What Linux Operating Systems do you like?

Mercurial · 24 Sep 2025 at 19:20

WantoN said:
That's a COPR repo right? I tend to avoid them.

cachy extra repository, so part of the distro not necessarily an AUR package (it can be pacman'd for official Arch) and is installed by default.

COPR is a Fedora repo? no idea about their repositories (Deb/Arch more my bag).

Edit - Ah, had a google, the Fedora community repo, fair enough, though i'd imagine the dev's own upload would be OK (i'm a lot less leery of community maintained packages on home desktop as opposed to a corporate environment). Though there is a Flatpak if you use that.

WantoN · 24 Sep 2025 at 23:11

Mercurial said:
cachy extra repository, so part of the distro not necessarily an AUR package (it can be pacman'd for official Arch) and is installed by default.

COPR is a Fedora repo? no idea about their repositories (Deb/Arch more my bag).

Edit - Ah, had a google, the Fedora community repo, fair enough, though i'd imagine the dev's own upload would be OK (i'm a lot less leery of community maintained packages on home desktop as opposed to a corporate environment). Though there is a Flatpak if you use that.

I do indeed flatpak, though for this it'd likely need some cli tweaks. I tend to opt for official upstream or RPM fusion when I can.

I set a mission of making this build more secure than my usual slap-dash approach, but oc/UV has been a pain point. I initially discounted it, but I'm very tempted by LACT now, especially given, as you say, it's the Devs upload.

I use MangoHud, didn't know about Mango juice but a GUI for config is very appealing so I'm nabbing that tomorrow, and I'll have one more crack at getting it working with COPR distros before I cave.

Appreciate the info thank you!

Mercurial · 25 Sep 2025 at 00:05

No problem, and you've prompted me to re-acquaint myself with Red Hat/Fedora which I've not used personally (except for a brief play with Bazzite & Nobara) or professionally for about 15 years! Also it is a worthy endeavour to seek to be more secure and organised so don't give up

, but some utilities, especially those related to gaming aren't deemed relevant enough, especially to the more business focused distributions (of which I would count Fedora) so you are hard pushed not to use an external source, unless you want to write/configure something yourself which you sound like you are doing to an extent.

Mangojuice is a lovely frontend for MangoHud (imo) and takes the slog out of making changes on the fly, I think you'll like it. Good luck

Edit - you mentioned CLI in relation to Flatpaks, do you use Flatseal? it can help with permission woes, if that is what you need to address.

WantoN · 25 Sep 2025 at 05:00

Mercurial said:
No problem, and you've prompted me to re-acquaint myself with Red Hat/Fedora which I've not used personally (except for a brief play with Bazzite & Nobara) or professionally for about 15 years! Also it is a worthy endeavour to seek to be more secure and organised so don't give up , but some utilities, especially those related to gaming aren't deemed relevant enough, especially to the more business focused distributions (of which I would count Fedora) so you are hard pushed not to use an external source, unless you want to write/configure something yourself which you sound like you are doing to an extent.

Mangojuice is a lovely frontend for MangoHud (imo) and takes the slog out of making changes on the fly, I think you'll like it. Good luck

Edit - you mentioned CLI in relation to Flatpaks, do you use Flatseal? it can help with permission woes, if that is what you need to address.

Im aware of Flatseal but I hadn't tinkered. It's a great shout and I'm going to research, thank you.

I'm very pleased with Fedora. I wanted to make a permanent switch and reacquaint myself with Linux. I set myself some challenges along the way; secure boot, privacy focused, strong gaming but not a gaming OS, make NVidia work, get full GPU VM passthrough, work from home, wife-friendly.

I agonised for a while, but overall Fedora was the right choice for me. I've approached it like a project; logged everything, planned software stack, drafted pretty robust documentation along the way. I swapped to a 6800xt midway, and if LACT fixes my woes, it'll be time to test a Kopia backup restore and then final wipe / fresh install to validate all my documentation.

I'm still pretty green, but doing it this way has at least help the knowledge stick somewhat

KDE Plasma to my eye is very slick, very configurable, and provides most of the dials and knobs in the GUI. Bundled apps are also pretty great, and I love the System Info and desktop widgets.

That said, there's been enormous opportunity to re-familiarise myself with the command line!

Mercurial · 25 Sep 2025 at 21:21

You've touched on a couple of the great things about Linux right there; it doesn't matter if it is Arch/Debian/Fedora you can install whatever desktop UI you prefer into whatever distribution you like and there's always more than one way to go about achieving any one task/goal. If Fedora does what you want, how you want and looks how you like, then more power to you

squerble · Friday at 15:06

Has anyone had a play with Omarchy yet? Seen a sudden explosion of YouTube recommendations for vids on it, and the out-of-the-box experience looks quite nice. I'm thinking if I were to switch my gaming PC to Linux, I'd probably still be better with another distro though?

Spleen Sauce · Friday at 15:39

squerble said:
Has anyone had a play with Omarchy yet? Seen a sudden explosion of YouTube recommendations for vids on it, and the out-of-the-box experience looks quite nice. I'm thinking if I were to switch my gaming PC to Linux, I'd probably still be better with another distro though?

Yes, and it's honestly pointless for anyone other than someone trying to show off how much free time they've got on their hands. Use Fedora or CachyOS instead.

alex24 · Friday at 15:51

I am just interested in a decent out of the box tiling window manager that doesn’t need a ton of config. Not sure about the other parts.

squerble · Friday at 16:09

Spleen Sauce said:
Yes, and it's honestly pointless for anyone other than someone trying to show off how much free time they've got on their hands. Use Fedora or CachyOS instead.

Any reason for recommending them over something "simpler" like Bazzite or Nobara? I'm not a Linux newb (more just moderate newb) but do appreciate a more out-of-the-box, less-faff setup.

Spleen Sauce · Friday at 22:36

squerble said:
Any reason for recommending them over something "simpler" like Bazzite or Nobara? I'm not a Linux newb (more just moderate newb) but do appreciate a more out-of-the-box, less-faff setup.

Bazzite is immutable so if you do want to make any system changes you’re in for a world of pain (but no harm in trying it).
Nobara is a mile away from friendly in that every major update will break something - it’s a super heavily modified version of Fedora.

Fedora 42 will work out of the box, is easy to install, easy to configure, has a nice easy to use App Store and is still a rolling distribution so it’s nice and modern with a new kernel. CachyOS is a bit more involved from the perspective that it’s based on Arch but still easy enough and the performance of the OS is excellent

squerble · Saturday at 07:30

Spleen Sauce said:
Bazzite is immutable so if you do want to make any system changes you’re in for a world of pain (but no harm in trying it).
Nobara is a mile away from friendly in that every major update will break something - it’s a super heavily modified version of Fedora.

Fedora 42 will work out of the box, is easy to install, easy to configure, has a nice easy to use App Store and is still a rolling distribution so it’s nice and modern with a new kernel. CachyOS is a bit more involved from the perspective that it’s based on Arch but still easy enough and the performance of the OS is excellent

Thanks. I assume these recommendations will still stand if I say the PC will be used for nothing other than gaming? I've got a Mac Mini alongside it for the day-to-day everything else.

Spleen Sauce · Saturday at 08:03

squerble said:
Thanks. I assume these recommendations will still stand if I say the PC will be used for nothing other than gaming? I've got a Mac Mini alongside it for the day-to-day everything else.

In that case I’d go for CachyOS. If you’ve got an nvidia card, use the nvidia specific ISO and the drivers/config is sorted for you automatically (it’s what I use)

squerble · Saturday at 08:06

Spleen Sauce said:
In that case I’d go for CachyOS. If you’ve got an nvidia card, use the nvidia specific ISO and the drivers/config is sorted for you automatically (it’s what I use)

I'm all-AMD here (9800X3D + 9070XT) so all good.

I need to keep researching some more but thanks for your input!

Spleen Sauce · Saturday at 09:06

squerble said:
I'm all-AMD here (9800X3D + 9070XT) so all good.

I need to keep researching some more but thanks for your input!

Nice thing really is if you don’t like it or get on with a distro it’s only going to cost you a bit of time to change it.

Buffalo2102 · Saturday at 12:00

You can make just about any Linux distro good for gaming these days but there are one or two that are more focussed on gaming. Drauger OS in particular but that might be a bit of a steep curve for a new user. Garuda has a utility that is specifically aimed at getting you set up for games.
The great thing is they are all free and you can give them all a try, as Spleen Sauce says.