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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Building a brand new machine and leaving Windows for good (beehaw.org)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm sick of Windows, and especially what it's become, and the way its trending looks like it will only get worse. I'll be building a brand new PC this summer and want to choose a Linux Distro instead. In preparation, I'd like to try out a virtual machine with a Linux distribution. I am solidly familiar with Ubuntu, but I think it's time to try something that may cater to my specific needs more.

I use my machine for work and gaming (mostly Steam). I am a fullstack software developer and use a second MacBook as well for my daily work needs.

I've had Manjaro, and OpenSUSE recommended to me by a friend who likes both of them but he doesn't game much and doesn't need various software development tools.

Are Manjaro or OpenSUSE good choices? I know there's a tonne of distros out there, and I'm trying to narrow things down a bit. Hopefully this community has some helpful advice.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: First of all, thank-you everyone for your help and positivity. It's been less than a day and the amount of advice and ideas is fantastic. Not too mention the noticeable lack of negative comments (a huge reason I left reddit more than a year ago), thank-you all for reaffirming my reasons.

I've got to admit, I'm a little overwhelmed by all of the advice, but in a good way. I will be scrutinizing all of this advice and laying it out into a roadmap for both my distro testing, as well as PC building. You are all making this community a helpful and spectacular place. I hope one day to be able to pay it forward! Please keep it up!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The OS on the Steam Deck is Arch based, just like Manjaro, so I imagine it'll do games.

I'm a fullstack developer as well, and use Arch as my daily driver, and have for the past 9 years. While I can't speak for Manjaro directly, just the upstream, I have some coworkers that use it without issue. I think it'd be fine for your needs, at least worth trying out. I hear a lot of bleeding edge horror stories thrown around but in that 9 years 95% of problems were of my own doing, and the 5% were easily fixed with a rollback of a package. Out of that, my downtime isn't worth mentioning it's so negligible. I feel my coworkers on macos have more issues with major version upgrades by far.

On Arch-based distros, pkgbuild is a great way to handle custom packages when needed, and the AUR is gives me almost everything I need that isn't in the official repos. It's a great developer environment.

I'm very interested in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed as well, was thinking of trying it out as my next distro on a personal machine to try out something new since I've been on a single distro for so long, but not because I need anything new, just sounds like fun.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Yes, SteamOS is arch based, but the games run over steam runtime (wich is debian based) that's why the steam-native package exists. I use endeavour btw.