recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can. however soon i realized how different it is and it requires more setup than i initially thought. i spent a whole day or two setting it up and i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?
when i was about to install steam i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed, i decided just set it up using discover with flatpak, the problem is when i was about to find out how to do that i read mostly people really hate when you ask how to enable it in arch, is it really bad? should i just use konsole instead?
im not very tech savvy and at first I was really reluctant to use konsole but since i decided to use arch its inevitable that i have to use konsole and so far its not that bad, yet.
I’m just wondering for the long term, should i just change distro? or i should just powertrough arch and see where it goes.
thank you for your time.
edit:
thank you for all the kind words, support and information everyone. i decided that i’ll stick with arch until it breaks and ill see either i retry arch or try different linux flavors. i never feels so excited about os since i was messing around in win 2000
if you’re a first timer and already got arch with kde set up you’re pretty fucking tech savvy ngl
But that doesn’t mean it’s a good place to start.
Try Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. Any of these will be easier than Arch and offer point and click installation for steam, drivers, and just about anything else.
When you get some more experience, instead of arch you can try endeavourOS. it’s basically arch with good defaults and has a fantastic KDE implementation.
For gaming focused PC I’d look at Bazzite. OP wants it to be like the Steam Deck, it’s just perfect for that.
I almost always advise against atomic distros for noobs. They are extremely limiting, add multiple complications to otherwise simple tasks, and the padded cell of immutability means you can’t really fuck around and learn how traditional Linux systems work.
I’m usually distro agnostic and just happy to see people use whatever Linux they like, but immutables have issues.
lmao, im not sure about that. i just followed a couple of tutorials on youtube on how to do it
Tech savvy enough. I do my damnedest to find a YT tutorial or forum post before I throw the towel in and make a help request somewhere. Like I literally will go hours before I finally concede and realize I can’t do something myself, and I act like my honor is forever lost whenever I go to Fedora forums in defeat. There are many out there who won’t even do that at the bare minimum, so you’re doing great. We’re doing great.
You’re going to break things. Then you’ll fix things. Then your break them again. Then you’ll realize there was an easier way to fix that last issue. It’s a fun learning experience.
cachyos, post install click install gaming packages, in steam goto compotability switch it to proton cachyos, done, there is no struggle, it grabs heroic and lutris too for non steam stuff
Highly recommend this for you OP. This would be the easiest course of action. Do you have to use Konsole, yes but for a few commands and once done you can do everything you need via GUI and not have to touch shell again for daily operations.
Catchy have a very powerful script that attaches all their pacman.conf (list of places where arch will look for it’s software)
Here’s a link to the section Adding CachyOS to existing Arch Install
Once that’s done you only need one more command
sudo pacman -Syu octopiOctopi will let you manage all your software and kernel updates without having to touch terminal or having to use flatpaks.
I would recommend packages:
- cachyos-hooks
- linux-cachyos
- linux-cachyos-header
- cachyos-kernel-manager
- proton-cachyos
- wine-cachyos
- cachyos-gaming-meta
This will have you fully set up and ready to seamlessly game on your machine without having to reinstall a OS.
recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can. however soon i realized how different it is and it requires more setup than i initially thought.
It sounds like you’re thinking of Arch + KDE as similar to building a PC, where if you get the same parts you can hook them up for the same experience.
I think their team chose Arch to build their distro off of because it’s very customizable and made it easy for them to add their configurations, interface layers, hardware optimizations etc. That doesn’t make it the best choice for a beginner unless you want to be thrown into the deep end and spend some time to learn a bunch.
IMO you should look into something like Bazzite or some other atomic Fedora, or OpenSuse, so that you can have a running operating system you can game on. Then you can spend some time learning about Linux with the functioning PC. There are ways to run other Linux distros inside your main one if you want to play with them and learn about them.
Unless you have another machine to use day to day, I find it annoying to be learning with the same machine I need for other things.
It sounds like you’re thinking of Arch + KDE as similar to building a PC, where if you get the same parts you can hook them up for the same experience.
yeah you nailed it.
i think ill keep learning arch and see how far i got, when it inevitably break ill choose later if i want to retry it or just go with bazzite, its a mostly pc for gaming so there isnt much important stuff in it
I think you’re better off with CachyOS than Bazzite to be honest.
It’s Arch-based, comes with an installer with KDE Plasma as default and on top of that is optimized for performance and geared towards gaming.The only reason people are recommending Bazzite
is because CachyOS is only a year old, while Bazzite is two years old,
unless someone can prove me otherwise.
In any case Bazzite is RHEL-based, so it won’t have the AUR or pacman,
which are the two things that set Arch-based Operating Systems apart from the rest of the pack.
AUR and pacman are superior to all other repositories and package managers.is because CachyOS is only a year old, while Bazzite is two years old, unless someone can prove me otherwise.
CachyOS has been installable (at least) as early as November of 2021. Its GitHub page is even older, going as far back as October of 2021.
Bazzite, on the other hand, is at least a year younger as it dates back to December of 2022.
Bazzite is RHEL-based
Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic. FYI, Fedora is not based on RHEL. Quite the opposite, actually, as Fedora is “upstream” of RHEL.
it won’t have the AUR or pacman, which are the two things that set Arch-based Operating Systems apart from the rest of the pack.
Come out of your cave, fam. Distrobox has been out for years now. And, with it, everyone has access to every other repo (including the AUR). We’ve finally evolved.
CachyOS has been installable (at least) as early as November of 2021. Its GitHub page is even older, going as far back as October of 2021. Bazzite, on the other hand, is at least a year younger as it dates back to December of 2022.
Thank you for that info, but then why are so many advising Bazzite instead of CachyOS?
CachyOS is Arch-based, Bazzite is not.Bazzite is based on Fedora Atomic. FYI, Fedora is not based on RHEL. Quite the opposite, actually, as Fedora is “upstream” of RHEL.
And thank you for that info.
So Red Hat decided to put Fedora in front and put RHEL in the back?
Red Hat used to be the base OS of Fedora, no?Come out of your cave, fam. Distrobox has been out for years now. And, with it, everyone has access to every other repo (including the AUR). We’ve finally evolved.
Again, thank you for that info.
But I don’t think any container app would diversify distros or make Fedora distros more popular.
In fact, it probably will lead to AUR-based distros becoming even more popular,
because one will have access to all the other smaller repos,
as AUR becomes the standard.Thank you for the kind words, fam. Much appreciated 😊!
why are so many advising Bazzite instead of CachyOS?
Assuming you’re referring to why so many others recommended Bazzite to OP instead of CachyOS. I believe it stems from the following line of OP:
mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can.
And even if the following is true:
CachyOS is Arch-based, Bazzite is not.
It’s simply undeniable that Bazzite is closer to SteamOS compared CachyOS, by virtue of how it -just like SteamOS- doesn’t deliver the traditional model of desktop Linux but instead goes all-in on a new paradigm. A simple example to point this out would be how both SteamOS and Bazzite default to automatic updates:
- SteamOS; https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/1062
- Bazzite; https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/Updates_Rollbacks_and_Rebasing/updating_guide/
CachyOS, by contrary, doesn’t. Though it ain’t hard to enable this: https://github.com/CachyOS/cachy-update?tab=readme-ov-file#the-systemd-timer
This is all tied to the aforementioned paradigm shift. I can name a lot more similarities if you happen to be interested.
So Red Hat decided to put Fedora in front and put RHEL in the back? Red Hat used to be the base OS of Fedora, no?
It seems that RHEL has been based on Fedora for over twenty years now 😅. As Red Hat Linux seems to predate Fedora, perhaps it was based on RHEL once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for a long time. Regardless, documentation on this event seems to be relatively sparse. As such, I wasn’t able to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Please feel free to complete my ‘research’ 😜!
But I don’t think any container app would diversify distros
Sorry, I didn’t quite get this. Do you mean that *“container app”*s will not succeed in decentralizing efforts and instead have the opposite effect?
or make Fedora distros more popular.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, but to be clear: Distrobox is basically available on every distro out there. So it’s not a Fedora-thing to begin with. (Though, it has to be said that I’ve yet to see it being better utilized/integrated than uBlue’s images.)
In fact, it probably will lead to AUR-based distros becoming even more popular, because one will have access to all the other smaller repos, as AUR becomes the standard.
Hmm…, I don’t quite understand why you think like that. There’s a lot that goes into making distros unique and deserving of their existence. Strictly limiting their appeal to the size of their respective (user) repos is honestly a disservice to the grandiose effort put out by our respected F(L)OSS developers.
Though, I kinda wonder… Why are you even praising Arch for this? Shouldn’t you root for NixOS instead as they’re the ones to possess the biggest repo?
It seems that RHEL has been based on Fedora for over twenty years now 😅.
I only used Fedora in college on shared college computers and that was over twenty years ago.
It was brand new back then as they switched over from Solaris.
I was under the impression back then that Fedora was a Red Hat Linux derative like Ubuntu was of Debian,
Ubuntu being the OS I was using at that time and the Linux Distro Timeline implies as such, however…perhaps it was based on RHEL once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for a long time. Regardless, documentation on this event seems to be relatively sparse. As such, I wasn’t able to arrive at a definitive conclusion. Please feel free to complete my ‘research’ 😜!
Businesses weren’t too keen about Red Hat’s six month release cycle, as the short time interpolation was too disruptive for them.
Red Hat then decided to have a seperate OS with a long-term support cycle and call that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
At the same time, users were demanding a ‘Red Hat Community Edition’, so Fedora came into existance and that was then used as an upstream source for RHEL.Sorry, I didn’t quite get this. Do you mean that *“container app”*s will not succeed in decentralizing efforts and instead have the opposite effect?
Yes. It’ll make some OSes more pointless. People will try out the distro in the distrobox, get what they need out of it and not bother installing it
or jump ship to the better one.Perhaps you misunderstood me, but to be clear: Distrobox is basically available on every distro out there.
No, it’s clear.
Hmm…, I don’t quite understand why you think like that. There’s a lot that goes into making distros unique and deserving of their existence. Strictly limiting their appeal to the size of their respective (user) repos is honestly a disservice to the grandiose effort put out by our respected F(L)OSS developers.
It’s a defining feature for me.
I had to jump off Ubuntu and Parabola for this reason.
For Ubuntu I needed the latest version of some package and for Parabola it was certain packages that were non-free.
Distrobox did not exist back then.NixOS sounds very interesting, but the moment I tried to install the distro- package manager I noticed aws packages and I have an aversion of anything remotely Amazon. Guix peaks my interest even more now that you’ve mentioned Distrobox.
I think I’ll take the jump.
If you’re willing to learn Arch it really isn’t that difficult. I wouldn’t reccommend it to a noob but seeing as you’re already using it why not give it a try? I wouldn’t reccommend the Steam flatpak as Valve reccommends against it and it doesn’t work as well. Feel free to DM for advice from someone who uses it daily.
I second this. The initial setup is the hard part. Give it a couple days. The arch wiki is the best resource in the whole Linux ecosystem in my opinion. If that’s the long manual you were looking at for installing steam, know that 90% of it is info on strange edge cases and all a typical user will need to do is
sudo pacman -Syuthensudo pacman -S steam(I forgot you have to enable the multilib repository if you haven’t already. You seem smart, you’ll find the info in the wiki)A couple times a year or so something will break after an update. When that happens
- Google if anyone else has posted your exact problem
- See if chatgpt knows anything
- Humbly post in the arch user forum
One of those will solve it. Good luck!
WHOA. Please be VERY HESITANT to use anything ChatGPT outputs. Sanity check any commands it gives you from other places first.
Try bazzite if you are willing to learn, otherwise just pick Zorin OS or Linux Mint and you will be fine (You will just have to learn the basics of how linux works, but nothing too complex as arch linux)
If you’re using an Nvidia card, the easiest way into Linux for gaming (in my opinion) is Bazzite, as aguasemgas mentioned.
Otherwise, any distro will do. I prefer Fedora Workstation, which is what I use for work (as do my wife and kids) but use Bazzite in my laptop because it’s a System76 Gazelle with a 3050TI,and I don’t like the current status of PopOS. All my games run great, and everything else is a FlatPak, so not much need to tweak anything really.
You’re probably better off with Fedora, Mint, or Bazzite to be honest
Seconding Fedora.
i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean?
sudo pacman -Syu- do this about once every couple of days to make sure your packages are up-to-date
i can’t think of anything else i have to do as part of maintaining my system outside of backupsand i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?
Where did you see this? What was the context? I ask because you could say the same thing about any PC you own. It’s not like Microsoft is gonna answer your distress call if Windows breaks unless you’re paying for support.
Is Arch Linux a stable distribution? Will I get frequent breakage?
It is the user who is ultimately responsible for the stability of their own rolling release system. The user decides when to upgrade, and merges necessary changes when required. If the user reaches out to the community, help is often provided in a timely manner. The difference between Arch and other distributions in this regard is that Arch is truly a ‘do-it-yourself’ distribution; complaints of breakage are misguided and unproductive, since upstream changes are not the responsibility of Arch devs.
It does not explicitly say “maintain” but it has a similar vibe to it.
truthfully? memes. i always saw people memeing on how small thing can break linux and how barebones it is and after using the actual arch it just dawned on me.
Once your computer’s working to your satisfaction, pretty much all you’ll need to do is alias
sudo packman -Syuand try to remember to run that every so often. The arch Linux wiki is second to none, and if you stick with the distro you should find it all feels very familiar in no time.🤞🏿 I just found out about ricing. so satisfactory is probably an illusive state…
