Gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system.
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It doesn't really matter as long as you're on something with recentish packages.
I've been on Arch for the past year or so and it's been working pretty well.
I've used openSUSE, Void, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu in the past for gaming and they've all been decent.
I'm just on Arch because I wanted a newer kernel and graphics drivers than Debian.
Plain arch is great for gaming, no need for a gaming specific distro
+1 most differences between the common distros are package manager, de, and some defaults only so in theory they are all the same (yes I know some use musl or no systemd but that's besides the point).
Nobara is a great gaming focused distro, it's a fork of Fedora by a well-known Red Hat employee.
It's by the GloriousEggroll guys, and I really liked it a lot. I would still be using it if it worked better with my laptop's hybrid Nvidia graphics setup. When I get around to swapping my desktop to linux, I'll almost certainly go with Nobara first.
FWIW, Pop!_OS is where I landed for great hybrid graphics support.
@shreddy_scientist @alehc Well, not just for gaming, but for beginners, or people who like the simplicity of the desktop environment, Linux Mint. I used it for quite a long time, and altough is has some quirks (as any linux distros do), it is a decent all-rounder, for everyday use and for gaming too.
That's what makes Nobara so rad, it works great for gaming because it has a number of the most downloaded packages built in!
I'm sure u only wanted to tell us, u are using arch linux. You wouldn't switch OS only for gaming. Jokes aside, I would rather switch from nvidia to AMD instead of using another Distro. I use arch btw, for gaming and music production.
I use Mint for my main gaming PC. Most things worked out of the box.
On my previous laptop everything worked out of the box, I jus had to install the nvidia driver. On my newest one the GPU required a newer driver than what was available for my kernel, so I had to experiment with various combinations of kernel and driver combinations before I found something that worked well.
I settled for kernel 6.0.0-1018 + nvidia 535.40.03 for my rtx4060.
I've had really good luck with Pop!_OS. AMD CPU and NVIDIA GPU, so having the NVIDIA drivers bundled is nice.
Most games in my Steam library work out of the box with no tinkering of Proton. I've lucked out in that the games that do require tinkering work with Proton Experimental or Glorious Eggroll's releases. Lutris is the same, though I just default to the latest Glorious Eggroll release.
I prefer Linux Mint, but I don't believe there is a "best" for gaming; simply select the one with which you are most familiar.
You enjoy Arch but you're thinking of getting another distro based on Arch for gaming?
I use Mint for gaming with a 6.1 oem kernel and kisak-mesa drivers. Works great, super stable with no issues. Most stuff has an Ubuntu LTS release, for everything else I use Flatpak.
debian testing go brrrrr
Regular Fedora Workstation is a good compromise between stability and new kernels etc.
Personally I like the KDE spin best: https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/
+1 from me. Fedora is a nice middle ground - stable, polished, yet adopting new things fast.
Any of them. I've gamed on Debian, Pop, Arch, Nix, Fedora, etc. Pick a DE you like, a package manager you like, a release cycle you like, an init system you like, etc and find the distro that matches. If you like Arch then use Arch. It's perfectly suitable for gaming.
doesnt matter at all
I found Garuda to be bloated when I tried it out, but I didn't try it on a beefy gaming rig, so maybe my system was just underpowered? I use Pop!_OS on my gaming rig and have had very few problems with it (most problems I've had are because I use a(n?) Nvidia GPU) and those problems have been easily solved.
I built my Linux gaming PC with 23.04 Ubuntu. It has kernel 6.2. Easy to install. Uses my Xbox and PS5 controller. Runs great with my Nvidia graphics card.
But you may want to try a few different distro and see which one you like.
Arch is quite good for this. Even though things can break when Arch is too new, it works quite well from experience. I guess Arch is often well supported even though not official because many archers open issues early on and devs try to fix that stuff before the updates hit the slower distros.
Arch
...btw