How to install Linux instead of Windows 11

[Emily Young]

Windows 11 is about to make a lot of people feel left behind, but there’s one operating system that’s recently been getting better and better for new and old hardware…

 

 

Check out Pop!_OS: https://pop.system76.com/
Grab BalenaEtcher: https://www.balena.io/etcher/
Grab Rufus: https://rufus.ie/en/
Get nvidia-patch: https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch
Get obs-nvfbc: https://gitlab.com/fzwoch/obs-nvfbc

[Murasaki]

I still got my eyes on Manjaro but if that doesnt work out ill try this one.

[YoungBlade]

I'm still rocking straight Ubuntu after 12 years.

 

I know people think Ubuntu is the most boring distro and that it's "for beginners" and that "real Linux users run Arch/Gentoo/LFS" or whatever, but I've yet to find another distro that just works out-of-the-box on all of the myriad of hardware I want it to run on with no issues. I've been running it since 8.04 and I've loved seeing it mature into a user-friendly, but still powerful, OS.

[LMFAOConnor]

I love Linux but can't stick to a single distro for too long.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

5 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I'm still rocking straight Ubuntu after 12 years.

 

I know people think Ubuntu is the most boring distro and that it's "for beginners" and that "real Linux users run Arch/Gentoo/LFS" or whatever, but I've yet to find another distro that just works out-of-the-box on all of the myriad of hardware I want it to run on with no issues. I've been running it since 8.04 and I've loved seeing it mature into a user-friendly, but still powerful, OS.

Cheers same here. The first time I tried Ubuntu was when I installed on a white 2008 macbook, and even back then everything just worked. Still with Ubuntu most of the time.

[R_public]

So I have question, in this part of the video; https://gyazo.com/755df2788352a8ad9738f51036c2c92c, what does it mean it will erase all the data on the drive? Like, if I install it to my 1TB SSD, will it wipe the SSD, or is it installing to a different "drive", please help.

[YoungBlade]

1 minute ago, Igitur said:

So I have question, in this part of the video; https://gyazo.com/755df2788352a8ad9738f51036c2c92c, what does it mean it will erase all the data on the drive? Like, if I install it to my 1TB SSD, will it wipe the SSD, or is it installing to a different "drive", please help.

The "Clean Install" option just wipes the drive clean and installs itself to that drive. You'll have to use the "Custom (Advanced)" option if you want to partition the drive for dual booting.

[WhitetailAni]

So when do we get a Linus Mint distro?

[Forbidden Wafer]

SteamOS next?

[KaitouX]

22 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I'm still rocking straight Ubuntu after 12 years.

 

I know people think Ubuntu is the most boring distro and that it's "for beginners" and that "real Linux users run Arch/Gentoo/LFS" or whatever, but I've yet to find another distro that just works out-of-the-box on all of the myriad of hardware I want it to run on with no issues. I've been running it since 8.04 and I've loved seeing it mature into a user-friendly, but still powerful, OS.

In my setup Ubuntu had a lot of issues with BT and audio, it was also much slower than Windows and other distros that I tried.

 

On the video: Another alternative that works well for booting into .iso is Ventoy, it's particularly good if you want to try multiple distros, as you can just drop all .iso files in the drive at once and select them at boot.

 

Lots of minor/niche software still have compatibility issues and usually they aren't popular enough for someone to have a workaround written somewhere. Software compatibility still is Linux biggest issue, even though it did get a lot better in the last decade.

[iLikeBananas]

I have a question, Anthony says that we should use FAT32 as file system. Because while NTFS supports file sizes over 4gb, FAT32 is overall more compatible. Does this mean that FAT32 does not support files over 4gb? What if I have a 10GB file, am I not able to save or open that file?

[Krilega]

I used Arch Linux full time a while ago, because I had full control over the installed software and thus, basically no CPU/Memory overhead to speak of (< 0.5% maximum CPU / 400Mb memory utilization while idling), which significantly dropped down my power usage from the wall compared to Windows. The experience with proton/dxvk/wine was awesome as well and they keep developing it.

 

I had to switch back to Windows unfortunately, because some of my devices aren't supported in Linux

 

Is there any way to IOMMU pass the only available GPU / USB hardware to a Windows Guest OS, knowing that I cannot use the Host OS while the Guest OS is running, and returning the hardware to the Host after shutdown of the Guest?

 

I don't want to install another GPU just to virtualize Windows for the couple of hours I need to use this crap OS a day.

Windows occasionally kills my UEFI boot settings of my Linux installation while trying to update itself, so dual boot setup is not a viable option as well.

[Hunter259]

1 minute ago, iLikeBananas said:

I have a question, Anthony says that we should use FAT32 as file system. Because while NTFS supports file sizes over 4gb, FAT32 is overall more compatible. Does this mean that FAT32 does not support files over 4gb? What if I have a 10GB file, am I not able to save or open that file?

Use something like ExFAT. Maximum file sizes are not an issue on that. You may need to jump through some hoops to do so.

[Forbidden Wafer]

Just now, iLikeBananas said:

Does this mean that FAT32 does not support files over 4gb? 

Yup.

Just now, iLikeBananas said:

What if I have a 10GB file, am I not able to save or open that file?

Exactly.

1 minute ago, iLikeBananas said:

I have a question, Anthony says that we should use FAT32 as file system.

You could probably use exfat, but not sure if Linux have kernel drivers for it or if it still relies on FUSE.

[iLikeBananas]

Okay, thanks for the help you two. If I am being honest, I was expecting it to be something under the hood. Like files over 4gb get split up in smaller files but without the user noticing it. You check it with the file browser and see one file, but on the actual hard drive it's saved as bigfile1, bigfile2 and so on.

 

I really didn't think it would straight up not work with those.

[Emily Young]

44 minutes ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn said:

As for the question in 12:30 - 'if it is so easy, why are there not that much users of it', I have a challenge for you. Ask your relatives to name an OS other than Windows.

If any of the major vendors would supply a Linux PC and advertise it like they do the Windows ones, it might have changed the situation a bit.

 

But vendors gotta bloat and it is easy to do on Windows.

  This is one major reason why most people don't use Linux. The reasons why Windows is the only OS option for many OEMs are myriad (and date back to the early 90s when MS split with OS/2), but the fact that Windows is "the standard" means that even if they might not care what operating system you use, they're going to default to Windows whether you want it or not.

14 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Yup.

Exactly.

You could probably use exfat, but not sure if Linux have kernel drivers for it or if it still relies on FUSE.

Support is in the kernel now as of Linux 5.4, while NTFS still uses FUSE. Paragon's NTFS driver has been submitted for mainlining in the kernel, though, so that might no longer use FUSE soon, too.

 

16 minutes ago, Krilega said:

I used Arch Linux full time a while ago, because I had full control over the installed software and thus, basically no CPU/Memory overhead to speak of (< 0.5% maximum CPU / 400Mb memory utilization while idling), which significantly dropped down my power usage from the wall compared to Windows. The experience with proton/dxvk/wine was awesome as well and they keep developing it.

 

I had to switch back to Windows unfortunately, because some of my devices aren't supported in Linux

 

Is there any way to IOMMU pass the only available GPU / USB hardware to a Windows Guest OS, knowing that I cannot use the Host OS while the Guest OS is running, and returning the hardware to the Host after shutdown of the Guest?

 

I don't want to install another GPU just to virtualize Windows for the couple of hours I need to use this crap OS a day.

Windows occasionally kills my UEFI boot settings of my Linux installation while trying to update itself, so dual boot setup is not a viable option as well.

Yes, there is a way to IOMMU passtrhough the only GPU and USB hardware (for USB, just blacklist the drivers and bind with vfio-pci like you would a GPU), although there's some additional steps for the GPU - in particular you have to detach it from the EFI console so that it can be reinitialized. It's not trivial unfortunately, just by virtue of how EFI GPU initialization works. Here's one script/tutorial that IIRC works. It helps if you do all this via SSH so you don't lose your input devices when binding the USB controller to vfio-pci.

 

7 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

Okay, thanks for the help you two. If I am being honest, I was expecting it to be something under the hood. Like files over 4gb get split up in smaller files but without the user noticing it. You check it with the file browser and see one file, but on the actual hard drive it's saved as bigfile1, bigfile2 and so on.

 

I really didn't think it would straight up not work with those.

FAT32 is an extension to a filesystem that was first created in 1977. The 4GB file limit wasn't an issue when it was made, and similar (but much larger) limits exist in NTFS and other filesystems today. The main reason it's still in use today is because it's relatively simple and its patents have all expired (which is also one motivation Microsoft had for making 32GB the largest FAT32-formattable drive size despite support for disks as large as 2TB, though there are technical reasons for this as well). It could in theory be abstracted the way you suggest by a file manager or driver, but there is no standard mechanism for this to happen. Instead you'll typically find compressed files like zip files split up that way, because they were designed with this kind of splitting in mind.

[nad2040]

8 minutes ago, Krilega said:

 

Is there any way to IOMMU pass the only available GPU / USB hardware to a Windows Guest OS, knowing that I cannot use the Host OS while the Guest OS is running, and returning the hardware to the Host after shutdown of the Guest?

Single GPU passthrough. 

 

[Krilega]

6 minutes ago, nad2040 said:

Single GPU passthrough. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, GabenJr said:

 Yes, there is a way to IOMMU passtrhough the only GPU and USB hardware (for USB, just blacklist the drivers and bind with vfio-pci like you would a GPU), although there's some additional steps for the GPU - in particular you have to detach it from the EFI console so that it can be reinitialized. It's not trivial unfortunately, just by virtue of how EFI GPU initialization works. Here's one script/tutorial that IIRC works. It helps if you do all this via SSH so you don't lose your input devices when binding the USB controller to vfio-pci.

 

Thank you guys. Will try it this weekend as I noticed that Windows really doesn't like it when you force uninstall systembloatware like Edge

[DJcoto1097]

is missing the link for check games compatibility :C

 

----- EDIT ------

 

found https://www.protondb.com/

 

 

[rpacker]

I've dabbled in dual booting Windows 10 and pop_OS a couple times. One thing I always have trouble with on pop_OS is with audio devices. I use a left/right balance of 91/100, and I found that pop_OS would reset my balance seemingly randomly. I also seem to recall having issues with audio jacks. I have a broken audio jack stuck in my front IO that I can't get out for the life of me (tips for this would also be appreciated), and I remember pop_OS using that instead of my USB headset. Any help with these issues would be fantastic.

 

That OBS plugin seems awesome, so thanks for that!

 

Also, I really liked Anthony's home layout. Could we maybe get a tutorial or write up on that?

[R_public]

50 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The "Clean Install" option just wipes the drive clean and installs itself to that drive. You'll have to use the "Custom (Advanced)" option if you want to partition the drive for dual booting.

So if I did partition my 1 TB drive, how would that work with downloading games into that install?

[YoungBlade]

Just now, Igitur said:

So if I did partition my 1 TB drive, how would that work with downloading games into that install?

If you partition the drive, it acts like two separate drives. So if you give 500GB to Pop OS, then it will have that space available for games, and Windows' drive space will be reduced to 500GB.

 

Being able to play a game using a single install across both Windows and Linux is often quite difficult and sometimes impossible. It depends on how exactly the game is being run in Linux. If it's being run using Wine, then it might work, but sometimes with additional issues beyond the normal ones, and if it's a native Linux version, that's not going to work on Windows at all.

[R_public]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

If you partition the drive, it acts like two separate drives. So if you give 500GB to Pop OS, then it will have that space available for games, and Windows' drive space will be reduced to 500GB.

 

Being able to play a game using a single install across both Windows and Linux is often quite difficult and sometimes impossible. It depends on how exactly the game is being run in Linux. If it's being run using Wine, then it might work, but sometimes with additional issues beyond the normal ones, and if it's a native Linux version, that's not going to work on Windows at all.

ACK, well that is annoying, due to World of Tanks being a data hog I don't exactly have much room to spare on my SSD *This I why I need to finish getting the parts for my new pc...* so I might have to uninstall a few things to make room. Or would a partition with about 250 work if I wanted to play smaller games, like simple steam games?

[YoungBlade]

Just now, Igitur said:

ACK, well that is annoying, due to World of Tanks being a data hog I don't exactly have much room to spare on my SSD *This I why I need to finish getting the parts for my new pc...* so I might have to uninstall a few things to make room. Or would a partition with about 250 work if I wanted to play smaller games, like simple steam games?

Linux doesn't need much space for the OS - my laptop has only a 240GB drive and Ubuntu itself takes up less than 10GB. Pop OS lists it's system acquirement as only 20GB, so you could definitely use a small partition.

[BuckGup]

Why was it worth mentioning windows 11 at all if the guide is how to install linux?