But it really is not hard (to do it that sence) just do a clean install and use from the downloaded Iso, wiping your drive on route. Having made a copy of important files first.
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Of course not. in an empty machine a Linux install is a snack.
Bt âhardâ I meant a hard disk install⊠just jargon.
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I know what you mean but did not want to discourage anyone with the word hard
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I installed it (LMDE7) in a QEMU/KVM VM the other day - couldnât be easierâŠ
Didnât need to use the terminal - and - it found my brother printer and installed it (I didnât have to lift a finger - it just did it automagically)âŠ
Plug and Play - probably the best choice for users dropping WindowsâŠ
Not for me - I prefer Ubuntu - as itâs easier to make Gnome 4x look and feel like MacOS (on my WFH desk I have two MacBooks and my Ubuntu 24.04 desktop) - and I hate the âlook and feelâ of MS Windows - and LMDE7 feels a lot like Windows (but much better 'cause itâs NOT Windows 
)
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I tried a lot and choose ZorinOS. Like Windows 10 without clusters.
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Hi @Duy ,
Zorin is a fine choice.
Regards
Neville
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Welcome @duy to the forum.
Zorin is a good choice. I used it for a little bit, but switch to Mint.
Have a good day.
Howard
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Iâve used Linux for years, a few of those years as my main and only desktop. First it was Slackware (yes, Iâm old), and then FreeBSD (not Linux, I know). Later, I mostly used it for work only, and installed Windows on my home PC, for gaming and some chill dev using WSL.
That said, I am currently considering Bazzite as a good option to replace Windows 11. I have tried it on a VM and did a lot of research on it. If you game, I would go with Bazzite, and even for other tasks beyond gaming. If you donât care that much about gaming, there are other options, like Linux Mint (less foolproof, but very robust, and still supports gaming), and if you donât care about robustness and want the bleeding edge, Iâd go with CachyOS (but I donât like Archâs philosophy, so I wouldnât personally).
Iâm a Debian guy, and Bazzite is based on Fedora (which I also like and used as my daily driver), but there is no Debian equivalent at the time really. There are a few cool Debian based distros, like Pop! OS or PikaOS, but Bazzite is living in the future, specially if you want something robust for a desktop.
TLDR: Bazzite!
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Why is it that ordinary Linux distros like Debian,Mint,MX, Solus, Void are not considered suitable for gaming?
If it is something to do with speed, why would you not consider Gentoo? It can be optimised as much as you wish.
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Hello and welcome to our group, never come across this system, but I am not gamer so no surprise, perhaps you will be able to guide some of our users down that road
Thereâs two main reasons I can see:
- Some distros just come prepackaged with everything that you need to game, making your life a lot easier (Steam pre-installed, multiple versions of Proton, custom NVIDIA or AMD ISOs, etc.).
- A few distros, like CachyOS, also come with a custom kernel that is optimized for gaming, as well as packages compiled with the latest CPU features, to give you that extra edge.
If youâre asking me whether you can game on any Linux, the answer is pretty much yes, as Linux is Linux (custom kernel aside, for varied performance), but gaming in Linux is not like gaming in Windows, mostly because most games arenât released for Linux, so we need an extra layer to emulate Windows essentially (WINE, or more specifically Proton when it comes to games).
This is my perspective at least. I personally would go with Bazzite because I want to game, but also because itâs a great concept for robustness and isolation (and I just need to test it as well).
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Hello and thanks for the warm welcome! Bazzite is being led by an ex-Canonical dev called Jorge Castro. I donât know much about him, but he was involved in a few cool stuff from Ubuntu, like the app store. Bazzite is what they call a greenfield project that redesigns the experience disregarding any constraints (if it were to start now, how would it look like). Theyâre based off of Fedora Atomic Desktops, which is a bit of a different concept (ostree and rpm-ostree at the core; think containerized systems).
This might beat Linux Mint for casual users, because itâs nearly impossible to break it. Personally quite excited with this project. Last time I was this excited jail systems were just becoming a thing in FreeBSD (a precursor to containers).
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OK, I get it⊠most people who game want all that preconfigured.
You can compile a custom kernel. It is a lot of work, and you need to know a few extra things. The easiest place to compile a kernel is in Gentoo, but you can do it in any distro.
I think if I were going to try and configure a machine for gaming myself, I would start with a minimalist rolling release distro (Gentoo or Void, ⊠I dont like Arch either) and install only what I needed. Then you dont get loaded down with unnecessary services (daemons) that are running all the time in background.
You might be able to clean out your distro a bit by getting rid of some services.
Just disable them, dont delete stuff
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I think most people who game donât want to have to handle that. They just want to make it look good (ricing is what they call it now), and be able to use it like itâs not there. Either way, going that route, personally Iâm a Debian guy, so I would stick with that. I wouldnât recommend any rolling release for a casual desktop, but if atomic/immutable is not something you like, I would most likely go with Linux Mint, maybe Debian Edition.
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You have been turned off by looking at Arch. Rolling release management has improved . My Void has been updated every week for 5 years, and only ever had one hitch, which was easily fixed. Any of Opensuse Tumbleweed, Solus, Void, Gentoo are OK for the average desktop, and you dont have the issue of a large reinstall with every new release.
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SteamOS - the most popular Linux gaming platform - is Arch basedâŠ
Me? I wouldnât use it⊠However - Iâd still like a SteamDeck and would probably go with the default setup from the vendorâŠ
Iâm 100% fine gaming on Ubuntu⊠too easy⊠previously ran Pop!_OS 22.04 - but didnât want to jump away from Gnome with Pop!_OS 24.04 with its Cosmic desktopâŠ
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I actually used Arch for over a year, back when it wasnât running systemd yet. I liked the whole idea of the distro because it was inspired by Slackware, which was my most serious Linux home desktop. At the time, I was working from my laptop, and I updated daily and followed the news on the Arch website. This was around maybe 2011 or so.
When they eventually got me a PC at work, I left my laptop home unused for several weeks. I installed Arch on my work PC and carried on. One day, there was this breaking glibc change that required manual intervention or some special attention. I followed the instructions posted on the official news and all went fine. Then, a few weeks later I had to go on a trip for work and needed my laptop. I had a few hours to update it and pack. I followed the same set of instructions and the system broke. Because it involved glibc, I lost even the basic system commands, like ls. It was unrecoverable. I was flying over an ocean the next day and had no laptop, so I ended up installing Ubuntu at the time. When I came back, I decided to switch to Debian, as it was light enough and the packaging system had always worked well in Ubuntu. Itâs been 15 years and I never looked back. Still using Debian to the day.
That said, Iâve glanced at Void once or twice. I think thereâs a guy from NetBSD involved in the project, so that gives it some credibility, but I canât see myself going back to something like that, in any context other than learning or playing around. For anything work related, Debian is rock solid (nowadays I mostly use it in VMs or via WSL). For a desktop, I wouldnât want to babysit the OS daily. Rolling releases tend to be sensitive when you forget to update them frequently. On the other hand, in 15 years of using Debian, the only issue I had was with updating NVIDIA drivers (solvable, but painful). This is why I say Iâd prefer something thatâs prepackaged for the desktop, like Bazzite is, even if itâs not for gaming. They also use flatpak and homebrew, which makes it similar to mac, and I find the potencial for normalizing across unix systems kinda nice.
Donât get me wrong, I understand the appeal of Arch, Void, and Gentoo all too well. Itâs just that experience tells me itâs not for me. I just donât want to be handling an OS crisis everyday instead of working or gaming (I know Iâm exaggerating here, but itâs to make a point). Now, if you want to learn Linux, by all means, install and use Gentoo! Thereâs no better way to learn.
I think the future is containerized workflows. That simplifies reproducibility so much, if youâre a dev! And it allows for a more robust OS if youâre a casual user or a gamer.
Even if you donât like Bazzite, Universal Blue has two other distros, Bluefin and Aurora, and thereâs always the base images provided by Fedora, Silverblue, Kinoite, Sway Atomic, Budgie Atomic, and COSMIC Atomic.
These distros are not like any other distros out there, really. Thereâs a lot of potential here.
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cool!
Slackware (3) was my intro to Linux over 30 years ago now⊠Seems like yesterday
I ran Slackware for a few years after that - then around 2000, jumped to SUSE (EL - not OpenSuse) - then accidentally found Ubuntu (VMware had an appliance âmarketplaceâ for VMware player around 2004 - there was an âapplianceâ called âBrowser Applianceâ that ran Ubuntu 4 with Firefox) - and pretty much did Ubuntu after thatâŠ
I do RPM based distros for my job - RHEL and Oracle (and some AMZN) - but for desktop - I prefer Ubuntu / DebianâŠ
I last âdistro-hoppedâ circa 2022 / 23 - and tried Fedora - but I kinda hated having to add extra repos (EPEL and RPM-Fusion) just to âdo stuffâ - so Fedora didnât cut it and I sat on Pop!_OS 22.04 for 2-3 years⊠But now back on Ubuntu (24.04).
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To be fair, I have to do that on Debian as well, with backports, if I want recent versions. 
Ubuntu lost me a bit with snaps. At first, I didnât like the whole idea, not just snaps, but also flatpak. They just felt wasteful in terms of space, specially snaps. But, if weâre doing that, then letâs go full containers.
Never did try SUSE. I saw it run everyday in a lab I worked at, since a colleague used it, but I just used Fedora, RPM-wise, and Red Hat 6 back in the day.
The best thing about Linux is that there is a lot of choice. Thereâs something for everybody.
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I understand your position.
When dealing with deadlines and work crises computers just have to be reliable.
I used Debian alone for years. It is a fine workstation distro.
I started looking elsewhere when I had troubles with a very new AMD graphics card.
Before that, when I was actually working, I used BSD exclusively, at home and at work. So I come from a rather different background.
Today , I multiboot several distros. I have one ( currently MX) that is my stable base, then I use Void for VMâs and containers, Devuan for image processing, and Artix for programming. Splitting the work keeps each distro simple to configure.
I am currently playing around with Antix and Netbsd.
You will notice that I am all non-systemd⊠that is my personal position, I dont push it onto others.
I can afford to be different from you, because I am retired. Work demands do not come into it.
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