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Linux gaming is finally viable

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Marees

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Thousands of gamers are installing Bazzite instead of sticking with Windows — and the reasons behind the shift are surprisingly compelling​

News
By Adam Hales published 4 hours ago
With weekly installs rising and SteamOS-style usability, Bazzite is quietly carving out a space for gamers tired of Windows friction

In a recent post on X, Bazzite revealed weekly user growth of around 1.25x over the last 30 days. That may sound modest, but for a niche operating system, it represents a meaningful rise.

Around 90% of Windows games can now run on Linux thanks to Proton. However, kernel-level anti-cheat systems still block major titles like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Battlefield 6, Rainbow Six Siege, and Valorant from running on Linux.

Gaming is not the only limitation. Linux still lacks native support for Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, and most professional-grade modelling software, although alternatives do exist.

Despite these drawbacks, Bazzite is still pulling in around 50,000 weekly users, a figure that continues to rise alongside that 1.25x growth. The project has also served a total of 2 petabytes of installs.

https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...ling-bazzite-instead-of-sticking-with-windows
 
I checked with Grok on the Linux alternatives for windows

  1. Ubuntu LTS — popular but recently few issues in updates
  2. LMDE (Mint — Mint Debian stable) — most user friendly for beginners
  3. OpenSuse Leap — alternative to LMDE
  4. Bazzite ( fedora based version ) — primarily for gaming
  5. OpenSuse Tumbleweed — alternative to Bazzite ?
  6. CachyOS — popular Arch based alternative (for performance?)
  7. Zorin — windows like but not 100% free
 
I decided to go all-in on Linux once the new Cosmic desktop was available for CachyOS. I still use Win 11 for some gaming, though.
 
I just tried CachyOS on an old Dell Precision M3800 laptop (2013), but had issues installing games because the CPU is not Vulkan compatible. Vulkan is required for Proton; however, it's a very nice OS.
 
Executioner said:
I just tried CachyOS on an old Dell Precision M3800 laptop (2013), but had issues installing games because the CPU is not Vulkan compatible. Vulkan is required for Proton; however, it's a very nice OS.
Click to expand...

It'll be the iGPU that isn't compatible with the latest version if Vulkan, which would be a problem under any OS.

Marees said:
Around 90% of Windows games can now run on Linux thanks to Proton. However, kernel-level anti-cheat systems still block major titles like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Battlefield 6, Rainbow Six Siege, and Valorant from running on Linux.
Click to expand...

Apex legends runs EAC, which is compatible with Linux, Apex Legends used to support Linux - Until devs toggled the switch allowing for EAC Linux support because apparently all 1% of 3% of Linux gamers were cheating (TBH, it's a crap game anyway). I also believe Rainbow 6 Siege also doesn't run rootkit anticheat.

Marees said:
Gaming is not the only limitation. Linux still lacks native support for Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, and most professional-grade modelling software, although alternatives do exist.
Click to expand...

With the advent of the Affinity Suite becoming free and able to be run under Linux quickly and easily along with OpenCL/CUDA support, the Adobe argument is effectively moot. In relation to professional grade modeling software, Autodesk Maya is supported natively by Linux.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
Apex legends runs EAC, which is compatible with Linux, Apex Legends used to support Linux - Until devs toggled the switch allowing for EAC Linux support because apparently all 1% of 3% of Linux gamers were cheating (TBH, it's a crap game anyway). I also believe Rainbow 6 Siege also doesn't run rootkit anticheat.
Click to expand...
The issue with Apex. Boils down to stupid people
- Gamers too dumb to understand Linux doesn't allow your terrible cheating aim bot crap to hide. So if you are dumb enough to run cheats designed to run on windows and hide from the game your going to likely get caught.
- Devs too stupid to understand the above.

If you try to cheat their system on Linux you WILL almost for sure get caught. The Apex devs were just too stupid to understand they were catching 99% of Linux users who were cheating, while catching a low % of windows gamers doing the same. Cause windows is a terrible OS that allows malicious software to hide in kernel space.
 
ChadD said:
The issue with Apex. Boils down to stupid people
- Gamers too dumb to understand Linux doesn't allow your terrible cheating aim bot crap to hide. So if you are dumb enough to run cheats designed to run on windows and hide from the game your going to likely get caught.
- Devs too stupid to understand the above.

If you try to cheat their system on Linux you WILL almost for sure get caught. The Apex devs were just too stupid to understand they were catching 99% of Linux users who were cheating, while catching a low % of windows gamers doing the same. Cause windows is a terrible OS that allows malicious software to hide in kernel space.
Click to expand...

I actually believe that most of the cheating was done under Windows by leveraging WSL2.
 
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90%?! id days its more realistically like 75%, and thats steam games not all windows games. decent start though.

1766354174977.png
 
pendragon1 said:
90%?! id days its more realistically like 75%, and thats steam games not all windows games. decent start though.

View attachment 774175
Click to expand...
Depends on the distro quite a bit. Some are better then others, also keep in mind ProtonDB has been around awhile now and the data gets a little skued for older titles. A know there are a handful of protondb "brorked" status games that run just fine... and a lot of bronze and silver games that run very well, though being 4 or 5 year old games it will take awhile for the it works perfectly now reports to out weigh the 4 year old borked reports.
 
I'd day it's probably closer to 85%, it's rare that I come across a game other than the usual CoD and Battlefield titles (although my fav, BF4 still runs fine - It actually runs better under Linux than it does under Windows) that doesn't just run with little to no effort - Even the free games under the EGS giveaways have been running perfectly with no tweaking OOTB at all.
 
looks like Linux is becoming popular (& not just for gaming)

Linux desktops feel better and faster than Windows, and I don't want to go back​


https://www.xda-developers.com/linu...ueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

checked with grok for linux distros for beginners. it suggested following options:
  1. LMDE — debian based
  2. Zorin — windows like
  3. pop!_OS — ubuntu based
  4. Bazzite — fedora based
  5. Regata — openSuse based
  6. Garuda — arch based
 
Marees said:
looks like Linux is becoming popular (& not just for gaming)

Linux desktops feel better and faster than Windows, and I don't want to go back​


https://www.xda-developers.com/linu...ueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

checked with grok for linux distros for beginners. it suggested following options:
  1. LMDE — debian based
  2. Zorin — windows like
  3. pop!_OS — ubuntu based
  4. Bazzite — fedora based
  5. Regata — openSuse based
  6. Garuda — arch based
Click to expand...

If running an Arch based distro, CachyOS all the way. Garuda? Does anyone use that anymore?
 
For anyone on Hardocp cachyos even if it's your first go with Linux.

I can understand the appeal of bazitte for a living room machine I guess.

I can't think of much reason to run anything else.
 
Linux "gaming" has always been viable - depending on your choice of games. I guess Alien Arena and SuperTuxKart just don't cut it for most people! I'd rather see more native programs made than Windows compatibility protocols being implemented, but the native programs just don't get the user demand studios need to make more of an effort.
 
Marees said:
looks like Linux is becoming popular (& not just for gaming)

Linux desktops feel better and faster than Windows, and I don't want to go back​


https://www.xda-developers.com/linu...ueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

checked with grok for linux distros for beginners. it suggested following options:
  1. LMDE — debian based
  2. Zorin — windows like
  3. pop!_OS — ubuntu based
  4. Bazzite — fedora based
  5. Regata — openSuse based
  6. Garuda — arch based
Click to expand...
Wasnt Pop! OS one of those that was pretty much crapped all over and another useless distro considering the other options in the Debian space?

I know many distro's is a good thing, but seems couple times a year, some new one pops up that basically gives some new UI/Theme, claims it is the best distro ever and it takes off because people like shiny new things?

On that note, does it exist, some 3rd party that validates all these shiny new distro's are...well secure, as secure as their base OS they came from? That the devs arent slipping in their own code to collect telemetry or something else? I mean, I know it should be discovered pretty quick if someone was trying to do something not so legit, but the speed to which new distro's seem to take off with people blindly installing which ever is the hot one of the week?
 
jardows said:
Linux "gaming" has always been viable - depending on your choice of games. I guess Alien Arena and SuperTuxKart just don't cut it for most people! I'd rather see more native programs made than Windows compatibility protocols being implemented, but the native programs just don't get the user demand studios need to make more of an effort.
Click to expand...
Pretty much this.

I feel like more people need to "vote with their wallets" and really decide if a single game or 2 is really worth Microsoft owning every last thing you do on YOUR computer...
 
MrGuvernment said:
Pretty much this.

I feel like more people need to "vote with their wallets" and really decide if a single game or 2 is really worth Microsoft owning every last thing you do on YOUR computer...
Click to expand...
Sadly, it is more like Microsoft, Valve, EA, and Epic owning every last thing you do on your computer. Of course it goes far beyond games. Unless there is a financial incentive to develop native apps, it won't happen. If a company can program for Windows for 90% of the users, MacOS for 7%, and the remaining 3% of Linux distro users just use WINE, then they won't bother with the cost to develop the native programs. WINE is a blessing that we can run some Windows applications, but a curse in that no one has to develop for anything but Windows. Microsoft staying with DX12 for so long has enabled WINE to catch up to the point, but what happens if MS decides to release DX13, or something else new for games on Windows that WINE won't be able to do for some years? I don't think Valve is going to be any sort of savior long-term for Linux gaming unless other developers start making native applications.
 
jardows said:
Sadly, it is more like Microsoft, Valve, EA, and Epic owning every last thing you do on your computer. Of course it goes far beyond games. Unless there is a financial incentive to develop native apps, it won't happen. If a company can program for Windows for 90% of the users, MacOS for 7%, and the remaining 3% of Linux distro users just use WINE, then they won't bother with the cost to develop the native programs. WINE is a blessing that we can run some Windows applications, but a curse in that no one has to develop for anything but Windows. Microsoft staying with DX12 for so long has enabled WINE to catch up to the point, but what happens if MS decides to release DX13, or something else new for games on Windows that WINE won't be able to do for some years? I don't think Valve is going to be any sort of savior long-term for Linux gaming unless other developers start making native applications.
Click to expand...
Again, vote with your wallet, refuse to buy said games, games are entertainment, not a necessity in life. When companies went full woke in 2025, plenty of people voted with their wallets and it hurt their bottom line, so they reversed course to try and save their margins...

Games are the same... The less people pre-order games and buy every DLC, and then turn around and complain about said game, but still sink hours and days and weeks into it...the sooner they will wake up and change their ways..

Once you hit their bottom line, they will take notice.
 
When Steam first dropped under Linux, all we has was native titles - and most weren't ported terribly well.

Since the advent of Proton, Linux is now basically Win32 compatible - so the idea of Linux native titles that may not be ported well (poor performance, missing features), or abruptly end Linux support (eg: Rocket League) is now a thing of the past. Personally, I by far prefer Proton, since it's release Linux gaming has literally accelerated in leaps and bounds.

In relation to Activision and EA, I wouldn't play their games complete with rootkits even if I was running Windows - I honestly cannot believe people willingly install software running as ring 0 on their systems.
 
StevenJamesBorchard said:
This thread smacks and seems peak. I shall make a new partition and see what games i can play!

Ah hahaha now MS won't have logs of what I am playing and for how long but it will be Linux ppl instead!!
Click to expand...
As long as you don't run Ubuntu no one is tracking you.... well accept them Valve guys. You don't have to run steam though. :) lol
 
Mazzspeed said:
Ubuntu tracks you?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing they're talking about the likes of Ubuntu Report, which is an install-time opt-in. It's in the process of being replaced by Ubuntu Insights, also install-time opt-in.

Debian has Popularity Contest, also an install-time opt-in.

Fedora is considering collecting basic telemetry.

Commercial distros, such as RHEL, I'm sure collect such info (I think they have to in order to enforce subscriptions).

Even some desktop environments, such as KDE Plasma and Gnome, also have opt-in telemetry.

I stumbled across this summary, no idea how accurate it is.
 
MrGuvernment said:
On that note, does it exist, some 3rd party that validates all these shiny new distro's are...well secure, as secure as their base OS they came from?
Click to expand...
Nope. None at all, and there isn't any desktop antivirus for Linux either.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Ubuntu tracks you?
Click to expand...
Guess you forget Ubuntu 12.10. You know the time canonical decided to integrate Amazon services into unity. Which included amazon adds turned on in the unity interface by default.
Snap packs exist.... its a CLOSED source app store for Linux. You can't trust Canonical. EVER. They might not be MS, but if they could be they would be.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMfqCzbSmQU
 
GoldenTiger said:
Nope. None at all, and there isn't any desktop antivirus for Linux either.
Click to expand...
We have anti virus. Its just not required or your system will explode.
https://www.clamav.net/

Linux has multiple commercial anti virus software. They just aren't aimed at Linux desktop users. You have to understand why it exists. Lots of people run Linux servers, where they host windows users. Things like email servers. 95% of the things Linux anti viruses scan for are windows viruses. Most email systems like gmail servers and the like are scanning for windows viruses on Linux servers.
 
MrGuvernment said:
On that note, does it exist, some 3rd party that validates all these shiny new distro's are...well secure, as secure as their base OS they came from? That the devs arent slipping in their own code to collect telemetry or something else? I mean, I know it should be discovered pretty quick if someone was trying to do something not so legit, but the speed to which new distro's seem to take off with people blindly installing which ever is the hot one of the week?
Click to expand...
To be clear yes you should install distros from known/trusted sources. If you don't know who makes a distro and why they make the distro don't install it.
As cute as a Hanna Montana distro is its probably not wise to make it your daily driver. haha

When in doubt, people should be sticking to Arch, Fedora, Suse, Debian. The mothers. They can trust long time distros like Mint. If you do some research into what your installing most distros are 100% safe. Nobara is based on Fedora and is created and maintained by a long time Red Hat (Fedora) employee. For newer smaller distros yes people should always fully investigate the state of their development. Most distros are small and should generally be discounted. And ya every once in awhile some trendy mistake of a distro happens like say Solus. (that one fell appart cause the founding dev, though he may be a genius is a flake)

https://distrowatch.com/ I know distro watch has its issues, it isn authortative or anything its just showing what is popular. If your researching a distro though and it isn't popular in anyway at all... well avoid it. Looking at distro watch right now #1 cachy (trustworthy... the development team is small but are all long time Arch developers prior to creating cachy their first and last names are plastered on the web site lol) Really looking through the distro watch top 100 I don't see anything concerning in there. The top 20 are all solid distros... and if its your first go with Linux security wise you would have no wories with any of the top 20 on there.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Nope. None at all, and there isn't any desktop antivirus for Linux either.
Click to expand...

Because...You don't need it. Of course, that by no means implies that AV under Linux doesn't exist - Even if it mostly scans for Windows viruses.

ChadD said:
Guess you forget Ubuntu 12.10. You know the time canonical decided to integrate Amazon services into unity.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I honestly think we need to get over the whole Amazon/Ubuntu debacle now, it was 13 years ago. I don't see any evidence Ubuntu currently spies on it's users.

Plasma has User Feedback, it's disabled by default, but it's there:

User feedback KDE.png
 
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Mazzspeed said:
Because...You don't need it. Of course, that by no means implies that AV under Linux doesn't exist - Even if it mostly scans for Windows viruses.



I dunno, I honestly think we need to get over the whole Amazon/Ubuntu debacle now, it was 13 years ago. I don't see any evidence Ubuntu currently spies on it's users.

Plasma has User Feedback, it's disabled by default, but it's there:

View attachment 777537
Click to expand...

To each their own. Its a Linux distribution that created a CLOSED SOURCE App store. They can pound sand. I know that seems neck beardy. But if you can't respect the spirit of Open source in something so basic I don't trust you. As Titus points out... WHY is your distro installing Firefox the front of the pack open source browser via your own closed source store? I don't trust them. They have knowingly broken trust a few times over the years the Amazon one was the most glaring but it isn't the only instance of them gathering telemetry. (and having it on by default)
Sure now they claim they only gather what you give them. IMO there current stance only exists because people called them out the last decade, and their user base # has dropped. If Ubuntu was still the most widely used distro I have no doubt they would still be laying data collecting frameworks. (more then they already are anyway)

All things equal. If you want a corpo workstation distro Fedora or Suse are more trustworthy. IMHO anyway. And that is considering that Fedora is IBM owned Red Hat. lol :)
 
ChadD said:
To each their own. Its a Linux distribution that created a CLOSED SOURCE App store. They can pound sand. I know that seems neck beardy. But if you can't respect the spirit of Open source in something so basic I don't trust you. As Titus points out... WHY is your distro installing Firefox the front of the pack open source browser via your own closed source store? I don't trust them. They have knowingly broken trust a few times over the years the Amazon one was the most glaring but it isn't the only instance of them gathering telemetry. (and having it on by default)
Sure now they claim they only gather what you give them. IMO there current stance only exists because people called them out the last decade, and their user base # has dropped. If Ubuntu was still the most widely used distro I have no doubt they would still be laying data collecting frameworks. (more then they already are anyway)

All things equal. If you want a corpo workstation distro Fedora or Suse are more trustworthy. IMHO anyway. And that is considering that Fedora is IBM owned Red Hat. lol :)
Click to expand...

Just because the Snap Store is proprietary and controlled by Canonical doesn't mean it's somehow, I dunno, distributing spyware - That's just lunacy. There's plenty of open source software being distributed on Canonical's proprietary platform, and while I agree Canonical's forced use of Snaps is underhanded and manipulative, I see no one substantiating the claim that Canonical are disrespecting their users by making the Snap Store proprietary.

As I've stated before, the belief that Linux must be OSS only is naive and unrealistic. You use Steam, which is also proprietary, yet you don't seem to have a problem with Valve?

C'mon Chad, this OSS perspective is as drawn out as the argument that Nvidia under Linux results in an unstable system, with driver installation/updates resulting in a totally hosed OS install. Meanwhile, I've been running Nvidia under Linux since 2013 with no issues I'd class as deal breakers, in fact right now I'm running two Linux systems, both with Nvidia cards from Turing onwards - and both PC's wake from suspend to ram daily, operate all day faultlessly, even hardware video decode works under Firefox. I put them to sleep of an evening, and repeat the process the next day. I get driver updates when they're made available, most of the time I don't even know they've been installed until weeks after the fact, PC's go burrr and performance is more than adequate.

No one uses Snaps anyway, everyone uses Flatpak as they're simply better.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
Just because the Snap Store is proprietary and controlled by Canonical doesn't mean it's somehow, I dunno, distributing spyware - That's just lunacy. There's plenty of open source software being distributed on Canonical's proprietary platform, and while I agree Canonical's forced use of Snaps is underhanded and manipulative, I see no one substantiating the claim that Canonical are disrespecting their users by making the Snap Store proprietary.

As I've stated before, the belief that Linux must be OSS only is naive and unrealistic. You use Steam, which is also proprietary, yet you don't seem to have a problem with Valve?

C'mon Chad, this OSS perspective is as drawn out as the argument that Nvidia under Linux results in an unstable system, with driver installation/updates resulting in a totally hosed OS install. Meanwhile, I've been running Nvidia under Linux since 2013 with no issues I'd class as deal breakers, in fact right now I'm running two Linux systems, both with Nvidia cards from Turing onwards - and both PC's wake from suspend to ram daily, operate all day faultlessly, even hardware video decode works under Firefox. I put them to sleep of an evening, and repeat the process the next day. I get driver updates when they're made available, most of the time I don't even know they've been installed until weeks after the fact, PC's go burrr and performance is more than adequate.

No one uses Snaps anyway, everyone uses Flatpak as they're simply better.
Click to expand...
Steam isn't baked into the OS.... well accept that one. lol I would have less issues with snap, if Canonical offered it but didn't try to bake it into their base install. I think even some people at Canonical disagree with the snap store. I mean one of their long time engineers released a script to de snap Ubuntu.

I also don't own a Nvidia product anymore. ;)

Canonical can do as they please. We have options. I don't trust them, I'm not alone. They have had a string of opt out telemetry, amazon tie ins, ads at one point. I acknowledge they have back tracked and removed most of that. I simply don't trust them anymore. I don't think they would have back tracked on any of it if a large % of their users had not felt the same as I do and migrated away from them.

I have no issues with non free software. For what its worth. There are places for closed source things. I do have an issue with a distro trying to take their package management closed source. All while at the time trying to market themselves as THE Linux distro. I'm not a fan of Android or ChromeOS either for the same reasons. Even though I still consider both of them Linux as they are. IMO Canonical out grew their britches around a decade back. I guess I understand they are a buisness and were trying to make money. They choose a string of poor easy money decisions and it soured me on them. This is why I run Cachy/Arch. I have decided I would rather stick to distros that are not tied so directly to commercial success. So far IBM has allowed Fedora to be what it has always been... and unlike Ubuntu Fedora isn't the actual product. RHEL is. Though IBM did kill the open non commercial version of RHEL. Though I can understand Cent wasn't IBMs style. At this point if someone was asking me for advice on a commerical Linux server setup Ubuntu ain't on my short list. I am interested to see what the Cachy team does with a server spin of Cachy. It won't be an option for any large server installs, but maybe they can be an interesting option for smaller/medium size installs. Not sure the price of the commerical distros support/pro contracts offer the value they may have a decade ago.
 
ChadD said:
Steam isn't baked into the OS.... well accept that one. lol I would have less issues with snap, if Canonical offered it but didn't try to bake it into their base install. I think even some people at Canonical disagree with the snap store. I mean one of their long time engineers released a script to de snap Ubuntu.
Click to expand...

Bearing in mind that Snaps are only baked into vanilla Ubuntu. There's plenty of distro's to choose from, all based on Ubuntu LTS, that don't force the use of Snaps. Who still uses vanilla Ubuntu as provided by Canonical?

ChadD said:
They have had a string of opt out telemetry, amazon tie ins, ads at one point.
Click to expand...

Which was all related to Canonical's bundling of Amazon's Shopping Lens under 12.10. They did it once, and they back peddled pretty quickly. Personally, I don't find IBM to be faultless in relation to underhanded manipulation considering they placed RHEL source code behind a paywall.

ChadD said:
This is why I run Cachy/Arch. I have decided I would rather stick to distros that are not tied so directly to commercial success.
Click to expand...

If Arch was still Arch before Valve got involved as a result of the Steam Deck, if CachyOS wasn't as polished as it is - I still wouldn't touch Arch with a 10 meter barge pole. No matter what Arch users like to claim, back in the day, to say Arch was stable as a daily driver OS was a painful stretch at best.

ChadD said:
At this point if someone was asking me for advice on a commerical Linux server setup Ubuntu ain't on my short list.
Click to expand...

I agree, I wouldn't recommend anyone use Ubuntu Server due to Canoical's insistence on the use of Snaps. However, my server runs Ubuntu Server 24.04, I've completely eliminated Snaps, and it never misses a beat.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Bearing in mind that Snaps are only baked into vanilla Ubuntu. There's plenty of distro's to choose from, all based on Ubuntu LTS, that don't force the use of Snaps. Who still uses vanilla Ubuntu as provided by Canonical?
Click to expand...
That isn't true though. Ubuntu has nothing to do with Mint. Canc isn't providing anything for Mint... its open source Mint is TAKING the files. Its like saying Manjaro is made by Arch (its not). Or Bazzite is a IBM product. (It's not) NO where anywhere does Canc offer an official stripped down LTS base. Mint has nothing to do with Canonical.

Mazzspeed said:
Which was all related to Canonical's bundling of Amazon's Shopping Lens under 12.10. They did it once, and they back peddled pretty quickly. Personally, I don't find IBM to be faultless in relation to underhanded manipulation considering they placed RHEL source code behind a paywall.
Click to expand...
Lens was part of Ubuntu for 5 years. I know I listed the first appearance in 12.10. But it was part of Unity and Ubuntu for 5 years. It wasn't dropped until they moved to Gnome. Once they went to Gnome they started adding opt-out unity-report. After some backlash they moved it to opt-in rather then opt-out and they anonymized the data. Its still part of Ubuntu though. Since 2022 they have been advertising Ubuntu Pro... There is no check box that says don't let Canc advertise to me. To remove it you have to do it via config files. Sure no big deal for you or I, average let me test out Linux users aren't going to know how to disable Canonical ads in Ubuntu. They also have popularity contest and automatic phone home crash reports.

I am 100% ok with RHEL being "paywalled" its a commercial operating system. As it was prior to IBM buying Red Hat. RHEL was never ever free. Though they made a free version CentOS that IBM killed. Ubuntu isn't free either.

Canonical isn't done either. They have recently added Ubuntu Insights in 25.10 (October 2025) It will be rolling out to Ubutnu LTS in April with 26.04. This is a update to Ubuntu-reports.Insight sends a monthly report back to Canonical. Though to be fair to them... they did open source the server side code on it, which apparently wasn't the case with Ubuntu-report. I mean whatever my point is simple. They keep looking for new ways to gather telemetry. They haven't given up on gathering data.

Mazzspeed said:
If Arch was still Arch before Valve got involved as a result of the Steam Deck, if CachyOS wasn't as polished as it is - I still wouldn't touch Arch with a 10 meter barge pole. No matter what Arch users like to claim, back in the day, to say Arch was stable as a daily driver OS was a painful stretch at best.
Click to expand...
You know the difference between Cachy and Arch proper is almost nothing right? (if Arch breaks so does Cachy) Yes they have for sure enhanced the install experience with a GUI... and they have some great tools. Still they aren't doing anything all that special to the packages they recompile. They are just recompiling them. Depending what your using 1/3-1/2 your Cachy packages aren't from the Cachy repos at all they are just installed from the standard Arch Repos which Cachy still adds to pacman.
I know your more recently moved over to Cachy. Arch has been as stable as Cachy for years now. People just didn't know it cause they didn't use Arch. There have been people using distros like Manjaro much longer then Cachy and saying the same... that its just as stable as any Debian/Fedora/Suse distro. I appreciate what the Cachy devs are trying to do don't get me wrong, at its core though in most ways its just a Arch installer. They even make it possible at install to just unclick the cachy repos and essentially turn the cachy installer into a GUI arch installer.
Arch is still arch, as you have probably gathered from running Cachy now the main goal is choice and minimal added packages. IMO for a long time a lot of knowledgeable Linux gurus (I manage servers at work but Linux on my MY DESKTOP No way type Linux users) would try Arch (cause all the normal users were told Arch is scarrrry and the Arch Neck beards will try to EAT YOU)... and the truth was exposed. They were not really Linux gurus at all. They would get a BASE Arch install up and say where is X where is Y how come my sound isn't working as I expect. They knew how to deal with a headless server but never learned how a Linux desktop worked. Or they set up Linux workstations with things like ubuntu that just made all the choices for them. So the FUD of the evil Arch distro... that unstable mess, packages lorded over by the worst sort of neck beards, breakage everywhere ROLLING packages directly from GIT the heathens. Where even is their MANDATORY ACCESS CONTROL is this thing running apparmor or sellinux; wait packages for both but neither are recommended? We don't understand. Why have the package if you don't recommend it... We are confused. :) lol

Anyway the Arch FUD has been real for a long time. The truth is Arch has been stable and reliable for probably a decade at least. Its not a new thing. Arch didn't suddenly become reliable cause Valve donated a signing server. Valve has helped them with infrastructure sure but Valve also choose to rebase SteamOS on Arch long before Arch accepted any $ help from Valve. They choose to do that because they understood Arch is a superior base for what they wanted to do. That's all really.

Mazzspeed said:
I agree, I wouldn't recommend anyone use Ubuntu Server due to Canoical's insistence on the use of Snaps. However, my server runs Ubuntu Server 24.04, I've completely eliminated Snaps, and it never misses a beat.
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I am glad we are agreed. :) Look bottom line NO Ubuntu is not Windows 11. Canonical is probably not really run by satan. As Linux companies/distros go they have pushed more telemetry reporting... and to this day their standard Ubuntu install has self advertisements built in. Maybe its not as over the line as having Amazon shopping adds built in anymore... still its ads. Its like a youtube channel advertising their own coffee brand. TODAY your Operating system is brought to you by CANONICAL, click here for your new user special 5-10 computer super license.

Another book... we can agree to disagree on Ubuntu. Its Linux we all have choice. I'm ribbing you a bit as well. I mean I don't like Canonical I don't trust them that is true, but I don't believe they are MS level bad either. I am thankful that they are not going to be come the de facto Linux distro as well. For awhile there it felt like they were gaining that sort of traction. They would for sure be in a better position in the Linux world if they hadn't decided to built Lens into Unity that's for sure. Unity might even still exist. It was choices like that that drove off the free open source development that was going into unity. Snap has likewise cost them a lot of free development.
 
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ChadD said:
To be clear yes you should install distros from known/trusted sources. If you don't know who makes a distro and why they make the distro don't install it.
As cute as a Hanna Montana distro is its probably not wise to make it your daily driver. haha

When in doubt, people should be sticking to Arch, Fedora, Suse, Debian. The mothers. They can trust long time distros like Mint. If you do some research into what your installing most distros are 100% safe. Nobara is based on Fedora and is created and maintained by a long time Red Hat (Fedora) employee. For newer smaller distros yes people should always fully investigate the state of their development. Most distros are small and should generally be discounted. And ya every once in awhile some trendy mistake of a distro happens like say Solus. (that one fell appart cause the founding dev, though he may be a genius is a flake)

https://distrowatch.com/ I know distro watch has its issues, it isn authortative or anything its just showing what is popular. If your researching a distro though and it isn't popular in anyway at all... well avoid it. Looking at distro watch right now #1 cachy (trustworthy... the development team is small but are all long time Arch developers prior to creating cachy their first and last names are plastered on the web site lol) Really looking through the distro watch top 100 I don't see anything concerning in there. The top 20 are all solid distros... and if its your first go with Linux security wise you would have no wories with any of the top 20 on there.
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Ya, I presumed as much, but sometimes my tin foil hate takes over..lol

I do tend to check who is backing said distro, and when you see names like AWS and other big companies...but then validating that said company does actually back them in some way.
As you noted, I tend to just stay with well known ones, but since I have seen CachyOS mentioned so many times, I figured instead of Manjaro or Garuda what ever for Arc... CachyOS sounds like something nice and new to try...

ChadD as for Ubuntu, you nailed it, for me it is when a company tries something, something they know they should likely not do, and then backtrack, for me, you know they are sitting in a room trying to find ways to do it again and sneak it past people to get what they want....They lose my trust and earning it back is not easy at all, especially when you have so many other options to pick from.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
If running an Arch based distro, CachyOS all the way. Garuda? Does anyone use that anymore?
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Yes. Garuda performs identically, has a better default UI, and a better forum (reminds me of old [H]). No real reason to use Cachy over it other than it's the current trendy distro. But then if you want to use Cachy there's no reason not to use it over Garuda or any other distro. Choice is the beauty of Linux after all)
 
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