Trying to go for a “Linux gaming distro” is the wrong thing to do in the first place, IMO. Even if they’re gamers, they’re switching the computers they use for everything. What they needed was a general-purpose distro and then to install Steam or whatever on top of that. The notion of a “gaming distro” should be considered harmful for everything other than maybe running it on one of those Steam Deck knock-offs.

Gaming distros can still do general tasks. They’re marketed as “gaming distros” because they have extra features like GameScope and optimizations from Glorious Eggroll. That’s valuable if you want to get all the gaming performance you can

Except none of that gaming performance value matters if you can’t get it working in the first place! People, especially ones new to Linux, shouldn’t have to know or care about the tools you mentioned. Hell, I had to DDG them to find out WTF you were talking about, and I’ve been gaming exclusively on Linux for damn near a decade! They don’t matter, and they’re especially not worth risking fucking up your entire experience for!

Way to ignore the BIGGEST point in my comment to hyper focus on a seconsary point just to seem smart. Do I think someone should pick a distribution just because it has GameScope? No. But do you know which distros include these optimizations? It’s the distros that include Nvidia drivers in the package so users don’t have to update them in the command line. It’s the distros that use Fedora and Arch to get those driver updates out in a timely manner so you’re not stuck waiting 6 fucking months to not have a newly released game not be a buggy flickering mess. not worth risking fucking up your entire experience for! This is your key disconnect. You see the OS as an experience. Most people don’t. They see it as a tool to get want they want. You might be fine with only playing 5+ year old 16-bit indies on an AMD card. But guess what? MOST PEOPLE DON’T DO THAT. Most people have an Nvidia card and don’t want to buy an AMD card just to use a new OS. And a lot of people want to play newly released games from time to time. You know what distro sucks for both those use cases? Ubuntu. I don’t care if it’s your favorite, those are just the facts. Deal with it.

Way to ignore the BIGGEST point in my comment to hyper focus on a secondary point just for ego. Fuck off with that. I am only participating in this conversation solely because I’m sick and tired of seeing influencers like Other Linus flounder and damage the reputation of Linux because they keep taking trendy bad advice spouted by people like you.

No, you fuck off. You’re the one going on about “the performance doesn’t matter when you can’t set up the gaming distro”. For Luke and Elijah, setting up CachyOS and Bazzite went fine. When they did have issues, the specific distro choice wasn’t the cause. YOU’RE the one whinging about “why don’t they recommend Ubuntu!” Linus going with an Ubuntu-based distro is the cause of half of his problems, and switching to Ubuntu itself wouldn’t have fixed them. Do I think the video was perfect? No. But your takeaway from the video is ridiculous