A Gaming Alternative to Ubuntu?
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little Sep 8, 2013
Hey there. In the recent past I have been a Ubuntu user and was quiet happy with it. But since they started pushing Unity I am getting more and more fed up with Canonical and their stance towards development.

I recently tried Debian, which I have used before, and I quiet like it. But there is one big problem: due to Debians stance towards stability I wasn't able to get some of the newer games running due to the usage of older versions of certain libraries. Especially the libc which will just horribly break stuff when you update it. And using experimental in a productive system environment isn't a good idea either.

So I am currently looking for another solution and wondered if you guys could help me out? The OS should be rather bleeding edge (it should be no problem getting the latest nvidia drivers, stuff like the libc should be as uptodate as possible) and either come with Gnome (I really like Gnome 3.x) or be rather agnostic to the window manager of choice.
I heard Arch would be a good alternative but I am not quiet certain if I am "there yet" to get Arch up and running. So are there any other suggestions?
pizzadude Sep 8, 2013
Fedora? Never used it but it it's rather bleeding edge.
Slovenijakp Sep 8, 2013
I would recommend Arch, I use it too.
There are many good tutorials how to install it, and Arch Linux has got a great wiki.
I'm sure you will able to make it :D

Here, these are good guides.

YouTube tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFzVG4wZEg

Beginner's Guide on Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners'_Guide

Guide on Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5680453/build-a-killer-customized-arch-linux-installation-and-learn-all-about-linux-in-the-process

-Slovenijakp
Hamish Sep 8, 2013
Arch should only be used by people who want their distribution to be a game in of itself. I am not quite sure if that is what you meant by a gaming OS. ;)

If you want something modern but does not take the same effort, I would definitely suggest Fedora, which I have used for many years with good results, or OpenSUSE which I have never used but have heard a lot of good things about.

You can still try Arch of course, it has its advantages, but there are easier places to jump to from Ubuntu.
Speedster Sep 8, 2013
I agree with Hamish, Fedora sounds like what you want, but assuming you have plenty of drive space (which is likely unless you opted for SSD over hard drive) I recommend still keeping an ubuntu partition around to see how a game works on the "supported" platform in case it is giving you troubles in fedora. Typically the problem is still there in ubuntu, but at least you can file a valid bug report with results from playing on ubuntu.
rick01457 Sep 8, 2013
Manjaro. It's arch on easy mode.
gemini Sep 8, 2013
Weird that no one has mentioned Linux Mint.
Speedster Sep 8, 2013
Mint is not considered bleeding edge-ish, which is original poster's reason for considering something other than debian
Liam Dawe Sep 9, 2013
Quoting: rick01457Manjaro. It's arch on easy mode.
I've heard good things about Manjaro.
n30p1r4t3 Sep 10, 2013
Quoting: rick01457Manjaro. It's arch on easy mode.
+ 100000000000000


And Fedora is a pain when it comes to Nvidia/Wifi drivers etc due to their "free software" stance.


If you wanted bleeding edge Debian, go with Linux Mint Debian. Stability, Updates (not unstable ones), and rolling release in one little Debian package. That's the only time I'll ever recommend Mint (just personal taste).
little Sep 14, 2013
Thanks for the replies so far! I will have a look at those mentioned. Maybe I start with Manjaro first to get some more experience with Arch based Linux. Linux Mint is... well it's Mint. I never understood their need to fork.
Arch sounds interesting but I think I will dive into that when I have more time and can spend a weekend to wrap my head around it.
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