Buy AMD, I suppose

If you have set your mind to Manjaro I don’t want to dissuade you, but if you are not yet strongly convinced of the distro I always like to point out that there were some issues with the distribution in the past (someone collected them here).

If you’re just after an Arch-like distribution I think EndeavourOS is a very friendly distro without adding their own repositories on top of Arch. But again - if you’re happy with Manjaro by all means also stay with it.

Are NVIDIA drivers still an absolute bitch to get working correctly? Is there still no way to run games off Gamepass?

Ok cool, so it’s NOT just easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy to switch.

This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.

I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.

I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.

I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.

It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.

God forbid you should have options.

I was about to comment the same - shitting itself when trying to do something nonstandard is a Gnome thing, not a Linux thing :^)

I also fully understand that new users are not aware of what the different components are and “what they do” (how they influence the UX) but they very much do make or break their “Linux experience”. Personally I dislike Gnome because it exposes barely any settings, and it’s “simple” to the point where it feels almost like a toy to me - kinda like macOS feels. Some people might be looking for that, and I don’t judge them, but I think it’s important to make an informed decision on simplicity and “guardrails” vs flexibility and customization. The same goes for immutable vs “traditional”, rolling vs releases, etc.

You don’t need to care about or understand the details, but the choice that the “Linux ecosystem” offers is one of its best parts, and understanding the implications of the ones you make is very important. It also helps avoid getting frustrated in “Linux can’t do this” situations by knowing that maybe it’s just your environment - believe me, unless it’s about running some proprietary code that the vendor is uncooperative about, “Linux” can do it. It might require some lines of code to glue together some pieces, but the “computing” things that “Linux can’t do” are very close to 0.

Gaming distros should have that sorted out of the box.

they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.

there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI.

Can you give a concrete example?

Which GPU do you have? There are plenty of distros that work just fine with Nvidia.

I’d suggest trying a couple through live ISOs to see what works best out of the box with your hardware. I settled on CachyOS and definitely recommend it. Bazzite is ok, very stable, but keep in mind it is immutable which may hamper its abilities as a full desktop.

No, on popular distros they are preinstalled, or only require you to check a checkbox in system settings.

I have a 3080 and run Mint without any real issues, what sort of problems have you found come up?

Do you have a Nvidia GPU btw?

Linux has two major offerings for display servers: X11 and Wayland.

X11 is old asf and uses TCP/IP to send your data from the GPU/CPU to the monitor.

Wayland doesn’t do this I don’t think… But I believe it’s been known to have issues with Nvidia graphics cards.

Hope Wayland development picks up because last time I checked it still has a lot of bugs that X11 just doesn’t.

The worse part of vista wasn’t even that it looked awful or ran awful. Personal perfence not with standing.

It was just 3 years too early and hardware fucking sucked. Drivers went standardized and everything was too weak.

Going back to vista years after the fact show it was actually really solid.

Probably the last time Microsoft was ever ahead of the curve in terms of design. Vista then 7 were great design wise, then it was only down hill since.

I installed Bazzite on my gaming pc this weekend. It runs Cyberpunk 2077 just fine.

This immutable Fedora + Gnome 49 is a bit weird coming from Xubuntu; seems to work though.

Nvidia just works unless you have a some weird obscure hardware combo. It’s been like this for over a decade. Nvidia’s reputation is because their code is shit, their processes are shit, and they lack feature parity from windows that their competitors have shown isn’t an environment limitation (like changing the amount shared dram used as vram).

Tips: Your distro maintaindr already did the hard part, get the driver from them instead of nvidia (unless you’re on Debian, then you’re on your own).

If you are on debian (or any of the other rare distros that don’t package the nvidia driver for you) and using xorg, back up your xorg.conf because the nvidia installer will modify it and the new one may not work. If you’re not comfortable using the terminal, make sure you take note of the location of your xorg.conf to minimize time spent there, you will need it though.

If you’re on a normal distro, it’s usually just sudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidia or sudo <PackageManager> <install flag> nvidia-open

I know nothing about Gamepass, but Mint runs Steam games on my 2080 just fine. It worked out of the box. I was a little surprised. To keep Steam from forcing me to update FO4, I bought it off GOG and installed it through heroic, with zero issues. It just worked.

But, no, it’s not easy-peasy to switch, you do need to be motivated to make the effort. Of course, there is a learning curve. Feel free to stay on Windows, that was always allowed.

You want a pic for proof? Ok, no worries.

Taken: Sat, Jan 17, 2026 • 12:09 PM GMT+01:00

Can’t wait for you to say this was 'shopped now. Go ahead, humour me.

I’ve noticed that AI slop articles tend to have a a TLDR right before the table of contents. I’m an aquarist and they’ve made it damn near impossible to get good info on fish, taking the first few pages of results before I get a forum post with useful info.

Has anyone had any luck with Diablo 2 Resurrected?