I did it, I jumped ship from Ubuntu to Antergos and I honestly can’t see myself going back. Here’s some thoughts on that.
Why I switched
There’s many reasons for my switch, but the main one has been stability. Ubuntu has been getting more problem-filled with every new release for me so I had enough. Not only that, but due to it being dependent on GNOME packages, stuff was being stripped away too and it’s just a mess now. Some applications have normal title-bars, some have GNOME’s new styling with everything sodding hidden and it’s just all mashed together.
Audacity would constantly screw up and just skip over audio while trying to record or playback, or just flat out not work.
Multiple games wouldn’t give me audio until I killed PulseAudio and reloaded it or did other trickery. It was becoming a nuisance, especially when I want to livestream and “oh sorry guys, let me fix my audio, fuc…”.
It seems Ubuntu has a lot of problems with their setup of PulseAudio. I don’t know what they’re doing to it, but they’re murdering the poor thing.
Antergos, I choose you!
If Antergos is anything, it’s like walking in heavy rain without a coat and — suddenly the clouds part and the almighty sun is shining down on you to make everything better. Something like this essentially (thanks Samsai):
I’mdefinitely probably not overselling it — okay maybe a little.
I adore the Arch User Repository (AUR) and have found it so incredibly useful for multiple applications I use on a daily basis, especially when those same applications on Ubuntu could be out of date for weeks and months. The brand new Minecraft launcher was in it the day it was release by the official developers, the itch.io app is in it, everything I need is right there and tested by tons of people. It’s essentially a far better PPA-like system. It’s easier to understand too, thanks to a much clearer layout on the actual website.
Just don't outright trust everything on the AUR, make sure you read a few comments before installing a random package. I'm sure you're all smart enough to know to do that anyway.
Getting used to KDE after being on GNOME or GNOME-like desktops for many years has been a challenge by itself, but wow, it’s actually a lot nicer. Things aren’t hidden away where I don’t expect them to be, if I want something it’s usually right where I would expect it in a proper menu.
There was two “gotchas” I had to sort out. I couldn’t figure out why OBS Studio wouldn’t pick up any video, so eventually I tested gaming and games ran at 5 FPS. Turns out that installing the nvidia drivers didn’t come with the 32bit libs as a dependency. So, if you do decide to check out Antergos with Nvidia, make sure “lib32-nvidia-libgl” is installed too. This took me a good day to figure out too, as I didn’t think to test games until the next day and that made me realize it was a driver issue.
The second was that one day I booted up to a black screen with a cursor, as the system booted so fast that LightDM didn't load (Arch Wiki entry). I had to edit "/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf" to include:
I also learnt about bash aliases thanks to being on Arch, so instead of running something I can never remember like “Yuarty -sYusudaadasdas” to update, I have it setup so I just run “upall” in terminal and it updates everything for me — glorious! It’s easy to do as well, simply edit:
Add at the bottom:
You can substitute “yaourt -Syua” for anything, like “apt-get update && apt-get upgrade” for Debian/Ubuntu and so on.
And then save it.
Lastly, enjoy a shot of my KDE Antergos dual-desktop:
Seriously, you should give Antergos a try. It’s Arch, but a more tame Arch since it has a live-media option and you can pick what desktop you want from the installer. This was a key selling point for me, and the installer was a breeze too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Why I switched
There’s many reasons for my switch, but the main one has been stability. Ubuntu has been getting more problem-filled with every new release for me so I had enough. Not only that, but due to it being dependent on GNOME packages, stuff was being stripped away too and it’s just a mess now. Some applications have normal title-bars, some have GNOME’s new styling with everything sodding hidden and it’s just all mashed together.
Audacity would constantly screw up and just skip over audio while trying to record or playback, or just flat out not work.
Multiple games wouldn’t give me audio until I killed PulseAudio and reloaded it or did other trickery. It was becoming a nuisance, especially when I want to livestream and “oh sorry guys, let me fix my audio, fuc…”.
It seems Ubuntu has a lot of problems with their setup of PulseAudio. I don’t know what they’re doing to it, but they’re murdering the poor thing.
Antergos, I choose you!
If Antergos is anything, it’s like walking in heavy rain without a coat and — suddenly the clouds part and the almighty sun is shining down on you to make everything better. Something like this essentially (thanks Samsai):
I’m
I adore the Arch User Repository (AUR) and have found it so incredibly useful for multiple applications I use on a daily basis, especially when those same applications on Ubuntu could be out of date for weeks and months. The brand new Minecraft launcher was in it the day it was release by the official developers, the itch.io app is in it, everything I need is right there and tested by tons of people. It’s essentially a far better PPA-like system. It’s easier to understand too, thanks to a much clearer layout on the actual website.
Just don't outright trust everything on the AUR, make sure you read a few comments before installing a random package. I'm sure you're all smart enough to know to do that anyway.
Getting used to KDE after being on GNOME or GNOME-like desktops for many years has been a challenge by itself, but wow, it’s actually a lot nicer. Things aren’t hidden away where I don’t expect them to be, if I want something it’s usually right where I would expect it in a proper menu.
There was two “gotchas” I had to sort out. I couldn’t figure out why OBS Studio wouldn’t pick up any video, so eventually I tested gaming and games ran at 5 FPS. Turns out that installing the nvidia drivers didn’t come with the 32bit libs as a dependency. So, if you do decide to check out Antergos with Nvidia, make sure “lib32-nvidia-libgl” is installed too. This took me a good day to figure out too, as I didn’t think to test games until the next day and that made me realize it was a driver issue.
The second was that one day I booted up to a black screen with a cursor, as the system booted so fast that LightDM didn't load (Arch Wiki entry). I had to edit "/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf" to include:
[LightDM]
logind-check-graphical=trueI also learnt about bash aliases thanks to being on Arch, so instead of running something I can never remember like “Yuarty -sYusudaadasdas” to update, I have it setup so I just run “upall” in terminal and it updates everything for me — glorious! It’s easy to do as well, simply edit:
~/.bashrcAdd at the bottom:
alias upall='yaourt -Syua'You can substitute “yaourt -Syua” for anything, like “apt-get update && apt-get upgrade” for Debian/Ubuntu and so on.
And then save it.
Lastly, enjoy a shot of my KDE Antergos dual-desktop:
Seriously, you should give Antergos a try. It’s Arch, but a more tame Arch since it has a live-media option and you can pick what desktop you want from the installer. This was a key selling point for me, and the installer was a breeze too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
jasondaigo Jan 19, 2017
welcome to the arch family ;-)
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Ray54Currently, I assume that your game reviews are performed on the current Ubuntu LTS. So, if a game works well for you, it should work well for me on my up to date Mint OS (as mostly on the same code base). Similarly, most commercial Linux games are tested against Ubuntu (and perhaps Steam OS), but often not against Arch type distributions. Assuming that you will use only Antergos for future reviews, can you give your views about the relevance of those future reviews for the current majority of the GOL readership, that if I understand your stats properly, use a Ubuntu based distribution.
[...]as I am thinking of trying Fedora and Arch myself, but I am concerned about loosing simple and reliable execution of games in my now large games library.
This concern is distribution independent, so unneeded. For Games it matters what kernel, drivers, mesa version you use.
Commercial games saying "supports Ubuntu,Nvidia" has primaly to do with legal protection.
In fact says nothing about how games working on users system or distro - Ubuntu is behind, arch-based distros are more bleeding-edge - saying that all games a running on my arch/amd since years, better as on ubuntu benchmarks, even if the news media claims otherwise (just gives me head shaking e.g. if "phoronix" says it doesn't work on amd card or has some regression, but it runs for me perfectly - since years he does fake news about bashing amd (vs nvidia) - but he just don't realizses that it's his broken ubuntu, not the amd driver (or he is paid from nvidia and does it on force))
Also lets asume a game offical only "supports" ubuntu - so what? If your pariticular ubuntu system is broken, the game still doesn't work - nothing gained.
So in the end: less worry, more doing!
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: natewardawgManjaro. It blends stability with bleeding edge, doesn't break as often as the more pure Arch(s)I don't like this false claim that "pure Arch(s)" break more often - or even ever break. It's just not true!
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: UnholyVisionAs others have said, welcome to the Arch life. :Dor just use pamac as gui (from manjaro) - if away from terminal;)
QuoteYuarty -sYusudaadasdas” to updateOnly a suggestion (For the people wanting the more lazy route), but if you want Yaourt fancy, you should try out "yaourt-gui" in the AUR. At least anyone that doesn't blindly install everything from AUR. Because it makes Yaourt very basic user-friendly. You still need to know package names, but it makes searching the names easier too. As you just type the number 8 for "yaourt -Ss", follwed by a prompt you enter text for said search.
0 Likes
I've been on Ubuntu Mate for about 2 years now. Left Linux Mint on my main gaming rig. I use Lubuntu on some of my older rigs and machines. I've not had any issues with Pulse Audio or the like. Were you are on Ubuntu or some derivative? I've found Ubuntu problematic for me in the past. The DE does not help me get to what I need to go and there are many lib files I had to install to game properly.
I have questions for Antergos users:
* How are installs from GOG library?
* Is Vsync automatically dealt with like on Ubuntu Mate?
I have questions for Antergos users:
* How are installs from GOG library?
* Is Vsync automatically dealt with like on Ubuntu Mate?
0 Likes
what i do is install antergos cli base install with only aur support. then login in and:
you get stock gnome3 basics only, on a minimal base, with a decent packaging tool. no extra stuff installed, like themes, icon packs etc. you can go do that yourself if you want.
would love if antergos just instaled stock de's/wm's instead of customizing it.
sudo pacman -S gnome pamac && sudo systemctl enable gdm.service && rebootyou get stock gnome3 basics only, on a minimal base, with a decent packaging tool. no extra stuff installed, like themes, icon packs etc. you can go do that yourself if you want.
would love if antergos just instaled stock de's/wm's instead of customizing it.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: MegazellI've been on Ubuntu Mate for about 2 years now. Left Linux Mint on my main gaming rig. I use Lubuntu on some of my older rigs and machines. I've not had any issues with Pulse Audio or the like. Were you are on Ubuntu or some derivative? I've found Ubuntu problematic for me in the past. The DE does not help me get to what I need to go and there are many lib files I had to install to game properly.These 2 questions have nothing to do with wether using ubuntu or any other distro - it's still linux. It's about the version of kernel, software, xorg/X11/wayland, mesa ... you use.
I have questions for Antergos users:
* How are installs from GOG library?
* Is Vsync automatically dealt with like on Ubuntu Mate?
Last edited by lelouch on 19 January 2017 at 12:53 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: GuestWould it be a good option for people new to Linux?I'm torn on it, it depends on how good their general PC skills are. The installer isn't quite as straightforward.
For now, personally, I will still recommend Ubuntu for people to start with, especially as it's the distro that gets the main support for gaming.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: PirateSkogenCan Antergos dualboot safely with Windows 10 on a UEFI system? I currently dual boot Ubuntu 16.04 with Windows 10 on my main gaming desktop. I would be willing to give Antergos a try, but I need to know that it can install easily and work with a Windows 10 dualboot situation. Ubuntu handles this situation very well but not all distros do.
Yes it can. Out of the box. In my case right after installing Antergos, the menu wasn't on grub, just had to run:
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
0 Likes
Quoting: MegazellI have questions for Antergos users:GOG games install like any other distribution, as they use their own installer based on Mojo Setup.
* How are installs from GOG library?
* Is Vsync automatically dealt with like on Ubuntu Mate?
As for VSYNC, no, since you pick the desktop environment at install it's up to you to enable little bits like that for whatever DE you pick.
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