I just had to say something.
For the first week, I didn’t like Linux. That changed when I got to Linux Mint. It changed again when I played games on it with Steam. Windows performance it was not and I was pretty disappointed
I tried every from Debian to Ubuntu to other Arch distros… and a lot of other things way outside my ability to handle: and it still was a difficult thought to leave Linux and go back to Windows and go back and join the bad guys.
Then I came across CachyOS: but I didn’t like it. But the gaming performance was Windows through and through (Cachy kernel and that bore thing).
Then I found out another Arch distro had Xfce and a Zen kernel and mentions of bore (Linux Mint was Xfce: my pc is from 2012) in it and that was Garuda. Downloaded the 24.04 iso which I didn’t know was not the latest and had to upgrade 6GB of god knows what before I could do anything at all. The nVidia proprietary I knew would mess up so I did the open source iso install.
At the end of it and the most stuff I’ve ever seen Terminal show me since going Linux, the entire thing works.
The NIC had to be updated to opensource, as, for some reason, it did not install it - though it worked seemingly normally: except it did not keep NextDNS configuration (it did keep a custom MTU).
The performance in Steam is mind-blowing. Alien Isolation with Experimental proton is better than CachyOS: but it’s hard to say by how much. The one thing both of them have is that it feels like a super-Windows 10 and looks and functions at desktop like Windows 11.
There’s more I want to say: but I’m not going back to Windows.
I’ve also just discovered ‘GreenWithEnvy’ which I never saw in any distro I tried. I didn’t see it and I don’t know about it. All I know is that a proprietary nVidia driver gives you a X-server control panel and in some of them ‘you might get’ a fan control - and absolutely nothing else: and using any game that is dx12 is going to make you think a supernova is going to happen.
GreenWithEnvy [oops not Joy: ha!) can be customized with a fan control temperature curve… what the hell I am even talking about. I’m sure everybody but me knows this like a Windows 10 that’s left a shadow on my bedroom wall after 11 years.
Incidentally, I came across 4 year old Garuda Linux posts… they thought Garuda was the most ham-fisted Arch distro they’d ever seen and recommended Manjaro instead.
I tried Manjaro a few days ago. Gaming performance on that was at least as bad as Linux Mint: but by bad I mean 50% of what you’d get with a fully optimized Windows 10 system. Garuda Linux and CachyOS is like Windows 11 gave birth and Microsoft doesn’t know who the Dad was or their whereabouts.
Yeah. I got +40 FPS in BeamNG when I switched to Garuda over Manjaro. I’m not sure if it’s just the zen kernel or some other magic, but it’s been great.
Realistically though, I came for the FPS and stayed for the community here in the forum. I’ve considered switching to mainline Arch a few times, but I stay for this forum.
