I used to distro hop frequently before Linux was almost supported by many things. I preferred Fedora derivatives but Ubuntu pushed those out in the dev space. I switched to Arch because it was funny then a few years ago switched to EndeavorOS because it was easy. I currently can’t get things like OBS to work smoothly (when my display sleeps, screen captures have to be deleted and rebuilt), sharing my screen with basically any tool is a nightmare, and I’m just kinda tired of compiling fixes and deeply configuring. I’m spoiled by the work experience on a Mac where all of this stuff works and it’s POSIX compliant.
What I’d like out of the box
- Solid support of OBS or other streaming tools
- Easy screensharing
- Decent audio experience
- Packages not Snaps (if I have to cave on this one I have to cave)
Linux is Linux so the rest of what I do will work almost anywhere. Godot, Rust, and a browser are basically all I need.
LMDE Cinnamon. Boring. Rock solid.
OpenSUSE Aeon
It’s just Aeon btw
Thanks for correcting
Yeah, we’re gonna need more details, like your DE, GPU, maybe the monitor?
But I would start by test booting images and just… see what OBS package works out of the box. Try Cachy or Nobara with KDE, plus whatever their respective wikis say about OBS usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjABILVAz5Y
this dude twitch and yt streams from linux and everything you listed seems to work for him
Sounds like it might be more of a DE problem than a distro problem. I’d recommend trying KDE Plasma if you haven’t already.
Sounds like you’re looning for Nobara.
- Stable Fedora base, optimized for games and creative work.
- WINE, OBS, codecs, and third-party repositories preconfigured.
- Less time in the terminal, more time playing and creating.
This might be wrong but I think many of screen sharing related issues actually come from wayland. If you’re on wayland and can switch to X11 on your current system I’d try that first before deciding on a new distro.
I’d recommend cachyos because of cachy update which runs updates all your stuff regardless of where you got them. Flatpak, Pac-Man, appimage whatever
I’ve used it for 3 months or so and it’s great, just works.
Decent audio experience?
You can tweak any distro but, pay attention to using Jack + PREEMPT_RT kernel + Xlibre (X11).
Avoid Wayland (especially with nvidia GPU), avoid Pipewire and avoid Gnome desktop.
I suggest starting out with Debian stable as the base. There are specialised AV Linux distros available but nothing beats knowing what you’re doing from the outset.
If you need the very latest version of a particular app not available as a distro package, Flatpak is your friend. Again, Debian ‘.debs’ and AppImage are most prevalent third party packages outside the proprietary app stores of Flathub & Snapcraft.
Avoid Wayland (especially with nvidia GPU), avoid Pipewire
Why? I have multiple devices running on Wayland (incl. 1x NVIDIA GPU), as well as Pipewire, and they run fine; what was your experience?
How is your experience with screen sharing?
Fair point, I haven’t tested that yet





