Audacity9961

I don't think most Arch users are.

However, I do think a small portion of the Arch community are. There seems to be a segment that is quite aggressive with RTFM, even where the wiki is unclear, or are otherwise very condescending or even aggressive to new users.

People also really need to stop recommending Arch to new users, especially those looking to move to Linux for gaming.

As others have stated, as long as you are using a distribution with reasonably modern (and maybe frequent) updates of the kernel and mesa stack, it doesn't matter much. The updates of these two packages are what will provide updated hardware support and performance improvements.

Steer clear of Nvidia. It can work on linux, but is a pain due to Nvidia not providing proper open-source driver support. I also highly recommend ensuring you have an intel chip if you need wifi, as realtek and broadcom can be a bit variable in terms of support and stability for wifi.

Wayland is also preferable in my view, due to its significant benefits over X11 - it is more secure, makes your computer much smoother, and supports modern niceties like better multi-monitor support, gestures, lack of tearing, HDR (in the future), etc.

This segues into my next point. It makes more difference what DE you use when gaming - GNOME currently doesn't support VRR on Wayland (appears to be coming in next release at least experimentally), while KDE does. So that is something to think about. I would stick to either of these two DEs as these are the only two that are both user friendly for beginners, and have excellent wayland support. Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE all do not yet support Wayland.

I would steer clear of distributions that are not established, and/or only have very small or single person teams (as this has potential security, stability and support implications) and would recommend Fedora. Fedora has a bleeding edge mesa and kernel (that roll between releases), but stability elsewhere with a solid community behind it and a dedicated security team, built on cutting edge technologies throughout. If you need VRR I would use the Fedora KDE spin. OpenSUSE tumbleweed is also a great choice.

Many users will recommend Arch Linux systems, as this is the hotness, particularly as this is what SteamOS is based on. I wouldn't recommend this even as a very happy Gentoo user, however, as relatively "pure" Arch Linux distributions (and Gentoo), will require you to follow notices on the website, and will require your knowledge and intervention at some point based on this notice; without your intervention, it will likely break your system. So as a beginner I would avoid Arch Linux and Endeavour OS.

Manjaro has had many too issues with the security and stability of their distribution to allow me to comfortably recommend it, and the Nobara and Garuda Linux teams are both too small for me to be comfortable recommending them. Zorin OS, Pop_OS and Linux Mint are all excellent workstation distributions, but their outdated kernels and software (they are based on a long-term support base) mean you may be either giving up some performance or hardware compatibility.

It is because of the tivo workaround to GPLv2. This was fixed in GPL v3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

There appears to be at least an aspirational goal for GNOME 46 to land experimental support.

They are being downvoted because it is utter nonsense, spouted as authoritative fact.

Anyone who has ever used gnome seriously, knows that although it can be used for touch it is heavily keyboard oriented.

While not undermining the work of KDE devs who I have great admiration for, GNOME devs also work heavily on standards that benefit all of linux, and arguably do just as much if not more, as they are a very well resourced project.

Gimp 3 uses python 3 as well.

It has already been announced and is likely to come before year-end.

I don't know how active it is anymore and how stable on Desktop, but maybe Lomiri?

Deepin also seems similar, in that it seems to sit between the two, but I can't recommend that due to the persistent disregard of security issues re that DE.

Lumina was something a bit similar to XFCE in that it seemed to want a simple stable base and ui, with only key technologies updated, and lots of options. Looks dead though now, which is a shame as I enjoyed using it for BSDs.

Thanks. That's very interesting.

That's an interesting distro. Can you provide a bit more info as to how it differs from a source-first distribution like Gentoo?

Void Glibc is my second-favourite distro. Awesome choice.

Is Gentoo lacking enough popularity?

If so, I use it because it offers unrivalled flexibility, even compared to Arch, portage, which is an epic package manager, a dedicated security team, reasonably large community and developer base, source-based package distribution and fast package updates, which often outpace even arch.