I’ve been using Fedora for the past few months and Pop OS for some months before that.
Debian was my first choice after Pop because of ideological reasons - non corporate structure mainly. But I couldn’t get games to work properly (my PC is only 7-8 months old). So I’ve been trying Fedora, but the more I learn about Red Hat and it’s involvement, it’s harder to stick to the distro.
What would be a good way to setup Debian (and KDE, because apparently GNOME is also Red Hat’s, although I do like the environment) so that it works well for my use case? The two year old DE and app versions does bother me but I guess I can learn to live with it. Do I try testing? Do I use backports?
PC specs: Ryzen 5 5600 Processor, RX 7600 GPU
I basically install testing on anything that isn’t a server.
You don’t mention what’s actually bothering you.
@absurdity_of_it_all Have you tried installing the kernel and mesa packages from backports?
I will try that, thank you. Are those just two packages I need to get from backports or are there dependencies and stuff that will come up?
@absurdity_of_it_all You’ll want to add the backports repo, and install the relevant packages from there. https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/
Your hardware is not very different from mine. Maybe there’s something in here that helps you?
Am i missing something what’s your question. You can install debian with kde right from the installer.
I want to know what kind of setup would avoid issues with games. I know I can run Debian with KDE from the installer. I had issues with games on plain stable so I wanted to know what can be done
Ah well I run debian sid but it can be a pain to update if you don’t know what to watch for. I have almost no issues with games. The debian wiki is great to get everything setup like dxvk and wine. Also if you want to stay on stable distrobox is a good option to use sid or other apps inside debian
This is too bad to hear. I installed Debian stable and have no issues gaming despite also using NVIDIA hardware at present.
What issues did you have with your games?
Some stuff that works great with Lutris or Heroic on Fedora, just wouldn’t even start up on Debian. I tried a couple of things but nothing worked. I thought it might be a new parts issue stable is 2 years old at this point.
I’m going to see if I can first try kernel+mesa backports (after trying the games again just on stable). If that doesn’t work I might give testing a go.
Have you looked into Pika OS? It’s a Debian based distribution that focuses on gaming.
My suggestion, try variouse live distro’s from an USB. Alternatively install debian from it’s ISO and select ALL desktop environments. Then on login you can select which on to use for the current session. Once you made your choice you can do use tasksel to remove the others (although I’d do a re-install with just the one I want)
Maybe try Linux Mint LMDE?
Arch Linux?
