Stick with what you’re familiar. You can run Proton with any distro most likely.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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Aren't some distros better at drivers and such than other distros?
Stable Distros such as debian and hold updates longer for testing, for example the newest Nvidia driver in the Bookworm Stable repo is 530(535 maybe?) wheras rolling release or bleeding edge distros might have up to 570 already.
You're always able to manually install any software not available in your distribution's repositories, but beware, in some cases here be dragons. Most of the time these manual installations are trivial, but in the case of Nvidia drivets for example, its VERY important you properly prepare your system, lest you end up in a state without graphics. This is of course, easily repairable, but a pain in the bum and something that can scare away new users.
I just installed Nobara 42 like a week and a half ago and it came with 570.153.02, and it works great.
I had a Pop install about 6-8 months ago that sooorta worked but I think it had the 535 drivers and whenever I tried to update it to the then-current version it would hard-lock my system and reboot with the default video driver no matter which version I used (except 555-server for whatever reason, which still didn't fix my games.)
Its important when manually installing the Nvidia drivers to remember to blacklist the Open source nouveau driver.
Huh, I never knew that. I'll have to remember that if I ever have to manually update this one, but so far nobara has been pretty good about finding and pushing updates.
KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS, you’re fine.
The answer is always OpenSuse.
Kidding. Stick with what you know works.
But seriously: OpenSuse.
Just joking.
Not.
Pop_OS! is touted as being designed around gaming and creative purposes. I use it as a daily driver and can’t complain, it plays nicely with whatever I throw at it gaming wise.
I tried Pop about 6-8 months ago and had lots of trouble with the nvidia drivers on it (and, subsequently, ubuntu and mint) with a bog-standard RTX3060. Pop's particular issue was that whenever I tried to update the video driver, no matter which version I used (except closed-source 555-server, for whatever reason) it hard-locked my system and on reboot had reverted back to the default video driver (so my 40" ultrawide screen was trying to do like 1024x768 and shit). I have since tried 2 seperate Ubuntu installs (LTS and non-LTS) and Mint in the last month, and all of them refused to even initialize the GPU. So, just a heads up for folks with nvidia cards, Ubuntu-based distros might give you trouble. Fortunately Nobara 42 (fedora) is working great.
I have no idea about graphic design, but for gaming I've seen Nobara (made by the guy who created Proton-GE) recommended a ton for its frequent updates and many default-installed compatibility options. Been using it about 2 weeks now myself and most things just work great (which is a hell of a relief; I had a ton of issues with Pop, Ubuntu, and Mint hating my bog-standard RTX3060 GPU for whatever reason.) Had some trouble getting battle.net/epic games working through lutris, but nothing too hard to sort out, and steam games have (with the sole exception of Marvel Rivals) just worked.
When I started using Linux more frequently everyone recommended Manjaro for gaming. Since then many people berated me for even mentioning it...
I've been using it for years and never had any problems; both gaming and graphically intensive apps run perfectly. It's best to go with all AMD, given how bad Nvidia drivers seem to be.
Honestly this is one of the things I hate about the Linux community. The distro elitism is over the top. Make recommendations, but don’t talk down to others or you’ll never get Linux to grow.
Manjaro is sort of speedrunning things. It is not a responsibly managed project. You CAN get shit done with manjaro the same way you can drive to work by just flooring the accelerator the entire way. It’s a bad idea but technically it can work.
Everyone is already saying it, the best is the one you know.
Basically, all distros can do whatever you want. The one you are most comfortable with and find easiest to use is what you will be able to make do those things.
But if you’re a bit of a newbie and not comfortable doing much with your current distro anyway, then there are some safe bets I’d often recommend:
Opensuse tumbleweed is very up to date, has btrfs + snapper by default in case you break it badly. Updates are also less likely than arch, for example, to cause a break. Also has a lot of pre installed software that can be more difficult to make go away due to how their “patterns” work. At some point it’ll reinstall everything you remove unless you blacklist that software.
Aeon is an immutable version of tumbleweed but without all the pre installed stuff. The auto updates work spot-on (you’ll just see a message say your system is up to date) and auto rollback on next boot if an update does break things. Great if you want to rely on flatpaks and distrobox. The KDE software suite is all good on flathub too. (Aeon is gnome only though!)
Im probably going to try slowroll
Bazzite is made for gaming, so it's a safe choice in that regard.
They recently released a DX (developer experience) spin, which I've been running lately. That feels very similar to the other atomic Fedora developer spins, so it has a lot of creative software working well. I've used GIMP, Inkscape, Darktable etc. on it, and there's even some nice automation to install/update DaVinci Resolve.
They're also working on a GDX (game developer experience) spin, which should be even better. You might want to check that out when it's ready.
While doing your research, check out Garuda, it is gaming focused and I have found it extremely user friendly.