Hello! I need to make up my mind because I'm replacing Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 because I really don't like it. I do lots of gaming, along with 3D Modeling, Programming, Word Processing, Listening, etc. I want it to be relatively simple to install, and especially easy to customize. I want the GNOME desktop, Libreoffice, Blender, GIMP, and a fair amount of software options. I also want to be able to setup my storage drive.
Linux Drives: - 850 Pro 512gb Boot Drive - 2TB WD Black (Storage)
I was really thinking of Mint. I really love Mint, and I have installed GNOME on it before. I have heard of OpenSUSE and here it is very good for GNOME. My friend uses Fedora, but I really no nothing about it. Arch is probably not the way to go, eh? Maybe Manjaro?
I'd suggest Debian. Recent, vanilla version of Gnome, same package manager as Ubuntu, large repo's, easy to use.
If youbreally want to be the first-class gnome citizen, Fedora would be the way to go, AFAIK it even supports gnome-wayland(Debian should alsi, but I never got it to work...). Not sure how well wayland plays with the Binary Drivers(And 3D software in geberal) though...
Out of the lot arch will have the latest software out of the box. It has the latest untinkered version of gnome and has steam and the latest graphics stack. Drivers are also easy to install. But it is a manual install and requires you to want to learn a little about how things work.
Fedora would require additional repos though they are easy to install. Graphics driver are a little harder to install tho that may have improved. It has the default gnome as well though I can't remember which version.
Opensuse is also a good choice and has the option to switch to a rolling release giving you the same advantage as arch. It is also easier to install over arch if you don't have much experience with Linux yet.
Fedora will require you to install the rpmfusion repo for non free software. It's simple to install you go to there site and click a link. It has support for all the programs you need the only thing you'll also need to do is install the binary nvidia drivers . also if you plan to use the command line to install stuff (recommended imo) the new package manager is dnf which replaces yum the commands are basically the same.
Good. Fedora + rpmfusion repos will give you 98% of everything you need. Look up how to install the nvidia drivers though. The open drivers are getting better (they just recently got full opengl 4.0 support on newer cards) but the closed drivers have everything in them espeicaly for blender.
Mint is a very barebones and simple environment. Light and efficient, but not so many bells and whistles. I personally don't like it due to the limited customization.
OpenSUSE is my favorite because it is a tweaker's paradise. It's a very fleshed out and completely customizable environment with easy installation tools that don't require the console (it does have one though). It supports KDE and GNOME desktops both. And in my experience it runs WINE quite well. I can get the oldies but goldies like Dungeon Keeper 2 and Diablo to work perfectly in SUSE but not win7. Supposedly new stuff like adobe suite works just as well too.
Fedora and Arch I have no comments on except that I can't take software named after an obnoxious hat seriously.
Lol, steam OS is based on debian. (Ok,to be fair, debian installs a half ubuntu when you install it under debian). In debian, Steam even is in the official repo's. Install guide: https://wiki.debian.org/Steam . Most other Software is also in the official repo's. Gnome is the default DE, and so has verry good support. Other DE's are also fully supported(LXDE, KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, ...). Installing Libreoffice is as sime as:
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
Blender is also in the official repo's. Stuff like GCC of course as well(With some other programming-related packages in the package build-essential)
You can customize Gnome the way you would on any other distro as well, using gnome-tweak-tool.
Storage drives should work on all Linux's, since the, usually share the same Kernel Modules anyway("Drivers"). Gnome using Nautilus also easily mounts them by simply clicking on them.