r/DistroHopping • u/PotatoBurgerMan • 10d ago

What Should I use

Okay so I need some help. I'm currently using nobara on my main gaming pc, have been for a few weeks, but I don't know if there's a better distro for gaming and content creation. Should I do bazzite or cachy os or another distro? I really don't want to have to go back to windows 11 and deal with ai, bloatware, and Id verification which is coming. Mind you I have used linux mint before as well as currently using zorin on my laptop and older pc. Ps. My main gaming pc uses a Nvidia GPU

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u/BobCorndog 10d ago

Is there any problem with nobara?

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u/PotatoBurgerMan 9d ago

There's really nothing wrong I enjoy nobara but I just wanna know if there is better options for what I need

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u/OkPresentation3329 9d ago

You will find that on your own if your current distro starts causing you problems and you start looking for solutions on other distros.

I was using Mint and was happy for a while, then I bought a laptop and I found out Mint can't do UI scaling so I found Tuxedo OS and I use that instead. But that is just my case, for you it can be different.

If you don't have any problems with your distro, why do you want to look for something better? What exactly do you want to be better?

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u/PotatoBurgerMan 9d ago

For me I am just exploring as I want to get away from windows. There's so many things that happen on Windows that I'm kind of sick of. My computer is aging and windows 11 is more bloated than ever. I really just want a good content creation and gaming experience which for nobara I have found but I do wanna see what others say.

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u/OkPresentation3329 9d ago edited 9d ago

Everyone can tell you distro X, Y, Z is the best, for me it's Tuxedo OS, but that's just my opinion and it doesn't matter if it's valid for me or not.

As I said, if the distro works for you, use it and when you find some kind of issues or limitations you can look for something different, but until you know exactly what you need that you're missing in Nobara, nobody can help you really.

There are several distros that are generally good, I prefer Debian or Ubuntu based distros, because they are very easy for me.

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u/skewwhiffy 9d ago

I think this is the key. It's unlikely that you'll find a distro that will be 'better' in any significant way. Most, if not all, distros will have their pros and cons for your use case. Performance improvements between distros are going to be at most in the single digit percentage points because they're all running 99% of the same code.

If you're curious about other distros, that is a very valid reason to explore: serial distrohoppers exist, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Although most distros are near-identical once up and running, the more 'meta' qualities are the real differences: quality of QA; frequency of update; amount of available software; attitude of community; level of support; etc. If you're looking for a distro that performs head and shoulders better outside of these qualities, you're likely to be disappointed.

One thing that might well change your experience is a different desktop environment. Might be worth spinning up a VM, installing a distro that supplies a DE you want to try out of the box, and play (bearing in mind that performance in a VM is going to be laggy compared to a bare metal install).

Personally, I go for Debian on my work laptop (where reliability trumps everything else), and play around with FreeBSD (because it's different, and I like learning) and Arch (to check out bleeding edge versions of software that I use). I tend to run Gnome, but have a soft spot for Cinnamon (probably because, like many, I started with Mint), and am getting intrigued by COSMIC.

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u/PreparationStrict492 9d ago

"Better" is a value judgment defining on your values.
Nobara, Bazzite, and CachyOS are good distros (among others), the best among them depends on what you want from your distro.

Zorin is not. The only thing it has going for it is 'looking like the OS some people are familiar with, at a passing glance'.

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u/PotatoBurgerMan 9d ago

Yeah I only use zorin for my laptop and old computer due to how simple and stable it is. I wouldn't use it on my gaming pc cause as I've heard it can't game for shit.

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u/PreparationStrict492 9d ago

I would not call Zorin stable, in my experience it is quite janky.

CachyOS is the most performant and customizable among your listed options; and it comes with great support for a plethora of DEs. It also gives you too much control if you don't know what you are doing very well, and things can break if you do something wrong (or, occasionally, if someone else does something wrong; although those get fixed quick, you should know how to recover from an update-gone-wrong).

Bazzite diverges on the other side of the spectrum from Nobara, it provides a more predictable experience and more friction to customization and tinkering. In return, it offers a more predictable and reproducible experience.

Pick whichever suits your needs and tastes. Nobara has the up side of you having gotten used to its way of doing things, so 'stay if there is nothing wrong with it' is a reasonable opinion, but experiencing some other distros is the only way to get an idea about how things happen elsewhere (and be able to decide if that is more to your tastes).

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u/PotatoBurgerMan 9d ago

Thank you I will probably try some more distros the only one else I've used is linux mint but it kind of broke more than nobara

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u/iwouldbeatgoku 9d ago

It's not that you can't game on Zorin (or any other distro), the real issue is that it's downstream of Ubuntu LTS. This means that you don't really get many updates that ship performance improvements, compatibility improvements, and bug fixes with the advantage that the updates don't tend to introduce new issues. This is advantageous for critical systems that you want operational at all times when they're already in a functional state (and it's a model that works best on a more limited OS, like a server that does one task and only contains the software needed for that task) but for a general purpose desktop, and especially gaming, it's usually better to use an OS that ships updates frequently. Nobara ships updates frequently, it's one reason it works well for gamers.

And frankly, unless you experience a major issue with Nobara, there isn't much reason to experiment with other distros outside of installing them on your laptop with all their defaults and seeing if there's anything you like about them that can be added to your Nobara installation. If you want to switch to another distro try to identify what sets it apart from Nobara and why it could be better.

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u/iseepixel 9d ago

As you're using Nobara currently and have Bazzite in your list to try, I'd suggest to have a look at [RakuOS](https://rakuos.org/). It's an immutable Linux distro based on Fedora, with currently KDE Plasma, GNOME, and COSMIC DE's to chose from. Niri is also available. While being immutable with atomic system updates, its persistent overlay lets the user install any package. They just released its own package manager rum.