Where to start?
Where to start?
I don’t spend much time on my desktop computer but if I do I tend to game a bit. OW II, CS, Helldivers, Tabletop Simulator mostly. And of course need Discord.
I am considering a minor upgrade to the hardware and would need a fresh install (currently Win 10). I’ve been out of the distro game for a while and currently only have one old thinkpad running Debian and an X1 Carbon gen7 I want to use for experimentating/ distro hopping.
I want a daily driver OS that can play games. I also edit photos and might to the odd “flash a CFW to an old phone” or similar light tasks. Where do I start?
I hear PopOS because “it just works” but also CachyOS because “performance, muh”.
I have experience with Ubuntu (first was 6.06) and Fedora mostly but have played around with a lot that came with at least a barebones UI (crunchbang anyone?). My life has changed so I have less time to nerd out with this than I used to. But I feel the itch to experiment now and maybe use Linux on my main desktop again after some years with that mentioned upgrade soon.
I will second Bazzite, with the additional note that I've needed to use Feral Gamemode to get rid of microstuttering and other minor performance issues. But, that's not really different from any other distro I've tried gaming on (Void, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Funtoo).
You have Debian experience? Then stick to it. It may be boring, but boring is good. That means it doesn't need much maintenance, and that it just works.
As a void Linux user, I approve this message.
Debian is a solid and a very popular distro. It's also the base distro of many other; there is a great selection of packages, an excellent package manager and it's well documented.
If you don't Frankendebian your box, Debian is one of the most, if not the most, stable distro out there.
It's a great place to learn, and since you already have experience with it, you're not starting from nothing.
I would also suggest you to stick with "stable" at the beginning. You will be tempted to switch for "testing", but believe me, stick to "stable" until you know what you are doing.
Have fun!
I've been using Mint as my daily driver and gaming PC for years. Very happy with it.
If you're really on the fence, and you're building a new system, you might just want to "distro hop" for the first week or so. It's a little work and a bit disruptive, as you'll be re-installing the OS every few days. But just like a car, there's nothing like actually driving it to get a feel for how much you'll like it.
Pretty much any distro can do everything you want. But since you liked crunchbang, consider Mabox. It's an openbox distro based on Manjaro with a bunch of QoL improvements like super+arrow to tile a window, or their own little fork of jgmenu to expand the functionality of the tint2 panel, plus some custom ricing tools. I'm not saying it's the best distro ever, but it might give you just the right nostalgic feels.
That sounds like what I should play around with on my old X220 - thanks for also recommending a finicky option. I want more Linux in my life :)
I've just used Ubuntu since the early 2000s. I know people have plenty of grievances with Ubuntu and Canonical but Ubuntu has always just worked for me. There is tons of documentation and the user base is so huge that it's easy to get questions answered.
I've been using Garuda and I quite like it with the KDE Plasma 6 DE.
No one picked up in the photo editing part. I guess I’ll look around a bit how the state of OSS tools is today. And what’s available as a flatpak maybe.
Krita and GIMP are some solid options.