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.😄
So, Bazzite does have a KDE 6 variant, and works very, very well, especially on a handheld PC.
It takes the approach of sandboxing off the core OS, but giving you a bunch of tools for running flatpaks and other things, set up DistroBox to semi-sort of have multiple linux os's simultaneously if you want to say, compile something from source that only has proper dependencies figured out in... not Arch, what SteamOS is based on...
I run it on my SteamDeck because it offers more ability to use it as an actual PC, while still being rock solid in gaming mode.
But uh... for more discussion... I'm going to kind of not answer your question and suggest something else:
Check out PikaOS.
https://wiki.pika-os.com/en/home
Basically, much like Nobara is a 'gaming-tuned', optimized, cutting/bleeding-edge version of Fedora...
PikaOS basically is that, but for Debian.
If you're used to using PopOS!, well, that's ultimately Debian based, so there may be less of a learning curve now that you're broadly familiar with the Debian environment.
PikaOS works with GNOME, KDE, Hyprland if you want an even lighter weight DE.
They are also working on a Handheld PC capable out of the box distro, but its not ready yet.
From what I've seen from various youtubers... PikaOS is trading blows with Cachy and Nobara for getting the highest frame rate out of a game, on a same hardware / same setting FPS comparison... sometimes it is actually beating them.
Uh also, yeah, look into CachyOS, it seems to be the latest hotness for an Arch based, gaming optimized, but widely functional for 'whatever' OS, if you're curious about trying out Arch, and of course thus being able to constantly let every one know you use Arch, actually.
I am very curious about trying Arch. But Solus has really caught my attention, too.
I wish you luck in your distro hopping adventures, do yourself a favor and try things out in a VM before going baremetal on everything, haha!
Hahahaha I've unfortunately already ignored this advice but hey, all my important files are backed up ;)
lol welp, I tried, but at least you had a backup. =P