Hey there i consider myself a relative noob, but I’ve been using Linux as my main operating system for about four years now, transitioning from Windows 7 to Linux Mint and then to MX Linux. Recently, I encountered a login issue, and I know I’m partially to blame for this. When I try to install projects from GitHub and things don’t work out, I often give up without deleting or cleaning up the configurations and fragments. Over time, this has led to a huge clutter on my system, which is why I’ve been wanting to do a fresh install for a while now, and I’m taking this as the opportunity to finally do it. My Hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X
GPU: AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 XT
RAM: 32 GB
What I’m Looking For:
I’d love suggestions for a Linux distro that:
Has relatively up-to-date updates
Can optimize the performance of my hardware
Supports both programming and gaming
Currently, I have a minimal installation of Windows 11 set up for dual boot, but I’m considering moving it to a VM if the performance impact is manageable. If that doesn’t work out, I’d like to continue with Windows 11 in dual boot. I want to play games like Space Marines 2, and while I know about tools like Proton, Wine, and Lutris, I just don’t wanna dive into that right now. Please, no fundamental debates about how I don’t really NEED Windows. I fucking know! And just wanna know if its possibly or not. ;)
Additional Preferences:
I’d like to use Flatpaks wherever possible, except for programs that aren’t available or those where permissions issues arise, like password managers with browser integrations.
I’m interested in some "ricing" but don’t want to spend all my time troubleshooting or making constant adjustments.
I’d like to run a local AI on the machine so i hope for something that can squeze the last drop of performance out of my hardware.
I appreciate the extensive guides available for Debian-based systems but am open to exploring new options.
I’m excited to hear your recommendations!
Thanks in advance!
Edit: I loaded Fedora Kde, Nebora and AuroraDX on Ventoy and explored the systems.MyFavorite at this time is AuroraDX
You might want to try Bazzite if gaming is a major requirement.
Second Bazzite. My use case is almost identical to OPs. Been using Bazzite for a while and I haven’t had a single issue. Everything works. Gaming is a breeze. Even works with my work dock with keyboard, mouse, webcam, and 2 1080p monitors attached. Plug n play.
Never had that experience on Linux before in my LIFE
Yes i heard of it. I think its fedora based. I will look Into that
You will love it. Great for gaming, flatpaks are the standard, and local AI is easy to setup with podman.
Just be aware that installing stuff without a flatpak or appimage available can be somewhat of a pain.
Been using it a few weeks and mostly happy. 2 gripes are waydroid not working (didn’t have a big desire to use it but still) and leaning into the immutability aspect can be tough. I say it’s tough because it didn’t take long to run into a case where I really need to use rpm-ostree install and I’ve so far failed at using workarounds.
Waydroid not working? You don’t happen to have an Nvidia card, do you?
Yup
Yeah Waydroid doesn’t support these yet sadly.
It works on Nvidia without hardware acceleration
Edit: at least on Arch
Oh good to know, last time I checked they said on their website they’re not supporting it. That’s great news, thanks!
Your case sounds like a perfect fit for Bazzite or Aurora.
- Both come already set up ootb, with all quality of life tweaks you want and need.
- They are image based distros (“immutable”), so you mainly work in your /var/ and /home/ directory, and all the other stuff is untouched and clean.
- They are very modern, getting the same updates at the same time as upstream Fedora.
- Running Ollama is just one
ujustcommand away, many complex things are made easier with those commands - You probably won’t get a lot more performance I believe. At least when I switched from regular Fedora/ Silverblue to Bazzite, I didn’t notice many more FPS in games for example.
Fedora
Supports both programming and gaming
Both is super uncritical.
You can install Steam as Flatpak without any real or major issues nowadays and thanks to Proton you can basically play any games except those that use Windows-specific ring 0 spyware as their DRM or anti-cheat mechanism. Pro-Flatpak: You don’t need to deal with 32-bit libs dependency hell.
Same with programing. The relevant compilers are all available for pretty much all common distributions. Same with the common scripting interpreters as well as all common IDEs.
but I’m considering moving it to a VM if the performance impact is manageable
Depending on your VM solution you can usually pass-through CPU and/or GPU and have nearly the same performance as on bare metal.
but am open to exploring new options.
This might be a bold move, but have you considered Arch Linux? You need to do most things by yourself, but the wiki is one of the best and most complete and extensive distribution-specific Linux wikis available. So if you’re willing to read instructions and learn new things, why not give it a try? (Disclosure: Arch is my daily driver since 2008 on desktops, laptops and homeservers).
seconding Fedora, i used to use archbased only but recently switched from win10 on my main machine and wanted a handy out of the box gamer distro with stability, been using Nobara which is really nice. of course you can get vanilla fedora configured just fine for gaming, etc. my draw was just the convenience factor. there is also Bazzite another “gamer” distro based on fedora atomic so even more stable.
I have an almost carbon copy of your hardware and I run endeavour OS dualbooting with a mini win11. Been doing it for about 3 years now. For software, I just install bauh and call it a day. This app has every thing from flatpaks to app images to the AUR (except snaps) and you go from there. I’ve been very happy with my set up. I have 4 separate drives in my machine so I have each OS on its own drive since windows loves to mess with grub every time it updates. Having them on separate drives makes it easier to recover if anything goes wrong.
EDIT: forgot to mention that I, too, play games and code on this machine. No issues whatsoever. I have KDE plasma on Wayland
OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Rolling and up to date. Stable. Games well.
Oh i did read a bit about it. I would say it sounds good. And i like that its Fedora based. And it is not immutable, thats something i think i dont’t want, because oft the higher lern curve Thanks
Been using PopOS for 2 years, it is nice and stable But I found it lacking in package department (cus Debian based), lots of things are outdated and I find myself constantly building apps from source. I’d go with Arch or Endeavour in a heartbeat, but my machine is a production machine at this point in time thus I can’t afford downtime at all. I absolutely recommend Arch or derivatives. It is worth getting used to.
Mint seems decent all around. No cutting edges nor it’s specialized in any areas, but it’s a jack of all trades, and rather stable.
I really like Mint, but I wouldn’t say it “has relatively up-to-date updates”.
First thing that came to mind was Fedora, if you are willing to try an immutable distro I highly recommend Bazzite, but tinkering has its limits there.
I usually don’t recommend this distro but Fedora and its derivatives look like something you should consider. It’s known for good support for developers and it heavily utilizes Flatpak. Fast update cycle (6 months) should help in gaming too. You’ll just have to go through the pain that is Anaconda installer.
I like Fedora but I hate Anaconda installer too
Your hardware is nearly identical to mine. On my gaming PC, I use Nobara.
It’s a distro created and maintained by the developer who works on the Glorious Eggroll version of Proton, so very well known in the Linux gaming community.
It’s based on Fedora, but has a ton of Linux gaming tweaks for extra performance and compatibility patched into it and pre-installed.
It’s very easy to download the ISO and install, and requires basically zero configuration out of the box to start gaming and using the PC.
The only thing I would caution you about, is the only use the built-in Nobara updater app to update your system. Don’t use Fedora commands like DNF to update stuff, it will cause conflicts.
As long as you do that though, you should be fine. I’ve been using Nobara on my gaming PC for about 2 years now, and it’s been awesome.
