Try them all.

Originally posted by DevaVictrix:

Try them all.

Originally posted by Zef:

Looking at bazzite, nobara, popos but i'm not sure which one to choose.

GO with Linux - Mint if you dont have HDR , otherwise go with Nobara KDE

I personally use cachyos.
It's basically just Archlinux, but with an installer which quite literally installs the system how I would've done it by hand, while compiling all packages for X86-64_V3. This raises the system requirements (sorry thinkpad users), yet can give a pretty nice performance boost.

Edit: They also ship packages with some patches. Like they patched KDE in wayland mode to actually allow screen tearing to occur when set to do so in the settings. It appears broken (at least to me) on other distros. This is very important for gaming.

Originally posted by Der tüdelige Fußgänger:

I personally use cachyos.
It's basically just Archlinux, but with an installer which quite literally installs the system how I would've done it by hand, while compiling all packages for X86-64_V3. This raises the system requirements (sorry thinkpad users), yet can give a pretty nice performance boost.

Edit: They also ship packages with some patches. Like they patched KDE in wayland mode to actually allow screen tearing to occur when set to do so in the settings. It appears broken (at least to me) on other distros. This is very important for gaming.

+1 for cachy, its arch without the bs and supposedly patched to perform a bit better

Originally posted by DevaVictrix:

Try them all.

Worst possible advice ever.
Very bad idea.
Nooooo.

Nuh, he wants a single answer. That's Mint.

Originally posted by NightKnight:

GO with Linux - Mint if you dont have HDR , otherwise go with Nobara KDE

Mint is a solid choice. Over about 25 years of using linux that's the one that's usually been the most straightforward, in my experience.

Linux From Scratch and/or Gentoo...

How about an install time of 10+ hours for LFS... :-)

I wouldn't call it a gaming OS, but I always return to Mint. I tried Cachy and Garuda, but I went back to Mint after a month or so.

Originally posted by tyl0413:

Originally posted by Der tüdelige Fußgänger:

I personally use cachyos.
It's basically just Archlinux, but with an installer which quite literally installs the system how I would've done it by hand, while compiling all packages for X86-64_V3. This raises the system requirements (sorry thinkpad users), yet can give a pretty nice performance boost.

Edit: They also ship packages with some patches. Like they patched KDE in wayland mode to actually allow screen tearing to occur when set to do so in the settings. It appears broken (at least to me) on other distros. This is very important for gaming.

+1 for cachy, its arch without the bs and supposedly patched to perform a bit better

it's arch trimmed for simplicity... so that arch linux gets even more hype and attracts even more idiots. especially those idiots who call setting up and configuring it bs.

LTS releases are generally more stable as anything can happen with rolling release distros, with the latter you may have to act more cautiously with updates being frequent, as some of them could have problems, and the AUR has a lot of that.

It's mostly just preference but if you want things to be more stable and not have to do anything about it, stick to LTS options like Pop!_OS, Mint, etc. If you don't care then rolling releases like Nobara Linux and CachyOS are fine.

Originally posted by r.linder:

LTS releases are generally more stable as anything can happen with rolling release distros, with the latter you may have to act more cautiously with updates being frequent, as some of them could have problems, and the AUR has a lot of that.

It's mostly just preference but if you want things to be more stable and not have to do anything about it, stick to LTS options like Pop!_OS, Mint, etc. If you don't care then rolling releases like Nobara Linux and CachyOS are fine.

LTS versions come with older drivers and it can take quite a long time until new features are added.
one of the reasons why valve switched from debian to arch linux for steamos and since the arch linux team also works directly with valve, you will be best served. If you also don't just run updates, but also check the archlinux news to see if there is anything to consider. you can also use a pacman hook so that you can see it directly in the terminal before updating, then you save yourself the way via the browser and there are usually no problems.
also nvidia users will benefit the most with arch linux because new features come the fastest ( you can also simply set up dual boot... one lts version and one with rolling release...
or you install arch linux with btrfs and then with snapper... if an update goes wrong you simply boot another snapshot. )

Originally posted by IceFoxX:

Originally posted by r.linder:

LTS releases are generally more stable as anything can happen with rolling release distros, with the latter you may have to act more cautiously with updates being frequent, as some of them could have problems, and the AUR has a lot of that.

It's mostly just preference but if you want things to be more stable and not have to do anything about it, stick to LTS options like Pop!_OS, Mint, etc. If you don't care then rolling releases like Nobara Linux and CachyOS are fine.

LTS versions come with older drivers and it can take quite a long time until new features are added.
one of the reasons why valve switched from debian to arch linux for steamos and since the arch linux team also works directly with valve, you will be best served. If you also don't just run updates, but also check the archlinux news to see if there is anything to consider. you can also use a pacman hook so that you can see it directly in the terminal before updating, then you save yourself the way via the browser and there are usually no problems.
also nvidia users will benefit the most with arch linux because new features come the fastest ( you can also simply set up dual boot... one lts version and one with rolling release...
or you install arch linux with btrfs and then with snapper... if an update goes wrong you simply boot another snapshot. )

The current version of NVIDIA drivers used by Pop!_OS right now is version 560.35.03, and COSMIC works perfectly fine with Wayland, those that still use X11 would be fine. The issues NVIDIA users would have on LTS distros that offer NVIDIA drivers are minimal if not non-existent.

Rolling release only really matters for GPU drivers when there's something major that comes up, like months ago when open source modules came out and when Wayland started working properly with NVIDIA video cards, or when there's a new generation of video cards, which isn't going to be problem until next year for people who are going to be buying into RTX 50 series.

That said, OP is more than likely looking at a current notebook and their focus is on stability, they don't need a rolling release, it comes down to preference, but because LTS releases are almost always stable when they come out, that's what I would recommend. Users seeking the absolute maximum performance they can get from the OS and kernel should absolutely be looking into something like Nobara or Arch. But you really can't go wrong with either LTS or rolling release, it's mostly preference, and I use both.

Originally posted by r.linder:

Originally posted by IceFoxX:

LTS versions come with older drivers and it can take quite a long time until new features are added.
one of the reasons why valve switched from debian to arch linux for steamos and since the arch linux team also works directly with valve, you will be best served. If you also don't just run updates, but also check the archlinux news to see if there is anything to consider. you can also use a pacman hook so that you can see it directly in the terminal before updating, then you save yourself the way via the browser and there are usually no problems.
also nvidia users will benefit the most with arch linux because new features come the fastest ( you can also simply set up dual boot... one lts version and one with rolling release...
or you install arch linux with btrfs and then with snapper... if an update goes wrong you simply boot another snapshot. )

The current version of NVIDIA drivers used by Pop!_OS right now is version 560.35.03, and COSMIC works perfectly fine with Wayland, those that still use X11 would be fine. The issues NVIDIA users would have on LTS distros that offer NVIDIA drivers are minimal if not non-existent.

Rolling release only really matters for GPU drivers when there's something major that comes up, like months ago when open source modules came out and when Wayland started working properly with NVIDIA video cards, or when there's a new generation of video cards, which isn't going to be problem until next year for people who are going to be buying into RTX 50 series.

That said, OP is more than likely looking at a current notebook and their focus is on stability, they don't need a rolling release, it comes down to preference, but because LTS releases are almost always stable when they come out, that's what I would recommend. Users seeking the absolute maximum performance they can get from the OS and kernel should absolutely be looking into something like Nobara or Arch.

I am on Linux Mint with Nvidia Driver: 550.107.02.

550 is the latest production branch, and 560 is the latest new-feature branch.

Up until 2023 I favored LTS releases. Somehow this AMD hdmi audio bug[bugs.launchpad.net] made it into lubuntu 22.04 kernel. It apparently was fixed in a couple of weeks in the upstream (non-LTS) kernel, but for reasons I never understood, the fix took ~3 months to 'trickle down' to the LTS distribution, finally being applied in June. I manually held the kernel version at 5.19.0-32 on my system for those 3 months. That soured me on LTS distros.

---

Apologies to the OP for going off in the weeds here - I realize this sort of trivia isn't what you asked for. (Note: not clear to me whether you're new to Linux.)

Originally posted by r.linder:

months ago when open source modules came out and when Wayland started working properly with NVIDIA video cards

yes a few months ago ( which is not long at all ) nvidia released the gpu kernel module as open source for the first time... as i have read ( i have pure amd hardware so no idea from my own experience ) there are already huge performance advantages... but... all the optimizations and adaptations etc pp will only come with time... since the work now no longer has to be achieved by reverse engineering