What Linux Operating Systems do you like?

Oh please don't think I was being derogatory; I think Ubuntu is probably the best recommendation for 90% of people considering the switch - even over Mint.

I just fancied something a bit different.

Didn't think you meant it in a derogatory way. For me personally I just like Linux to be boringly familiar as an alternative to Windows and find Debian/Ubuntu [mostly] work in a fairly intuitive way compared to many flavours of Linux - I'm not one who likes the experience of trying different distros.
 
Didn't think you meant it in a derogatory way. For me personally I just like Linux to be boringly familiar as an alternative to Windows and find Debian/Ubuntu [mostly] work in a fairly intuitive way compared to many flavours of Linux - I'm not one who likes the experience of trying different distros.

Perfectly reasonable. The best OS is one that doesn't get in the way, or poke at your data when it doesn't need to.

That's the real downside of Fedora and it's ilk, and the big thing that could one day make me go for a different distro - rapid kernel rollover, and lack of LTS.

Ubuntu, especially LTS, gives you way more stability, and confidence in your system day to day.
 
Last edited:
I would actually say Ubuntu does certainly do some things in sometimes different ways and has gone in some odd directions over the years but it’s still a solid bet as it’s relatively well documented and importantly so widely used there is usually a solution for most problems readily available. I use the the server LTS on my home server still for that reason. It’s been very reliable.

There is no best linux/GNU OS overall, they all do things a little different and it depends on your needs, priorities and desire to explore or learn. If someone says there is a ‘best’ then they are over-simplifying the situation.
 
I would actually say Ubuntu does certainly do some things in sometimes different ways and has gone in some odd directions over the years but it’s still a solid bet as it’s relatively well documented and importantly so widely used there is usually a solution for most problems readily available. I use the the server LTS on my home server still for that reason. It’s been very reliable.

There is no best linux/GNU OS overall, they all do things a little different and it depends on your needs, priorities and desire to explore or learn. If someone says there is a ‘best’ then they are over-simplifying the situation.

I do think that Linux's great strength does prove a barrier to entry sometimes - choice.

As a newbie, the selection of even mainstream distros is dauntingly enormous; I'm not always convinced telling people 'it depends, write a dissertation on your use case' makes it any easier on them.

I'm not suggesting that's your angle, or that you're wrong at all - I agree with everything above.

I just think that a little guidance towards a couple of 'safe bets' can be more helpful than throwing open the doors to 20 distros and a litany of questions.

Especially when half the time it's not until you've been up and running for a few weeks you realise there's a limitation you hadn't considered / been aware of. Or is that just me? :D
 
Last edited:
Passthrough to a windows VM is absolutely doable, especially with an AMD card. I'm not knowledgeable on CachyOS, but the performance difference from what I've seen is a few percent, I don't even notice (7800xt) when gaming in Fedora KDE Plasma, which has been a delight. That's with Secure Boot and VT-d, too.

I'm not one for multiplayer unfortunately so I can't give you anecdotal experience, but in Fedora you can run a windows VM for this sort of requirement.

For me it's setting up non-linux peripheral profiles to write to the device, AquaSuite configuration, and the extremely rare single player game that refuses to work on Windows (which I've not actually come across yet).

Obviously do your research, but Windows VM seem to be the choice for pesky windows only online requirements.
Thanks, to be fair I think I'd rather just scratch my FPS itch with stuff like Space Marine 2, Marvel Rivals etc if I did go Linux, I'm a 99% single player gamer anyway
 
Last edited:
Thanks, to be fair I think I'd rather just scratch my FPS itch with stuff like Space Marine 2, Marvel Rivals etc if I did go Linux, I'm a 99% single player gamer anyway

I don't regret it at all, and I've definitely made some decisions that made implementation way harder than it needed to be.

I totally see multiplayer being a huge barrier, but my gaming preferences (sound similar to yours) mean Linux works wonderfully.

What's nice is, I've had to do almost zero workarounds to make a game work, and I've found I've had less difficulty implementing ultrawide in old games than in Windows.
 
I do think that Linux's great strength does prove a barrier to entry sometimes - choice.

As a newbie, the selection of even mainstream distros is dauntingly enormous; I'm not always convinced telling people 'it depends, write a dissertation on your use case' makes it any easier on them.

I'm not suggesting that's your angle, or that you're wrong at all - I agree with everything above.

I just think that a little guidance towards a couple of 'safe bets' can be more helpful than throwing open the doors to 20 distros and a litany of questions.

Especially when half the time it's not until you've been up and running for a few weeks you realise there's a limitation you hadn't considered / been aware of. Or is that just me? :D

This is a point I almost made too, the choice is too much at first so best to just try something and go from there. Ubuntu would always be in my initial list.
 
I don't regret it at all, and I've definitely made some decisions that made implementation way harder than it needed to be.

I totally see multiplayer being a huge barrier, but my gaming preferences (sound similar to yours) mean Linux works wonderfully.

What's nice is, I've had to do almost zero workarounds to make a game work, and I've found I've had less difficulty implementing ultrawide in old games than in Windows.
2 things I need to properly research is modding on Linux, I don't really mod games anymore but I was thinking of replaying Fallout New Vegas at some point and obviously I'd like to mod it preferably with something like Wabbajack

And more importantly for me is reshade for RenoDX HDR fixes etc, it's a must imo for some games
 
2 things I need to properly research is modding on Linux, I don't really mod games anymore but I was thinking of replaying Fallout New Vegas at some point and obviously I'd like to mod it preferably with something like Wabbajack

And more importantly for me is reshade for RenoDX HDR fixes etc, it's a must imo for some games

That's the rub with a fresh move to Linux, verifying your deal breakers.

I did a pretty robust list and implementation plan, but there were still hiccups, thankfully sorted.

The modding thing is particularly amusing because I hadn't given it much thought, but there's actually several games I return to that use mods (Factorio is Linux native so no worries there).

My very basic understanding is that generally it's ok, similar to steam in windows. No idea about nexus mod manager etc, and the file name case sensitivity thing sometimes needs some attention.

I have a feeling you're going to need Wine or even a VM in some edge cases though. Food for thought, better start researching more myself :D
 
Last edited:
That's the rub with a fresh move to Linux, verifying your deal breakers.

I did a pretty robust list and implementation plan, but there were still hiccups, thankfully sorted.

The modding thing is particularly amusing because I hadn't given it much thought, but there's actually several games I return to that use mods (Factorio is Linux native so no worries there).

My very basic understanding is that generally it's ok, similar to steam in windows. No idea about nexus mod manager etc, and the file name case sensitivity thing sometimes needs some attention.

I have a feeling you're going to need Wine or even a VM in some edge cases though. Food for thought, better start researching more myself :D
Aye, I know I could always install cachy too and give it a whirl while on Nvidia to see how these things work, it's just annoying reinstalling Windows haha
 
Aye, I know I could always install cachy too and give it a whirl while on Nvidia to see how these things work, it's just annoying reinstalling Windows haha
Dual booting is the way forward, really takes the hassle out of things. I also use an external NvME for when dual boot just isn't enough ;)
 
I've been thinking of changing my GPU too AMD to give Linux a fair trial (as in long term not just couple week like last couple times) with CachyOS, I used it briefly a few month ago when I had a temporary 9070XT and FSR4 was working well then except for performance loss in comparison to running FSR4 on windows, those of you who have a 9000 series can you share some details on how it performes now?

I think the only other major thing stopping me is BF6 unfortunately, I loved the beta
Performance has definitely improved since release, what niggles there were now seem to be ironed out (at least on Cachy). LACT has caught up and is now mostly functional for undervolting/overclocking (though it does have some foibles presently (you need to reset between submitting new settings)).

I don't really mess with FSR to any great extent other than choose what looks best to my eye, but i've not noticed any performance shortfalls or outright issues. I don't online game, but I keep a Windows install on my machines for when I need it, hence my comment in the previous post.

Edit - Actually, most popular LTS distros now have kernel support, even my old Pop 22.04 install works fine now after updating (though I've not tried Ubuntu & Mint).
 
Last edited:
Performance has definitely improved since release, what niggles there were now seem to be ironed out (at least on Cachy). LACT has caught up and is now mostly functional for undervolting/overclocking (though it does have some foibles presently (you need to reset between submitting new settings)).

I don't really mess with FSR to any great extent other than choose what looks best to my eye, but i've not noticed any performance shortfalls or outright issues. I don't online game, but I keep a Windows install on my machines for when I need it, hence my comment in the previous post.

Edit - Actually, most popular LTS distros now have kernel support, even my old Pop 22.04 install works fine now after updating (though I've not tried Ubuntu & Mint).
Thanks, last time I used it FSR4 had a performance hit and the 9000 series wasn't 100% yet on Linux, tho some games still out performed windows even with those 2 issues which was crazy to me

I've been hearing mesa 25.3 should help with RT too? If so that'll be good for Cyberpunk and other titles

I guess the only real major issue left is the lack of HDMI 2.1 for stuff like LG OLED TVs but that's not a fault of Linux or AMD
 
Dual booting is the way forward, really takes the hassle out of things. I also use an external NvME for when dual boot just isn't enough ;)

100% - I haven't used the drive in weeks, but I'm keeping my Windows OS drive until I'm 100% satisfied with VM implementation.
 
100% - I haven't used the drive in weeks, but I'm keeping my Windows OS drive until I'm 100% satisfied with VM implementation.
I've setup VM passthrough in the past as an exercise when I ran a 3060ti, I found it worked quite well once setup locally, but I always had problems with the Oculus (now Meta) VR package which was mainly what I was planning to use it for :) I'll have to revisit it at some point (probably when what i'm using now breaks ;) )
 
I've been hearing mesa 25.3 should help with RT too? If so that'll be good for Cyberpunk and other titles
I've read a while back there are changes to Vulcan amongst other things, the RC for 25.3 is due next month allegedly so not far away, I think Cachy is on 25.2.3+ which is the latest currently.

Edit - Probably teaching you to suck eggs; but the CachyOS wiki is really worth having a look through if you do go this route, especially under configuration and post install onwards, it may be my memory but it seems to have been really fleshed out since I started using Cachy this time last year.
 
Last edited:
I've read a while back there are changes to Vulcan amongst other things, the RC for 25.3 is due next month allegedly so not far away, I think Cachy is on 25.2.3+ which is the latest currently.

Edit - Probably teaching you to suck eggs; but the CachyOS wiki is really worth having a look through if you do go this route, especially under configuration and post install onwards, it may be my memory but it seems to have been really fleshed out since I started using Cachy this time last year.
Yeah I was looking at it other day and couldn't believe for example there's now launch commands to update FSR3, 4 and DLSS for example
 
Last edited:
GPU control on Cachy looks pretty great. How does overclocking/undervolting look for you guys?

Mines a three software stack and CLI for persistence on fedora
 
GPU control on Cachy looks pretty great. How does overclocking/undervolting look for you guys?

Mines a three software stack and CLI for persistence on fedora
I use LACT on my 9070XT (which comes with Cachy by default I think, it's a nice friendly GUI for the hard of thinking (me!)) it works as well as it does on Windows under Adrenaline with the same base overclock/undervolt options, although you can push more Watts through it (now it is capped 374w as opposed to being capped at 340w). I've found my settings directly transferable (I undervolt typically and have a mild overclock on the VRAM for day to day, oddly, I haven't needed to tune the fans on Cachy, which was one of the first things I did on Windows (they used to ramp up and down noticably) and with no impact on temperatures).

Edit - https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT and then MangoHud with MangoJuice (Cachy comes by default with Goverlay, but I prefer MangoJuice) for performance monitoring.
 
Last edited:
I use LACT on my 9070XT (which comes with Cachy by default I think, it's a nice friendly GUI for the hard of thinking (me!)) it works as well as it does on Windows under Adrenaline with the same base overclock/undervolt options, although you can push more Watts through it (now it is capped 374w as opposed to being capped at 340w). I've found my settings directly transferable (I undervolt typically and have a mild overclock on the VRAM for day to day, oddly, I haven't needed to tune the fans on Cachy, which was one of the first things I did on Windows (they used to ramp up and down noticably) and with no impact on temperatures).

Edit - https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT and then MangoHud with MangoJuice (Cachy comes by default with Goverlay, but I prefer MangoJuice) for performance monitoring.

That's a COPR repo right? I tend to avoid them.
 
Back
Top Bottom