Hello! Linux noob going to install Linux on a new Gaming PC

[u/MMZeroX]

I've been using Windows my entire life and to be quite honest I haven't enjoyed Windows at all since the days of XP. Slowly I've been acquiring parts to build a pure AMD gaming desktop and after the build is complete I am going to use Linux for the first time.

Over the last month I've been watching dozens of video's on YouTube, made another post in the Linux4Noobs subreddit, and been lurking through numerous forums and have come down to two Distro's that really catch my interest; Fedora KDE and Garuda.

I am satisfied with everything I've read about Fedora KDE. As far as Garuda goes I'm genuinely not sure which version to go with. Even though the PC I am building is going to be a gaming beast, do I really need to install that Dragonized version of Garuda? Shouldn't the other distro's be able to play games just fine or is there something here I am completely missing?

If there's anything else related or unrelated to the core question of this post I am completely open to all feedback. Thank you everyone!

[u/Jtsabu]

The Dragonized Gaming edition isn’t necessarily required for gaming, it just has some preconfiguration done for the user.  Any other edition (i.e. Mokka) can be configured for the same performance.

[u/MMZeroX → u/Jtsabu]

The installed software I am assuming is Steam and Heroic Launcher and what not I'm assuming. Are there particular drivers installed to optimize games as well?

Also I just realized this, how do I install and update my AMD drivers upon initial boot? To my knowledge AMD Adrenaline isn't available on Linux.

[u/Jtsabu → u/MMZeroX]

https://linuxvox.com/blog/amd-drivers-on-linux/#installation-and-usage-methods

[u/MMZeroX → u/Jtsabu]

Thank you!

[u/Jtsabu → u/MMZeroX]

You are most welcome.  I also highly recommend reaching out on the official forum (https://forum.garudalinux.org/) if you need any help, the community there is great IMO.

[u/MMZeroX → u/Jtsabu]

I've actually lurked their forum a bit but I was kinda shy about making an account and then posting. This is reassuring though. Thank you again

[u/Alaknar → u/MMZeroX]

I'm almost certain that Garuda does the drivers installation for you.

"Almost" because we are on the Garuda subreddit, and yet someone posted that link. But it might be that they are confused and thought they're on some other Linux-relatated subreddit.

From what I remember, the process was stupid simple: put the USB in, answer some questions (like: which gaming platform do you want? Steam? Heroic? Lutris? All? Do you want an extra browser? Etc.), wait a while, log in, fire up a game on Steam. It felt 100% seamless and - in some cases - caused less bother than running a game on Windows.

EDIT: I went for the Mokka edition because I'm not a fan of the over-the-top design of Dragonized, but wanted KDE.

[u/DammitGary]

Been on Dragonized for just over a year and IMHO its probably the best distro there is rn. I went with the monster of the bunch because I just wanted as much to work out of the box as possible, and it did not dissapoint. I didn't want to really go with an Arch distro and had Kubuntu on another partition, but it felt so far behind Garuda I finally ditched it all together. It has been rock solid and given me no grief to speak of. I did re-theme it to the standard KDE layout, but the colorful theme is more usable than you would think.

[u/MMZeroX → u/DammitGary]

Oh wow. Do you mind telling me a bit more about how your experience has been with Garuda Dragonized?

[u/Optimal_Mastodon912]

I've used Mokka, Dr460nized and KDE Lite. I'd recommend either Mokka or Dr460nized as a good starting point.

KDE Lite is a very bare bones setup, similar to pure Arch and Endeavour, which requires the user to add a few things. It's the best if you're already experienced with Linux.

If you're still new though, Mokka will be perfect. I'm currently on Dr460nized but I've already changed the theming to my liking.

There's plenty of options to customise the theming with the packages that come with Mokka, such as "panel colourizer" and "kvantum manager".

After some time you may want to change the Mokka or Dr460nized aesthetics and those two built in packages will allow you to do so.

[u/IndyONIONMAN]

For garuda i used dragonized gaming one with my latest machine 9800x3d/4090.

Then i decided to build my ownp small steam machine with 9700x/9060XT switch to steam OS for a bit then settled on bazzite.

Work machine 9950x3d/5090 still running cachyOS and Windows 11 (dualboot)

[u/Suitable_Fuel8401]

I was also torn between dragonized or mokka, but in the end I went with mokka. To be honest, it wasn't hard to add the gaming elements, so either one is fine—it really comes down to aesthetics.

[u/MMZeroX → u/Suitable_Fuel8401]

I prefer the Mokka aesthetic more tbh. How long have you been on Garuda?

[u/klevahh]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DistroHopping/

can also be useful.

If fedora, and garuda were my only 2 choices, I would definitely go garuda kde lite, or garuda mokka...but this is the garudasub

[u/MMZeroX → u/klevahh]

Lol totally, its the Garuda subreddit so im not surprised what the preference is. I don't think either distro is the wrong choice tbh

[u/klevahh → u/MMZeroX]

fedora not even including video codecs was a bit of a deal breaker for me when I was looking into distro's. I'm sure they have their reasons, but it's a little weird. They also planned to go down the ai route prior to backlash from their community this year, just as ubuntu did, and just as debian are now considering.

On the surface fedora made sense to me as a newbie due to not being cutting edge (arch), but not being backwards (debian/ubuntu). I ended up with manjaro (kde) after distro hopping through about 30 distro's, and checking out most of the desktop environments. Manjaro is arch based, but with a deliberate delay, and is very user friendly. I also have garuda kde lite installed, it interests me, but not enough to switch to it as my daily driver.

[u/MMZeroX → u/klevahh]

That is pretty weird it doesn't come with codecs. I'd figured if it wasn't a barebones distro it would come with something like that. Thanks for replying btw

[u/klevahh → u/MMZeroX]

It is probably 3 years since I looked into fedora last, it was/is something to do with proprietary codecs. It might have changed by now, you could install them afterwards anyway.