All things operating system related, from Windows to Mac to Linux distros and the more obscure.
Subcommunity of Technology.
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All of my workstations are now running Fedora Silverblue. Steam is installed via flatpak, and GPU is a Radeon 6800 XT. I also have a Steam Link for couch co-op. All is well on the gaming front!
Debian Sid and Arch have run equally well with this setup. Your choice of distro matters much less now compared to a few years ago, especially if you favour a flatpak workflow.
Edit: typos!
I've been running Pop for a bit over a year now and am (mostly) satisfied with it. The only issues I had were due to kernel updates, it would cause flickering on my screen and (like someone else mentioned) had to revert to an older kernel until the situation was resolved.
Currently on Artix, but planning on changing to Gentoo soon.
gentoo!
i love the versatility it offers, but it's very much so DIY. it has great documentation. anyone who considers themselves a "linux enthusiast" should try an install in a VM at some point or another, if nothing else it's a great learning experience.
for gaming in particular: flatpak steam / lutris / bottles. it's great because it's completely distro agnostic. i can take the $USER/.var directory and put it on any distro with flatpak installed and it'll just work.
Debian
I have my gaming computer hooked to my TV and running Chimera OS. Makes it easy to use with just a controller.
Most of my gaming these days is done on my Steam Deck running stock SteamOS. I also play a few games on my main Linux Mint system.
I'm using Manjaro KDE - working well with Steam Games with Proton for must games.
I'm on EndeavourOS, but my laptop will be moving to Fedora Sericea (Silverblue, but Sway) to try that out.
Arch Linux. Been using it since long ago and play most of my games on it.
I'm using Gentoo.
If I wanted a smooth no-tinkering experience, I'd use Ubuntu. Or hell, steamos.
A little background for context. I’m gamer and professional software developer. I’ve been dual booting windows 11 and pop os for awhile. Windows for games and pop os for everything else… Over the weekend I switched to NixOS. This came with a learning curve which I spent a day or so learning. I’ve been getting the hang of it now and I love it so much. I definitely recommend it. I managed to get steam working without much fiddling and my emulators. It’s been great! The benefits for programming are obvious. Allowing me to basically stop using docker dev containers.
I completely removed windows from my computer and I’m very happy.
I use Arch with XFCE. Yes, it took a while to get running properly, and just the other day I went to print something and realized cups hadn't even been installed yet, so I spent 15 minutes getting my printer up and running, so I totally get that it's not for everyone. I like it because of the detailed wiki with great tutorials and instructions on getting things working, like the one I used to get a nextcloud installation working on my computer. And I like it because of the extensive Arch User Repository, so I know I can install whatever I like. I mostly just play Stardew Valley and trackmania on it. I've used Manjaro before and enjoyed that too, and it comes with all the benefits of arch.
I installed Mint on my friends computer, which works totally fine, but I don't know how it is for gaming; she definitely doesn't game.
Arch really is a documentation project rather than a distro, their wiki tops most everything out there :)
Seriously, ArchWiki has taught me most of what I know about Linux.
Yeah, that's basically where you go if you ever have some obscure problem, it's incredibly useful really.
SourceMage! It's a source based distro like Gentoo. I've been using it as my main distro for a solid 10 months now, I'm very happy with it! We have flatpak so steam works great, as well as lutris and everything else. Definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for simplicity though!
Definitely wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for simplicity though!
Or short install times. Compiling KDE takes forever. Or at least it did back when I used SourceMage, years and years ago.
Honestly, the times aren't too bad as long as you have a recent CPU! It definitely varies though - on my main PC, compiling glibc takes about 15 minutes, on my netbook that I had a smgl install on, it took about 20 hours lol
On my gaming desktop, I am using Fedora currently with the Awesome WM. That might change though with all the RH stuff going on. On my gaming laptop I switch between Arch and Void with Qtile on both.
Pop!_OS. It just works, it's easy, and it makes me enjoy using my computer.