So I’m looking for a new distro rec and having a hard time landing on one. I started off on PopOS for a couple of years and it was fine, but I wanted something a little different, then I switched to Bazzite and found out I love KDE and dislike immutable distros.

I primarily use my machine for gaming and secondarily for small coding projects and a lil home labbing. And based on my previous selections you can probably tell I don’t want to have to mess with a lot of settings or configurations to get coding or gaming.

I’m currently leaning towards EndeavuorOS or Garuda, but wanted to hear some other opinions.

For a little more background I checked out Manjaro and Nobara, but liked Endeavuor a bit more. My GPU and CPU are both AMD and relatively new.

  • @Lemmist@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    97 days ago

    In all cases when you don’t know what exactly distro you want – use Debian. Debian is a default Linux.

    • @Arose8334@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      37 days ago

      Personally I prefer Debian for servers and something like Fedora Workstation for desktop/laptop. More recent packages and frequent updates on Fedora.

    • mox
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      Do note that if you intend to use Debian for gaming, you’ll probably want to enable Backports for access to newer kernel and firmware packages.

  • @Arose8334@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    87 days ago

    Super happy with Fedora. Both KDE and Gnome spins are great. So far no stability issues. The only thing I miss from EndeavourOS is AUR, but honestly, most apps I use are available in flatpak or homebrew anyway.

    • Vik
      link
      fedilink
      English
      17 days ago

      have been happy using fedora workstation for over five years now 😊

      I also keep a silverblue disk as a portable install to help debug iffy systems.

  • @xektop@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    I’ve been using endeavourOS for 1,5 years already and love it. Most of my games run with little to no tinkering. I’ve had no major issues that I couldn’t resolve with some googling or asking someone who knew better. Before I ended up with endeavourOS I have tried several distros ( mx Linux, Ubuntu, Garuda, Fedora, nobara, popOS ) and with all of them I had different issues that I was not too keen on troubleshooting. I would avoid Garuda and just go with Arch or endeavourOS for gaming.

  • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    14 days ago

    EndeavourOS and Garuda are the same distro with a different default KDE theme, which you can install on any distro with KDE.

    I personally would recommend vanilla arch, use arch-install command if you don’t want to do it manually. Then spend some time making it truly yours. At least if you wanna be on Arch, which is the best distro for ricing, finding software easily and having to learn a few things every now and then in case something break, as Arch needs some maintenance.

    Now you may argue that EOS and Garuda are easier Arch installs with some defaults, but if you’re gonna be on Arch then the first time is best if it’s vanilla Arch, learn what you want and what you don’t, learn how the Arch way is done on there, and then when you have done that but can’t be arsed to do it again and again every time something breaks and you go for a reinstall, then go for the easier way.

    If you just want recent software and none if the hassle of Arch then just go with Fedora KDE, OpenSUSE Tumbkeweed/Slowroll, or any of the trillion of distros, including Debian Testing.

  • @gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    47 days ago

    I’ve never used EndeavourOS or Manjaro, but if you’re looking for something similar to Bazzite (gaming-ready, not immutable) and Arch-based I’d check out CachyOS. I’ve been using it for a good while now and I really like it.

  • @Eldritch@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    37 days ago

    I’ve used both. Endeavor have a nice arm distro on my desktops I’m using the vanilla Garuda isos. It doesn’t install everything for you out of the box. But assuming you aren’t afraid of yay or pacman that isn’t a problem. Both are very close to arch. But offering a bit more modern install experience. I’ve done lfs/Gentoo/vanilla arch. And they were fine learning experiences. But if you want a simple to install, lean weeding Edge system. Where you don’t have to hope that your software is released as a flat pack in order for you to easily this version. Either one is pretty decent.

  • @highball@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    27 days ago

    I’m not a Fedora user, but seems like a middle ground between Bazzite and Fedora for your desktop, could be to use distrobox to have the mutable part. I don’t know exactly how much configuration fedora needs, maybe none. Anyways, distrobox is a good tool to have no matter what distro or type.

  • EndeavorOS. All the goodness of Arch, plus an easy install.

    I haven’t tried Garuda yet, but that’d be second on my list.

    I’m really looking forward to ReactOS maturing a bit more so more of the software I want runs on it. I’m pretty excited about a modern microkernel.

    • @EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      4 days ago

      Garuda and EndeavourOS are literally the same distro with a different default KDE theme. You can go to KDE settings, themes and search sweet candy or sweet Mars or whatever it was called and install it on EOS.

      Maybe Garuda has the chaotic AUR by default I don’t remember but since you’re still on Arch and therefore expected to rtfm you should probably just figure out how to install it on EOS instead tbh, assuming you really want/need it

      • I don’t want to. What did I say that made you think I wanted to switch?

        I said Endeavor was my first choice; Garuda would be my second choice. Basic Arch with one of the installation helpers would be my third.

        I’ve only installed Arch from scratch once, and I won’t do that again since I don’t have to.

          • This seems to be a common problem with Lemmy clients. When responding, you can only see the comment to whom you’re replying. It makes it really difficult to see whether they’re a new person, or someone you replied to before; it discourages referencing commentators by name. It’s quickly becoming my least favorite behavior of all clients.

            Is there an Android client that shows you the whole thread ancestor history via scrolling? It’s not even a problem to figure out a reasonable way to implement it; it’s just no-one does.

  • Blaster M
    link
    fedilink
    English
    27 days ago

    Let me be the one to go against the grain and say Fedora

    • @CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      06 days ago

      I’ll second that. I’ve been using Fedora KDE for almost a year as my sole desktop OS with no notable issues and really only one minor gripe. Which is that my 240Hz monitor gains a distracting flicker at 240Hz, but if I set it to 120Hz it goes away.

      • Blaster M
        link
        fedilink
        English
        16 days ago

        My only gripe is that I still can’t get PCVR working from my Quest to Fedora

        • @CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          16 days ago

          I can’t speak to the Quest support as I don’t have one, but my Index definitely had issues when I first switched to Linux fulltime. I had been dual-booting for about a year prior to that. But over the last year, it’s gotten better and most titles I’ve tried lately seem to just work the same way they did on Windows.

          I do still have this persistent issue where my computer treats the headset as the primary display during bootup if have it plugged in, but that’s OS independent and starts at POST.

          I’ve also seen some changelogs a while back suggesting Valve was trying to get OpenVR and SteamVR more compatible and make them both work better on Linux. I don’t know what issues you were having or how recently but it might be worth digging into again if it’s something you care about.

  • @Geodad@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    16 days ago

    If you want a Fedora based gaming distro, Nobara is probably your winner.

    If you want a Debian based gaming distro, Pika OS.

  • @wingsfortheirsmiles@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    17 days ago

    I’ve just built a new gaming PC for the living room with the 9070XT and tried various KDE flavour distros like KDE neon, Bazzite, Fedora KDE spin etc for more mature VRR and HDR support. Ended up on EndeavourOS which was really straightforward to install and get to grips with in terms of native packages and the AUR. Was easy enough to add the additional repos to get access to Mesa 25+ for GPU support, I’m really liking the distro so far!

    I’ve used PopOS and Mint before but this is my first Arch based distro.

  • burgersc12
    link
    fedilink
    English
    16 days ago

    I liked endeavouros but I switched to tuxedoos, endeavour broke my 8bitdo controller with a recent update, but tuxedo worked perfectly fine.