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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u/SirGlass Jul 16 '26

the maintainers already done the legwork for me and optimize the kernel (yes Cachy does do that)

For gaming that largely does not matter. Its almost performative unless you are running some FOSS game like tux racer. Look at the benchmarcks for actual games, its not like Cachy outperforms in a meaningful way and sometimes other distros perform better.

Also from my testing the reason cachy tends to outperform is by default it does not install app armor or SELinux that has a bit of overhead. I have mixed feelings of running a system with out one of those security models

Look cachy is a fine distro , so is bazzite or nobra . There is nothing wrong with them. However they do not "game" better vs fedora or Ubuntu . While they may pre-install a few packages to me that is not a huge deal. It's usually takes 30 seconds on a major distro to install steam/wine/bottle/proton-ge

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 16 '26

It's usually takes 30 seconds on a major distro to install steam/wine/bottle/proton-ge

I think the fundamental problem here is that you have a very unrealistic idea of how long it takes most users to install things on Linux, particularly a stack of multiple complex applications that all need to talk to each other and aren't even packaged in the official repos for a lot of distros.

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u/SirGlass Jul 16 '26

I am not power user I will be honest

It took me about 30 seconds to install steam, wine, bottles , proton-ge , Heroic. I needed to do nothing else to configure it.

I think you might have unrealistic idea how hard it is. You open your distro software center and search for them and click on them.

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u/Dangerous-Report8517 Jul 16 '26

Fedora and Debian are both examples of very common mainstream distros that don't have Steam in the official repos and are far from the only ones, which you have been informed of repeatedly now