It’s not so much the lack of a rapid update cycle as much as it’s the pinned kernel version alongside the years-long pace of Debian’s stable upgrade cycle.
That would be fine if the kernel didn’t see much improvement over ~2 years of development, but there’s constantly new stuff being added or optimized with every kernel release. It’s just not much of a friendly introduction to Linux gaming for a newcomer to either have to pick between missing out on recent improvements, or diving into the intimidating realm of fiddling with packages and backported kernels—especially if they’re not coming from a tech savvy background.
Most Linux users, including gamers, don’t really benefit from improvements to Linux since most of it is drivers for hardware they don’t have. Most userland software can be installed via flatpak or PPA (or other form of additional repository for your distro) if you really need something newer. But my understanding is that people (esp gamers) get annoyed more by stuff changing than missing out on new stuff.
The whole point of recommending a stable distro is to give the best chance of the person finding the help they need, as well as things not breaking randomly, and you get that with stable release distros. If the user knows enough to disregard that, they know what distro would be a better fit anyway.
It’s not so much the lack of a rapid update cycle as much as it’s the pinned kernel version alongside the years-long pace of Debian’s stable upgrade cycle.
That would be fine if the kernel didn’t see much improvement over ~2 years of development, but there’s constantly new stuff being added or optimized with every kernel release. It’s just not much of a friendly introduction to Linux gaming for a newcomer to either have to pick between missing out on recent improvements, or diving into the intimidating realm of fiddling with packages and backported kernels—especially if they’re not coming from a tech savvy background.
Most Linux users, including gamers, don’t really benefit from improvements to Linux since most of it is drivers for hardware they don’t have. Most userland software can be installed via flatpak or PPA (or other form of additional repository for your distro) if you really need something newer. But my understanding is that people (esp gamers) get annoyed more by stuff changing than missing out on new stuff.
The whole point of recommending a stable distro is to give the best chance of the person finding the help they need, as well as things not breaking randomly, and you get that with stable release distros. If the user knows enough to disregard that, they know what distro would be a better fit anyway.