I’ve ordered myself some parts to build a PC for Linux gaming. In the meantime, i’m deciding on which linux distro to use.
For the desktop environment I typically use KDE.
I have used Ubuntu in the past but i’m ruling it out because of snaps and other such annoyances. This also applies to Ubuntu based distros that use the same repos (KDE Neon etc).
I see the wikis recommend Nobara, but I’m reluctant to use a Fedora based distro because I’m so used to Debian/apt (both as a desktop and server distros). I’m not ruling it out completely though.
Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam? Will I be missing out on lots of performance improvements or is this easily addressed by using an additional repo for a tweaked kernel and proton version or whatever?
From your other comments you seem to have a system simmilar to mine. I use mint, and i’m very happy with it, feature rich and ubuntu based, without the features you dislike like snap.
Only real step requirs for gaming has been installing some overclocking and heat management stuff like corecntrl, as well as some 32 bit archetecture stuff to run steam.
I’ll second Mint, though I haven’t done much gaming on it. Before switching all my stuff over to Mint, I did have xubuntu/steam running pretty well for most games I tried up through Doom 2016 (can’t remember if I tried eternal) so I can’t imagine mint being much worse. As far as gaming specific stuff goes it’s got a pretty decent driver manager and time shift preinstalled for when said driver manager breaks things.
I’ll second Mint as well. I play mostly small indie games but have played Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 5, and Terminator: Resistance with no problems. The worst I’ve experienced is having to tell Steam to use a different version of Proton for some games (I recently had trouble launching Cyberpunk on Proton Experimental so I downgraded to the next most recent and it worked fine). I also have an AMD GPU so no driver mess.