Operating Systems

I'm not a heavy gamer, but I'm content with Manjaro. I don't dual boot, though I do have access to an older computer with Windows 10. I haven't had cause to use it for games, though.

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.

I’ve been running Arco Linux just up till now and have switched to the new Debian 12 release. It have not been to much trouble to get my Nvidia card and Steam running. I mainly switch because of all the updates and “maintenance” that I feel is associated with a Arch system, so kinda like you said.

Im running good old Ubuntu with gnome. I mostly play terraria, minecraft I and Bethesda rpgs these days so it does everything I need.

PopOS is best for out the box gaming, its similar to Ubuntu so you'll be familiar with it

@nlm CachyOS. It's Arch based with a bucketload of performance tweaks & bespoke patches, including a kernel scheduler developed by distro maintainers. It also has a small but super-responsive community that tends to resolve issues quite rapidly

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.

I'm using Manjaro KDE - working well with Steam Games with Proton for must games.

Like several others here I am using pop_os. I bought a System76 laptop though so they kind of go hand in hand.

Ok, since I created this thread I think reflashed the same thumb drive with four or five distros already.

Without actually installing anything.

This is going to have me obsessing for a bit.. :)

I'm on Arch right now, migrated to it after almost 2 years on Fedora. I'll probably still go back and forth between the two.

Linux mint gaming

I use a steam deck.

I've been using PopOS for about 3 years now. I found it easier to get Steam to work compared to Linux Mint (can't remember why though). I've never tried Ubuntu or non-Debian based systems.

Now I am on fedora. Before I used debian stable and before that I tried some other distros, like some flavors of ubuntu, endeavor, mint, manjaro and so on.

Debian

Ubuntu 20.04lts

Currently running Fedora on my laptop and Arch on my desktop, though I’ll probably migrate from Fedora to openSUSE next month.

I use Arch, but I have two graphics cards in my system and I run a stripped windows VM for any game that I want ray tracing or 4k in.

My arch setup has an older Nvidia Quadro card and can run everything on like medium settings, but my virtual machines have a 3080ti. I didn't want the wear and tear on my 3080ti just to watch YouTube or play indie games that don't need the horsepower, but I still want to try stuff like portalRTX or stable diffusion and the like that needs an enthusiast graphics card.

This to me is the best of both worlds. I can run the VM in the background so I can use my desktop(connected to the TV) as a media center and have cyberpunk playing totally hidden and streaming to my steam deck for ray tracing maxxed settings.

Hell I even play Half life:Alex VR in a virtual machine and stream it over wifi to my Oculus quest.

garuda, it's just a fancy arch install with the ugliest, bloatiest, default theming you can imagine, but once you get rid of it it's pretty solid.

I'm running Kubuntu which is just Ubuntu but with KDE Plasma instead of Gnome

Endeavour OS (PC and Laptop) and Steam OS. Very happy with both.

NixOS. If you played around with Arch you'll be fine. My only gripe (although it's kind of important) is NVIDIA doesn't work. Call me lazy but I haven't felt like switching to an other distro, plus I'm not much of a hardcore gamer.

EndeavourOS with Plasma. migrated from Manjaro after one too many questionable decision on their side.

Im really surprised that I don't see zorin os on these types of threads. Its main stick is to be chock full of out of the box software especially around windows compatibility. wine and play on linux are ready right away and I can run most windows programs right after install.

I'm running Gentoo on my gaming PC, and would not want anything else.

It's very customizable, as it allows to tweak packages' optional dependencies at compile time. It's also rolling release, so no stress with distribution upgrades. Despite that, it's also very stable (most of the time...).

So far the only downside I've seen is that updates can take a while, as almost all packages get compiled from source.