What is a Distro?
Distros (short for distributions) refers to the name of the Linux operating system. Due to the nature of Linux there’s effectively an infinite combination of ways that Linux can be customised and distros are the starting points to where the operating system has been customised. You can then customise that even further.
Think of the Linux Kernel as a blank canvas and a distro as a picture that you can colour in. Someone’s taken the time to put in the drawing for you so that you’re not starting from scratch but you can then draw on top of the picture, replace any of the colours that have been pre-applied or just leave it as it is and you have a pre-coloured picture that’s ready to go.
Distros are built on top of base distributions. The base distributions are built from the Linux kernel or, in some cases, other distros (for example, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian). These include but are not limited to:
- Fedora (for example, Nobara)
- Debian (for example, Ubuntu)
- Arch (for example, CachyOS) – Note that Arch is typically the least user-friendly
The base distributions are typically pretty raw compared with the end distro. The distros that are built on top of the base distributions are more polished versions.
How to Pick a Distro
This is a tough one. Anywhere you look there will be fans of specific distros stating that you should use X over any other distro. If you asked 100 Linux users which distro you should use you’ll probably get 75 answers. However, as you’re looking at playing FFXIV you’re probably after a user-friendly, gaming-first distro, which helps narrow things down. I would still recommend doing your own research but this shortlist should help:
| Distro | Base | Difficulty | Why it’s good for FFXIV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bazzite | Fedora | Very Easy | Gaming-first distro that’s almost “SteamOS for PCs”. Excellent out-of-the-box gaming support. |
| Linux Mint | Ubuntu/Debian | Very Easy | Extremely beginner-friendly and highly stable. |
| Nobara | Fedora | Easy | Fedora optimised specifically for gaming and content creation. |
| Pop!_OS | Ubuntu | Easy | Great hardware support and beginner-friendly. |
| Fedora Workstation | Fedora | Easy | Modern packages with excellent gaming support. |
| EndeavourOS | Arch | Medium | User-friendly Arch with access to the AUR. |
| CachyOS | Arch | Medium | Gaming and performance optimisations built in. |
| openSUSE Tumbleweed | openSUSE | Medium | Very stable rolling release with excellent QA. |
| Arch Linux | Independent | Hard | Maximum flexibility and bleeding-edge gaming packages. |
| Garuda Linux | Arch | Medium | Gaming-focused Arch derivative with lots of tweaks. |
If you’re on Windows the common recommendation is to use Rufus to create a bootable USB from the distro’s ISO. From there, follow the distro’s installation guide.
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