I used to distro hop frequently before Linux was almost supported by many things. I preferred Fedora derivatives but Ubuntu pushed those out in the dev space. I switched to Arch because it was funny then a few years ago switched to EndeavorOS because it was easy. I currently can’t get things like OBS to work smoothly (when my display sleeps, screen captures have to be deleted and rebuilt), sharing my screen with basically any tool is a nightmare, and I’m just kinda tired of compiling fixes and deeply configuring. I’m spoiled by the work experience on a Mac where all of this stuff works and it’s POSIX compliant.
What I’d like out of the box
- Solid support of OBS or other streaming tools
- Easy screensharing
- Decent audio experience
- Packages not Snaps (if I have to cave on this one I have to cave)
Linux is Linux so the rest of what I do will work almost anywhere. Godot, Rust, and a browser are basically all I need.
Decent audio experience?
You can tweak any distro but, pay attention to using Jack + PREEMPT_RT kernel + Xlibre (X11).
Avoid Wayland (especially with nvidia GPU), avoid Pipewire and avoid Gnome desktop.
I suggest starting out with Debian stable as the base. There are specialised AV Linux distros available but nothing beats knowing what you’re doing from the outset.
If you need the very latest version of a particular app not available as a distro package, Flatpak is your friend. Again, Debian ‘.debs’ and AppImage are most prevalent third party packages outside the proprietary app stores of Flathub & Snapcraft.
Why? I have multiple devices running on Wayland (incl. 1x NVIDIA GPU), as well as Pipewire, and they run fine; what was your experience?