What distro would you recommend to harness the full power of this semi old cheapo PC with an NVIDIA GPU?
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
I use Nobara, moved to it from Neon myself after the debacle that was the rebase to 24.04. It's Fedora based and you can get it with regular KDE or their own customized version. It's Fedora with special mods made by GloriousEggroll (the dev behind Proton-GE) to improve performance mostly for gaming though the improvements can be of benefit to other applications as well. It was probably the most popular "gaming" distro until Bazzite became the hot new thing. Give it a try and see how it runs on your hardware.
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Bazzite would be my suggestion. Throw the full install on the ssd then format the HDD for general storage. I'd be a little concerned about the 1060 3GB GPU though. Drivers will likely be fine, but the "10 series" have notoriously awful async compute and take a much larger penalty when running games/apps under proton/vulkan if I recall correctly.
Ok cheers that's definitely worth a shot
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I use Nobara, moved to it from Neon myself after the debacle that was the rebase to 24.04. It's Fedora based and you can get it with regular KDE or their own customized version. It's Fedora with special mods made by GloriousEggroll (the dev behind Proton-GE) to improve performance mostly for gaming though the improvements can be of benefit to other applications as well. It was probably the most popular "gaming" distro until Bazzite became the hot new thing. Give it a try and see how it runs on your hardware.
I don't think my GPU is recent enough for Nobara. That's what I wanted to use initially. Haven't actually tried it yet though.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
Grab the Pop! OS nvidia image and you're in business.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
I have arch kde on a similarly spec'd computer, and it runs great. Fairly easy to install with archinstall. Not sure about the 10-series GPU, but the nvidia drivers work fine on my 3070 under arch
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Grab the Pop! OS nvidia image and you're in business.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm currently installing bazzite but if that gives me any trouble I think I'll try pop. I've just never really used gnome or its derivatives before. But it hardly matters for gaming anyway.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
Those are really decent specs! Which I had this kinda hardware sitting around. I'd probably try arch. Its kinda fun if you don't break it.
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Those are really decent specs! Which I had this kinda hardware sitting around. I'd probably try arch. Its kinda fun if you don't break it.
Steamos might be cool as a gaming rig too arch based so you get the best of both worlds
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Steamos might be cool as a gaming rig too arch based so you get the best of both worlds
SteamOS doesn't support NVidia
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Ok cheers that's definitely worth a shot
Yeah, Bazzite had dedicated installers for NVdia GPUs. Considering that Neon is being left to die by KDE, it's sensible to switch distributions anyway.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
There's already a thousand comments, but I'll give my opinion anyway. Debian is by far the most reliable distro I have ever used. It's easier to install than arch in my opinion, and is completely rock solid. However, if you have at least a year experience with linux and you like tinkering, nothing beats arch. I don't recommend using distros like pop_os, endevour os, or manjaro, simply because once you have a bit of experience, it just introduces more points of failure.
TLDR;Debian, or if you are experienced, arch.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
I'll also throw in my vote for Bazzite. I've heard a lot of good things about it in terms of its default included packages and configurations for gaming. It sounds like you may not be advanced enough to mess with settings to make gaming run smoothly, so bazzite would do all of that for you. They have a KDE version. And it is what's called an "immutable" distro where the main systems files can't be modified easily by the user. That will make it safer to those who aren't sure of what they're doing. You can also easily set it up to run Big Picture Mode by default, so if you decide to use that pc more like console connected to a tv, bazzite would be great for that. Like others have pointed out, Bazzite has good support for nvidia cards out of the box, and that's a key feature to note. Bazzite is kinda like an unofficial version of Steam OS that's ready for widespread use and supports a lot of hardware. They're doing what Steam is not ready to do yet.
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I'll also throw in my vote for Bazzite. I've heard a lot of good things about it in terms of its default included packages and configurations for gaming. It sounds like you may not be advanced enough to mess with settings to make gaming run smoothly, so bazzite would do all of that for you. They have a KDE version. And it is what's called an "immutable" distro where the main systems files can't be modified easily by the user. That will make it safer to those who aren't sure of what they're doing. You can also easily set it up to run Big Picture Mode by default, so if you decide to use that pc more like console connected to a tv, bazzite would be great for that. Like others have pointed out, Bazzite has good support for nvidia cards out of the box, and that's a key feature to note. Bazzite is kinda like an unofficial version of Steam OS that's ready for widespread use and supports a lot of hardware. They're doing what Steam is not ready to do yet.
I just wiped Bazzite in favor of Tuxedo OS. I liked Bazzite a lot until I wanted to do the faintest wisp of development (setting up a new DIY keyboard with QMK). At that point I realized I’m in a very specific doughnut hole where I will occasionally want to do things that are still not mindlessly simple on an immutable distro, but I’m still untutored enough to need the walkthroughs that never include how to properly layer or sandbox stuff without just fucking up the very immutability that made it a good idea in the first place.
Shame though, as it was dead easy to install and use for basic productivity and especially games. A person with different needs and/or more skill would do very well with it. In the meantime, Tuxedo seems like a good snap-free Kubuntu alternative, and I’ve been floating around in KDE-running Debian derivatives (off and on) for decades.
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I just wiped Bazzite in favor of Tuxedo OS. I liked Bazzite a lot until I wanted to do the faintest wisp of development (setting up a new DIY keyboard with QMK). At that point I realized I’m in a very specific doughnut hole where I will occasionally want to do things that are still not mindlessly simple on an immutable distro, but I’m still untutored enough to need the walkthroughs that never include how to properly layer or sandbox stuff without just fucking up the very immutability that made it a good idea in the first place.
Shame though, as it was dead easy to install and use for basic productivity and especially games. A person with different needs and/or more skill would do very well with it. In the meantime, Tuxedo seems like a good snap-free Kubuntu alternative, and I’ve been floating around in KDE-running Debian derivatives (off and on) for decades.
Yeah, that makes sense. I guess you "outgrew" Bazzite. That's what's awesome about Linux, there's a distro for every use case. If I were to setup a HTPC/pc gaming console connected to a tv, I'd use Bazzite. But, for my desktop, I run Arch cuz I tinker so much with it.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
Kubuntu would run just fine on that machine.
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I use KDE Neon on my laptop and I'd prefer to have KDE as a DE on this one too (if possible) but I don't mind a non Ubuntu base. Basically I'd just like to be able to play games on it without much hassle but I know how to paste commands into the terminal if the need arises.
Latest drivers and packages?
- yes: Arch, Fedora, Bazzite
- no: Debian
Want to do maintenance work, set it up and learn?
- yes: Arch
- some: Fedora, Debian
- none: Bazzite
Note: Bazzite is so established that Marvel Rivals' developer Netease has released game patches targeting that distro specifically. It's the current most recommended gaming diestro.
I use Aurora on my laptop & Bazzite on my desktop.
