MASSIVELY regretting updating my gaming PC to Kubuntu 26.04.
Something's gone awry with the Nvidia drivers (obv), and there appears to be no way to install an older version. I specifically requested the 535 version, but it went ahead and installed 580 anyway, and now I can't boot into Plasma.
I have an older, now unsupported GTX1060, so I suspect the new drivers won't play ball with it. And now I'm kinda fucked.
Think I might take the opportunity to hop away from Kubuntu on that machine. Might set it up with Arch (btw).
Sort of tempted by Bazzite or Cachy, but my understanding is that ultimately they're just Arch with extras.
How's Debian for gaming?
Welp, as I type, Arch(btw) is installing on my gaming machine. And in theory /home will remain intact.
In theory...
So Arch installed pretty easily. Even successfully kept /home intact, which was nice.
BUT THE FUCKING NVIDIA DRIVERS ARE STILL BEING CUNTS.
Jesus fucking wept.
Why do these companies make this shit so hard?
Seems that it's pacman deciding that what I really want is the open version of the drivers, not the one I *actually* want. So I try to install the one I actually want and it says "Hey, here's that nvidia-open driver you asked for!"
and oh god I think I might cry.
YOU WILL ALL BE PLEASED TO KNOW THAT MY GAMING PC IS NOW SORTED
Fuck knows what I managed to do to the Kubuntu install, but it's now running on Arch, with kernel 7.0.2, Plasma 6.6, and the same 580 nvidia driver I could NOT get to work properly, and it's all working just fine.
For now.
Even managed to switch it across from Kubuntu to Arch without losing /home, which blows my tiny mind.
Until I work out how to, or even if you can transfer installed programs over, I do still have to go through and reinstall stuff, but by and large it's all sorted now.
Sorry for keeping on about this but...
When using Kubuntu, I found installing things like Sunshine (the game streaming server) to be a massive arsehole. Indeed, the only way I managed to get it working reliably in 25.10 was by following the instructions to build it myself from the source. Which is stupid. But I could not get any of the prebuilt binaries to work, and the dev's attitude was *shrug*.
Meanwhile, on Arch, I downloaded archSunshine.sh from their GitHub, made it executable, ran it in a terminal, and now it's working. It took ten minutes, and that includes the time it took to open the various firewall ports.
But Arch is supposed to be the double-hard-bastard Linux distro...
I honestly don't know enough about these things to begin to really understand the difference, but my experience of Arch so far is that, yes, it does require a bit more setting up than Ubuntu, but once you've done that it's pretty straightforward.
Also, Flatpaks have helped.
UPDATE:
So, turns out that when you install Arch from the installer script, it's apparently quite easy to forget to install the audio stuff. So I had to fix that today. Then, once pipewire and everything was installed, I still didn't have any sound settings.
Turns out you also have to install a thing that lets your DE talk to pipewire.
Anyway, that's all sorted now, and I spent a couple of enjoyable hours playing Horizon Zero Dawn, snipering bandits and using a Big Fuck Off Gun to blow up machines.
Fun.
@DJDarren CachyOS is optimized for newer hardware, but otherwise it's Arch with some configuration out of the box.
Bazzite is Fedora if I'm not mistaken, and I'd never use Debian for gaming, because even unstable can take a while to update packages.
@qwc This may be the route I have to take.
It seems likely that the 580 drivers just won't work properly with my 1060, and I've no idea how to roll them back, because Ubuntu's package manager only lists the current one.
I can get into Plasma if I use software rendering, but then the GPU sits completely idle. Or I can access the GPU, but it won't actually display anything. But not both.
DJDarren
woe2you
Tom
Dan MacLeod 
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