Hello, I have been a linux user for close to 6 years now and I have changed my distro quite a bit ( especially in first few months of starting out linux ).
I have wen’t from ubuntu, xubuntu, fedora, peppermint, arch, artix, … in first few years. After that I have settled on arch for close to 2 years. After that long time on arch I decided to try out and test interesting distro’s for at minimum 6 months every year ( and if I didn’t like them I would go to arch back ) until I found something else I could main because I have found a few issues with arch that I could accept but would become annoying from time to time.
Across the two year’s I started this yourney I have used gentoo ( used it for a year but then the lack of a proper retroarch package made me change the distro, plus the 3+ hours compile times when updating specific software ( looking at you qt-webengine and firefox ) ), then I choose to try out nixos which I used for 3/4 months before all that main maintainer debacle and splitting of the team I wen’t back to arch because I didn’t wan’t a distro I’m using falling appart on me.
And here I am now, another year is soon to start and I’m searching for another different type of a distro to try out that does something differently compared to most distros, even willing to try out nixos again if the situation has stabilized now.
My only hard requirement is that the distro need’s to be able to play games ( as in steam and gog ).
Edit: just to clarify, I’m chaning distro’s on a yearly basis for a learning experience and fun.
Another serious suggestion is OpenSUSE. They have a rolling release (like Arch does) model distribution openSUSE Tumbleweed - https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/ and another distribution more stable in a sense like Ubuntu releases versions, openSUSE Leap - https://get.opensuse.org/leap . openSUSE is seriously a good and reliable distribution that existed for long time, but is not too much well known in the entire Linux world. If I was not focused on Arch based distros recently, it would have been my choice probably.
I too can easily recommend Tumbleweed. Very nice distro on its own.
Rocking Tumbleweed too!
Right now they only update to the “stable” Nvidia drivers branch in the repos, so I had to install the 565.71 drivers manually via the run file from Nvidia’s website to fix an issue with variable sync. (Windows without Wayland support would strobe solid black randomly. Yikes!)
The only annoyance is having to reinstall the driver from terminal any time the kernel updates. (Protip: just make a drivers folder in your /home folder to easily get to it from the terminal.)
This is referred to as “the hard way”, but once you get it set up once it’s really just ls /drivers/nvidia, run it, and then enter -> enter -> enter -> enter -> reboot -> enjoy.
Otherwise, between Steam, Heroic Launcher (for GoG), Lutris (for EA), and Bottles (everything else / standalone games, disc games, etc), I can play pretty much anything I want! and it runs gloriously! (Be sure to get ProtonUp-Qt to get better Proton versions)
I primarily spend most of my time in Blender, but games work beautifully. Plasma 6 is just awesome as well. My win10 install is getting so dusty right now, and I actually made the jump because it kept Bluescreening on Vermintide 2, and refused to “refresh this system” because “Can’t. Sorry.”
My only thing on the wishlist is for my WMR-baser VR kit to work in Linux… maybe that’ll happen and maybe it won’t. Otherwise, I LOVE Tumbleweed.
Automatic rollbacks with Snapper and BTRFS have been wonderful too.
(If any of this sounds like rambling lingo please feel free to ask and I can clarify. ❤️)
I used it for a long time as a daily driver and then as my admin workstation. Worked really well, GUI admin panels are nice, and I didnt find anything too difficult.