I’ve ordered myself some parts to build a PC for Linux gaming. In the meantime, i’m deciding on which linux distro to use.
For the desktop environment I typically use KDE.
I have used Ubuntu in the past but i’m ruling it out because of snaps and other such annoyances. This also applies to Ubuntu based distros that use the same repos (KDE Neon etc).
I see the wikis recommend Nobara, but I’m reluctant to use a Fedora based distro because I’m so used to Debian/apt (both as a desktop and server distros). I’m not ruling it out completely though.
Any reason why I shouldn’t just go with Debian + KDE and install Steam? Will I be missing out on lots of performance improvements or is this easily addressed by using an additional repo for a tweaked kernel and proton version or whatever?
The thing with Linux is you shouldn’t be afraid of distro hopping. Just try any distro you want for a few days, and if you don’t like it, move on to another one. Repeat until you find the distro you like the most. You can grab a new SSD and swap your system partition to try the new distro of you don’t want to format your current system partition.
Put your home directory on its own partition, and you can usually even preserve files between distros.