Comment by SparkBomb
3 months ago
No the correct choice is what I want to use and it is Debian. Distro-hopping doesn't fix your problems and you will end up with either the same issues or more issues by distro-hopping.
I use my Linux machine for things other than games and I am not moving to "distro of the week" to run one game.
The correct choice if you don't want to spend all that time fucking around with your configs to play a game is Bazzite. If you value something more than the time you save then sure, use Debian for that ineffable reason: but don't bitch and moan about Linux being hard to play games on just because you're using a distro that isn't designed for it.
Bazzite makes gaming easy and is the Linux distro for gaming.
That's fair but Debian is shipping you multi year old packages when you want the latest drivers and mesa for games.
Bazzite has those, and you can just jump into a Debian Distrobox for development.
Debian 13 has mesa 25 which seems to be the latest or very close to the latest and installing an updated kernel was trivial via backports.
People exaggerate the problems of using a stable distro.
>People exaggerate the problems of using a stable distro.
Stability isn't a problem, it's a feature. Companies trust Debian, Ubuntu LTS, etc. for their servers EXACTLY because the packages are old.
This isn't the case with desktop computers, where the latest optimizations are delivered weekly if not monthly, and may improve performance across the board.
Sorry, but Debian 13 was recently released. Just three months ago, you would have been stuck on Mesa 22.
Usually Debian testing will get you where you need to go with Steam and gaming. The stable branch won't git r dun for you usually.
I find you can get a fair way with using backports. I am running the latest kernel and pipewire gubbings.
I've been playing games on Debian Stable for many years now, and although there were some issues back when the Linux Steam client first came out, in past five or so years, I noticed that I tend to forget to even check whether a game works with Proton before buying, and I haven't had any issues playing all sorts of games.
Of course, I don't play AAA slop that's essentially rootkits with a game attached on the side, but even more reasonable AAA titles tend to work just fine.
What I'm trying to say is that this "debian stable is from previous century" confusion needs to die. They had one or two slightly longer periods between two stable releases, many years in the past, but that seems to be all people remember.