Comment by arghwhat
2 years ago
I'm not too surprised about gamers aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
> aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are
Is that an issue besides GPU drivers? I assumed (though I haven't really tried it) that Steam is pretty relatively self-contained on Linux and doesn't really rely on system packages that much (most games are running on Proton/Wine anyway).
The "GPU-driver" also includes all the the Vulkan and GL runtimes and user-space machinery for shader compilation and what-not. Being on latest and greatest can make a significant difference there that I'd expect gamers to chase.
Steam also still relies on e.g. your display server.
Does Arch handle Nvidia's drivers properly? I'm using Open SUSE and it's a horrible experience, they provide multiple ways to install them and none work, so ended up just having to use Nvidia's installer directly.
Same. I would also add that a lot of gamers also seem to be power users and/or tinkerers, and Arch is (IMHO) the best distro for that as well.