I have just watched this video and in it 2 things are said that made my Linux newbie heart sink:
- Debian 13 is not going to get the latest versions of Nvidia drivers and there are better distros for us.
- Debian in general is not meant to run on the latest hardware.
I am on a regularly upgraded desktop tower gaming PC and currently I have an Nvidia card and an Intel CPU (which, I know, even just because of the mobo chipset is not a great choice).
In this conditions and wanting to invest even more in gaming and new hardware in the future, what should I run on, instead of LMDE 6?
Debian is awesome. For servers. For desktop I would use something else that pushes updates more frequently.
My personal opinion ofcourse, use what you like!
I have to agree, rolling release distributions are the greatest recent development in desktop linux because they make the surface area for updates small (fewer packages more frequently, so if something breaks you have fewer places to look). Immutable distros make reverting a bad update foolproof.
I ran bazzite for a while but then my work changed their VPN endpoints to use oauth, which didn’t work on the openvpn2 version available. I switched back to Fedora (which updates pretty frequently, just not constantly) so I could install and use openvpn3. I’m sure I could have figured out a way to get it running by patching it into ostree, but that felt a bit like breaking the rules.
Debian is the underpinning for all of my homelab gear.
Yours is the first comment in this thread that didn’t make me want to simultaneously upvote and downvote.
I’d recommend Fedora if you want stable and modern hardware support.
Isn’t Bazzite based on Fedora?
It is, and it’s amazing for gaming
Yes, I believe so.
yeah but you install your software via cringepak (bloat) or shitty rpm-ostree and nothing is as well documented vs traditional distros
That should be fine since I am planning to put it in its own partition and maybe disk, isolated from my main driver that would be Vanilla Mint, no?
For fastest hardware support, you will want a rolling distribution like Arch (requires a do-it-yourself attitude) or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (complete out of box, but some quirks, like missing codecs requires manual work). Fedora also has decent new hardware support, not rolling so not as good, but same problem as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. You can also consider derivitives like CachyOS (Arch, but has a nice installer).
Ubuntu and Linux Mint have OK new hardware support. Twice a year they release new “hardware enablement upgrades” to bring new support.
And worst is Debian. They don’t do hardware ennoblement upgrades at all. It’s something you have to do yourself by using backports. They bring new hardware enablement by default with new releases every 2 years.
I’ve found CachyOS to be a good fit for me, sounds like I’m in a similar position to you.
Same here! It’s Arch-like in having the latest updates, but I’ve found it to be a lot easier and forgiving than “vanilla” Arch. Been running it for a while now and it’s been a great fit.
Try any suse favours, it will surprise you.
I am on the rolling distro (tumbleweed) and it is surprisingly stable, the only time it broke was because of a new Nvidia driver release. But it came with a rollback feature and 2 daya later everything was fixed.
Honestly, just because you can not use debian shouldn’t be any major problem in a modern pc
You should clarify that the roll back takes two seconds and the two days was the wait to upgrade again :D I do love Tumbleweed.
Fuck, you are right. It could be understood in that way.
Debian is like that. Mature. The point releases are thoroughly tested for reliability, but the cost is that they can’t include bleeding edge software in the middle of the release cycle. The “stable” branch (currently Trixie) is always lagging behind, and the “testing” branch (Forky, next in line to become “stable”) will be frozen long before it is released.
You might want to try a rolling release distro. Arch Linux or something based on it (EndeavourOS, Garuda, CachyOS), or Debian Sid (the unstable branch).
I’ve been running CachyOS for a couple weeks now and so far it’s been fantastic. Very user friendly and great for gaming, as well as other tasks. I’d highly recommend it.
I would recommend Linux Mint for stable general purpose, or Bazzite as I see other people recommend it for more gaming oriented until SteamOS 3.0 comes out for desktop PC’s
If you want something stable but up-to-date, Fedora is a very good option. Plus it has a bunch of “Spins”. The two main ones are Gnome and KDE Plasma, but there is a bunch more, and they’re all officially supported.
Then there’s also Arch. Arch should not be considered stable, but anecdotally I’ve not heard many problems with it in the past few years, so you’d probably be fine. I’d go with EndeavourOS or CatchyOS if you want Arch without the tedious setup process.
Stable doesn’t mean “won’t crash”, or that there’s any guarantee that there are less problems. It just means that there won’t be any big changes during the distro’s lifecycle.
That might mean it crashes less since you won’t see much in terms of new features, or it might mean you have to live with a very annoying bug for a few years because the package maintainers didn’t want to back port the fix for whatever reason.
Just remember to check archlinux.org before system updates.
Debian is what you put on your grandma’s Facebook machine
To put it in a less elitist way: you can put it on a family PC for light entertainment or for things like homework for kids
To be perfectly clear: most people use their PC as a glorified Facebook machine.
(it also doesn’t have to be Facebook but the concept is the same)
Debian is what you put on a system you want to work forever with minimal maintenance. Whether that be your Grandma’s computer or my headless server.
Cachyos, its popular for a reason, the wiki is really helpful, and the goal is to quickly get you setup for gaming with the correct drivers
And you mention needing up to date drivers, its arch, easy to setup btrfs/snapshot support (parititon using btrfs, its one click on the post install menu) so you can rollback when stuff goes wrong Select limine bootloader if you go this route, its the easiest for snapshots imo
Opensuse Tumbleweed. You get the drivers, it’s stable, and the one time it isn’t you just roll back to the prior snapshot in the boot menu that it takes automatically. Steam runs great on it. Honestly about the best there is.
You can use the sgfxi installation script to get up to date drivers. :P
Thanks for the suggestion.
I just tried following the tutorial and… it only made me more proficient at using Timeshift.
To be exact, it prompted me to create a xorg.conf file, which apparently is not in my system. I accepted and it brought me to a black screen with a black screen that remained there for 5 minutes. I force rebooted the machine and it failed to launch lightdm.service.
So USB, Timeshift and back we are.
I am afraid I am not at your level yet. Been stable on Linux since only a few months.
Thanks again though, at least I know it exists.
I ran mint (non debian) on older hardware for years and loved it mostly.
Upgraded everything in march and realised i needed newer kernel newer mesa. I could of installed from certain ppa’s but hey 12-13 years on one distro i fancied a change.
Kde took some learning (does one need all those settings) but hey functional hardware is the goal and the goal was met. Like graphics tablet i had to mess with modprobe and .sh files just works magnificently.
I can’t compare performance as 8 thread to 24 thread i do not see a fair comparison.
Leaving the comfort zone i think made me understand more about linux and that is very good.
PikaOS is Debian with the latest drivers and hardware and selective updates where needed. It’s basically perfect for me and I’ve been daily driving it on 3 different PCs (2 Nvidia 1 AMD) for more than a year now with zero regrets or significant issues. I did pop into the discord with a few speed bumps and questions that were quickly answered.
https://wiki.pika-os.com/en/home
this should tick all your boxes.
