I've been using Pop!_OS for a few years now, and it's worked like a dream. Everything works out-of-the-box, and gaming on Linux has never been easier. But it almost works a little too well. Learning Linux as opposed to Windows for all my games was a fun challenge.
But, now that I'm familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I'm starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.
Don't get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.
I started with Linux by installing Kubuntu, and I really miss KDE Plasma. I know Kubuntu is still on Plasma 5, and I've been wanting to find a distro that lets me use Plasma 6.
I've narrowed my choices down to three distros: Nobara, Garuda, and Bazzite.
So far, I've confirmed that Nobara and Garuda come with Plasma 6, but I haven't found that information for Bazzite yet.
So, what do you think about these distros? What are the pros and cons for you?
I'm leaning the most toward Garuda - but I'm worried Arch may be TOO big of a leap. I really just learned that Fedora is not Arch-based, so I know Garuda will be a bit of the odd one out of the three.
TL;DR: Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite - which one is good and do any suck?
EDIT:
Thanks, everyone, for the insightful and helpful comments! From what everyone has said, I've come to find that either CachyOS or Solus will fit my needs best.
CachyOS seems optimized for gaming, while Solus' curated rolling releases seem (to my untrained eye at least) to be somewhat of a step between the way Debian-based distros upgrade and the way Arch-based distros upgrade.
I'd love to hear people's experiences with both of these! I think I'm going to try to dual-boot them and see what setup looks like for both.😄
Preface: I don't have any experience with Garuda or Nobara but I have used Bazzite.
Not to make the choice harder, but Bazzite does come with Plasma 6. You can have it boot to the SteamOS UI or to the Plasma Desktop.
Bazzite is a great choice for stability but you need to be aware it doesn't operate like a traditional Linux distribution since it's based on ostree and is immutable. Package installations are primarily done through Flatpak, AppImage or exported via Distrobox.
Hmm, that's a serious downside for me ngl. I tried to set up Mod Organizer 2 when I had Steam installed through Flatpak on Pop!, and I had to switch to the Ubuntu repository to get it to recognize my Steam install.
Steam comes preinstalled and configured on Bazzite, it isnt the flatpak version.
Good to know, thank you.
Endeavor is a also a very good choice. It is pretty much arch with some QoL stuff added. Uses the arch repos for packages.
Like OP said, you can get Plasma on Bazzite, as well as install it right on a SteamDeck if you have one. It's constantly being updated, and if gaming is your main driver, Bazzite goes out of its way to make things work. In theory you wouldn't have to do any tinkering to get games running, with the added bonus that you won't be messing up or introducing any entropy to your system files. If something does go wrong, you can reboot into the previous release and it'll be back to where you just came from.
There's still plenty to learn if you want to, it's just not the traditional Linux distro setup.
Steam is natively installed and works perfectly. You can install other packages, but it effectively adds another layer which slows down updates a bit.