I am a software developer and used to working with wsl, debian servers, etc. I selfhost a bunch of things and know my way around the linux commandline and would call me privacy enthusiast that uses a lot of FLOSS software. I also do occasional gaming but I guess that should work on any distro with enough work.

You’re a power user who has enough technical knowledge to deal with the issues of running bleeding edge.

I’d say Arch, even the manual install isn’t too complicated once you’ve done it a few times and then you’ll have access to the latest and greatest packages.

Occasionally this results in some weird bugs. For example, currently, when waking from suspend my HDMI outputs fail to connect until I change the display properties, so I wrote a bash script to toggle the refresh rate and bound that to a hotkey so I can recover without a display. I’m sure in a day or two a system update will fix it and, if not, I know how to locate the problem (in the system log: kernel: nvidia-modeset: WARNING: GPU:0: HDMI FRL link training failed. ) and report it on the appropriate bug tracker.

If this doesn’t sound intimidating then you’ll be fine as an Arch user.

How about CachyOS?

Tumbleweed absolutely is an all purpose distribution. Most distributions are. Very few are specialised enough to make a difference.

And they really mostly all install the same thing in the end. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Just pick something that’s not obscure and that has a release cycle that works for you.

For kde, I’d say that the best maintained ones are suse, fedora and kubuntu, in that order (although with the latter you still get Ubuntu, so ymmv).

Doesn’t seem like anyone mentioned it yet, so I’m gonna chime in: Bluefin-DX by Universalblue might be worth a look.

It’s a special developer version of their already interesting and rock solid atomic distro, meaning it’s not rly meant that you do much with the OS part of the filesystem (I’d recommend you read up on it, since I xan’t explain it that well) It has VSCode preinstalled (you can replace it with VSCodium tho with a simple command IIRC) and allows you to doing up virtually endless Linux environments where you install your additional programmes that aren’t available as a Flatpak (you can still use them in the CLI, DW)

Based on your write-up, one of the Arch based distros is likely your best bet. My strong recommendation would be EndeavourOS. It is awesome.

If you use EOS, install both the current stable kernel and the LTS one. Use current day-to-day. In the very rare instance that you have a kernel or driver issue, boot into LTS.

Fedora is a great distro. As a non-American, I would say that you do not need to be so focussed on either IBM or the “American” control over Fedora.

1 - Fedora has a great community and a strong commitment to Free Software. Independence from Red Hat’s commercial agenda is the very reason it exists.

2 - Even in a worst case scenario, you are not locked into Fedora and switching is low risk and easy. There is little downside to enjoying Fedora now even if something was to happen later (however unlikely).

3 - modern Linux distros are almost all built from the exact same base elements. Fedora is really no more exposed than anything else.

4 - Red Hat is a driving force behind half the technology at the heart of whatever distro you will end up on including SystemD, Wayland, Pipewire, Glibc, GCC, and the Linux Kernel itself. To repeat point number 3, you are no less exposed to the influence of IBM/Red Hat on Ubuntu or even Arch.

I mean, you could use something like Chimera Linux that avoids SystemD, GCC, and Glibc. But you would still be using Wayland, Pipewire, and of course the kernel. And Chimera does not sound what you are looking for.

I would recommend EOS but I would not avoid Fedora for the reasons you cite.

Good job eliminating Ubuntu.

Seems like you answered your own question. If a gaming software engineering privacy enthusiast isn’t a power user, I don’t know what is.

Also, Tumblweed really isn’t intimidating. Give it a try.

Well from what you’re saying I’d go for something like EndeavourOS.

Based on arch, usable out of the box but without much preinstalled so that you can do your own mix. Manjaro is a bit similar but with more preinstalled (and maybe more bugs from what I read).

It all comes down to how “techie,” you are. If you want something safe, than Debian is fine. All you have to do is not use Debian Stable and use Debian Sid. There are also many other Debian based distros that are excellent for new comers. Many are likely to recommend you Mint, which is a fine distro for people how are new to Linux.

OpenSUSE is pretty good if you are into rolling releases. Fedora is excellent if you want to be building your own apps from source and know how to use the proper flags when building. However, if you want something that is a bit faster and simpler to use, then I would suggest something else.

If you want something independent and you say that you know your way around computers then either Arch or something Arch based, so you are not going full on KISS. In the end, it all comes down to how much of a DIY system do you want and much of a system you want to just work. Do you wan it be rock solid or with a higher chance of breakage.

Personally if you want to go pure, then go Debian Sid, it is a good mix of rock solid along with some newer packages and it is way more stable --statically speaking, or sort of-- than Ach. Again, this is anecdotal as you will have a number of people say that they had been on Arch for a while without any issues. So, people’s mileage may carry.

On one of my old machines, I have been testing Q4OS and Mabox, which are Debian based and Arch based respectably and they have been border line perfect for years. Q4OS uses KDE out of the box. Mabox uses Openbox, so it might not be something you are looking for. Both are very light on resources which you can use for running all the apps you want.

However if you have copious amounts of RAM and you want something a little more known, then check out Mint, or NixOS. The latter requires a bit of a learning curve but if you already work with computers, and have no issue reading documentation then you won’t find it difficult.

I’d just go Tumbleweed

Someone else mentioned it, but another vote for Aurora-dx (-dx for the developer version). It’ll give you the KDE experience without having to worry about your underlying system, leaving you time to work on software dev in a containerized environment of your choosing. Arch is great if you want to customize and tinker with everything, but given your parameters, I think not worrying about that bit will make your life easier as you focus on what’s more important to you. As long as you reboot your computer from time to time, you’ll always have the latest version and can rollback easily if something goes wrong.

And as is tradition with Linux, it’s not like you have to use whatever you decide forever. Distro hopping is a time-honored tradition!

Just because nobody’s mentioned them yet and they are worth trying out: Solus & Void. Both are independent and rolling distributions.

Give NixOS a look-see. Takes a different approach to package management, but for an engineer that want’s customization abilities it’s probably one of the top choices. I don’t usually recommend this for newbies, but if you’re an engineer it won’t be too bad and simply using it may give you more skills to add to your repertoire when looking for work.

A lot of people put time into maintaining their dotfiles, but NixOS takes that idea to the infrastructure-as-code level when you use it as your daily driver.

ETA: in terms of gaming, with Wine/Proton + Steam/Lutris/Heroic pretty much any distro will be workable

I would recommend Arch, EndeavourOS or Garuda (awesome KDE gaming ed,) and a lot of peeps like CachyOS, mostly for their customized kernels/CPU optimizations. You can get CachyOS kernels inside of Garuda as well.

You sound like a perfect fit for Arch.

I’ve pretty much run every distro under the sun. From arch to Gentoo to Debian and all of the middle ones. I then landed on endeavour OS and used it for around 3 years. It was great until it broke.

Every couple of months something breaks and I can never fix it. Nothing fixes it, even a timeshift restore. I just had to reinstall, and that was painful. I’ve then set out on a new hunt.

I’m now experimenting with Nobara OS as it is a better Fedora and comes with some goodies for gaming. It’s been ok so far besides this occasional random freezing that I can’t figure out. It goes away by either rebooting or switching to a tty and back to GUI. I’m still experimenting with it. If it works well, I’ll keep it, if not, my next experiment will be BazziteOS. I did try mint for a little bit, too, and liked it, but I wanted to explore more.