourOS.

For three simple reasons:

• when I want to install something, someone has usually already put in the work and made it easily available on the AUR
• if something breaks, there is an easy way to recover as long as you set it up in advance (snapshots)
• bleeding edge, you get updates quickly, latest KDE, latest kernel, latest everything

Basically, the low ease of use of arch is addressed by EndeavourOS, and its “instability” is addressed by timeshift. All you’re left with is how easy it is to get your system to run whatever you might want it to run.

What I did is install EndeavourOS with btrfs, then first thing run sudo yay -S pamac to install a GUI for managing software discovery, installation and updates.

Next, timeshift, timeshift-systemd-timer and timeshift-autosnap. The systemd package enables timeshift to maintain scheduled snapshots, and the autosnap package automatically creates snapshots whenever you install or update something, so you can always go back to right before changing your system.

Run timeshift to set it up, and you’re good to go.

mint. my distrohopping always ends back in mint. heard good stuff about zorin too, i intend to try that next.

You’ve basically described my situation exactly. I built a PC 6 months ago for Linux. I distro-hopped for a good while and settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Now I’ve put OpenSUSE on my laptop too. I would highly recommend it.

I went for an AMD GPU and have never had any problems with it. Linux is not as painless as Lemmy would have you believe though. Be prepared to learn some hard lessons and keep your data physically disconnected from the PC while you do it.

You’ve asked about WiFi drivers further down…on my PC, the only distros that had the correct WiFi drivers out of the box were EndeavourOS and ZorinOS. The rest all needed wired LAN to get them going.

I was in the same boat a month ago. I decided to get a System76 desktop. While a bit more expensive than building my own, the time and grief saved has been wonderful. They are great machines if you can spend a little more to save headaches.

I have Linux mint on my gaming desktop and it’s been great. I’d say that is a good entry point. But i tried a couple distros via live USB before choosing.

As far as user friendlyness for new users I usually recommend Mint (Cinnamon desktop) / ZorinOS Core (customized Gnome desktop)/ TuxedoOS (KDE Desktop).

Choose accordingly to your preferred desktop environment and enjoy.

I recommend endeavouros - it’s on arch (personally my favorite, btw), has a bunch of desktop environments you can pick from that come configured nicely out of the box, nice presets and well commented configs, etc. Install and setup are super easy, they also include installing your driver’s and such.

For getting games to work, most games work out of the box on steam (just make sure to enable proton for all titles and you’re set). Some games will require some changes to the launch command which you can super easily find with just searching {game title} Linux. There are some that straight up don’t work, and most likely no tinkering will fix that - but it’s primarily fps and competitive games with kernal level anticheat. It’s getting better with fewer and fewer games using it though. Since you already have a steak deck you already know the process most likely so you should be able to hit the ground running

I’m not amd guy… I’ve used Intel and Nvidia for ages and ages… when my last upgrade failed hardware wise… I bought a Intel minipc from Beelink with an Intel ultra 5 125h.

It came with windows 11.

I’m a dad of a 1 yr old. who is playing stardew with his wife right now.

Ive formatted a handful of times to different Linux distros to see which felt better for me on this PC.

Manjaro, kubuntu, Debian, kde neon.

Currently I’m running kde neon. Out of the box it likes to reboot on updates… so I found a non-sudo needed cli command to fix that. (It’s a setting apparently in settings)

Anyway…l say all this to say… the way steam is now… and how graphics cards are… you can pretty well run what you want.

Granted it’s antidotal from me… But as long as you’re not buying the absolute latest stuff from a hardware vendor… You’d be fine.

If I was buying now I’d probably not buy the Intel chips that are having troubles but the gen before that… and probably some 3xxx Nvidia card.

And not hesitate to run any distro I wanted.

Ps I like apt… because that’s what I’m comfy with. So I tend to use distros that use apt. Tho manjaro is nice because of the aur… But they have issues company wise

I’ve been bouncing around Linux distros since 2007.

I’ve been a big Ubuntu fan but Bazzite has absolutely blown me away, especially for gaming. Everything just works out of the box. No tweaking, no driver installations, no troubleshooting.

My multi monitor display and dock with peripherals (including webcam and wireless headset) just works with a single USB connection on the dock.

Call me a shill for bazzite but if you are just using the pc like a windows user would to play games, you won’t go wrong with it. I could basically say the same for any Ubuntu or Fedora distro but from my experience, those require some tweaking for everything to work nice.

I’ve been gaming on endeavour OS for 3 years now and I love it. 10/10 would recommend.

If you value your time and want to save money before you go the hardware route try a cloud gaming platform like Geforce Now. Get the top tier account, you will always have the best graphics, you can run on any of your existing hardware, and you can fire up additional rigs for your children/friends. If the games you like are available, you never have to wait for updates. If you enjoy modding games this is not for you. All that money you were going to throw at the cpu etc can, if you want, be put towards a really nice monitor and controllers both of which typically outlast the cpu anyway.

Are you me? It pissed me off that the system was obviously designed to disregard my wishes one too many times. Luckily, gaming support has been very good.

I went Pop OS but I had Bazzite, Nobara and Endeavour on the usb drive ready to go if I didn’t like it.

Maybe it sounds overdramatic but if the point of a computer is to play games (and I did spend a lot of money for it) and it stutters consistently to the point that the “80” FPS I’m getting looks worse than a consistent 30, then yeah, I’m going to do something about it. And since the simplest way was wiping the system and reinstalling, then going for linux at least at first makes sense.

Maybe I wasn’t clear in the OP but it was not a bit of stuttering: I could go to certain areas in game and get consistent stuttering and frametime problems, which is worse than just lowered but consistent FPS.

I wouldn’t describe rolling release distros where you need to fix breakages for lazy gamers.

@seaQueue @lorty I always have controller problems with flatpak steam. Some games will work with a controller and some won’t Even if steam says control is compatible. I have the same problem with Debian and steam too. That’s why I always game on arch Linux and Fedora Linux. I have no problem with controller support but those two.

Have you been able to try a more recent kernel version? It may have improvements in the driver situation.

Just a thought, you could try getting a new Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card or just a USB dongle. Should be in the $10 usd range