I know this has probably been asked before but I am currently using Arch and wondering if my choice is the best for gaming. What are the thoughts from the community? I have an AMD Ryzen 7 processor with 64 gigs of RAM and a decent AMD GPU. Gaming seems to be okay on Arch but I am wondering if I’ve overlooked something better. Thank you in advance.
If you can live with the debian side of things - pop_os is simple, clean, and works out of the box for gaming. If not, I had a good time on Nobara. I’ve never journeyed further into Arch than Manjaro which I didn’t like much - so I can’t make direct comparisons for you
I could live with the Debian side of things but I would probably prefer Linux Mint Debian Edition to pop_is. Would this be okay?
Not for gaming. The problem with Mint, and most Ubuntu/Debian based distros, is they run ancient packages - especially the kernel, the graphics stack (mesa) etc. Sure, you could install a custom kernel, sure you could install a PPA with updated drivers etc, but then you’d make a mess out of your system, which will cause your updates and upgrades to break.
For gaming, you always want to be on the latest stack (there are exceptions ofc in case of regressions), since the Linux world is pretty fast moving, and especially these days, lots of fixes have been coming in fast for Wine/Proton/AMD, thanks to Valve and the Steam Deck, and all the users and devs invested in it who now see Linux as a viable platform for gaming. Never before in the Linux world have we seen so much development and advancements, and it’s all fueled by the Steam Deck (and AMD’s opensource efforts).
Pop, is also based on Ubuntu, so it suffers from much of the same issues that other Ubuntu based distros face, so it’s not the best choice for gaming.
So you’d be better off sticking with Arch (if you like to DIY and optimize stuff on your own), but Nobara is a pretty solid choice when it comes to gaming, because it’s optimized for gaming out of the box - has a custom kernel with patches gamers would appreciate, patched Discord for stuff like screensharing, has Proton-GE, Steam, drivers, codecs etc all ready to go. In fact, Nobara is made by the same person who makes Proton-GE (ie GloriousEggroll), so you know that this is a legit distro for gaming that’s actually made by someone who knows their stuff, and is a gamer themselves.
Just looked up Nobara. I was happy to see it’s a flavor or spin of Fedora. I’ve used Fedora more than any other distro.
LMDE5 is pretty old at this point. LMDE6 is planned fairly soon though and that would be much better given easier access to drivers.