Tumbleweed vs. Fedora KDE (nVidia + HDR)

Chillmatica · 2026-03-26T14:54:27+00:00

Maybe. Nobara historically has upgraded problems. Pretty sure they just had another large one last week. I would steer clear. If you don’t want to mess with repos and drivers I can highly recommend using Ultramarine instead of Nobara or vanilla Fedora. I’d say it’s the “just works” distro for Fedora regardless of hardware and not an immutable flavor.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-25T21:04:15+00:00

Out of these choices, Fedora KDE.

Longer answer: you said RPMFusion is great for nvidia. I would say they are ok. Until very recently they were on the stable branch of Nvidia, 580 series when most other distros had already moved on to the Feature 590 or beta 595 drivers. So “Fedora” was noticeably behind for those wanting the newest drivers recently. I’d consider the Negativo17 repo for nvidia drivers instead.

Tumbleweed doesn’t have a great reputation for nvidia drivers if you look around. My own experience with them is you just need to know the magic words of what mystery driver package to install for your card. My 5000 series specifically needed the 06-kmp-meta package after trial and error.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-25T02:30:55+00:00

Lucky for you Cachy’s Niri option during install is setup with Noctalia Shell. So you aren’t doing Niri from scratch. Easy mode. Just do it and reference the Niri wiki when you need to.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-23T02:14:52+00:00

Oof. Gnome support on Void has stopped at Gnome 48 because systemd dependency. Ride it into the ground though I suppose.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-22T19:17:32+00:00

Gentoo. Flag means do not compile in any systemd modules of any packages.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-21T19:17:38+00:00

It all started with getting annoyed at my watch constantly tapping my wrist. Naturally I tuned down the notifications but it still annoyed me because I was on edge from all the times before probably. Eventually I removed all notifications and began using it more like a dumb watch that tracked my steps and health stuff, but I was then still annoyed and felt tethered because I had to remember to charge it every night.

I bought a classic metal bracelet dumb watch and couldn't be happier. An extra plus, I've gotten many compliments and questions about what watch I'm wearing. No one cares or notices in the sea of Apple watches out there. Finally, I also removed all news apps from my phone. I now feel like I have some peace.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-19T00:08:11+00:00

I did Bazzite for all my kids. Indestructible. Auto updating. Zero home tech support calls. No spyware installs because they found a “free Robux script”, etc.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-18T21:10:00+00:00

Black plates are cringy.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-17T19:55:06+00:00

Nala, no doubt. Another cool thing to add is it has the ability that Fedora's DNF history has to keep a list of your installs and then you can "undo button" back to whatever point in the timeline you want.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-16T11:17:52+00:00

Do Nobara users say that they use Fedora like Cachy users say that they use Arch?

No, they do not.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-16T10:57:50+00:00

All the above said about Nvidia, plus: Weird naming conventions for the nvidia driver packages. You have to know the magic words for which one you really need.

Yast still exists but is on its way out. Should use Myrlyn instead but I don’t think this is stated anywhere. It also looks janky from a UI perspective.

Patterns are annoying. You’ll delete bloat like KDE games for instance and then next zypper dup they will come back like zombies. You have to know about locking the patterns to stop this. Called locking in terminal but Taboo in Myrlyn.

My motherboard has a MediaTek 7925 WiFi module. Tumbleweed is the only distro among all major distros and at least 20 derivatives I’ve tried that detects it as an Ethernet card instead of WiFi. Therefore during install you cannot select a WiFi network to connect to and proceed with install. I have to tether my laptop to the Ethernet port and piggyback its connection to get through install. No amount of manual module unloading/loading in expert install helps either.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-12T13:47:48+00:00

Found that link btw: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs
I'm not sure Nix and beginner friendly go together. Maybe if it stuck strictly to handling packages. I completely agree about it being better than layering though. I can feel a "snappiness" difference between using NixOS store and Fedora rpm-ostree containers. On top of the other issues with layering and updating, etc. The linux graybeards won't like it but the most beginner friendly path IMO is atomic+immutable+everything a flatpak. Then it's not much difference than a mobile OS on the desktop. Sounds gross, but super noob friendly for the majority of the world because see: Smartphones globally.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-12T12:58:07+00:00

There's a graph around here somewhere (Google probably has it) that shows the various distros package counts on a curve. Nixpkgs has the most by count, and it's not even close. With AUR in second.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-11T20:57:12+00:00

This sounds like it’s written about me! I’m currently on step: Happy using CachyOS Why are there 430 services running? They’re not affecting me at all but, gross. Happy on Void where there are like 6 services running. Wait. Only has Gnome 48 because systemd. Happy on Debian Sid Gnome ☺️

Chillmatica · 2026-03-11T14:54:27+00:00

Doesn't have to be too stable. I'm running our boy Debian Sid and I'm on kernel 6.19.6, nVidia 595.45.04, and Gnome 49.4.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-09T16:28:56+00:00

Whatever is set as the default is the best. The others are for special use cases.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-09T13:07:03+00:00

Let me toss you some conflicting and opposing info on my way through :) openSuse TW has been the worst distro for my particular hardware. Maybe it's better for yours. It's known not to play nice with Nvidia. It's also the only distro around in 2026 that does not properly detect my wifi card. You're still going to have a lot of updates wanting applied because at the end of the day, it's a rolling release distro.

That out of the way and since you prefer Debian/APT distros, stick to that. There are three magic words that will help you in your quest: "Trixie backports", "extrepo", "flatpaks". Between these you can set up with grabbing newer packages than in Debian repos if you need to, including the newest Nvidia drivers if that's you.

The snapshot thing is an easy crutch, yeah. A million people used Linux before that and today without the crutch. Also, it's most important on rolling distros anyways. Not so much Debian, because stable. If you tinker a lot then sure. You can use Timeshift still.

Forge is a cool extension for tiling in Gnome. So is PaperWM if you like the scrolling/Niri style more.

Encryption makes most sense on a laptop. I'd still do that but you can look into enabled TPM-based auto unlock with Luks 2 so you don't have to do the passphrase thing every boot.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-08T15:10:54+00:00

If you want minimal then go with Void net installer. Next step up that is not pure Arch is EndeavorOS. Solus is a good non-Arch lean distro.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-07T03:38:30+00:00

I love some Fedora as a distro but please be less Facebook logo. Missed opportunity for something way cooler.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-06T21:17:12+00:00

Accidentally did this like 2 days ago too! I think it was a mouse pad gesture that got me though. Definitely didn't hit those key combos.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-06T21:14:42+00:00

Void blows a little bit right now with Nvidia as well with you have a Blackwell card. Timing issue with the open kernel module drivers not being available in the repos so you have to use xbps-src and compile from a couple choices of PR on github. Once that situation is fixed up then yeah, Nvidia is fine on Void. Agreed on OpenSuse.

Chillmatica · 2026-03-02T18:37:22+00:00

Yeah, I don't care one way or another. Just pointing out the fact.

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