If I switched from Windows to Linux, would I have to reinstall all my games?

[kelvinhall05]

Before you state the obvious, all the games I care about work on Linux, and most of my Steam library does. So that's not an issue. The thing I'm wondering about is if I can just install Linux (let's say MX Linux, but I haven't really decided on a distro or if I'll even switch to Linux) on my SSD and not have to reinstall all my 900+GB of games on my HDD. Can I just add it as a Steam library folder like I would on Windows? Or will there be an issue with it being formatted NTFS, or something completely different? Thanks!

[Pixel5]

you would certainly have to redownload it exactly because of different file systems and even if that would work without a redownload you will need many files that steam will download which are OS dependent and not downloaded unless you are really on Linux.

[kelvinhall05]

4 minutes ago, Pixel5 said:

you would certainly have to redownload it exactly because of different file systems and even if that would work without a redownload you will need many files that steam will download which are OS dependent and not downloaded unless you are really on Linux.

I'm not surprised, but...fuck. Guess I'm not switching for a while

 

Thanks and Merry Christmas  

[rcmaehl]

Yes and no.

 

The majority will need a reinstall. Some may be only compatible with Proton and will run fine. Others may not be compatible with Linux or Proton at all and won't run. Just point Steam to the existing library and it'll grab the Linux versions of anything that NEEDS them and will let you know about the rest.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, rcmaehl said:

Yes and no.

 

The majority will need a reinstall. Some may be only compatible with Proton and will run fine. Others may not be compatible with Linux or Proton at all and won't run. Just point Steam to the existing library and it'll grab the Linux versions of anything that NEEDS them and will let you know about the rest.

It gave me some obscure error when I tried that. I can't remember what it was since the last time I tried this was around Halloween, but I might have made a thread about it either here or on Reddit. If I can find it I can tell you the error, maybe that will help...

 

But yeah, all the games I care about (basically just TF2, GTA V, and War Thunder) either have native support or work well on Proton.

[wasab]

Ah.... Yes. 

[Guest]

I share my windows steam library with Linux and here are the things I've noticed:

Probably because I'm using steam proton, every time I swich from Linux to Windows and/or from Windows to Linux there are something like 300Mbps that needs to be re-downloaded every time, only for steam play games I suppose

No issues so far with native games like Half Life 2 or other valve/source powered games, they have all the linux and windows binaries in the same folder, but I definitely had issues with other games which will re-download part of the files, like 100 megs or even get corrupted (just happened once) 

Moral of the story: Unless you got an  unlimited data plan and a decent connection, don't do that

I do that just because I want to spare disk space while having a decent connection