recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can. however soon i realized how different it is and it requires more setup than i initially thought. i spent a whole day or two setting it up and i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?
when i was about to install steam i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed, i decided just set it up using discover with flatpak, the problem is when i was about to find out how to do that i read mostly people really hate when you ask how to enable it in arch, is it really bad? should i just use konsole instead?
im not very tech savvy and at first I was really reluctant to use konsole but since i decided to use arch its inevitable that i have to use konsole and so far its not that bad, yet.
I’m just wondering for the long term, should i just change distro? or i should just powertrough arch and see where it goes.
thank you for your time.
edit:
thank you for all the kind words, support and information everyone. i decided that i’ll stick with arch until it breaks and ill see either i retry arch or try different linux flavors. i never feels so excited about os since i was messing around in win 2000
if you’re a first timer and already got arch with kde set up you’re pretty fucking tech savvy ngl
But that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to start.
Try Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. Any of these will be easier than Arch and offer point and click installation for steam, drivers, and just about anything else.
When you get some more experience, instead of arch you can try endeavourOS. it’s basically arch with good defaults and has a fantastic KDE implementation.
For gaming focused PC I’d look at Bazzite. OP wants it to be like the Steam Deck, it’s just perfect for that.
You can do gaining in literally any distro. My pop install runs steam just fine.
Bazzite’s not Arxh based though if thats the OPs.intent?
I have no idea what the OP is trying to achieve though. I just use LMDE with steam
I almost always advise against atomic distros for noobs. They are extremely limiting, add multiple complications to otherwise simple tasks, and the padded cell of immutability means you can’t really fuck around and learn how traditional Linux systems work.
I’m usually distro agnostic and just happy to see people use whatever Linux they like, but immutables have issues.
They are extremely limiting
Assuming you’re referring to Fedora Atomic, your statement is extremely exaggerated. Out of the top of my head, the current limitations are iffy akmods and UKI/systemd-boot. The latter of which is being worked on currently and might arrive rather sooner than later. Neither of which I’d assume 95% of Linux users ever engage with anyways…
add multiple complications to otherwise simple tasks
I feel like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Please be explicit; which tasks are made more complicated on Fedora Atomic?
the padded cell of immutability means you can’t really fuck around and learn how traditional Linux systems work
It’s true that you aren’t supposed to “fuck” around (most of)
/usrduring runtime. Furthermore, I agree that the existing ways to circumvent/bypass this leave much to be desired. But, again, most peeps use perfectly fine systems without ever feeling the need to tinker with/usr… And if you absolutely must…, well…, Fedora Atomic doesn’t actually stop you. It just wants you to adhere to its ways of achieving it. Making it more of a paradigm shift, rather than outright limiting the user.If your criticism basically boils down to “I can’t make use of my preconceived notion on how Linux works.”, then “Yes.”; that’s exactly the point. Granted, it wouldn’t hurt if Fedora Atomic allowed conventional methods to continue working. But as it’s currently in the middle of a architectural shift (going from
rpm-ostreetobootc), I’d argue they’ve got more important things to work on.I would say the greatest limitation would be repos and your ability to build whatever software you want from source. Having access to the AUR allows me access to much wider array of software. Can you run Hyprland and all of its companions like hyprlock, hyprpaper, etc on bazzite? That’s the setup I prefer, and I’m fairly certain it’s not possible in a Fedora based immutable system.
I don’t want or need guardrails to keep my system running correctly. If you do, or just enjoy the stability, cool. I’m just glad you’re not running windows. I don’t think bazzite is bad. I just don’t think it should be the go to for welcoming newcomers.
Thank you for the quick answer and for providing clarifications!
I would say the greatest limitation would be repos
What do you mean? What’s wrong with Fedora’s repos? Apologies if I sound obtuse*.
and your ability to build whatever software you want from source.
There’s nothing preventing you from doing this within a container created by Toolbx/Distrobox. I can attest to this. You can even build it natively. While I haven’t personally engaged in building it natively, I can’t imagine it would cause any problems. But please correct me if your experience (or otherwise) is different.
Can you run Hyprland and all of its companions like hyprlock, hyprpaper, etc on bazzite? That’s the setup I prefer, and I’m fairly certain it’s not possible in a Fedora based immutable system.
Fam, break your leg. Nothing is stopping you; someone else has already done just that. And you can just piggy-back of their effort. In case you’d like to see other (successful) attempts at making Hyprland work on Fedora Atomic: consider taking a look at wayblue and hyprland-atomic.
Huh. Well, today I learned.
You do sound obtuse, but thanks for the education.
I still think bazzite is the wrong suggestion for newcomers, and I don’t care if you like my opinion.
Agreed.
CachyOS has all of the gaming stuff (can be just point and click with their welcome popup/installer), is arch based so there’s a ton of well made documentation.
Download yay and off to the races
Cachy is preloaded with Paru. Is yay the better option?
To be frank, I haven’t used paru. I’m relatively new to arch but I’ve had nothing but good experiences with yay
I’ve only used yay but afaik paru is very similar and well put together.
I’ve been wanting to try Cachy, but my experience with Endeavour has been so good for so long that I’m not even feeling distro-hoppy. I admire Cachy from afar.
I used bazzite and I ran into the exact issues you described above. It worked, and it worked well, but anything extra that I wanted to do required jumping through a shit load of hoops and bouncing around between bazzite forums, fedora forums, and universal blue forums to maybe not even arrive at a reliable work around.
It was extremely valuable because I had to learn a lot, but it just wasn’t nearly as seamless as cachy.
Bazzite will play steam games right off the rip and it will do it well, and is an easy install. Beyond that it can get harry if you’re not just using flatpacks.
A lot of people will say “just use distrobox” if your solution to make something work in this OS is to download and use another OS, why wouldn’t I just start there with the other OS?
Yeah, this is exactly the point I was trying to make. I want a system that is simple and straightforward, running primarily native packages and a small handful of flatpaks. I don’t want or need to emulate other distros because my own distro has its wings clipped.
This is what I ran into when I first decided to try a linux system desktop after ten years. I wasn’t familiar with the new distros around these days, so decided to try Bazzite first. Immediately ran into a driver issue that was apparently not fixable until the (already released) fix made its way into their official repo or something.
Shelved that and gave CachyOS a try (made more sense anyway since I used arch in college and had a steam deck since day 1), and it’s been my daily driver for 6 months now.
Try Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora.
I think openSUSE is also a good option for newbies, either the Leap (stable release) or Tumbleweed (rolling release) variants. One nice thing openSUSE does for newbies and why I have been using it in the process of moving away from Windows is that it comes out of the box with automatic system snapshots enabled so that if you break anything it’s relatively simple to roll back to a working config.
I didn’t really enjoy YaST, but I’ve got a freed up secondary SSD, maybe it’s worth giving a try again.
I don’t think YaST is really required and they’re apparently moving away from it. I’ve barely used it myself, but I hear it’s one of the things many people like about openSUSE.
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I’d argue that beyond surface-level stuff, the Debian-based distros have a steeper learning curve. PPA’s, packages with versions in the name of the package,
.debs that don’t update with the rest of the system, the list goes on. No shade to anyone who is happy with Ubuntu or Mint, but I too started on Ubuntu and didn’t find it intuitive enough to stick around. OP is talking about avoiding the terminal, “just use Debian” is not even a solution to that.
Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora
I recently tried Fedora for the first time last week… and was pleasantly surprised! Out of these 3, I feel like Fedora looks the nicest. Fedora Workstation’s installer is a little nicer than Ubuntu’s. I also think the update screen during reboot is a nice touch.
Yeah, I stuck with Fedora Gnome for at least a year. It had its limitations for me, so I’m currently on EndeavourOS with Hyprland, but Fedora will always have a place in my heart.
if i may ask, what kind of limitation that makes you switch?
The specific set of baseline dot files I use as a template for my Hyprland setup don’t seem to play nicely with Fedora. I love Fedora, but some of my toys aren’t easily compatible with it.
im not sure if my machine will need that level of stuff for my usage nor my tech level that high to require something like that. so its nice to know that i will not lose much if i change distro with a more streamlined one.
after lots of input i decide to just play with arch until it breaks then switch to bazzite.
thank you for your input
I’m comfortable with tech but clueless with Linux. What does all this mean?!
But seriously, why would you want endeavorOS instead of sometbing youre saying is more simple, like Mint?
Increased flexibility and control, some things I like to do work better in an arch based system than a Fedora based system. One of my biggest reasons, is that the tiling window manager I use is better supported on Arch and makes use of many AUR packages. Using the AUR and building from source can be risky if you don’t know what you’re doing.
That fact that you don’t know what any of this means is why you should start with a more beginner friendly distro. You’ll learn, and as your knowledge grows you’ll have a much clearer understanding of your needs in a distro.
Imagine it’s like racing. If you start in a GT3 car pushing 900 horsepower as a beginner you’ll probably die. Which is why most start with karting or racing Miatas. Keep it simple and build your skill set and knowledge as you go.
I appreciate the reply.
Im definitely going to start beginner friendly. I’m just trying to get a handle on what the differences tangiby mean ahead of it. Every explanation i find seems to be. “You do more, you can customize more, it’s more powerful, or only losers dont use the hardest thing possible”. Ok, the last one was a joke, kind of.
The biggest difference? Arch forces you to the terminal more. The easier distros come pre packaged with GUI tools for things like graphics driver selection, adding and removing repositories, installing and removing software, etc.
Vanilla arch doesn’t come with any of that. EndeavourOS, the more fleshed out Arch based distro I use doesn’t either. You could use Mint, Ubuntu, Pop, or Fedora, without ever needing to see the command line. You CAN use it, and should from time to time to start learning, but Arch throws you right into the deep end of the pool of using the command line for almost everything you do.
Some of these people will likely try to say “well actually there are GUI frontends for pacman” or whatever, it’s not the same as using Mint where graphical tools that are easy to use are baked into the system.
Mint or fedora. Skip Ubuntu. Updates break things too much. If you got mint I’d recommend LMDE over Ubuntu mint. For the same reason so long as your not on brand new hardware. Mint is honestly the easiest way to go. Fedora being second. Bazzite if you want to have a steam OS like experience.
Mint is a fine distro, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that wants to do gaming right now either. None of the first class DEs are running on Wayland yet, which means that most monitor features of the last decade are not at all or badly supported.
I have a 70 year old father running Ubuntu on a laptop without issue for a couple years now. Everyone’s mileage may vary.
Poor OP probably has no idea what to do now.
So OP should start over? Just offering your unnecessary opinion? (Remember they read this) Go with the compliment and move on
Yes start over.
Ubuntu, Mint, Pop_OS, Fedora.
Save your important files on a separate drive, install your new beginner friendly OS of choice, and don’t be afraid to break it. A reinstall from a USB stick takes like 15 minutes, and with your important files stored separately you don’t have to think twice about wiping the system and starting over.
OP should follow their chosen path and we should commend them for their efforts and support their choices rather than tell them they did it wrong and start over according to our opinions.
Op was asking for advice. You have different advice? Give it. I don’t care what you think of my advice.
lmao, im not sure about that. i just followed a couple of tutorials on youtube on how to do it
Fake it till you make it
Tech savvy enough. I do my damnedest to find a YT tutorial or forum post before I throw the towel in and make a help request somewhere. Like I literally will go hours before I finally concede and realize I can’t do something myself, and I act like my honor is forever lost whenever I go to Fedora forums in defeat. There are many out there who won’t even do that at the bare minimum, so you’re doing great. We’re doing great.
You’re probably better off with Fedora, Mint, or Bazzite to be honest
Seconding Bazzite, it’s great for gaming.
Third
ford
Seconding Fedora.
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If you’re the type of new user that likes to go balls deep straight away, then Arch is arguably one of the better options thanks to its excellent Wiki. However, please don’t blatantly overestimate yourself for the heck of it. Consider checking out ArchWiki’s own entries on this matter:
- Why would I not want to use Arch?
- I am a complete GNU/Linux beginner. Should I use Arch?
- System maintenance
i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed
I don’t think this attitude is helpful for conquering Arch, but YMMV.
recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can.
FWIW, if you just want to emulate SteamOS, perhaps consider Bazzite instead. It’s not based on Arch, but it arguably is the closest to SteamOS (but better). More so than any Arch-based distro*.
after looking at it more i realized its more of a wiki than a tutorial. my initial thought is if i use pacman to install steam i had to find and get the dependencies by myself so thats why i went with flatpak route.
few people recommend bazzite too. ill try to give it a look
few people recommend bazzite too. ill try to give it a look
If you want the system to be out of your way while you get to enjoy your games, then that’s exactly what Bazzite is for.
If, instead, you’re interested in getting to know how the traditional model of Linux desktop works, then I’d look elsewhere.
had to find and get the dependencies by myself
Luckily, Linux has evolved in the past 30 years. A package manager (one usually comes with your system, like apt, dnf, pacman) will handle almost all direct dependencies for you. When installing Steam, you may be asked which 32-bit Vulkan library you want to install, but aside from that it should get everything automatically. (Hint: vulkan-radeon on AMD, otherwise pick the one for your GPU brand)
Managing and “maintaining” (updating, sometimes cleaning) an Arch Linux installation is definitely more involved than what you are used to on Windows or the Steam Deck. Some people prefer this workflow, as it offers more control over their system. Others prefer an already set up and maintained environment.
Bazzite is a very SteamOS-like experience. You click update once in a while, and shouldn’t have to touch anything else internal to the system. You get Steam and Flatpaks out of the box.
Since Linux gives everyone the freedom to do things the way they want, there will always be people shitting on a specific way to do things. There are definitely good reasons to dislike certain software, but generally you should be just fine. Just because someone thinks their way of doing things is better doesn’t mean you should immediately switch to that.
That being said, the main downside of Steam in a flatpak is the sandboxing possibly getting in the way of modding your games, or games that use unique hardware (like steering wheels or so).
steam(pacman package) does not have those specific issues, but it lacks sandboxing (aside from Steam’s pressure vessel for games).
You can continue with Arch if you want, and there’s certainly good resources to learn (like the wiki) or get help (like the IRC or Matrix rooms). It will require you to learn about how to actually set up and configure your Linux installation the way you prefer. Other distros (usually marketed as “user friendly”), like Fedora, Bazzite, Mint, will automatically perform or set up some of the maintenance you’d have to do manually on Arch.
thank you for the insight. glad that its not as hard as people used to do back in the day. i hope wont break it sooner than i hoped so im going to stick with arch for a bit. honestly its been a pretty fun experience so far.
Arch Linux’s whole claim to fame is Some Assembly Required. Go with something like Mint or Fedora (the latter of which is available with the KDE desktop, source: am typing this on a gaming computer running Fedora KDE) and they’re much more complete out of the box.
Yes, you’re screwed.
You’re mega extra screwed.
They know where you live.
They’re coming for you.
Hide.
🙈
Arch has a bit of a steeper learning curve. Ubuntu is probably the most “mainstream”, but I prefer Mint (based on Ubuntu) for some user-friendly changes. PopOS (already based on Ubuntu) is also supposed to be a bit more gaming centric if you’ve got an Nvidia card.
I’ve got an AMD kit in my main machine and Nvidia/Intel in my laptop and both work fine with most Steam games using Proton.
First, I would like to give you some major props. Installing Arch, in itself, is a big deal. It is not a beginner-friendly distro. It is a very power-user friendly distro and has an incredible wiki that is helpful, at least to some degree, for many distros.
For a beginner distro, I would recommend Linux Mint for its easy transition and great focus on user experiences or Bazzite if you really want to install and get gaming.
When taking drivers in Linux, most are provided as either kernel modules (integrated into the kernel, so you don’t have to worry about installing anything) or packaged for the distro, in which case, once installed via package manager, they’ll auto-update whenever you update system packages. They are so much easier to deal with than Windows drivers (for the end user). For example, to use a Wacom drawing tablet, all one has to do is plug it in.
i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean?
sudo pacman -Syu- do this about once every couple of days to make sure your packages are up-to-date
i can’t think of anything else i have to do as part of maintaining my system outside of backupsUninstall Arch and install Linux Mint. Give yourself that gift. It’d still be easier than installing Arch Linux, and you’ll be way more comfortable most of the time in the long term. It’s not that you can’t use Arch, but their approach is not beginner-friendly.
I admire your energetic here. I only installed the latest ubuntu (cause of latest gpu driver updates) then I installed steam from software center and it works nothing to do anymore.
Just a heads up, you might want to use Steams .deb file instead of snap
recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can. however soon i realized how different it is and it requires more setup than i initially thought.
It sounds like you’re thinking of Arch + KDE as similar to building a PC, where if you get the same parts you can hook them up for the same experience.
I think their team chose Arch to build their distro off of because it’s very customizable and made it easy for them to add their configurations, interface layers, hardware optimizations etc. That doesn’t make it the best choice for a beginner unless you want to be thrown into the deep end and spend some time to learn a bunch.
IMO you should look into something like Bazzite or some other atomic Fedora, or OpenSuse, so that you can have a running operating system you can game on. Then you can spend some time learning about Linux with the functioning PC. There are ways to run other Linux distros inside your main one if you want to play with them and learn about them.
Unless you have another machine to use day to day, I find it annoying to be learning with the same machine I need for other things.
It sounds like you’re thinking of Arch + KDE as similar to building a PC, where if you get the same parts you can hook them up for the same experience.
yeah you nailed it.
i think ill keep learning arch and see how far i got, when it inevitably break ill choose later if i want to retry it or just go with bazzite, its a mostly pc for gaming so there isnt much important stuff in it
Sounds good! There’s also !linux4noobs@programming.dev and similar communities to ask questions for all the specific issues you are working on
I think you’re better off with CachyOS than Bazzite to be honest.
It’s Arch-based, comes with an installer with KDE Plasma as default and on top of that is optimized for performance and geared towards gaming.The only reason people are recommending Bazzite
is because CachyOS is only a year old, while Bazzite is two years old,
unless someone can prove me otherwise.
In any case Bazzite is RHEL-based, so it won’t have the AUR or pacman,
which are the two things that set Arch-based Operating Systems apart from the rest of the pack.
AUR and pacman are superior to all other repositories and package managers.is because CachyOS is only a year old, while Bazzite is two years old, unless someone can prove me otherwise.
CachyOS has been installable (at least) as early as November of 2021. Its GitHub page is even older, going as far back as October of 2021.
Bazzite, on the other hand, is at least a year younger as it dates back to December of 2022.
Bazzite is RHEL-based
Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic. FYI, Fedora is not based on RHEL. Quite the opposite, actually, as Fedora is “upstream” of RHEL.
it won’t have the AUR or pacman, which are the two things that set Arch-based Operating Systems apart from the rest of the pack.
Come out of your cave, fam. Distrobox has been out for years now. And, with it, everyone has access to every other repo (including the AUR). We’ve finally evolved.
CachyOS has been installable (at least) as early as November of 2021. Its GitHub page is even older, going as far back as October of 2021. Bazzite, on the other hand, is at least a year younger as it dates back to December of 2022.
Thank you for that info, but then why are so many advising Bazzite instead of CachyOS?
CachyOS is Arch-based, Bazzite is not.Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic. FYI, Fedora is not based on RHEL. Quite the opposite, actually, as Fedora is “upstream” of RHEL.
And thank you for that info.
So Red Hat decided to put Fedora in front and put RHEL in the back?
Red Hat used to be the base OS of Fedora, no?Come out of your cave, fam. Distrobox has been out for years now. And, with it, everyone has access to every other repo (including the AUR). We’ve finally evolved.
Again, thank you for that info.
But I don’t think any container app would diversify distros or make Fedora distros more popular.
In fact, it probably will lead to AUR-based distros becoming even more popular,
because one will have access to all the other smaller repos,
as AUR becomes the standard.Thank you for the kind words, fam. Much appreciated 😊!
why are so many advising Bazzite instead of CachyOS?
Assuming you’re referring to why so many others recommended Bazzite to OP instead of CachyOS. I believe it stems from the following line of OP:
mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can.
And even if the following is true:
CachyOS is Arch-based, Bazzite is not.
It’s simply undeniable that Bazzite is closer to SteamOS compared CachyOS, by virtue of how it -just like SteamOS- doesn’t deliver the traditional model of desktop Linux but instead goes all-in on a new paradigm. A simple example to point this out would be how both SteamOS and Bazzite default to automatic updates:
- SteamOS; https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1062
- Bazzite; https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Updates_Rollbacks_and_Rebasing/updating_guide/
CachyOS, by contrary, doesn’t. Though it ain’t hard to enable this: https://github.com/CachyOS/cachy-update?tab=readme-ov-file#the-systemd-timer
This is all tied to the aforementioned paradigm shift. I can name a lot more similarities if you happen to be interested.
So Red Hat decided to put Fedora in front and put RHEL in the back? Red Hat used to be the base OS of Fedora, no?
It seems that RHEL has been based on Fedora for over twenty years now 😅. As Red Hat Linux seems to predate Fedora, perhaps it was based on RHEL once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for a long time. Regardless, documentation on this event seems to be relatively sparse. As such, I wasn’t able to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Please feel free to complete my ‘research’ 😜!
But I don’t think any container app would diversify distros
Sorry, I didn’t quite get this. Do you mean that *“container app”*s will not succeed in decentralizing efforts and instead have the opposite effect?
or make Fedora distros more popular.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, but to be clear: Distrobox is basically available on every distro out there. So it’s not a Fedora-thing to begin with. (Though, it has to be said that I’ve yet to see it being better utilized/integrated than uBlue’s images.)
In fact, it probably will lead to AUR-based distros becoming even more popular, because one will have access to all the other smaller repos, as AUR becomes the standard.
Hmm…, I don’t quite understand why you think like that. There’s a lot that goes into making distros unique and deserving of their existence. Strictly limiting their appeal to the size of their respective (user) repos is honestly a disservice to the grandiose effort put out by our respected F(L)OSS developers.
Though, I kinda wonder… Why are you even praising Arch for this? Shouldn’t you root for NixOS instead as they’re the ones to possess the biggest repo?
It seems that RHEL has been based on Fedora for over twenty years now 😅.
I only used Fedora in college on shared college computers and that was over twenty years ago.
It was brand new back then as they switched over from Solaris.
I was under the impression back then that Fedora was a Red Hat Linux derative like Ubuntu was of Debian,
Ubuntu being the OS I was using at that time and the Linux Distro Timeline implies as such, however…perhaps it was based on RHEL once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for a long time. Regardless, documentation on this event seems to be relatively sparse. As such, I wasn’t able to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Please feel free to complete my ‘research’ 😜!
Businesses weren’t too keen about Red Hat’s six month release cycle, as the short time interpolation was too disruptive for them.
Red Hat then decided to have a seperate OS with a long-term support cycle and call that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
At the same time, users were demanding a ‘Red Hat Community Edition’, so Fedora came into existance and that was then used as an upstream source for RHEL.Sorry, I didn’t quite get this. Do you mean that *“container app”*s will not succeed in decentralizing efforts and instead have the opposite effect?
Yes. It’ll make some OSes more pointless. People will try out the distro in the distrobox, get what they need out of it and not bother installing it
or jump ship to the better one.Perhaps you misunderstood me, but to be clear: Distrobox is basically available on every distro out there.
No, it’s clear.
Hmm…, I don’t quite understand why you think like that. There’s a lot that goes into making distros unique and deserving of their existence. Strictly limiting their appeal to the size of their respective (user) repos is honestly a disservice to the grandiose effort put out by our respected F(L)OSS developers.
It’s a defining feature for me.
I had to jump off Ubuntu and Parabola for this reason.
For Ubuntu I needed the latest version of some package and for Parabola it was certain packages that were non-free.
Distrobox did not exist back then.NixOS sounds very interesting, but the moment I tried to install the distro- package manager I noticed aws packages and I have an aversion of anything remotely Amazon. Guix peaks my interest even more now that you’ve mentioned Distrobox.
I think I’ll take the jump.
You’re not screwed. Depends on how much you enjoy tinkering and troubleshooting.
My main advice would be to keep your data backed up and completely disconnected from the PC. And make sure your machine is not critical (i.e. for working from home or something). Other than that you do what you want. If you want to dive deep in Arch then that’s fine.
One thing to know is that the important part relevant to you is: the desktop environment (KDE) and the Linux distro (Arch) are different things. The far more important thing for you is to have KDE… the distro underneath just needs to not get in the way.
If you’ve got Arch up and running then stick with it until it gives you trouble. I naturally ended up distro hopping in the beginning because I would catastrophically break something I couldn’t repair and could change distros naturally when reinstalling.
Good options for easy distros with KDE would be:
-
Tuxedo OS (or Kubuntu) - easiest and there’s lots of support online.
-
Fredora - rock solid and highly recommend. Although I would recommend OpenSUSE Tumbleweed instead, this got me hooked on Linux and was the least problematic for a bleeding edge updated distro, where I happily used Discover for installing and updating.
-
CachyOS - good option for sticking with Arch.
this pc is mostly for gaming and entertainment so not much is lost if its wiped or broke.
i do love tinkering, just that software tinker is a bit out of my depth
thank you for your input. after a lot of other input and consideration i’ll keep playing with arch until it broke then ill decide later if i want to retry it or go with bazzite. or maybe see other enticing distro too. there is so much…
-
I don’t know exactly what u are talking about steam cause it just sudo pacman -Syu steam and that it .everything else if u have modern nvidia then do sudo pacman -Syu nvidia-dkms if amd setup then u will no need anything else .In the end as for beginner try CachyOS if u the most close experience to vanilla arch .this guys just do some performance tweaks while staying maximum vanilla as possible about arch linux
i mixed wiki as a tutorial step by step on how to install steam on linuk it seems
sudo pacman -SyuAnd done, usually. Lol
Looks like you have an extra space
Good call lol. Fixed.
You haven’t provided a lot of detail on what your current setup looks like. If you use a gaming-focused distro like Cachy or Bazzite they should essentially work “out of the box.” Bazzite is also very difficult to break since the immutability makes for very effective guard rails for new users.
If you went with Arch right off the bat, you did take on quite a lot for a new user, but - and I do genuinely mean this - there is no better way to learn the ins and outs of Linux than jumping into the Arch deep end. Even if you choose to switch to a lower-maintenance distro, your effort with Arch is never wasted.
Want a very low maintenance gaming distro with almost no setup? Bazzite.
Want a more hands-on gaming centric distro like SteamOS? CachyOS.
Want a more stable all-around distro that also works great for gaming? Fedora.Avoid Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu. You will see Mint recommended often, but I personally only recommend it for older hardware that you are trying to revitalize. There are better options.
A new version of Debian just released, and there is no more rock solid distro than Debian. Add KDE Plasma and you will have a very low maintenance, pleasantly familiar, extremely reliable system.
