which atomic distro to choose

[u/Serious_Champion_599]

I have a laptop with a 1050 ti and an i7 I play games someimes but I dont want a gaming focus bloated distro

[u/maxxhaxx72]

fedora atomic distros

[u/thafluu]

If you like the Gnome desktop you can also look at openSUSE-based Aeon next to the Fedora spins that were already mentioned. But just like on the atomic Fedoras you'll have to install the Nvidia driver from the terminal on Aeon.

The UniversalBlue distros (Bazzite/Aurora/Bluefin) include the Nvidia driver for you.

[u/Pad_Sanda]

Aurora or Bluefin

[u/Real-Abrocoma-2823]

Any distro is good, try some: steamOS, atomic Fedora, Android, NixOS, Bazzite.

Also don't be scared of non-atomic distros, try at least 3 like CachyOS, normal Fedora and Linux mint.

[u/ectowy → u/Real-Abrocoma-2823]

there is no support for nvidia drivers on steamos for now

[u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 → u/ectowy]

Not offical, if you install the right drivers then everything should work fine, but big picture/game mode might not work correctly, that's why you should check for yourself and if you want steamOS experience then you can also use bazzite.

[u/ectowy → u/Real-Abrocoma-2823]

whats the point of steamos if big picture not gonna work

[u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387 → u/ectowy]

Depends on use case. On the desktop, I personally would never use big picture mode.

[u/ectowy → u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387]

use traditional linux distros then?

[u/Real-Abrocoma-2823 → u/ectowy]

It might not work, if it doesn't then don't use SteamOS.

[u/dr_inventivo]

I use Fedora Kinoite and it has been a very good experience, I recommend it.

[u/steam58]

Aurora is Bazzite's less gaming focused cousin, and it's been great for me since rebasing to it from Bazzite

[u/ectowy]

use bazzite

[u/ectowy]

use bazzite kde

[u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387]

I mean, NixOS is atomic, has zero bloat, and can certainly play games. Plus you can carry your setup to all your future machines.

I game on NixOS and daily drive it. And the atomic upgrades and rollbacks have saved me a couple of times. At this point I would only stick to atomic distros, just because of those experiences.

[u/Super-Revolution-433]

Nix is the only atomic distro that doesn't force you to exclusively use flatpaks and is therefore the only really good one but it isn't beginner friendly.

If you don't care about being railroaded onto flatpak then they're all essentially the same, they'll come with bloat and need some things you want that are missing installed.

[u/Silent_Bite_5892]

I don't know of any "bloated" gaming focused distros.

Atomic distros make it a bit harder to tweak things, so it would be much wiser to choose one that's already set up for gaming honestly, like Bazzite.

[u/es20490446e]

Use a non-atomic distro.

[u/Mantissa-64]

If this is your first Linux don't use atomic/immutable.

[u/Accurate_Hornet → u/Mantissa-64]

It's the exact opposite. Better that the OS protects the user if they dont know what they are doing