Linux Mint

[KlaxonCow]

Ah, thing is, generic SteamOS is not a thing yet.

We're gearing up to that with the Steam Machines, but if I wanted to run actual SteamOS right now, then it's a case of using the Steam Deck recovery image on an "all AMD hardware" system, as the Steam Deck only has drivers for its AMD hardware and you're essentially depending on the universality of their drivers to "kind of work" on something more desktop grade.

And the laptop I'm ordering does not match that description.

You know, if desktop SteamOS was a thing, then I might well go with that. And it's not because it's a "gaming OS", per se. But because it's a distro that's getting all the attention from a corporation with deep pockets and a need to get stuff like HDR, variable refresh rate, Freesync, etc. and a need to get the desktop on par with at least a basic Windows-like experience for converts.

Kind of the same reason why I get a "gaming laptop", even though I don't do that much gaming - and what "gaming" I do do is honestly all indie and retro games that could run on a 10 year potato, as I have zero interest in your Fortnites and your Calls of Duty stuff - but it's because if you need hardware grunt (e.g. good GPU for rendering in Blender, good CPU for compiling code) then the "gaming" hardware has it. You've just got to go into the "control panel" and turn off all that pointless RGB lights under the keyboard and such.

Like Cachy sounds interesting , because they're focused on optimisation. Turning on all the optimisations for their kernel. Their focus is on frame rates for gaming, sure, but if it results in an all-round faster distro that can benefit more than just gamers.

Indeed, the real interesting thing with Valve getting involved in Linux is that things are getting sent upstream, so they improve everything. Like, the latest kernel now carries a bunch of Windows-alike synchronisation primitives, which'll make Proton and Wine faster, as they can use native primitives in the kernel itself, rather than trying to emulate Windows with Linux primitives (which work a bit differently that it has been a subtle drag on Wine and Proton being able to run Windows software).

I'm talking about KDE having all the HDR and VRR stuff - because Valve and others are working on it for the gaming side of things - but it's open source and it'll wing its way upstream eventually, to then flow back downriver for every distro.

[KlaxonCow]

Fuck it. I'm going to try out CachyOS on a "live" USB, and if it picks up all my hardware just fine, I'm going with it.

It's top of the "distrowatch" charts right now, as the most popular, and though I'm not going for "gaming", per se, the performance improvements it's designed for - turning on all the optimisations - will also totally benefit production stuff, like Blender and compiling C++ code.

I want KDE because this laptop has a fancy screen, so I want the HDR / VRR shit to "just work", which is does on the latest KDE (thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck).

And I get away from the "snaps" bollocks of Canonical. And while I try to avoid the "busman's holiday" of dealing with Linux stuff in the Terminal because it was my day job to run Linux servers in my previous employment - so who wants to be messing with configurations at work and at home? - I no longer do that as a day job, and I can absolutely handle the Terminal and config files, no problem.

That is, I haven't avoided Arch previously because I can't handle the Terminal, but because I didn't want to have to mess around with it.

But, screw it, Arch + KDE is the SteamOS way. And while SteamOS is not a thing, CachyOS is where people are going.

Anyway, I'm going to do the old trick. I will create a separate "/home" partition - maybe on a separate SSD, as it does have multiple slots and I've got a 2TB NVMe from a previous laptop sitting around - and, therefore, you can install / re-install distros to the "/" partition, leaving "/home" alone. Then you just hook up your "/home" again through "fstab" and can switch distros, without touching your settings and data.

Indeed, the ability to be able to do this in Linux - the beauty of the Virtual File System - is one of those things Windows can't do that Linux can, which is supremely awesome. All your settings and data go to "/home" and then put it on a different partition / drive, so you can just change the distro and leave your data completely alone. Or, if moving to a new machine, pop out the "/home" drive, stick it in the new system and you can be instantly up and running. Hook up the "/home" folder with "fstab" and then when you install Thunderbird or Chrome or whatever, they just immediately pick up your "profile" and settings from the "/home" folder and instantly work. As if you hadn't just completely changed the distro / hardware underneath them.

I'll give CachyOS a go, but set it all up, so that if I decide that I'd rather "Fedora KDE" or maybe eventually SteamOS instead, I could just switch it out from underneath my "/home" folder and carry on, as if nothing had even happened.

The other possibility is Linux Mint but installing KDE... except you don't get the latest KDE that way, and Mint is focused on Cinnamon desktop, as that's their baby, so I'd rather be doing something "officially supported" by the distro in case it goes wrong.


Indeed, one of the complaints for those moving to Linux is that "there's too many distros" and my response is that, actually, all of the major ones are solid choices. So "don't let perfection be the enemy of the good" and just choose something. With pretty much any distro, you can switch the desktop environment if you really want. You can turn any distro into any other one, if you want to put in the work.

I'd say this to others, so I should non-hypocritically take my own advice. Any choice is a decent choice. All you're really doing is trying to optimise things to be exactly how you'd like it to be - the desktop environment you most prefer (which, by the way, has been GNOME for me up until now, so switching to KDE is a "fuck it" kind of move anyway) and package management (but all the package managers basically work the same way, and "flatpaks" are often taking over as the "just works" option across all distros).

Eat my own advice. Choose any distro, as it's not really as big a decision as it's made out to be. They all work just fine. It's only optimising that it works most like how you'd rather it worked (stability vs. rolling release, favourite desktop environment, etc.).

[tufty]

If you wanna be hip, you could try out omarchy.

[KlaxonCow]

Fuck it. Ventoy with every distro. Try them all. Settle on nothing.

[Little stoned kiwi]

They are all Debian wearing different skin-suits.

[grue]

I 've never had the urge to try different distros. Installed Mint, customised it to my needs and forgot about it.

[Little stoned kiwi]

I 've never had the urge to try different distros. Installed Mint, customised it to my needs and forgot about it.

That's awesome to hear and I'm glad you're enjoying it. I usually recommend Mint for that reason, even though I don't use it myself.

[KlaxonCow]

Mint is also tempting.

Because it quite literally is "Ubuntu, but without the Canonical bullshit", as they forked from Ubuntu, when Canonical started its journey of bad decisions and abandoned projects, exactly to get away from all that (and have continued in that vein, not going anywhere near "snaps" either).

Otherwise, it would be the logical choice. But what's tempting me away to other distros is that, thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck, KDE Plasma's been getting a lot of work done on it lately, as it's the Steam Deck's desktop. So the latest versions have out-of-the-box support for HDR, VRR, GSync and things like that.

And Cachy is apparently not just tuned for video, but also has low latency audio out of the box too. Indeed, it actually uses a different CPU scheduler algorithm that prioritises responsiveness - audio, UI - over the usual "completely fair scheduling" that most kernels use. So though it's billed as a "gaming" distro, its optimisations also make it one of the best out-of-the-box distros for audio as well.

Mint was my first choice and it's also the safe choice. But, for that "safety", it's also leaving so much of what my new fancy hardware can do on the table.

Note that this is also something that's very much in flux. KDE's got the best "out of box" experience for HDR and so forth right now, but GNOME's got "experimental" support that might soon mature. Pop!_OS - who owns the award for the stupidest named distro - are working on their new "Cosmic" desktop, and that's going to have all the HDR / VRR goodness baked in as a "first class citizen" as well. But it's all still "work in progress" with a brand new desktop - but, you know, eventually, it'll also become mature.

Plus, it's all open source. So what tends to happen - over the longer course of time - is that if one distro / DE nails something, then you will eventually see all the others eventually catch up - because they can all spy on each other's homework.

So this is, I realise, very much an "in the moment" decision, which will eventually possibly become a moot point within a few years - as everyone ends up supporting everything - but with Valve choosing KDE, it's getting all the attention, and CachyOS then pushes optimisations on top of that. This is the combination that attempts to make the most use of your hardware... at least at present time of writing.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Don't believe the hype. From what I've seen of it, most of CahchyOS' performance improvements are kernel tweaks. Real but over-rated. Virtually all distributions have an RT kernel if that's important to you. It's not the default because performance is subjective and reducing latency reduces throughput.
There's always been a selection of users that invest too much time chasing 3% performance gains that only matter 3% of the time...including myself but that's a hobby.

Mint is awesome because you install it and get on with your day. The operating system is supposed to be uneventful.

[KlaxonCow]

It's the KDE thing, really.

Or, more precisely, it's Wayland. As Wayland has the HDR / VRR support baked into it, and the DEs that support Wayland are KDE and GNOME. But GNOME is still working on their support, so it's "experimental" - you can turn it on with a flag - and that usually means "buggy, not ready for actual use".

I'm already using Wayland on Ubuntu - they made it default with 24.04 - which uses GNOME, but the HDR / fractional scaling stuff is still a work in progress. KDE's the only one that's out-of-the-box just working.

Cinnamon is conservative and "stable". It's not even switched to Wayland yet. X.org have already said that X is never going to bother supporting things like HDR and VRR - it's a legacy display server, ticking along in "maintenance mode".

There is another option in Fedora KDE. A sort of halfway house between something Debian-based and something Arch-based, but that's yet another different distro again.

If there were a good Ubuntu / Debian distro that had KDE as a "first class citizen". But there isn't really. You can, of course, install KDE but two desktop environments can clash and also leave you with two text editors, two photo viewers, two... you get the gist, as both have their "default apps" and you'd end up with both sets.

I'll probably do some "live USB" testing, and find a distro that supports the hardware.

[tufty]

I thought Gnome had ditched X11 entirely and gone balls-deep on Wayland?

[KlaxonCow]

I thought Gnome had ditched X11 entirely and gone balls-deep on Wayland?

Going balls deep, rather than gone balls deep.

There are still some things being "experimental" flags and still being worked on. HDR, fractional scaling, etc. - particularly with nVidia cards (which I have).

Like, I'm running Ubuntu which is using GNOME on Wayland right now. And it works, but I can't do 150% scaling for my 1440p screen and have to mess about with font scaling instead.

There's not much in it. KDE has more features implemented - but, at the same time, more complaints that it's glitchy, so GNOME might be taking the right approach, long-term, to get it right, rather than be "first to market".

And, yes, I can imagine that, in a years' time, there'll be no fucking difference, as GNOME will have fully transitioned to all the GPU goodness that Wayland can unlock.

As I say, been running Wayland on Ubuntu here - with an nVidia GPU - and it's all been fine and dandy. So, really, I'm a Wayland convert and am not interested in X anymore. That's going backwards for me.

I just want a distro where I can use all the hardware features and it doesn't use "snaps" (or, at least, I can choose if I want to install the snap version, rather than have Canonical force it by refusing to carry the .deb version on their repos - and avoiding further Canonical bullshit like this, as I don't doubt after snaps, they'll come up with something new, like forcing AI search into the distro or whatever, as there's a pattern of this now that they're becoming the Linux equivalent of Microslop).

You know, I might well change my mind after trying these out. But I want to try this out, and I am heading towards where all the action is - KDE + Arch is getting the attention right now, thanks to the Steam Deck. Let's see what's going on over there.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Bazzite is popular for its out-of-the-box experience. It's a Fedora base that comes in KDE and GNOME flavours with proprietary graphics drivers; you select what you want from the drop-down boxes on their download page and it returns the specific image that does it. If you want cutting edge without the faff of Arch it might be a good fit for you.

https://bazzite.gg/