tldr:
What reliable, up-to-date, linux distro would you recommend a gaming softwareengineer and privacy enthusiast?
Full text:
Hey all,
I know this is the age old question, but I would like to ask it anyway.
I am currently switching from windows to linux on my main pc and am on the hunt for a fitting distro. I am a software developer and used to working with wsl, debian servers, etc. I selfhost a bunch of things and know my way around the linux commandline and would call me privacy enthusiast that uses a lot of FLOSS software. I also do occasional gaming but I guess that should work on any distro with enough work.
My thought regarding a few distros:
- I like to live on the edge of time and therefore have the feeling that debian based distros (although being very stable) are too “old” for my liking.
- Ubuntu - Canonical is out for me.
- I also looked at fedora, and liked it, but after reading more and knowing it is backed by IBM and that is US based I am not too sure anymore. I ideally would want to have something independent. Although being backed by a company promises continuous work in the future (with the risk of becoming bad).
- OpenSUSE tumbleweed seems promising (german origin!) but also quite intimidating as it is apparently mostly targeted towards power users and I am not sure if it fits an all purpose desktop pc.
- Arch based distros seem great as it contains all the newest packages and is infinitifly customizable. But the KISS nature of arch and the (as far as I understood) high effort to get everything running is a bit intimidating when switching from windows. But I also do like the fact that it ships with only the bare minimum and not anything bloated.
Further more I somehow think that using a base distro (in comparison to a fork of a fork…) is more ideal as they receive updates, etc faster. But that is just a feeling and I couldn’t argue more precisely about it.
Regarding a DE I am definitely going KDE.
I would be very happy for some tips, opinions or pointers in the right direction to continue and finally get rid of windows… Well at least mostly. I guess i will keep it in dual boot as I do play a few games that unfortunately won’t run on linux.
Thanks in advance already!
I’m not very knowledgeable about or experienced with Linux yet, but from everything that I’ve read, I have the impression that Arch is the one that’s oriented to power users, not OpenSUSE. I’ve seen OpenSUSE suggested as one of the more beginner-friendly distros, apparently one of the, if not the most stable rolling release distros, and supposedly has one of the best KDE integrations. That’s the one I’m leaning towards adopting as my first Linux distro to really use seriously to replace Windows on desktop (as opposed to just playing around with it). I am also considering the other flavors of OpenSUSE besides Tumbleweed: Slowroll and Leap, in that order.
I agree with your feeling that going with one of the source distros that other distros use as a base is a better bet, and have seen some reviewers say as much. As far as I know, the big 4 in that regard are Arch, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. Most everything else is apparently either a derivative of one of those or a niche independent distro.