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?!

  • @sugar_in_your_teaEnglish
    6•7 months ago

    I’m still not sure what he’s trying to achieve by switching. Is he having issues with pop OS? Or does he just want to try something different?

    I would say anything Ubuntu based will be so similar as to not be interesting, so maybe pick something different. Nobara and Garuda are different, but I honestly don’t know what they offer to someone looking to try something new since they essentially do all the config for you. So my recommendation is one of the following:

    • Fedora - most nobara guides should be compatible, but it does require a little effort to get set up (not a ton, just need to install stuff)
    • Tumbleweed - rolling like Arch, but without the upgrade issues; it’s what I use and I think it’s solid
    • Mint Debian edition - should be pretty similar to pop OS since Ubuntu/pop OS is based on Debian, but perhaps different enough to be interesting

    Those are all major distros and thus should have lots of help available online.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      4•7 months ago

      I think he wants to try something different. He was frustrated that gaming on Linux requires “so much fiddling” (the kids today truly have no idea). So he tried installing windows, and that went about as well as you could expect (I did try to warn him, but he had to see for himself). So, he’s ready to reinstall Linux, and I suggested trying a gaming distro just so he doesn’t feel like it was a total waste of time.

      • @[email protected]English
        4•7 months ago

        He can also dual boot it between two distros. I have both Linux Mint Debian for stability and Garuda for current updates that benefit gaming. I recommend installing Linux Mint first and then Garuda, and use Garuda’s boot manager, which can also be customized pretty well from the setup assistant.

        edit: by setup assistant I meant a program that’s available after initial install, not during install.

          • @[email protected]English
            2•7 months ago

            Yeah, there’s a few layers to the assistant programs. I should clarify there’s a “Garuda Welcome” program that contains “Garuda Assistant”, “Gamer”, “Settings Manager”, “Network Assistant”, “Boot Options”, etc, where you’ll find various parts of setup, but the main unintuitive part is that there’s a “Setup Assistant” button at the bottom separate from all that, where it does a system update, then provides a tabbed interface for installing non-gaming related programs. You see it when it first installs, and it took me a bit to figure out how to get back to that dialog because I was looking in all the other places, and thought “Setup Assistant” was just for initial setup.

              • @[email protected]English
                3•7 months ago

                Should also clarify that not all programs are available from the welcome/assistant. There’s also Octopi which is the standard package manager, and you can install other package managers from the assistant program.

              • @[email protected]English
                2•7 months ago

                Should also add a tip that sometimes on a reboot the system may not display anything until you turn the whole thing off and on again. To fix that you go to the boot manager settings in the welcome program and add “nomodeset” to the end of kernel parameters for each linux distro. May need to repeat this after a major update that updates grub, but the param is usually still there in the boot settings program, you just have to select the distro option and click “Apply” to reenable it.