I've been using Pop!_OS for a few years now, and it's worked like a dream. Everything works out-of-the-box, and gaming on Linux has never been easier. But it almost works a little too well. Learning Linux as opposed to Windows for all my games was a fun challenge.
But, now that I'm familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I'm starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.
Don't get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.
I started with Linux by installing Kubuntu, and I really miss KDE Plasma. I know Kubuntu is still on Plasma 5, and I've been wanting to find a distro that lets me use Plasma 6.
I've narrowed my choices down to three distros: Nobara, Garuda, and Bazzite.
So far, I've confirmed that Nobara and Garuda come with Plasma 6, but I haven't found that information for Bazzite yet.
So, what do you think about these distros? What are the pros and cons for you?
I'm leaning the most toward Garuda - but I'm worried Arch may be TOO big of a leap. I really just learned that Fedora is not Arch-based, so I know Garuda will be a bit of the odd one out of the three.
TL;DR: Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite - which one is good and do any suck?
EDIT:
Thanks, everyone, for the insightful and helpful comments! From what everyone has said, I've come to find that either CachyOS or Solus will fit my needs best.
CachyOS seems optimized for gaming, while Solus' curated rolling releases seem (to my untrained eye at least) to be somewhat of a step between the way Debian-based distros upgrade and the way Arch-based distros upgrade.
I'd love to hear people's experiences with both of these! I think I'm going to try to dual-boot them and see what setup looks like for both.😄
Kubuntu 24.10 is on plasma 6.1; not sure why you thought it was on plasma 5? Maybe you were thinking of the Long Term Support release which has a much longer release cycle and favours stability over cutting edge; that probably is still on 5? But personally I stay away from Ubuntu distros due to snap.
If you really want to learn Linux and game, maybe pick a distro that is not optimised by default for gaming and optimise it yourself?
I'm on OpenSuSE Tunbleweed and have optimised it myself to game how I want. It's rolling release so I'm on KDE Plasma 6.4. It's not difficult to do although I haven't gone quite as far as kernel patching that the gaming focused distros offer.
Another challenge is Arch - it's really not as difficult as people think and even just setting it up in a virtual machine helps you learn alot about Linux fundamentals without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've learnt alot using KVM to create virtual machines, and even have a Win 11 machine set up just because I can.
Another route to consider which I also do is get a SBC like a Raspberry 5 and look into setting up self hosting of services like Home Assistant etc. Again you learn Alot about how Linux works in the process and you can keep your main PC running for games without having to move. There is a whole self hosting community on Lemmy with loads of different routes to go, and lots of different manufacturers these days.
There are lots of options beyond changing distros. But also changing distros can be fun and a nice way to reset and make something new.