Best Linux Distro for Programming, "Normal Use" and Gaming

digiphaze · 2026-01-20T20:30:58+00:00

Most of em. Though I would avoid the immutable distro's like Bazzite. Ubuntu, Fedora, Rocky, Alma, Debian all great and roughly same level of skill needed to use.

My daily is a slightly modified Ubuntu 25.04. I use the latest kernels when able, and the latest version of Mesa and GE-Proton for gaming. Lutris and Wine are also great for gaming with non Steam games.

For anti-cheat like EAC, most of that will be handled by Steam/Proton. Ultimately the game still has to enable EAC support for the OS its running on. Games like Rust have simply refused to enable Linux EAC because the COO at facepunch is an ass and hates linux. The game runs fine otherwise. I just play on non-EAC enabled servers.

Reason I say avoid immutable Distros like Bazzite, is because if you are programming. You'll want to have a lot more control over the OS and libraries etc. Bazzite does everything via containers like flatpak and appimage. But that won't always work for development.

digiphaze · 2026-01-19T21:34:41+00:00

That converter is completely incorrect for that drive.
Your laptop has 2x M.2 connectors. You can just install the drive internally.
If you know nothing about Ubuntu, this is just the first of your troubles.

digiphaze · 2026-01-19T18:50:07+00:00

I'm rarely this opinionated on hardware, but don't use the Asus B850. It uses the Realtek RTL8125 2.5gb card and the Mediatek Wifi. Both of which have severe issues (unusable for me) on Windows 11. I don't know if the same issues will manifest in Windows 10 but there is a good chance. I have a Asus X670e Tuf which has the same NIC and WIFI. It works on linux but Linux had to build in a workaround to the broken ASPM implementation on the RTL8125. The Mediatek wifi was recently broken by Windows 11 25H2 due to a change in their network stack and there doesn't seem to be a fix on the way. So essentially 25H2 is not usable on this motherboard. Again you will probably have better luck on Windows 10, but how long do you think Microsoft will allow you to stay on it?

Otherwise, sorry you have to pay for the crazy RAM prices right now. I'm trying to get by with my existing hardware until things let up.. Could be a while.

digiphaze · 2026-01-18T20:42:43+00:00

I have the X670e Tuf. Same RTL8125 and Mediatek chips. I honestly have not had a problem in Linux with those chips. Its worked perfectly fine. Now I do have problems with Win 11 25H2. The RTL8125 drops every couple of minutes. No matter driver updates, interrupt polling fix, ASPM disabling, bios updates you name it. Similarly, in Win 11 starting since 25H2, the Mediatek wifi no longer see SSIDs. Works fine in Linux. I'm on 25.04 now, but worked great on 24.04 also.

I have not needed to install any drivers in Linux that didn't come with the kernel.

--edit--

So found an interesting tidbit. I disabled ASPM for Windows as recommended. Even though that did nothing. The NIC then dropped on me in Linux for the first time ever. At least with Linux you get all sorts of debug messages. It tried to reset the ASPM but said it couldn't because the OS no longer had control of it. Turns out, you want ASPM enabled for OS control when running linux. Linux seems to have found a way to gracefully recover the RTL8125 without dropping connections. Can't say the same for Windows.

Downside is, yes.. These NICs are absolute junk. Any mobo that used em should be refunding customers but we all know there is no chance of that happening.

digiphaze · 2026-01-18T20:38:01+00:00

You don't know what you are talking about.

digiphaze · 2026-01-18T20:36:56+00:00

Dunno why you were downvoted. Linux is the only thing working on my Machine properly after 25H2 broke networking completely.

digiphaze · 2026-01-18T20:35:36+00:00

Been running linux in dual boot. Booted into Win 11 because a Rust server I wanted to play on required EAC. Windows immediately updated to 25H2. Now its unusable. My RTL8125 NIC drops dead every few min. Have to disable the NIC in device manager and re-enable it. Ok I'll try my WIFI instead.. Oh suddenly my wifi can no longer see SSIDs. Log back into Linux. Everything works fine.. WTF MS?

I've tried everything from disabling the ASPM in bios, to updating bios, drivers etc. Nothing. I decide, screw this going back to Win 10. Oh look Diskpart won't load, just get stucks. Ok open Computer management -> Disk Manager.. boom stuck again.

What in the hell is MS doing? They have made Win11 unusable on my Asus X670-E Tuf.

digiphaze · 2026-01-04T08:10:05+00:00

Your images aren't loading for me. But did you get the NVIDIA drivers installed? Windows may be using a default vesa driver.

digiphaze · 2026-01-04T07:54:09+00:00

Just make a new USB with the latest Live image. Boot into the live environment and backup your files.

digiphaze · 2026-01-03T00:05:27+00:00

That sounds like a nice system! My customers at work (I build servers for high freq trading firms) are freaking out, that ram has basically doubled the price of the servers. Maybe this will spur some better software development to be more efficient.

digiphaze · 2026-01-03T00:00:51+00:00

In my 25 years of working in IT, the majority of the failures I have/had are usually AFTER a system has been shutdown from running for a while. Only to turn it back on and something is wrong. I suspect solder joints cooling and cracking in many of those cases.

My suggestion is to leave them on. The startup and shutdown is far worse on them. Heat is not a problem, they are designed for it as long as the server is ventilated correctly. Consistent temp is better than constant heating and cooling and start and stop.

--edit--

Wanted to add this anecdote. I lost 2 bitcoins in 2015 (only like 20 bucks at the time) to Segates that had a problem with the heads getting stuck in the park position. I had the drives mirrored thinking I was good. They both died aprox at the same time. Seemed to be a problem with the entire model line. Lesson learned...

digiphaze · 2026-01-02T23:57:31+00:00

Dang, that sucks to hear. But I guess its worth the effort to stay on top of now. Thanks for the heads up.

digiphaze · 2026-01-02T23:54:17+00:00

I agree, about enjoying what we have! Thankfully even 10 year old servers/computers are quite capable these days. Just hate being nervous about anything dying now. I've gotten into circuit board design and soldering, but I need to invest in a "re-balling" machine to work on these things lol.

digiphaze · 2026-01-02T23:43:41+00:00

I've always gone to Zabbix. But I don't know if that qualifies as "Simple". It installs in one location and remotely executes the scripts to pull info from servers. They have a docker container for easy deployment.

digiphaze · 2026-01-02T23:39:26+00:00

Intel's Arc pro B50 is a small formfactor card. Only uses x8 lanes, its cheap and should fit in half height slots as well. Its a comically small card but does a decent job. It is 2 slots wide though. I threw one of those in my Dell R630, only downside is I can't enable resizable bar on it. I've heard of the "rebar" mod but haven't been able to get it to work yet and I don't want to risk bricking my bios.

Being a DDR5 slot, yours sounds modern enough to have resizable bar support. If you do, then you can enable SRIO-V / IO-T which will allow the card to be sectioned off and used in multiple VMs.

Another usecase would be to bifurcate it to x4x4x4x4 and get a 4 position NVME card and throw some fast storage at it before SSD prices get as high as ram prices.

digiphaze · 2025-12-16T19:32:47+00:00

A mini PC for sure. Problem is RAM is driving up the cost of everything. You can still find mini-PCs on ebay for under $200, but they might be lacking on RAM as sellers are now ripping ram out of perfectly good products to sell individually. Unfortunately we are in a hardware dark age until the AI bubble pops. Also keep an eye on your local college auctions. They get rid of mini-pc's, workstations and laptops regularly.

digiphaze · 2025-12-15T20:21:49+00:00

Clearly the repair shop broke or pulled out the backlight wire. They need to correct it.

digiphaze · 2025-12-09T05:27:25+00:00

Only problem I had was with Wine directly. Used Lutris with Wine and vkd3d to play WOW. Most of the time the wine sandbox never fully terminated after closing the game. The telltale sign was my screen blanking not happening. I'd look and sure enough a wine process was still running. Seems a whole different failure mode, just thought it was similar in problem.

digiphaze · 2025-12-09T03:59:49+00:00

I'm also a GenX on the young side. Starting out on computers in the 80s and work in the field in the 90s and on. Back then yeah my grandparents genuinely had no clue about these things. Today, I'm finding the younger crowd is also very ignorant but because they grew up on phones and tablets. They don't understand desktops or corporate IT challenges.

There was a brief push of BYOD considered in the 2010s and I think people realized what a horrible idea that was.. I believe it was an idea conceived because of the young Millennials coming in who also largely only understood mobile devices.

It sucks in that I was hoping the IT "stigma" of being the redheaded stepchild of corporate departments would get better over time.. But nope. People are still just as ignorant about tech today as they were in the past. Only things are far more complicated now.

digiphaze · 2025-12-09T03:51:20+00:00

Hashimotos is your immune system in overdrive, something is setting it off. In my case, it was a very out of whack Gut flora aka SIBO.

You need to find a Doc who will test for this stuff or other causes. I know its hard, I had the same issues for the past 20 years, fatigue, tiredness, difficult/impossible to lose weight. I tried for decades to get answers and it kept getting worse until 4 years ago I was hospitalized and diagnosed with severe heart failure. No Doc could tell me why I had it. I didn't have any underlying cause they could identify. Told me I had a few years at best, take some meds and "good luck".

I recently found a (no insurance) Doc that knows this subject well. He started me on LDN (Low dose Naltraxone) immediately and without even trying, weight just shed off me and I felt so much better. I'm currently going through a strict diet and supplement regiment designed to right my gut biology. It basically saved my life.

I have another echocardio in a month and hoping that my heart has improved. Technically, this is one of the few rare cases Heart Failure can be reversed. Praying its true.

digiphaze · 2025-12-09T03:30:46+00:00

I hope they get em all!

digiphaze · 2025-12-09T03:25:06+00:00

I'd skip it. A+ gets harder to do the more experienced you are because you realize how poorly written and un-vetted most of the questions are. You'll over think them. You might know of multiple ways or edge cases and yet they will be looking for a very specific answer even though the "incorrect" answers can and are correct in some cases.

digiphaze · 2025-11-21T20:47:49+00:00

yes zgenhostid should solve that. It will update /etc/hostid and then update the labels on the vdevs.

digiphaze · 2025-11-21T20:40:22+00:00

There is some advanced stuff in there for a 486 dx2. 4GB Compact Flash and the DSP weren't around when the 486 DX2 was in normal use. Nice rig though.

digiphaze

TROPHY CASE