TL;DR: Is there really a performance benefit to a gaming distro over a regular distro? Or is it more of a “this is the least work” to get setup?

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I run EndeavourOS on my desktop and haven’t had any issues with performance. I just like playing with new things and learning from the experience.

I’ve seen loads of people recommending Bazzite as a gaming distro for various reasons. It’s gotten to the point that I installed it on a second SSD to do my own testing but I’d still like to see others perspective.

From my research, there doesn’t seem to be that much performance to be gained (generally speaking). I’ll be testing this on my own hardware but is this generally true?

I think a big draw (especially for new users) would be that these distros would require very minimal work to get up and running into a game.

I think the TL;DR at the top best describes my question. I’ve just been thinking about this and haven’t been sure how to express it in a clear manner for others to understand. Also, this video got me thinking more.

EDIT:

Glad to see that I’m not alone in my thinking. Biggest benefit of a “gaming distro” is the convenience of having everything setup and there is no real performance difference.

  • yala
    5·
    6 months ago

    Last year, this piece was written on it. And, based on an extremely small sample size (N=1), the takeaway was basically that the 1% lows (and the 0.1% lows) do seem to benefit on some games.

    But, there are so many factors at play, it’s pretty hard to back up any claim of performance increase (or decrease). However, if you’ve got the time and you want to play around, then please feel free to benchmark the 1% lows (and 0.1% lows) of the games you play on different distros and come to your own conclusions.