Operating Systems

Im really surprised that I don't see zorin os on these types of threads. Its main stick is to be chock full of out of the box software especially around windows compatibility. wine and play on linux are ready right away and I can run most windows programs right after install.

I use Void Linux. I like how much more up to date the libraries and apllications tend to be, it's quite similar to Arch in that regard, as it's a true rolling release just like Arch.

It also tends to be very stable as well, with couple minor issues I had ever experienced got fixes within 48-ish hours. One was hugin not launching, and the other a transition issue between pipewire-media-session and wireplumber being the default.

Void uses runit for service management, and is still multithreaded despite taking a more similar approach to just plain shell scripts, and constantly monitors services. What I like about this is more much simpler services are to write compared to SystemD, and then you just put a simlink to them from /etc/sv/ to /etc/runit/runsvdir/default/ to enable or disable.

Void also uses their own XBPS package system, which operates similar to pacman, and is equally fast. Void is basically a rolling release like Arch, with the latest updates, but instead has a more "classic" system management style, which I for one greatly appreciate.

After nearly a decade of distro hopping, Void is where I landed for at least the past several years, and I see no reason to leave. Just sharing incase someone else out there thinks this sounds like the system for them, and if so, Take a Step Into the Void, it might be what you're looking for. That's what I like about there being so many distros, there's choice to match each one's needs.

Linux mint gaming

I use Ubuntu currently. I was considering daily driving Debian 12 now that it works on my desktop, but I couldn't think of any significant reason to use Debian 12 instead of Ubuntu (I'm mostly just indifferent towards a certain packaging format that a vocal contingent of the linux community hates). I'd say any distro is "good for gaming" as long as it has good drivers for your GPU of choice. I've kind of just lost interest in the "latest and greatest" tech in the Linux ecosystem so LTS distros like Ubuntu (and stuff based on it) and Debian stable are what I gravitate towards now.

Win11 is worse than a phone vis a vis spying. Finally made a switch. could not install popOS, so ended up with mint.

I really should have known better than to expect a consensus in a topic like this 😁 Ask 10 linuxheads which disto is the best and you'll get 12 different answers

I was using Gentoo for a while, but I kept having issues with the proprietary Nvidia drivers, so I set up a Win10 VM with GPU passthrough.

I actually just switched to NixOS, haven’t had a chance to get my games set up just yet but I am excited for the number of people I have seen have success with it. Setting up gaming is next on my list.

Arch Linux at the moment, though I distro hop quite a bit!

When it comes to gaming, I can't really say I've found a distro that "felt" better for gaming, and I've been on a fair amount of them - Fedora (and Nobara), Arch, NixOS, Endeavour, pop!_OS - I haven't noticed a difference. I didn't measure benchmarks because at the end of the day its about what I can perceive, not what I can read from a spreadsheet.

Realistically I think the only difference I ever noticed was with pop there's a Nvidia ISO that has the drivers already included in the live environment, so I get to skip a step post-install.

I find myself just using Flatpaks for gaming stuff (Steam, Bottles, Heroic, etc) these days since I know that I can take those on just about any distro. I've heard that there is some FPS loss from running games through Flatpak, but again I haven't done any benchmarks so I can't confirm nor deny this.

I'm running Kubuntu which is just Ubuntu but with KDE Plasma instead of Gnome

I'm using Manjaro KDE - working well with Steam Games with Proton for must games.

NixOS, not going to lie to you and say it's always easy to get games running on it though. Sometimes it's a complete pain in the ass.

Arch on my laptop but Pop on my gaming rig. At the time I installed it, I wanted the extra relative ease of Pop's handling on video drivers. I have since switched to AMD, so no driver woes at all since they're in the kernel, but I have stuck with Pop for that system. If it ain't broke... who am I kidding, I'll probably switch to Arch soon.

I am currently using Pop!_OS, which is based on Ubuntu and comes with GNOME but because I don't really like GNOME's interfaces, so I swapped it with Sway and i3bar.

I never played modern games on this thing, so I don't really know how well it does, but I heard it's pretty good for gaming.

As my main I'm currently running EndeavorOS. I'd say it's pretty good. It does all of the legwork of installing Arch, but comes with minimal bloat and really lets you make it your own.