I’m still not sure what he’s trying to achieve by switching. Is he having issues with pop OS? Or does he just want to try something different?
I would say anything Ubuntu based will be so similar as to not be interesting, so maybe pick something different. Nobara and Garuda are different, but I honestly don’t know what they offer to someone looking to try something new since they essentially do all the config for you. So my recommendation is one of the following:
Fedora - most nobara guides should be compatible, but it does require a little effort to get set up (not a ton, just need to install stuff)
Tumbleweed - rolling like Arch, but without the upgrade issues; it’s what I use and I think it’s solid
Mint Debian edition - should be pretty similar to pop OS since Ubuntu/pop OS is based on Debian, but perhaps different enough to be interesting
Those are all major distros and thus should have lots of help available online.
I think he wants to try something different. He was frustrated that gaming on Linux requires “so much fiddling” (the kids today truly have no idea). So he tried installing windows, and that went about as well as you could expect (I did try to warn him, but he had to see for himself). So, he’s ready to reinstall Linux, and I suggested trying a gaming distro just so he doesn’t feel like it was a total waste of time.
He can also dual boot it between two distros. I have both Linux Mint Debian for stability and Garuda for current updates that benefit gaming. I recommend installing Linux Mint first and then Garuda, and use Garuda’s boot manager, which can also be customized pretty well from the setup assistant.
edit: by setup assistant I meant a program that’s available after initial install, not during install.
Yeah, there’s a few layers to the assistant programs. I should clarify there’s a “Garuda Welcome” program that contains “Garuda Assistant”, “Gamer”, “Settings Manager”, “Network Assistant”, “Boot Options”, etc, where you’ll find various parts of setup, but the main unintuitive part is that there’s a “Setup Assistant” button at the bottom separate from all that, where it does a system update, then provides a tabbed interface for installing non-gaming related programs. You see it when it first installs, and it took me a bit to figure out how to get back to that dialog because I was looking in all the other places, and thought “Setup Assistant” was just for initial setup.
Should also clarify that not all programs are available from the welcome/assistant. There’s also Octopi which is the standard package manager, and you can install other package managers from the assistant program.
Should also add a tip that sometimes on a reboot the system may not display anything until you turn the whole thing off and on again. To fix that you go to the boot manager settings in the welcome program and add “nomodeset” to the end of kernel parameters for each linux distro. May need to repeat this after a major update that updates grub, but the param is usually still there in the boot settings program, you just have to select the distro option and click “Apply” to reenable it.
Gaming? Nobara. It is created and optimized for gaming by Glorious Eggroll, creator of Proton-GE. He is the most knowledgable Person I knpw about Linux gaming and therefore Nobara is the right choice for me.
Prepare for a few headaches with anything that is running through ea craps. I had quite a few with titanfall 2. Everytime ea launcher updates, break the game and I have to delete (just rename as a backup measurement) the game prefix directory so proton would rebuild it again.
The game prefix directory (if that is how it’s called) is located in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/
I’ve been using Fedora and honestly I’m impressed. Especially since version 39. It’s solid, stable, gaming just works. It requires some initial setup with COPR and installation might not be as straight forward but it’s definitely not hard.
I may get downvoted but make sure you’re using X11 for now because Xwayland latency is real. Wine on Wayland is around the corner but not there yet. And use Steam from COPR not flatpak. Besides that, in my opinion, it’s a dream setup.
Honestly it actually may be just fine, I had some trouble from before when I was trying distros and re-learning the current state of Linux (after a 3 years break) and looking back, they may have been related to Wayland or something else entirely instead of flatpak itself.
I may be wrong too but I think game detection on Discord won’t work for flatpak Steam (and flatpak Discord). I may be wrong though.
I see that, Valve was at the Tokyo Game Show to promote the steam deck and had a panel with the tekken producer, they are even convincing a console country into buying a handheld PC.
Nevermind! I kinda got it. THe notes that show triplicated are the GHWT mode oens. If I chose in the settings the notes to look older like in GH3, then they display perfectly ok. I don’t care too much whether they have some weird shine or contour.
Did you turn on steamplay/proton on in the settings? Including the toggle to use it for all titels?
Of course does not mean all games are playable, but they at least should so up in your library to try.
You can test a windows game and especially single player games most just work. If you have some problems you can check it on protondb.com. Maybe someone already found a simple solution.
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