[Update: I went with CachyOS instead, it looks like a great option for gaming with general usage and has a really good wiki]
A coworker of mine asked me to help him install Linux, he hasn’t tried Linux before but he’s sick of Windows.
He is very much into gaming, so gaming support is the first priority. He is also a developer/tester so I suppose that he will also want to have access to dev tools, languages, and other packages like that for personal projects.
My first go-to when recommending to newbies is Mint because it’s simple, tried and tested, but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience. However it scares me that there’s no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks and brew, or even podman images. Will this be a problem as he uses the OS for general usage besides gaming in the long term, would it be better to just go with Mint and set that up for gaming instead?
Feel free to also recommend other distros, but keep in mind that while he is technical, he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
After I left Bazzite as “my first Linux” I landed on Garuda. It is Arch based, is gaming and performance focused, comes with different desktop environment options, has pacman and works well with pamac, and has been noob friendly.
No ragrets.
I just switched to bazzite a couple months ago after switching away from kubuntu. I love it, don’t expect I’ll ever go back, and I’m not interested in trying any others. It’s kind of a pain if you want to do things outside of gaming, due to the immutability of the os, but anything is still possible.
One thing I haven’t figured out yet is theming grub, nothing I’ve tried has stuck.
Fedora KDE.
Steam and Heroic work fantastic on it.
Has its own App Store for searching for stuff.
Looks similar-esque to Windows so getting around is less painful.
Definitely support this recommendation. Having switched to this from windows a few months ago I can say that it is very stable (after I fixed secure boot issue) and very pleasant to use. Solid built-in apps. Tried GNOME first. Its design was good but just not for me.
Can recommend nobara. Has all the game focused stuff bazzite has but it’s just regular old fedora with the dnf package manager underneath.
Nobara does seem pretty cool
He should start with Mint, learn the system in general, and then move to Bazzite, CachyOS, Pika or Nobara, which are more game centric.
CachyOS
he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
Of the two options you gave, I’d go with Mint. If your friend runs into a problem, it would probably be easier to diagnose the issue since it’s just Ubuntu/Debian under the hood.
Once they get used to it, they can try other gaming specific distros if they want to try to get a little more performance.
I built a new gaming computer a month ago. After a couple hours of research, I chose Nobara. It was by far the easiest experience I have ever had setting up an OS and everything has worked flawlessly so far. Even my wife who isn’t tech savvy at all has no issues using it. I cannot recommend it enough to new users who want an easy time gaming. I’ve been a linux user for almost twenty years, but I just wanted something easy that didn’t need tinkering and Nobara delivered.
he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
If you’re able to be there for the install, then great. I’ve had a couple of times where, due to certain hardware, it needs a different sound server or some other workaround. In an extreme case, you might need to fallback to a second choice of distro.
but I have been hearing a lot about Bazzite lately and see that it offers a very nice gaming experience
Is there anything specific you’ve heard that applies to your friend’s needs? (Honest question, I haven’t looked deep into it.)
If it’s just small things like ‘Steam and [etc] is installed already’, then you can just do that easily anyway.
no typical package management like apt or pacman as I browse their docs, instead it relies heavily on Flatpaks [snip]
Keep in mind that Mint uses apt and (optionally, but IMO inevitably for a gamer/dev) Flatpaks integrated in their package manager, which has gotten much smoother but still is two different systems which can cause confusion. I don’t know how Bazzite handles this.
If he’s a dev, he probably is able to follow this guide:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guideThe result is a system, that has virtually every package you can imagine in the aur, always the newest packages - which is quite important for gaming performance and a really slim system.
For the gaming part I recommend Gamescope:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GamescopeAs desktop Plasma is a good choice for beginners. However I personally use Sway.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Plasma
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SwayI installed Arch for the very first time this past weekend. I am a software engineer with almost 30 years experience and some time less with Linux. I did my research beforehand: I watched a manual installation on YouTube and I went over the wiki.
And the manual installation was hard. I would not recommend it to a beginner.
he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.
This isn’t Arch, sorry. My own Arch didn’t boot the first time (but yes I was able to fix it quickly).
This was my opinion too. However like a year ago my best friend asked me: “Hey, I want to try linux. Which distro do you recommend?” I told him, that I recommend Linux Mint for beginners. And that I use Arch. Like a day later he wrote me again: “I’ve installed Arch, lol. Wasn’t that hard. The guide is actually very straight forward.”
This changed how I see Arch today. Arch isn’t super complex or hard to use. It’s just a bit more time consuming to set up. On the other hand it just works once set up.
I went with mint, had mininal troubles getting gaming setup and still a good none gaming experience. Show him how to customize his desktop a bit i really enjoyed trying cool themes to fit the gaming vibe.
Bazzite is install and use. Perfect out the box experience
If you are afraid of being limited by flatpak for bazzite, (or any other distro but arch), you can use this :
an Arch container using distrobox that can run in every distro.
This way, you’ll have access to the AUR and arch repos in general.
Always start with Bazzite for gaming. If you decide you want more control, switch to Fedora KDE. When you want to explore whats out there, put everything that interests you on a Ventoy thumbdrive. I don’t recommend Mint for new users primarily because it doesn’t officially support KDE Plasma.
I’ve tried many distros, Bazitte is by far the best for gaming without having to tinker. Fedora is not a good option imo because nvidia drivers are a pain in the ass.
I’d recommend he dual boot. Bazitte strictly for gaming due to it’s lack of traditional package management. And arch, Debian, or Fedora for coding.
I personally use PopOS for work stuff as well.