Nobara Linux? - should I switch from Fedora?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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I just finished watching some older youtube vids that I never had time to look at the start and I see that in the video " Gaming on ZEN 4 to ZEN 5: Windows vs Linux" it appears @wendell is using Nobara.

I had a quick google and it seems to be Fedora with some spice added to it.

Can anyone provide some info on if they use it and should I look to switch when I look to take my main PC back to linux when I look to upgrade from 5000 series to 9000 series in the coming months?

edit - I will be looking to game more on the linux side.

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Ive heard of it too, but ive been happy with fedora, so doesnt seem to be worth the move (to me)

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Looking at their page there appears to be some QOL upgrades as well as some kernel patches as well

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It’s just Fedora with stuff preinstalled, it saves time for them not having to tweak everything manually on a fresh install

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Good question. I saw the graph with nobara vs windows and it looked good. My issue is I distro hopped allot. I finally got a game to boot on manjaro after I reinstalled it to get rid of something called weyland. Now that I have a functioning linux on my current hardware. I don’t want to install a distro if it doesn’t do what I currently have.

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I used Nobara for about a year on my 2013 macbook pro and a PC I cobbled together from parts I found in the trash and some deals I saw on FB market place. Long story short, it was great at first, especially on the trashcan PC, but as time went on both systems started to become unbearable and even unbootable. I ended up switching to Fedora for my macbook and started using the trashcan PC as a homelab/server. Maybe one day when I have to time and money, I’ll put together a gaming/editing PC and give Nobara another go. Just be sure to have something like Time Shift and a good backup system in place.

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Based on running various distributions on and off since the mid-late 90s…

Most distributions can add packages to give you what you want, the kernel can be recompiled to give you the options you want, etc.

As redhat user from way way back who migrated from Slackware and then turned to Debian, then ubuntu and then whatever distribution (with a whole bunch of FreeBSD in the early/mid 2000s)… pick a distribution that:

  • has an agenda / policy structure you agree with
  • provides timely updates
  • has a layout/init/package manager/etc. that you can understand as thoroughly as possible

Then add what you want from packages or source.

There’s always some new flash in the pan distribution with some shiny new feature, and that distribution may or may not make it mainstream or get any sort of third party support.

By all means experiment, but for me I’m old and jaded enough to just want something that has a large user base that the group behind it is committed to supporting.

So for me these days it’s either Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu. Though I’m keeping an eye on Arch based on the recent collaboration with Valve.

Boring answer probably, but at the end of the day they’re all linux plus a package manager of some sort and a repository that may or may not include all or even most of the things you want.

If you hop from Fedora, you’re basically throwing away a lot of your hard earned knowledge of how to do things in Fedora. Which is fine if you’re looking to learn new things, but if you just want the computer to work - maybe not so much. Also, depending on how much you’ve learned with fedora, maybe that’s not much to re-learn, YMMV of course.

Obviously, @wendell being a very technically competent YouTube personality (I’m sure in addition to his day job) has good reason to distribution hop to keep track of what is going for the rest of us. Just because wendell is running it doesn’t necessarily mean you should leap at it :slight_smile:

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Good reply

I have a few distros on the go at the moment across different PC’s

I share the sentiment of wanting something that works reliably… I just wonder at times if i make the switch on my main PC again whether i could be getting more performance out of my system than just sticking to the basics…

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Performance wise you’re probably likely to get a rounding error (like maybe 5%) difference between distributions on particular workloads.

And really, if you want that rounding error you could likely just recompile the kernel or libc, etc. on the distribution of your choice with different options. Personally I don’t think it’s worth distribution hopping over. And… bucket of salt, any comparison tests you see are for distribution X running kernel version Y, which is likely invalid by the time you read it due to kernel/package updates.

If you’re wanting ultimate performance… sure.

But see “I just want my computer to work” above. The more you go down the path of tweaking and optimising the further you get from the well supported normal platform that is tested to actually work properly across a wide range of scenarios - not just your current niche workload.

Most code compilation options and kernel options are a tradeoff of some kind. One of the parameters is performance. One of the others that may be traded against it is compatibility.

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So I think with last weeks valve+steam annoucement it prettymuch means that arch is going to be the first-class gaming/steam experience. It already was, but you had to jump through a few hoops to make it so.

Chris titus us working on something that makes it easy to deploy a consistent loadout across distros, but something like this that will setup steam, gamemoderun, kernel tweaks, etc… theres a laundry list of stuff that nobara does “oout of the box” that is wonderul, plus proton, but you can get all that on arch too with slightly more work. but the ‘slightly more work’ is quick;y becoming ‘run this thing that configures these 50 things’

so I think arch is winning/has won/is worth it with valve official backing/testing/resources

for the specific ask, no, dont switch from fedora to nobara. just make the tweaks to your fedora that nobaha has. like gamemoderun if you aren’t already. and lots of other little changes. :slight_smile:

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Interesting to hear it looks like it has already taken that mantle.

My PC is basically VM host + gaming, and currently on Fedora. Might spin up arch on the spare PC and compare the experience :slight_smile:

I figured it would be some way off yet.

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it is some way off yet for the “diy” aspect I explained but the effort required to diy is so so much less than even 2 years ago its shocking.

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I was totally shocked how simple steam+fedora was these days.

Granted, AMD system but I went from wiping windows to running games in steam and got (via heroic) with zero CLI - in like… a couple of hours, that was mostly waiting for games to download.

And not just old games. BG3, Cyberpunk, etc.

Good times! Linux gaming has come SO far in just the last 12-18 months.

My only issue right now is making opentrack head tracking work with DCS inside of proton.

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Wayland is probably something you’ll want to keep, if not now then later on. Valve is actively working as a maintainer on the project not unlike their efforts backing Arch Linux. I’ve actually been wanting to move my main gaming rig over to Arch Linux because it seems to be the way to go for gaming on Linux at this point with all of the testing and support from Valve behind it. You could probably use the arch installer distro if you want to install Arch the easy way.

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I could not care less wether I keep wayland or not. On the 1660ti with manjaro I could play deeprock galactic. I plan on replacing it with a 7900 GRE or XT. Then I will care again. Also, lads!
Variable refresh or freesync,right. Does it work on linux?

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I use Freesync every day. IMO freesync works better on AMD than on Nvidia. I have experience with both.

As a Wayland shill, I care :smile:

Edit: I notice now that you have an Nvidia card. To be honest, when I used Nvidia; I avoided adaptive sync because the experience was so horrible on that platform on Linux.

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What are these tweaks that actually make a difference?

The rest of this comment is just a bit of rambling.

I compared Arch pretty much out-of-the-box to a fresh install ubuntu, and it compared very favorably with no tweaks at all. Aside - never figured out why ubuntu introduced seemingly random but equally spaced frame drops in certain games, or some other less annoying issues it had.

Aside from gamemoderun and messing around with its config, what will actually make any difference? Somehow I doubt kernel tweaks will accomplish much of anything… that may be because the kernel is on my (long) list of “stuff I don’t understand”, though.

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Please post if you get this working.

I’ve been waiting on trying DCS to get solid info on hardware and software for head tracking and HOTAS.

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Oh I am not prejudice towards wayland. It just didn’t work for me. I am new to this linux thing.
Also, is there a guide on the forum to turn on freesync or vrr for nvidia or amd?
And then about vrr and freesync, can I set a custom refresh rate? I live on a farm. During the day I run at 120Hz. Waking up before the sun, I tend to run at 50Hz till the sun comes up.

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iirc there was a patch to add a windows like primitive to Linux that helped a fair number of windows games. transparent huge pages maybe. the acpi performance profile daemon out of the box. it’s balance being disabled. there’s probably a dozen more tweaks beyond that.

when you install Nobara there’s also a script that you could go look at for a better idea of what it does on top of the rest

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