You're viewing part of a thread.
How is it gatekeeping? It’s is a trap though, there is literally nothing in those distros making gaming better. It’s like those “gaming” branded mice or keyboard that just have more color and a higher price tag. It’s there to attract people, but in the end you’ll get roughly the same performance whether you use mint, ubuntu or arch.
They don't make gaming better, they make it easier for people who want to switch to have a functioning system, and there's no price tag at all. Some will learn from there, some will just keep taking the easy way and that's fine too.
It's gatekeeping because without them only people willing and able to get technical get access to Linux. Would it be better if everybody learned? Of course. It's not going to happen though, let others have a way in.
That’s the thing I don’t get. It only takes 5m starting from a fresh ubuntu/mint and the likes to be gaming ready. Even if you have no clue how to use a computer, there are hundreds of guides on how to do it in maybe 10m. Compare that to getting a gaming distro, which would save you those 10m but you’d pay the price next time you have an issue and realise the distro is way too niche for you to get a non-technical answer.
It’s not gatekeeping, I’m not keeping anyone away from Linux, I’m giving them a better path so they can have a smoother experience.
It takes 10 minutes for you. I know people who struggle to understand that the browser isn't google isn't the internet, try having them install a new OS. They don't follow the guides, because they don't even understand what they should look for.
Some understand enough but like the convenience, and again that's fair.Bedsides, gaming distros aren't the mess you say they are, nor are they so much more niche than any other major distro.
Usually they just work, when they don't you look for fixes in the underlying distro community.You are gatekeeping, and you are condescendingly deciding the best path for everyone else. I get that you honestly think it would be better, still people are different, what's best for you doesn't need to be the best for everyone else.
10m for anyone. If you’re able to go through the bios to boot on your usb, you’re able to take 5m to to google “gaming on x distro” and paste 3 commands (steam, lutris/bottles, nvidia drivers)
gaming distros aren't the mess you say they are
As someone who occasionally spends time helping people on forums, I’ve noticed that a very good chunk of people having issues are people using gaming distros or arch.
Another issue is the kernel mods that sometimes comes with those distros. A few years ago they were mostly all good, now the official kernel is generally better. If you look at recent benchmarks, the modded kernels will give you +2-5 fps in very specific tests and then -30 in the next. They also vastly vary by hardware. This results in many users having performance issues in some places but nobody being able to debug why.
Nobara might be the only one that is maintained and popular enough to make sense for anyone to use, the others are straight up traps.