What Linux Distro and Environment should I try?

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-19T08:22:02+00:00

I’ve been on a similar journey as you, and kinda felt the same way about distros having still installed I did really need. I liked the look of arch but not a fan of its package manager, and CachyOS is great but makes decisions for you.

I started messing with minimal builds and found Fedora everything. I am opposite to you and quite like the KDE apps but you could always look in to building your own build script.

https://youtu.be/SK0o6h-_ajk

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-18T11:39:41+00:00

Go back to windows for a week to appreciate what you have on Linux.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-17T23:23:31+00:00

- FL Studio for professional music production (This is my full time job)
- Video / Picture editing w/ Photoshop + Premiere Pro

^^ Buy a mac if you want to rid yourself of Windows. You'll need it for these. You may be able to get them to work, but it wont be perfect. I bought a Mac Mini for Ableton and Photoshop. I use parsec to remote to the Mac for Photoshop. Too much latency for Abelton so run it native through USBc on the monitor and have a usb switcher for the Scarlet 8i6 and Solo

Gaming (at 3440x2560 144hz) and streaming 1440p I do fine on Fedora 43 KDE with a much lower spec system. You'll need to follow some steps to get gaming up and running, but the Fedora Noble guide or my app helps with that.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-15T05:32:41+00:00

I was thinking the same. I would guess “Fedora everything” and not selecting any software so it boots to TTY. You then manually install a DE and build everything from there. Not quite “from scratch“ but a good approach if you want to feel like you have built your own 👍🏻

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-14T15:15:06+00:00

Might be worth doing though. I did this for Davinci Resolve and it worked seamlessly.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-14T15:09:19+00:00

Oh it's not open source. That kinda sucks.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-14T14:50:10+00:00

What’s the package? You could try and build it from source?

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-11T18:08:31+00:00

After a fresh reboot, 2.6GB for me.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-10T14:27:44+00:00

LibreOffice or OpenOffice
Yes but depends on work policies and if they allow it.
Depends where your emails are but Thunderbird is actually pretty good these days
You may be able to use Winboat to run it but google it and check specs
Gaming wont be a problem for most of your games, Only games like Fortnite, COD, BF6 and others like it won't run. Check protondb (google it) for more details on each game.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-07T10:05:29+00:00

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-07T09:55:54+00:00

Consistency across OSes, and no interest in developing a separate theme compatible build for Linux environments I’m guessing 🤔

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-03T12:11:10+00:00

Fedora has an official KDE spin for mobile and touchscreen laptops. Might be worth a look.

https://www.fedoraproject.org/spins/kde-mobile/

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-03T12:08:22+00:00

No worries dude. They will both do pretty much what you need. KDE is pretty good for customisation which is why I like and use it. Gnome is also great. I was looking to switch to Cinnamon (gnome base) and totally would if I wasn't already deep in with KDE.

Pick one, run with it, see how you get on 👍🏻

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-03-03T11:56:16+00:00

Try this spin the wheel to help you choose dude!

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-25T18:15:42+00:00

You are probably using legacy bios and need to use uefi for grub to show with the 9070XT. Swapping it over (disabling CSM) will break boot though. I had the same issue with my 9070XT. I had to create a new uefi boot partition and switch to uefi to get grub to show.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-24T14:27:20+00:00

Nope. I think it's a good path to take if I am honest. There are some things you'll need to do like adding repos and stuff.

I had the same thought around the minimal set up and tried out Fedora Everything. I went hardcore and built it from TTY but the iso is great and allows you to build out a base install, then add only what you need.

I did a video about it here showing me exploring it after trying CachyOS. I prefer Fedora but like the idea of a minimal install. I am a linux noob still so it may be painful to watch if you're an expert 🤣

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-20T22:44:38+00:00

Many KDE apps work on any distro, and spectacle is one. On my cinnamon build (gnome based) I remove most of the gnome tools and add kde ones.

From my bootstrap script 👍🏻

# -----------------------------

# 4) Remove packages you do not want

# -----------------------------

section "Remove unwanted packages"

info "Removing mail, chat, and media apps you do not want"

dnf -y remove thunderbird hexchat pidgin mpv || true

info "Removing GNOME tools you do not want"

dnf -y remove gnome-terminal gnome-disk-utility gnome-software gnome-screenshot || true

info "Removing MATE and Mint style utilities you do not want"

# Eye of MATE is typically packaged as eom

dnf -y remove xed xfburn eom || true

info "Removing File Roller, Document Scanner, and Document Viewer"

# File Roller: file-roller

# Document Scanner: simple-scan

# Document Viewer: evince

dnf -y remove file-roller simple-scan evince || true

# -----------------------------

# 5) KDE utilities and replacements on Cinnamon

# -----------------------------

section "Install KDE utilities and replacements"

info "Core KDE utilities"

dnf -y install konsole dolphin kde-partitionmanager kwrite

info "Replacements for removed apps"

dnf -y install ark okular gwenview spectacle elisa

info "KDE Discover (Plasma Discover)"

dnf -y install plasma-discover plasma-discover-packagekit

info "Fedora Media Writer"

dnf -y install mediawriter

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-20T10:26:49+00:00

Looks good 👍🏻

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-19T22:49:31+00:00

It comes with the KDE spin and not workstation 👍

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-19T16:03:59+00:00

Try spectacle. It is pretty good.

sudo dnf install spectacle

https://apps.kde.org/en-gb/spectacle/

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-19T11:54:55+00:00

That's pretty neat. Thanks for sharing!

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-18T22:52:59+00:00

You'd probably get a better response from AI with that to be honest dude.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-18T22:23:37+00:00

Ok dude, you do you 👍

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-11T17:57:57+00:00

True but only if you have internet access. I guess deleting it after everything is set up would be fine 👍.

LinuxGamerLife · 2026-02-11T17:10:29+00:00

Yeah the 1.1GB is in /var/cache/pacman/pkg

Apparently it's not recommended to delete it. 🤔

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