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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Coworker wants to try Linux with gaming, Bazzite or Mint? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by iByteABit@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A coworker of mine asked me to help him install Linux, he hasn't tried Linux before but he's sick of Windows.

He is very much into gaming, so gaming support is the first priority. He is also a developer/tester so I suppose that he will also want to have access to dev tools, languages, and other packages like that for personal projects.

My first go-to when recommending to newbies is Mint because it's simple, tried and tested, but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience. However it scares me that there's no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks and brew, or even podman images. Will this be a problem as he uses the OS for general usage besides gaming in the long term, would it be better to just go with Mint and set that up for gaming instead?

Feel free to also recommend other distros, but keep in mind that while he is technical, he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

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[–] rozodru@piefed.social 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'd say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he's a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he's looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that.

That being said as a dev and gamer myself if my first linux experience was Bazzite I might get annoyed. Mint is a great first experience. when I originally tried it well over a year ago though I did have issues with my Nvidia GPU on it and gaming wasn't super great BUT it's been awhile since I've used mint so that may have changed.

Honestly I would suggest start with Mint and just drive it for a couple weeks. If he likes it but feel it's limited for some things then that's when he can expand out to different distros. And like I said maybe gaming on Mint has improved since I last used it. But if he's comfortable with running distrobox and containers then Bazzite is fine.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 1 points 6 hours ago

Oh yeah I was quite annoyed with bazzite initially with embedded toolchains... The default arch distrobox also runs vscode variants horribly with tons of freezing for some reason. I had to create a new arch distrobox.

Also Saleae Logic2 has a Fedora bug where it takes between 2 and 10 minutes just to open because of logfiles and errordumping and timeouts that is very annoying.

Also menu shortcuts for distrobox only work like for 20% of programs (luckily code-oss is one of them)

And don't get me started on running a VM that can see the local network...

After you get a setup going though, then it is breezy though.

[–] iByteABit@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I’d say Bazzite but I would warn him (and since he’s a developer already it might not be a big deal) if he’s looking to do any sort of dev work or whatever with Bazzite then prepare to utilize stuff like distrobox, flatpaks, etc to accomplish stuff like that

That's what I figured, I would be very annoyed to have to use images for software I would simply do an apt install for in other distros, so I'll leave out Bazzite from my options definitely

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Bazzite has a developer edition OS image

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

If he's a dev, he might actually prefer it. Just explain and let him decide which one he wants to try first.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

And then when he try actually tries it everything breaks and he spends hours trying to get udev working from a distrobox container.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Why would it break?

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 0 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Sorry, I mean "it simply doesn't work".

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You might just want to recommend fedora with the caveat that he'll need to do a little setup with drivers. Bazzite and nobara are both fedora distros.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

So, all downstreams have no added value?

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

That's not what I said. My experience with nobara personally hasn't been great and while I use bazzite at home for gaming PC but wouldn't recommend it at this moment because it seems that the dev team is having some drama. I use cachy daily and find it wonderful and super easy. Not the arch difficulty that I was expecting. It's a downstream.