My teenage son wants to try a new distro for gaming. Our family has been using pop os for years, but he wants to try something new. The main three I see are

  • nobara (fedora based)
  • garuda (arch based)
  • drauger (ubuntu based)

The machine he’s using is a 2018 Intel nuc. It has a strong processor (core i7) but no discrete graphics. I can’t tell which (if any) of the distros above would be better or worse for his case.

Reading around, it seems like Garuda might be slightly more fiddly. And, Drauger I only saw mentioned in a couple of articles, but not on this forum. Are these impressions correct? Do you have any other advice for us?!

  • Bruno Finger@lemm.ee
    English
    10·
    7 months ago

    I’ve been using Fedora and honestly I’m impressed. Especially since version 39. It’s solid, stable, gaming just works. It requires some initial setup with COPR and installation might not be as straight forward but it’s definitely not hard.

    I may get downvoted but make sure you’re using X11 for now because Xwayland latency is real. Wine on Wayland is around the corner but not there yet. And use Steam from COPR not flatpak. Besides that, in my opinion, it’s a dream setup.

    • zipsglacier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      Thanks, yeah my impression of Wayland was similar. Curious why not flatpak steam; that’s what he was using before, and it seemed fine.

      • Bruno Finger@lemm.ee
        English
        2·
        7 months ago

        Honestly it actually may be just fine, I had some trouble from before when I was trying distros and re-learning the current state of Linux (after a 3 years break) and looking back, they may have been related to Wayland or something else entirely instead of flatpak itself.

        I may be wrong too but I think game detection on Discord won’t work for flatpak Steam (and flatpak Discord). I may be wrong though.