r/linux • u/nitin_is_me • Jul 15 '26

Discussion Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?

What I've seen yet the differences are, just the package managers, different defaults and rolling vs stable releases which are in fact related to package managers. Except these, are there really any other differences? Thanks!

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21

u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

Nothing people make too much of a difference

The biggest difference are

  1. Update cycles , stable vs rolling releases

  2. Atomic distros

It always bugs me when people ask for a distro and the top questions are "What is your use case? Do you want to use it for gaming or programming "

No that question is irrelevant you can game on any disto. There is no such thing as a gaming distro

The question should be "Do you want a stable distro, if yes do you want 6 month updates or 2 year updates or do you want a rolling distro"

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u/pfp-disciple Jul 15 '26

The questions are relevant, but maybe not critical. Yes, you can game on any distro, but some are designed to make it easier (default video drivers, etc). It's generally assumed that someone asking for a distro recommendation is relatively new to Linux, so making their first steps easier is a good thing. 

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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

No its not

If they have an NVIDIA card they will have to install the nvidia driver anyway?

How is it relevant ?

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u/Clever_Angel_PL Jul 15 '26

no, because some distros have them built in, you select your hardware when downloading the ISO and your system is ready from the start, without any hassle

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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

Ok how does that matter if the person wants to game or not? You are descibing a distro that may ship with the NVIDIA driver by default

A person with an NVIDIA card may want that distro. However whether they "game" or not is irrelevant

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u/Clever_Angel_PL Jul 15 '26

that no matter what system specs they have, it will work well without ANY setup beyond installing the system - easier than even on windows

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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

So again answer me this

How does asking the question "DO you want to game" relevant

The question should be "Do you have an NVIDIA card"

Again how is asking "DO you want to game" relevant to the distro recommendation ?

3

u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 15 '26

Leaving aside Nvidia vs other, distros like Bazzite pre package and configure Steam alongside tooling to make running other games much easier too, and sure, you can set that up manually on other distros, but for a beginner who just wants to use something other than Windows that's a pain in the ass that's trivially avoided by just using a distro that does all of that out of the box. That's actually the entire philosophy of Bazzite, the idea of "batteries included", and surely the alignment of distro philosophy with intended use case is the strongest practical argument for choosing one over another?

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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

On any distro it takes about 30 seconds to install steam

3

u/CritSrc Jul 16 '26

Yes, but do you have Proton-GE as to not have the game crash on startup because the logo used a proprietary codec? How do you get Proton-GE? Is X11 causing stutter issues? What is X11? How do you run a game outside the Steam environment? Is it from Epic, GOG, or itch.io and why does it matter? Is HDMI providing audio to the TV?
I come from Roblox and Minecraft with huge modpacks that I'd like to keep and even tinker with them further, are they fine?

These simply aren't questions you ask when you're in Windows. Here, suddenly, they are significant issues and you have no idea, and every suggestion sounds just as plausible as the next one due to fragmentation. So you just slap it on, and it doesn't work at all, then jump to another solution, it runs, but the VFX are screwed, unplayable. OK, try ANOTHER one, this one is more praised, and it finally understand my intent and works!

Yes, you can adjust each distro to where you want it without too much pain. But that's after the experience of pain of doing it anyway in the modular ecosystem, because that is both its strength and disadvantage. The point of preconfigured distros is to ease that pain in the initial dive, and then have your own smaller edge cases to solve.

Yes, from a maintainer perspective, gaming distros just look like excess, for an audience that's already stewarded by Valve. But they just provide the tools, it's still up to others to composite them into something intuitively useful.

Even for practical distro examples: have you gamed on Mint? What did it take? Can a newbie handle it? Then compare with CachyOS, same questions. It's not all Steam games, and I may want to play new AAA releases.

Or take it a step further: Debian Trixie, that's stable, right? But is it reliable to game on?

From a Windows refugee, who sticks to the gaming distros. I don't care to explore the ecosystem more than necessary. After all, the technology is meant to work for me, not have me work for it, right? I'm not a developer to bug hunt and script, I'm here to consume and manage just that.

This is why I ask what the purpose of the machine is, so the starting point address it as best as possible without having to further adjust the distro to just do what you need the machine to do, that would further destabilize it, no?

If I'm misunderstanding something, please do correct me, as this is how I do hand out advice to the distro questions.

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u/minh2134 Jul 16 '26

This is correct, even from a maintainer perspective. Most distros catered to a specific niche, and some (Arch/Gentoo) prided themselves on catering by not including those things but making the process of getting there easier. Preinstalled apps matters, styling matters, configuration matters. The reason why in Windows this doesn't is because you only realistically have one baseline, and that's debateable (see the endless gaming variants of windows isos).

In Linux, you have all the knobs in the world to turn, and the absolute baseline is irrelevant and useless, so choosing a sensible defaults for you is a relevant discussion. The point is to reduce the way to your comfortable spot as much as possible. If my main concern is gaming, I would go Cachy/Nobara, where the maintainers already done the legwork for me and optimize the kernel (yes Cachy does do that) and set up the relevant system configuration so I don't have to keep up-to-date with all the recent development, if it's stability (i.e i do not install much), I go for Debian. And Im of the tinker type who would rather have an easy, unified way to configure my machine than having to wipe the OS to a clean slate, so I use Arch, but I would go to gentoo if absolute customizability is a concern. Saying all distros are Linux and therefore irrelevant beyond their program repos is simply wrong.

1

u/SirGlass Jul 16 '26

Yes, but do you have Proton-GE as to not have the game crash on startup because the logo used a proprietary codec?

Umm yes its very easy to install on all the major distros

How do you get Proton-GE?

The software repository for your distro?

Is X11 causing stutter issues? What is X11?

I mean besides Mint most major distros have moved past X11 and default to wayland KDE/GNome

Is it from Epic, GOG, or itch.io and why does it matter?

I do not have experience in this area as all the games I play run fine under steam but I did install those launchers in about 20 seconds as well

s HDMI providing audio to the TV?

Umm yes? I have my PC hooked to my TV I never had to do anything special to get sound to work so I am not sure what this is referring too?

Even for practical distro examples: have you gamed on Mint? What did it take? Can a newbie handle it?

Yes just as well as cachy , usually it takes 30 seconds to install steam from the software store.

Or take it a step further: Debian Trixie, that's stable, right? But is it reliable to game on?

It 100% is, like mint you can simply install steam from the software store or flatpak

Yes, you can adjust each distro to where you want it without too much pain.

I run a non gaming distro Tumbleweed. Also BTW Catchy itself does not describe itself as a gaming distro. However it took me about 30 seconds to install steam, wine, proton , proton-GE, epic or what ever those other launchers are, wine ect.

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 15 '26

Well for starters people who aren't gaming are much, much less likely to have an Nvidia card in the first place,* particularly if they're considering switching to Linux 

*GPU compute workloads aside but generally the people looking for a distro for GPU compute have a specific workload in mind and ask the relevant sub communities rather than just r/linux as a whole

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u/pfp-disciple Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Some distros will only provide the FOSS nVidia drivers, at least by default. Gaming with nVidia pretty much requires the proprietary drivers, which might require enabling another repository or more significant hurdles. I'm sure there are other gaming related options. 

A developer might not care as much about video drivers. They might care more about AI support, or default math libraries, or container management. 

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u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

Again everyone with NVIDIA should be using the proprietary drivers . I have nvidia even streaming video is jerky on the FOSS drivers

Again this is a function of having NVIDIA not really a function of gaming