I use Windows for my desktop PC but I’m also a fan of Linux for work and programming.
I’m not really liking the direction windows is taking so it would be nice to explore some other alternatives. I mostly use my desktop for gaming, so I’m interested in how people are gaming on Linux
Personally I use Arch and it’s never given me any issues. I’ve never used it but my understanding is Endeavor OS is basically just Arch but easy to install. Proton with steam makes running most windows games relatively easy, the main pain points are multiplayer games and their anti cheat.
I second this, endeavorOS is great and has access to the AUR.
GloriousEggroll also make a custom proton https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom
The GE-wine version can also be downloaded directly through Lutris
Yeah my two finalists were Arch and Fedora. Ended up going with Arch to be on a rolling release and have maximum access to updated software/libraries.
Fedora used to be my go to years ago but I installed arch because people said it was hard and would teach you more about how Linux works which I wanted. Wasn’t until after I spent the time installing it I learned about what rolling release really meant but it’s great for gaming PCs lol
I’m pretty sure the Steam Deck is also Arch based, but I don’t know what all they’ve done past that. I will say that if you’re looking to just game and not really learn the ins and outs of Linux, doing something like Endeavor or some other sub flavor will probably give you a better experience. If you do go that route, don’t ask for help on the official Arch forums, though, as they are not very kind and friendly if you aren’t on pure Arch (the wiki is still fantastic and just generally a great resource, no matter which distribution you go with)
SteamOS (the version on the steam deck, not the older Ubuntu based one) is an immutable distro based on Arch. Being immutable means it’s very stable and hard to break, but they still have all the bleeding edge arch packages available when making new system images for updates.
It’s a good system, although I wish they were faster about releasing stable updates. As it is you have to be on the beta or main update channels to get updates close to desktop Arch.