https://distrofighter.com/

I heard CachyOS is quite popular these days. Other dedicated gaming distros are Bazzite, Nobara, Garuda Linux ...

Pick one, that is the one

Fedora KDE.

Linux Mint!

It's based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.

Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.

Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.

Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It's a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.

However. I might not be as 'cool' as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don't feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.

Mint is not something that I use myself, but it's what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.

On other comments and what you've said in your other comment, I think you'd be just interested in Nobara or CachyOS. At least, if you want an out of box working experience but still have the ability to tinker and develop relatively easy.

You might prefer Nobara because it's Fedora based rather than Arch, and your hardware specs aren't bleeding edge anyway. If you want a bit more stability than that though, and don't mind doing the set up yourself, plan vanilla Fedora could also work and you just add what you want / need.

I'd avoid any recommendations for immutable distros like Bazzite because they're best for beginners that aren't too tech savvy, or people very familiar with Linux and have no issues mucking about with OS-tree or running a distrobox. Really no in-between.

I also have 8 bitdo controllers and I do recommend updating them on Windows before you get rid of it, depending which you have - some can be updated via a Chrome based browser but others only through Windows really.

Love Linux Mint for the easy transition away from Windows.

Fedora flavors are a good mix of quicker updates and also very stable. KDE Plasma is a very well thought out desktop environment and familiar to Windows users. I've been using Mint and it feels dated. Also I recommend not using anything from Ubuntu as they keep enshittifing.

Fedora Aurora might suit you. It's immutable but you can still install Mullvad via ostree or a community Flatpak.

Having read through some of the comments I just wanted to add one thing. If you find that one distro doesn't quite do what you need, don't be afraid to wipe it again and install a different distro. I migrated from windows 10 to Linux mint, I found it frustrating for gaming, and then from mint I switched to cachyOS, which is built from the same OS that the steam deck uses. I haven't had any similar issues since. Find what works for you, and don't be afraid to try something else

My go-to advise for people new to linux or just wanting something that works is Linux Mint (Or Ubuntu if you don't mind the commercial aftertaste). End of discussion.

It is based on Ubuntu packages which are well maintained (things just work), it has been around and popular for a very long time, has a big and active community, and it prioritises ease of use.

The only downsides are support for brand new hardware (<6-12 months) which takes a while to be supported. But that doesn't seem to apply to you.

If you want bleeding edge, extensive customizations, or a cool unconventional desktop you can check out any kind of desktop.

I like discussing distros as much as the next person. But in my long distrohopping career I realised that with new or novice linux users it's best to stick to the easiest, most out of the box experience. I would argue this is linux mint.

I've seen too many times that people send new linux users to the most wild distro's and then be suprised that the user gives up on linux completely after a week.

If you want to get some terminal/technical experience or like to make your hands dirty feel free to experiment.
But make your feet wet in the shallow well known puddles.

Fun story about why I'm such a curmudgeon about this:

Long before Proton even existed, I once researched how to run a Windows VM for gaming on a Linux host machine, with GPU passthrough. At the time I had an Intel iGPU and an Nvidia discrete GPU, so I figured the iGPU could run the host, while the discrete GPU could run the guest.

I asked around reddit and some of my tech savvy friends on what the best distro would be to accomplish this. A few people steered me toward Debian, because I expressed concern that the system wouldn't be stable or would be difficult to work with.

Well, turns out Debian was a fucking terrible choice. First I had graphics driver problems, naturally. Secondly, I couldn't even install qemu if I wanted to because it wasn't in the apt repositories that shipped with Debian. So I had to learn to add those. Then I had to learn how to stop Debian from recognizing the nvidia GPU during boot, so that the PCI device could be reserved for the passthrough. That was a monumental headache to figure out. And finally, once everything was set up, I learned that nvidia had more or less disabled their consumer-grade cards from being used in a virtual machine. I spent over a month trying to get that working, and eventually just said fuck it and stayed on Windows. And I caught a ton of flak for that, because obviously I should have known that nvidia was a bad choice of GPU, and I should have just purchased an AMD GPU instead... in the middle of GPU mining bubble, when cards were going for $500 a pop.

I'm really hoping to not have a repeat of that experience.

Bazzite. Fedora based, "atomic", has nvidia drivers and windows compatibility utilities preinstalled. Atomic means easy rollback after update in case if something breaks, and it probably doesn't expect you to use command line much. It is expecting users to install apps with flatpak so make sure flathub has the software you need (I think it does).

I have never personally used Bazzite, but atomic distros and namely Bazzite are known to be very user friendly and breakproof.

Steam Link is available for Linux. I suppose that most Steam-things are.

I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?

Answer: Yes.

Is your PC going to be a gaming-centric PC? Or are you planning on doing other things like work or other stuff?

There's plenty of gaming-focused distros out there. Some easier and some harder to understand.

From your hardware You'd probably be good with something like Linux Mint or Zorin OS. They're Ubuntu based and are pretty solid and easy to use. They support your hardware out of the box. Kubuntu might be a good choice too if you want a more windows-y experience with more customization options. I personally have Kubuntu and my 8bitdo controllers work without a hitch via bluetooth. I play mostly indie games and a few AAA titles from Steam, GOG and Epic via the Heroic launcher as well and have had zero issues.

If you REALLY want a gaming-focused distro, you'll have to go with a Fedora based distro then. Something like Nobara.

But you want to avoid less stable distros like Arch-based ones. Like Cachy OS. Those might end up being more of a headache than anything with problems occurring after updates and a malware-infested 3rd party software repo.

Almost any distro will work for pretty much all of that. Only potentially limiting thing I see there I don't think that the Mullvad VPN client is generally available within distro repositories. Their site says it has clients available for Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora. So perhaps pick from one of those?

For the steam link question, I know if I have a game running on my desktop it presents me the option to stream to my laptop (both Linux machines). I assume this is the same functionality. I don't use it so can't speak to how well it works.

Edit: It occurs to me this comment lacks a recommendation. Within the three listed supported distros for Mullvad, I think I'd recommend Fedora for you. Been some years since I used it last but I remember the installer being fairly robust and intuitive while still easy to use, and a pretty rock solid system once it's up and running.

I love how there are already 38 replies. Linux distro questions are like Lemmy catnip, heh.

Fort what its worth:

• I have very similar hardware: 7800, 3090, 1440p ultrawide, NVMe+SATA

• Similar needs (GoG, game modding, python, Plex, photo backup)

• Problems with linux before.

CachyOS has been my "end boss" distro.

Ive had the same stable partition for like ~3 years now, which Ive never had on linux so long. Its just perfect in so many ways, like development libs being optimized, and every gaming/optimization package you could ever want being packaged by the distro. It saved me from getting hacked or screwing up my own system in a few ways.

THAT BEING SAID,

I still dual boot to (heavily neutered) Windows. Some games, like Cyberpunk, just seem to perform slightly (but measurably) better on Windows when I A/B benchmark them, even when I try to make linux the best case scenario.

And some things I do (like HDR content wheb hooked up to a TV, or rendering HEIF files) still have some quirks on linux.

You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.

CachyOS. Hands down the best for you.

• Gets updates as soon as they come out which is important for gaming and software development

• Really good performance, has access to a huge amount of software

• Beginner friendly, automatically creates snapshots (backups) in case you mess up

• Has a simple to follow wiki with lots of useful info. Also it lets you install all the gaming packages you need with one button click.

No offense to people on this site but every time this thread pops up there are a lot of terrible recommendations being thrown around. Don't bother using base Arch linux if you're new to Linux. Don't use random niche distros like MX Linux. Debian is very barebones and requires you to manually set up a lot of things that come by default in other modern distros. And finally IMO don't use an immutable OS unless you know what you're getting into, as many people get burned by how hard it is to install applications on them.

I use Bazzite. The Mullvad VPN gui app works on it, but you will have to either add the Mullvad repo and layer the package, or install the local .rpm file (using rpm-ostree), and manually update it whenever there is an update.

Sounds complicated, but it really isn't.

If you want to use the aur, all you need to do is create an Arch distrobox (everything you need to do it is pre-installed, including a gui app for distrobox if you don't want to do CLI). You can then "export" anything you install on the box to your host OS to be opened with one click with no noticeable overhead.

And yes, you will be able to play your Steam games on the TV with Linux. Probably better and more easily than with Windows nowadays.

Ubuntu based distros are going to have a very easy Nvidia driver experience (just open the driver tool from the start menu and select the version you want, and bam, done). However, one downside of Ubuntu itself is their pushing of snap packaged apps, which are considered a bit crap, and can cause weirdness (I think Valve officially don't recommend the Snap version of Steam).

You can avoid the snap stuff with Linux Mint, as they totally strip that out. Only downside of Mint is that it's still on an older LTS version of Ubuntu, 24.04 (the latest is now 26.04, two years newer). You will need to add an additional PPA (a third party repository) to access the latest 610 Nvidia drivers on it, which some of the very latest games like the James bond require to launch in Proton. That may or may not be an issue for you. Mint also has the best built in app store, IMO.

Fedora is nice, but the Nvidia driver isn't quite as easy to install, and it doesn't come with some needed video codecs out of the box, though this script maker can make those pretty easy to get. I'd recommend it if you want more up to date apps in the repos and don't want to encounter Ubuntu's snaps.

Nobara is a spin of Fedora with all that stuff included (and has an installer with the Nvidia driver pre-installed, I think), made by the Glorious Eggroll who makes improved versions of Proton.

I personally would suggest choosing between those options, since both Ubuntu and Fedora based distros have a lot of 3rd party support, such as Mullvad, which only supports those two officially, and they have large communities with lots of help.

Zorin OS. They do an amazing job at creating a very smooth UI and give you the ability to tailor it to your liking. It's Ubuntu-based, but very lightweight. I use it in all my VMs for this reason as well.

Plain old Debian always wins if you prefere a Wirkung sytem over bleeding edge features

I can understand people not being comfortable with the idea of running a constant cutting-edge distro.

I'm a very old-school Linux user (the very first distro I tried was Red Hat back in 1996), and I've had the chance to try most distributions over the years from Debian to SuSE, Slackware to Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Arch Linux, and various derivatives in between. I can say I know most of them.

Debian and all its derivative distros like Mint, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, etc., are a bit too dated for nowadays' desktop PC needs. Yes, I know some of them have some new fancy desktop stuff now (like COSMIC on Pop!_OS), but it's like having a BMW X1 body with a Toyota 86 engine. Very fancy to look at, but not very powerful for modern hardware.

I would never recommend Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS for a modern desktop PC.

While it's not my current distro, I've tried it and found it to be an excellent compromise between stability and modern tweaks (including some optimizations similar to what CachyOS does), so I strongly suggest looking into Nobara (https://nobaraproject.org/). It's Fedora-based, it's not immutable like Bazzite, and it comes out of the box with a lot of tweaks for gaming (see https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/#modifications).

Give it a try!

My recommendation for new Linux users is to keep it vanilla: Mint (Debian), Fedora, or Arch. Flavor of the month distros are going to come with a lot of baked in opinions from the parent distro that may make troubleshooting more difficult if you try to treat it like that. Sure CachyOS is Arch based, but it has a custom kernel and other things. People will argue the point, but I think vanilla is just better. I also worry about distros that have yet to sufficiently establish themselves and the kind of support you can expect from them going into the future. Nothing is a bigger Linux deterrent than getting dragged into distro drama as maintainers fight, argue, fork, and drop support.

Mint: Beginner friendly. Some might recommend Debian, but I've always found setup to be a bit tedious. Mint has been around long enough to prove itself and has a well-established community.

Arch: Don't let the reputation get to you, this is a perfectly fine distro to start with if you are a person of moderate to advanced skill level, especially since the archinstall script makes actual installation much easier. If you like the idea of the Arch wiki acting as a kind of instruction manual for an OS that you haven't seen in years and hand-picking a lot of your software while making small adjustments in config files to get most things working (clearly documented in the wiki!), this is a good choice. I avoided it for years based on reputation while I fought with Ubuntu and I'm angry at how much I let community opinion deter me when this was the correct choice for me all along.

Fedora: Less to comment here as I don't have a lot of personal experience, but from what I understand it's a good compromise between Debian and Arch. A bit faster to update but not bleeding edge. Considered a bit more stable than Arch.

The most important advice I can offer is twofold,

1. Just make the switch. Once you get a better idea of what you need and what works and doesn't for you, you'll be able to make a more informed decision on if a more specific distro would suit you better.
2. Linux is not Windows. You'll never be able to replicate your workflow and feel 1:1 and you can't/shouldn't consider that a failure. Be prepared to make small adjustments but I do think you'll find the effort worth it overall.