Linux

EndeavourOS, Simply Arch with an installer, has KDE as an option for DE.

I use it, I love it. Arch is great. E-OS just cuts out the first few hours/days of set up.

Personally, I find Debian pretty good these days. I used to default to Testing, but I've gravitated towards stable.

Honestly, in the age of Flatpak and Steam, almost any distro works.

Arch w/ KDE gamer here. I have generally had a good experience with it. I think everything you said is generally accurate. In terms of customization, lack of bloat, and a good wiki, Arch is generally considered to be all of those things. A rolling distro like Arch I believe will also be getting the latest proton updates, which may help with sooner game compatibility/optimization updates on more recent releases.

I say go for it.

Because others already suggested Arch/ EndeavourOS, I'll be suggesting something else: Bazzite.

It's part of the image based ("immutable") Fedora series and is basically Fedora Kinoite, with all drivers and codecs already set up for you, self managing, with many gaming tweaks included.

It's rock solid and basically unbreakable, while also being extremely modern and updated. On Arch, even if it doesn't break, you always get the newest stuff, which might not be as polished. On Fedora, it matures a few months, while still being very modern.

The main target group is "For Linux users who don't want to use Linux", meaning, it runs all your favourite stuff (KDE, etc.) without having to care for anything. It even updates itself automatically in the background without any interference.

If you prefer something with less "bloat" (a lot of optional tools and software to choose from, but nothing mandatory), then check out Aurora, which is basically the same, but without gaming stuff.

For more information, check out universal-blue.org

Just a small heads up for OP: You have to do quite a lot of (advanced) things differently from now on if you choose Atomic.

Use containers (Distrobox, etc.) for everything you can, avoid installing stuff on the host if possible, etc.

Just use Flatpaks for 95% you do graphically, and for CLI stuff or software that isn't available as Flatpak, I would recommend you to create an Arch Distrobox container (already set up IIRC) and use that. You can even install stuff from the AUR and export it, so it works just like it is supposed to.

Look into:

• Bazzite (Fedora Atomic)
• Nobara (Fedora)
• ChimeraOS (Arch, AMD-only)
• Garuda (Arch)

All are preconfigured for gaming. Bazzite and Nobara use the fsync kernel, not sure what Chimera uses, and Garuda uses the zen kernel.

Otherwise, Arch is still the most popular choice for gaming if you look at the statistics.

OpenSuse Tumbleweed.

I use Debian stable because I'm tired of constantly twiddling with breaking stuff, I just want a distro that keeps working without issues and tinkering.

If you still want to learn Linux stuff and debug packages, then go for a bleeding edge distro.

Since no one answered you here, I'll say distrochooser.de isn't bad at all. For the new linux user who is comfortable enough trying new things, I think it's perfect. It does lose its usefulness if you've already tried all of the options it offers, but at that point you probably don't need distrochooser anyway.

I game on arch (btw) But honestly I don't think the distro itself really matters for gaming? Just choose the one you want and give er

I don't have anywhere near your experience, but the key points (customizable, no bloat, good wiki) all scream Arch, as you predicted 🙂

I always come back to OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Once I have everything setup, it's stable as a rock and kde works really well on it.

I use arch btw

uBlue Bazzite. Nothing better than that.

Customizable is a broad term.

I run Gentoo as my main distro, and have for a couple years now. It's a pretty stable rolling release (IMO more stable than Arch), and since you're already an advanced user, the experience should be pretty rewarding!

The wiki is great, and the installation handbook is top notch.

You get to control exactly what features each package is compiled with, so no bloat at all.

KDE 6 just landed too!

I like CachyOS

Aurora is cool, if you're okay with using an immutable distro. It is Fedora Atomic-based with KDE on top, so it is stable, but relevant. All necessary drivers are set up out of the box, but less pre-installed apps than Bazzite.

i use a minimal arch with the zen kernel and hyprland for home, work and play. no kde/gnome. for me it's just right. except screen sharing in teams or discord, which haunts me... now it works, now it doesn't.

Fedora Silverblue (atomic GNOME) and Kinoite (atomic KDE) have been solid for both work and gaming. System maintenance is largely seamless and automatic once configured. I still use Arch daily, but only in the terminal (distrobox and containers).

Going AMD is so worth it too, I have zero regrets swapping my RTX 2080s for RX 6800 XTs. Secure boot, Wayland, no fuss updates. Couldn't be happier.

You mentioned needing customization...not sure what you're hoping for there, but the atomic distros allow for plenty of userspace tweaks. It's the system-level stuff, like boot and greeter themes, that require a bit more work to implement. My time is too precious to fuss about that stuff these days.

Anything arch based. :)

In your situation, I would go for endeavourOS, since it is arch in easy mode (don’t need as much time as arch and works flawlessly on all my machines)

Arch is pretty good, but it's fairly easy to break it, if you don't know what you're doing. For gamers I recommend Bazzite. It's an image-based fork of Fedora Atomic (Universal Blue). You can also try other ublue-based distros such as Aurora or Bluefin. Or Fedora Atomic flavors like Silverblue and Kinoite. In fact, you can easily switch between them without reinstalling your system. All it takes is one command, and ostree will do the magic.

I run ubuntu's server base headless install with a self-curated minimal set of gui packages on top of that (X11, awesome, pulse, thunar) but there's no reason you couldn't install kde with wayland. Building the system yourself gets you really far in the anti-bloatware dept, and the breadth of wiki/google/gpt based around Debian/Ubuntu means you can figure just about any issues out. I do this on a ~$200 eBay random old Dell + a 3050 6gb (slot power only).

For lighter gaming I'll use the Ubuntu PC directly, but for anything heavier I have a win11 PC in the basement that has no other task than to pipe steam over sunshine/moonlight

It is the best of both worlds.