What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?
What are some significant differences to expect when switching to an alternative, and can that affect gaming compatibility and performance?
If you are asking about “gaming compatibility” you should not switch to a non-systemd distro. You will end up going through extra hoops for zero benefit.
What kind of extra hoops? Or maybe it’s the type of games?
Asking because I switched to Devuan on my gaming PC and I didn’t need to do anything specific for games to work (Steam and Lutris).
The only exception is The Last Caretaker (UE5) that requires more recent NVIDIA drivers than those in the Debian repos, but that has nothing to do with systemd, it’s Debian/Devuan being conservative with updates to guarantee stability.
That’s kind of the best case scenario though: there isn’t even a significant benefit
And by hoops i only mean what you just described: small differences with the mainstream distros that might cause friction for someone inexperienced. It’s not the end of the world. I was being a bit hyperbolic
I think there are plenty of pragmatic reasons an experienced sysadmin or Linux power user might prefer OpenRC or something sysVinit compatible over systemd, but i think those reasons make a lot less sense to someone who is, respectfully, obviously a beginner (revealed by their use of the phrase “gaming compatibility”)