Nobara:Unofficial Fedora Linux 36 Spin focused on Gaming

Gaming and content creating on Linux doesn't stop with open source. In fact some of the most popular proprietary software and applications usually have open-source alternatives. 

Firefox-web-browser

Chromium-web browser.

LibreOffice- basic office suite.

kdenlive-video editing program

OBS-Software for video recording and live streaming. 

Handbrake-transcoder for digital video files.

Gimp-image editor

Blender- 3D computer graphics

Audacity-multi-track audio editor and recorder

As you can see, it’s not hard to find alternatives to popular software and applications. Open source programs offers more flexibility to the user. Proprietary software programs tend to be less flexible and often comes with restrictions. 

Gaming on a Linux distro 

Valve software several years back came out with a Linux native steam client. They thought it would convince many software makers to write code native to Gnu+Linux systems. Some did, but Valve didn't do a very good job of pushing Linux as a platform. Valve did come out with their own homegrown Linux gaming centric distro called steam OS but it hasn't been updated on the desktop in years. 

Thomas Crider (aka “Glorious Eggroll), a Software Maintenance Engineer at Red Hat, has created a very nice alternative to Steam OS called Nobara. My first impression, It is a distro powered by Fedora and targeted squarely at gamers and content creators. 

Here's a sample of list of packages, and software on the Nobara Project’s ISOs

NVIDIA drivers

OBS Studio

Wine dependencies (winetricks, gstreamer, etc.)

third-party codecs

Steam

Lutris

gamescope

xone (kernel module for wireless Xbox controllers)

goverlay

mangohud

vkbasalt

LibreOffice

printer drivers

kdenlive

Blender

ProtonUp-Qt

flathub

I'm sure many will argue that anybody can install all of those packages on any vanilla Linux distro themselves. However for new users that takes a little research to know what packages or needed for content creation and gaming. Mr. Crider goal seems to be to make a gamer’s life with Linux more simple. Everything is set up after first install so the user can get started on whatever task they are trying to do right away.

Is it a modified version of Fedora 36?

I don't think it's really fair to say that Nobara is just a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes added to it. People used to say that Linux mint was just a modified version of Ubuntu with proprietary packages absent from a pure the Ubuntu install. No I disagree. I feel that Thomas Crider (aka “Glorious Eggroll) is creating something special just like Clement Lefebvre and Vincent Vermeulen did with the creation of Linux Mint back in the day.

There’s 3 ISO that you can download:

Official – Nobara with a modified version of Gnome desktop.

GNOME – Nobara with the default GNOME desktop.

KDE – Nobara with the default KDE desktop.

My system configuration built in 2020 (Your mileage may vary)

CPU: Ryzen™ 7 2700 

GPU: Powercolor Red Dragon RX 5700

RAM: 16GB (2 x 8GB) (PC4 19200)

MOTHERBOARD: ASRock AB350M Pro4 (BIOS 5.90 2019/7/5)

STORAGE: Intel 545s Series 2.5" 256GB +WB Blue 1TB 7200 RPM 

HORI Fighting Commander for Xbox One wired USB controller.

Microsoft Xbox One wired USB controller.

Black Web wireless keyboard.

Zelotes T-90 USB wired Gaming Mouse

My impressions.

I installed the KDE version. The highlight of nobara Linux is its based on Fedora 36. Fedora is well known for having amazing hardware support. Plasma 5.24 looks stunning. The first boot presents a clean colorful desktop. There’s a kde logo in the bottom left that gives you access to an application menu, a system tray in the bottom-right corner, and no top bar. The layout is intuitive and simple. It’s set up nice by default, but you are free to customize the desktop.

Next I noticed the the RPM Fusion repositories are enabled out of the box. RPM Fusion provides software that the Fedora Project or Red Hat can't ship due to legal reasons. Flatpak flathub repository was also enabled by default. There are people out there that need proprietary programs like Discord, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Zoom, and Microsoft Edge browser. Flatpak flathub repository got you covered.

Watching streaming services.

Nobara Linux has a set of multimedia and graphics apps ready to use. Video and audio to play without any issues because of gstreamer. So play any movie you want to watch and listen to any song you want no matter format. Everything is just baked in. I was able to watch Amazon Freevee, Paramount Plus, Pluto TV, and Filmrise streaming services without a problem.

Playing games on Nobara project.

The Steam and Lutris gaming platforms or pre-reinstalled and ready to use. Of course, Wine is also included by default in Nobara Linux.

For my steam test, I selected ‘Stary' and 'Warframe’. Steam downloaded Proton 7.0-3 running with my system set for 1080p resolution. And, the Custom MESA-ACO drivers for my Rx5700 worked out of the box without any tweaks needed. I wanted to also test out OverWatch, but it's not available on steam. For that I had to use lutris to install and run it. The Lutris Overwatch install script is actively maintained and kept updated. I didn't have to make any modifications. 

Conclusion...

To be clear...the Nobara distro is not a ‘Fedora Spin’. As far as I can tell it's a completely completely independent project from Fedora. They do use fedora packages, code and repositories. Fedora Linux is a community-built distro sponsored by Red Hat, which was the most profitable open-source company in the world before its acquisition by IBM. However, Red Hat does not develop Fedora Linux directly, though some of the company’s employees are members of the Fedora community. While no distribution is a perfect fit for everyone, Thomas Crider (aka “Glorious Eggroll) primary goal is to give the most simple point-and-click user experience to new Gnu-linux users. His Nobara Project adds many necessary packages, and fixes issues by default that will make make Fedora Linux for new users. All my hardware was supported, I liked the default collection of applications and the distribution was very easy to set up. 

The distribution is available for download from the project website in three versions.

 Nobara Linux Changelog