recently i just finished building a new pc. mostly for gaming since my only exposure to linux is steam os and i heard its uses arch with kde plasma so i try to emulate it as close as i can. however soon i realized how different it is and it requires more setup than i initially thought. i spent a whole day or two setting it up and i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?
when i was about to install steam i found a tutorial on it with 3 - 4 pages full of text and was a bit overwhelmed, i decided just set it up using discover with flatpak, the problem is when i was about to find out how to do that i read mostly people really hate when you ask how to enable it in arch, is it really bad? should i just use konsole instead?
im not very tech savvy and at first I was really reluctant to use konsole but since i decided to use arch its inevitable that i have to use konsole and so far its not that bad, yet.
I’m just wondering for the long term, should i just change distro? or i should just powertrough arch and see where it goes.
thank you for your time.
and i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean? is it just finding and testing drivers? or system update? what is the easiest way to do it? and what i getting myself into?
Where did you see this? What was the context? I ask because you could say the same thing about any PC you own. It’s not like Microsoft is gonna answer your distress call if Windows breaks unless you’re paying for support.
i read now im responsible on maintaining it, what does it mean?
sudo pacman -Syu- do this about once every couple of days to make sure your packages are up-to-date
i can’t think of anything else i have to do as part of maintaining my system outside of backupsTry bazzite if you are willing to learn, otherwise just pick Zorin OS or Linux Mint and you will be fine (You will just have to learn the basics of how linux works, but nothing too complex as arch linux)
If you’re using an Nvidia card, the easiest way into Linux for gaming (in my opinion) is Bazzite, as aguasemgas mentioned.
Otherwise, any distro will do. I prefer Fedora Workstation, which is what I use for work (as do my wife and kids) but use Bazzite in my laptop because it’s a System76 Gazelle with a 3050TI,and I don’t like the current status of PopOS. All my games run great, and everything else is a FlatPak, so not much need to tweak anything really.
If you’re willing to learn Arch it really isn’t that difficult. I wouldn’t reccommend it to a noob but seeing as you’re already using it why not give it a try? I wouldn’t reccommend the Steam flatpak as Valve reccommends against it and it doesn’t work as well. Feel free to DM for advice from someone who uses it daily.
I second this. The initial setup is the hard part. Give it a couple days. The arch wiki is the best resource in the whole Linux ecosystem in my opinion. If that’s the long manual you were looking at for installing steam, know that 90% of it is info on strange edge cases and all a typical user will need to do is
sudo pacman -Syuthensudo pacman -S steam(I forgot you have to enable the multilib repository if you haven’t already. You seem smart, you’ll find the info in the wiki)A couple times a year or so something will break after an update. When that happens
- Google if anyone else has posted your exact problem
- See if chatgpt knows anything
- Humbly post in the arch user forum
One of those will solve it. Good luck!
WHOA. Please be VERY HESITANT to use anything ChatGPT outputs. Sanity check any commands it gives you from other places first.
You’re probably better off with Fedora, Mint, or Bazzite to be honest
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Seconding Bazzite, it’s great for gaming.
Third
ford
cachyos, post install click install gaming packages, in steam goto compotability switch it to proton cachyos, done, there is no struggle, it grabs heroic and lutris too for non steam stuff
The only tweaking I’ve ever needed to do was for Helldivers 2. I had to swap from cachy’s proton to the actual proton which was literally just a menu in Steam. (Multiplayer wouldn’t work otherwise. Everything else was fine.)
Highly recommend this for you OP. This would be the easiest course of action. Do you have to use Konsole, yes but for a few commands and once done you can do everything you need via GUI and not have to touch shell again for daily operations.
Catchy have a very powerful script that attaches all their pacman.conf (list of places where arch will look for it’s software)
Here’s a link to the section Adding CachyOS to existing Arch Install
Once that’s done you only need one more command
sudo pacman -Syu octopiOctopi will let you manage all your software and kernel updates without having to touch terminal or having to use flatpaks.
I would recommend packages:
- cachyos-hooks
- linux-cachyos
- linux-cachyos-header
- cachyos-kernel-manager
- proton-cachyos
- wine-cachyos
- cachyos-gaming-meta
This will have you fully set up and ready to seamlessly game on your machine without having to reinstall a OS.
Arch Linux’s whole claim to fame is Some Assembly Required. Go with something like Mint or Fedora (the latter of which is available with the KDE desktop, source: am typing this on a gaming computer running Fedora KDE) and they’re much more complete out of the box.
sudo pacman - SyuAnd done., usually. Lol
Looks like you have an extra space
Once your computer’s working to your satisfaction, pretty much all you’ll need to do is alias
sudo packman -Syuand try to remember to run that every so often. The arch Linux wiki is second to none, and if you stick with the distro you should find it all feels very familiar in no time.Welcome to Linux where you maintain your own os… You are literally the owner of this ship you want to destroy your system to ahead you want to do whatever cause windows pissed you off go ahead… evening can be fixed usually… try all the distros till you like some and use those.
How does it feel to be in control and not have to listen to the Man ?
Uninstall Arch and install Linux Mint. Give yourself that gift. It’d still be easier than installing Arch Linux, and you’ll be way more comfortable most of the time in the long term. It’s not that you can’t use Arch, but their approach is not beginner-friendly.
Arch has a bit of a steeper learning curve. Ubuntu is probably the most “mainstream”, but I prefer Mint (based on Ubuntu) for some user-friendly changes. PopOS (already based on Ubuntu) is also supposed to be a bit more gaming centric if you’ve got an Nvidia card.
I’ve got an AMD kit in my main machine and Nvidia/Intel in my laptop and both work fine with most Steam games using Proton.
If your only exposure is steamos bazzite might be easier for you
I admire your energetic here. I only installed the latest ubuntu (cause of latest gpu driver updates) then I installed steam from software center and it works nothing to do anymore.
Just a heads up, you might want to use Steams .deb file instead of snap
First, I would like to give you some major props. Installing Arch, in itself, is a big deal. It is not a beginner-friendly distro. It is a very power-user friendly distro and has an incredible wiki that is helpful, at least to some degree, for many distros.
For a beginner distro, I would recommend Linux Mint for its easy transition and great focus on user experiences or Bazzite if you really want to install and get gaming.
When taking drivers in Linux, most are provided as either kernel modules (integrated into the kernel, so you don’t have to worry about installing anything) or packaged for the distro, in which case, once installed via package manager, they’ll auto-update whenever you update system packages. They are so much easier to deal with than Windows drivers (for the end user). For example, to use a Wacom drawing tablet, all one has to do is plug it in.
