There’s growing interest in the Linux operating system as a platform for gaming and game development. It may not be the right choice for everyone, but for all you Linux enthusiasts and hobbyists out there, we are proud to offer a custom version of Arch Linux designed with gamers and game developers in mind: Golden Drake Linux (GDL)!
GDL is a highly-modified fork of the Anarchy installer and thus, like Anarchy, it’s technically not an independent distro. Rather, it’s simply a convenient method for installing a customized version of Arch. It’s also provided without any warranty or promise of technical support: it’s just a fun open source side project that we hope might be of interest to a few folks out there beyond our walls.
There are pros and cons to each of the major Linux distros, but we’ve gravitated toward Arch for the following reasons:
- Arch is a robust, well-managed, rolling distro that offers bleeding-edge versions of software while still maintaining an extremely high level of stability (reports to the contrary are exaggerated).
- In addition to extensive official repositories, Arch offers convenient access to a seemingly endless array of additional software for those bold enough to venture into the Arch User Repository (AUR). This greatly reduces the need to rely on flatpaks, AppImages, or snaps, though these options are available, too.
- The Arch community is highly knowledgeable and maintains one of the all-time best sources of Linux lore: the ArchWiki.
- The overall structure and philosophy of Arch make it uniquely versatile, customizable, and liberating.
The only major downside of Arch, in our view, is that its standard installation process can be intimidating for newcomers and time-consuming even for experienced Linux users. This is why we see great value in installation helpers such as ours.
For detailed information about GDL’s features, system requirements, etc., see the project’s README file.
To download the latest ISO, visit the releases page.