I also don’t get it. How many people realistically only use their desktop PC for gaming and what’s the benefit of using a “gaming” distro if the same can be achieved with minimal amount on a more versatile distro?
I am using bazzite cause its the first distro that I didnt have to use hours of my time to fix stuff and fine tune. I normally dont switch my distro often so I never remember how all the small fixes worked
I’m not sure if CachyOS counts as a “gaming” distro or not, but I use that on my desktop/work machine. I’m pretty familiar with Arch (BTW) and I can do a manual setup from scratch if I need to (that’s what my laptop runs) but Cachy just seemed like a way to use Arch with a simple setup and a bunch of default optimizations. So tl;dr laziness I guess lol.
The distro comes with an installer that asked me if I want to install Lutris, Steam, Heroic Games Launcher and the AMD drivers. Asked me about my browser preferences, including Vivaldi, which I actually use. It also took care of installing Wine and Proton GE for me, I just had to select them from a list.
It also includes a Garuda Toolbox application which is a general “I don’t understand Arch but need to do maintenance” kind of software. You hop in, drop tasks into a queue (things like checking for updates, clearing orphans, merging .pacnew, etc., etc.), and then it handles executing them all in the appropriate order after just a single root password prompt.
I still consider myself to be primarily a Windows user (I can actually properly troubleshoot stuff there), but I have dabbed in Linux many times over the years. I’m using Garuda for about a year now and I’m super happy with it.
As for other distros - I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, Tuxedo OS (basically re-branded Kubuntu, specialised for Tuxedo Computers), Fedora, PopOS, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting.
Garuda gave me the most “just works out of the box” experience to date.
Don’t get me wrong - there was still a bunch of things I had to do to get the experience I truly liked, but it gave me the fewest and the least annoying surprises so far.
As for things it lacks - if you get the “Dragonized” edition, you end up with a fairly heavy KDE, and some… questionable default theme choices. I’m running the Garuda Mokka, and I think it just looks super pretty out of the box. I disabled a couple of Window Decorations, but even out of the box it wasn’t anything super over the top. You can also always switch to one of the classic KDE themes, like Breeze.
This was my first foray into Arch, so I can’t tell you if it “breaks” anything someone experienced with Arch would be annoyed about.
How many people realistically only uses their desktop PC for gaming […].
The majority? Not everyone can or wants to afford 10 gaming gadgets just to play the same games on different devices.
what’s the benefit of using a “gaming” distro
There are some benefits. (I haven’t and don’t plan on watching the video, so I don’t know which they used.) CachyOS has some optimized kernels that help squeeze out more performance out of latency sensitive games. It is not earth-shattering, but there are measurable differences. One personal example was CS2. It ran fine on Fedora 42, but on Cachy there was noticeable less stutter when there was a lot of action.
I guess then we agree? Not many people can afford dedicate devices for just one use case, so a PC, in most instances will also be used for other use cases than gaming.
Thanks for the reasons for dedicated gaming distros, I wasn’t aware of those.
Far and away, business is the primary use case for PCs, education second, art and design art likely third, and gaming (while always growing) is still niche use case for PCs worldwide.
At best, gaming has over taken media consumption as a PC task but I think that has more to do with media becoming primarily, a mobile device activity in the last decade.
I also don’t get it. How many people realistically only use their desktop PC for gaming and what’s the benefit of using a “gaming” distro if the same can be achieved with minimal amount on a more versatile distro?
I am using bazzite cause its the first distro that I didnt have to use hours of my time to fix stuff and fine tune. I normally dont switch my distro often so I never remember how all the small fixes worked
I’m not sure if CachyOS counts as a “gaming” distro or not, but I use that on my desktop/work machine. I’m pretty familiar with Arch (BTW) and I can do a manual setup from scratch if I need to (that’s what my laptop runs) but Cachy just seemed like a way to use Arch with a simple setup and a bunch of default optimizations. So tl;dr laziness I guess lol.
User of Garuda Linux here.
The distro comes with an installer that asked me if I want to install Lutris, Steam, Heroic Games Launcher and the AMD drivers. Asked me about my browser preferences, including Vivaldi, which I actually use. It also took care of installing Wine and Proton GE for me, I just had to select them from a list.
It also includes a Garuda Toolbox application which is a general “I don’t understand Arch but need to do maintenance” kind of software. You hop in, drop tasks into a queue (things like checking for updates, clearing orphans, merging .pacnew, etc., etc.), and then it handles executing them all in the appropriate order after just a single root password prompt.
Sounds great! Do you have experience with other Distros and do you think this distro lacks in any area when it comes to use cases other than gaming?
I still consider myself to be primarily a Windows user (I can actually properly troubleshoot stuff there), but I have dabbed in Linux many times over the years. I’m using Garuda for about a year now and I’m super happy with it.
As for other distros - I tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, Tuxedo OS (basically re-branded Kubuntu, specialised for Tuxedo Computers), Fedora, PopOS, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting.
Garuda gave me the most “just works out of the box” experience to date.
Don’t get me wrong - there was still a bunch of things I had to do to get the experience I truly liked, but it gave me the fewest and the least annoying surprises so far.
As for things it lacks - if you get the “Dragonized” edition, you end up with a fairly heavy KDE, and some… questionable default theme choices. I’m running the Garuda Mokka, and I think it just looks super pretty out of the box. I disabled a couple of Window Decorations, but even out of the box it wasn’t anything super over the top. You can also always switch to one of the classic KDE themes, like Breeze.
This was my first foray into Arch, so I can’t tell you if it “breaks” anything someone experienced with Arch would be annoyed about.
The majority? Not everyone can or wants to afford 10 gaming gadgets just to play the same games on different devices.
There are some benefits. (I haven’t and don’t plan on watching the video, so I don’t know which they used.) CachyOS has some optimized kernels that help squeeze out more performance out of latency sensitive games. It is not earth-shattering, but there are measurable differences. One personal example was CS2. It ran fine on Fedora 42, but on Cachy there was noticeable less stutter when there was a lot of action.
I guess then we agree? Not many people can afford dedicate devices for just one use case, so a PC, in most instances will also be used for other use cases than gaming.
Thanks for the reasons for dedicated gaming distros, I wasn’t aware of those.
I have misread the meaning of
onlyin your sentence. Only for gaming and nothing else, almost 0%.Far and away, business is the primary use case for PCs, education second, art and design art likely third, and gaming (while always growing) is still niche use case for PCs worldwide.
At best, gaming has over taken media consumption as a PC task but I think that has more to do with media becoming primarily, a mobile device activity in the last decade.
TBF, I think the majority of “people who play games” play them on their phones these days, and PC gaming is not that big of a percentage.