A Smooth Start - Week 1 of Using Linux

 

Week 1

I had recently finished building my first PC, and it was finally time to install the operating system. At first, I thought that I would just go for Windows like most people, but when I learnt about Linux, I was doubting if I should even pay the $139 to activate Windows 11 Home. So I begun my research into finding the perfect Linux distribution to my taste. I decided to go with Nobara, a distro based on Fedora Linux. It was gaming-centred, and seemed to be very promising. I proceeding into creating a bootable USB using the Fedora Media Writer software on MacOS, which ended up being very straight-forward.

Spoiler: I didn't end up going with Nobara. You see, I was having troubles with my PC trying to get a display on my monitor, and I had to wait several days for a repair to be completed. With all that time, I was starting to accumulate doubts about Nobara. While Nobara was still a very famous Linux distro, ranked top 13 on DistroWatch, I was looking for a distro with a lot of support and a massive community, while also being adapted for gaming use. The number one distribution ranked by "hits per day" on DistroWatch was CachyOS, leading by far, and after some research I found out that it had great support for the Proton compatibility layer used to play non-native games on Linux. I installed it onto my USB after erasing Nobara and inserted it into my PC.

A list of the Linux distributions with the most hits. Source: DistroWatch

DistroWatch's Distribution Ranking

From my motherboard's BIOS, I started up the USB in the boot menu and waited about 30 seconds for CachyOS to download itself. Greeted by the user-friendly Cachyos-Hello software, I was redirected onto my desktop homepage and could freely use this new desktop environment. I opened Firefox and installed some basic application packages. When I tried to update the system to the latest version through Konsole, which is the terminal equivalent in CachyOS, the system recommended me to restart. However when I did so, I found myself back into the computer's BIOS. So I reinserted the USB and restarted the process, and I finally understood that I hadn't actually installed CachyOS onto my hard drive yet. I did so and managed to fully establish my Linux system. 

Now that it was all set up, I installed Steam using the forum and the "pacman" package installer/manager and downloaded Kerbal Space Program, Elden Ring, and Red Dead Redemption 2. I had already played 70+ hours in Kerbal Space Program (KSP) on my previous device, a Mac Mini. Comparing the loading speeds, this PC was about 10 times quicker on the first boot. Getting back to the two AAA games, I had just acquired them as I wasn't able to play them on MacOS.

I had a flawless experience updating my system using the "paru" software. All I had to do was open the terminal app, which in this case is called "Konsole". By typing "paru" or "sudo pacman -Syu", the system checks all of the installed packages for any updates and immediately installs them if they are available. Around the time when I installed this operating system and wrote this text, a big new release of CachyOS dropped, the first big one of this year.

This pretty much concludes the first stages of my Linux experience. Thank you for reading and see you next week!  

 This is the first episode of my Linux Experience 2026 blog series. Every week, I upload a post talking about my experience using this unique operating system! Sign-up with your email to receive a notification when a new blog releases, it's free!

 Click here for Week 2.

 

My PC Specifications:

  • AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3D

  • AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB VRAM

  • 32 GB DDR5 6000Mhz CL30 RAM

  • 2 TB NVMe 5.0 SSD 

 Other Components:

  • 27'' 2560x1440 320Hz 1ms Monitor

  • B850-Plus Motherboard (WiFi 7)

  • 850W Power Supply

  • Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB

  • 5x Artic P12 Case Fans

  • Phanteks XT Pro   

 

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