this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?

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[–] guillem@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm switching to GuixSD. Fortunately I have an old laptop and can build up my system there until I feel confident enough to do the real switch.

Pros I have encountered so far: booting in 20 seconds. Nice, although small, community. Scheme is cool. When the time comes, I will just need to copy two text files (and my dotfiles) to the main laptop, and my system will be (theoretically) the same, and it will be (theoretically) unfuckable.

Cons I have encountered so far: some kinks that were quick to research and fix while on an Arch-based distro, now are a bit more of a pain (but most of them in the fun way at least). For now I have given up trying to make the Thunar archive plugin work and switched to PCmanFM. Also I had to install Logseq as a flatpak. I have started very recently and I have not installed much yet so no idea about the impact on gaming.

ETA: there's !guix@lemmy.ml and !guix@infosec.pub on Lemmy.

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

20 seconds isn't that fast...

I'm using Fedora on a sata SSD and mine boots in about 15 seconds. My laptop running Ubuntu on a sata SSD is about 17. Both running normal systemd

edit: i just timed ubuntu at 12 seconds. i do not have luks encryption though

[–] guillem@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Oh I thought it was.

ETA: that includes me typing the LUKS password.

[–] Amaterasu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In Fedora, and other distros using Systemd, potentially in some distros that don't use Systemd as well, using tools like dracut or mkinitcpio you can enroll TPM2 to Secure Boot and seal TPM to NOT request LUKS password every boot.

[–] guillem@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago

That's too advanced for me I guess but maybe in a future.

[–] Peasley@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I remember booting Gentoo in about 7 seconds to the GUI desktop around 2013. A lot more than systemd has changed in the Linux ecosystem since then. It feels like everything has gotten just a little slower.