I’m backing up my windows device today and plan on installing a Linux distro. My primary use for this PC is gaming, though I do complete some banking and other tasks I find cumbersome on my phone.
My technical skill level is “knows enough to get into the shit, but not enough to get out.” I did use Ubuntu exclusively for a period of about 3-5 years over a decade ago.
One con I’ve found regarding this OS is that it has “no browser in Live environment,” but I have no idea what that means.
If anyone has experience with this OS or good tips/recommendations, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Can’t say I’ve heard of it before now. Generally I recommend new Linux users sticking to more popular distros to maximize the size of people who can potentially help you if needed. I also think ‘gaming’ distros are overrated though and would probably just recommend kububtu for you, installing pipewire if that is something that appealed to you from drauger.
I think kubuntu still ships with snap though
It might be smarter to use something snap free. It is all down to personal preference
That’s sound reasoning, thank you. I’m making the assumption that it will be lighter on resources, but I do recall the Ubuntu forums being invaluable when I was running it, so that is definitely a good consideration.
every linux distro is extremely lightweight compared to windows, just try something mainstream and it’ll be fine
I assume it means they don’t include a web browser in the bootable live USB environment. Which is odd. But I also assume when installed it will include Firefox or something.
That said, have you also considered Bazzite? It worked great for me.
+1 for Bazzite 💯
I look into it, thank you. I looked around the web and it was mentioned multiple times and looks more like windows then MacOS.
With Bazzite, you can choose which desktop environment you want to use when you download the ISO. The KDE desktop will be more windows like, and the gnome desktop will be more similar to MacOS. The underlying OS is the same.
I saw that! It definitely makes for a compelling option. While I’m a bit saddened that there seems to be more support for Nvidia than AMD (if I’m reading it correctly), that isn’t something I’m not accustomed to.
With Bazzite you will choose AMD or Nvidia when downloading the iso.
You probably are seeing more about NVIDIA because it’s usually more difficult to get things working with NVIDIA than AMD on Linux, so it’s a bigger deal that they have NVIDIA working out of the box.
Ah, ok. I misunderstood. Good to know, thank you.
I was considering that distro a while back, but they do have a warning that it has issues so it’s not really suitable for new users. Btw there ain’t much point in gaming distros, you can use mint cinnamon and it gets exactly the same performance and it’s noob friendly and stable.
And live environment means you can use it from the usb installation media before installing. Idk why it doesn’t have a browser in it though.
I’ve decided to run a few common distros from USB to see which I like better after the advice here. I think I was overcomplicating things.
Yeah the best way to choose a distro is to just try them and see which one works. Every now and then I forget that and I start distrohopping. I always go back to mint because simply nothing else works well enough on my HW.
This question has highlighted what to me is the number 1 issue with Linux as an ecosystem.
Drauger OS, per their own website, is an Ubuntu based distro that reached end of life in 2022. It no longer has Apt repos online.
I recommend you just pick one of the big 4. Debian, Ubuntu, mint (all Debian based, all solid), Fedora is great if it works with your hardware (some configs are just bizarrely and inexplicably wayyyy slow with Fedora). Since you’re a gamer, if you have the right hardware (amdgpu) go for bazzite or smth like that and you’ll have a console experience with a desktop as a secondary experience.
Keep it simple mostly though. The less fingers are in the pie the less likely it is someone has dirty fingers, don’t go fuckin around with unvetted, unpopular distributions. If you have changes you wanna make, make them yourself as you learn what is safe. Never make a change you don’t understand, and don’t go follow someone’s list of unvetted changes just because “muh performance tho”.
I’ve never heard of that so probably not
I have Garuda and it is relatively straight forward installing things with just the UI (although it has two steams). Sorry I don’t have info about Drauger
I also use Garuda. While I wouldn’t normally suggest an Arch-based distro to someone newer, the developers there did a pretty good job at making it more approachable and user friendly for people who aren’t used to Arch.
The default BTRFS filesystem setup with automatic Snapper snapshots at each update also gives some extra stability insurance to the rolling release. If an update does temporarily screw something up (as very occasionally happens)–or you manage to do something to the system yourself–you can just boot using a previous system snapshot until the issue is fixed. Another reason I would recommend Garuda where I wouldn’t necessarily suggest Arch or most derivatives.
I’ll check it out, thank you. I’m not dead set on drauger, my Linux experience is too outdated to have strong opinions. 😂
I do almost everything in UI and I like sticking to ui
I personally wouldn’t recommend something Arch based unless you really want Arch
I find garuda is different and there is the added bonus of arch having a lot of documentation around features such as hdr gaming, proton, ect
I’ve seen a lot of posts from people having issues. That’s the reason I don’t recommend it.
Ok. I haven’t had any issues but I also don’t use my pc that much
