Linux questions

[Inception9269]

Which one?

I've always preferred using Windows, and only have a little experience with using Linux. Back in 2016 or 17 I tried getting into it, running it as a dual boot. It didn't work that well back then, especially when trying to get Nvidia drivers to work with it. Apparently Nvidia has improved since then, with the state of Linux gaming being so much better than back then. Linux still isn't quite to the point where I want to make the switch right now, but with everything surrounding W11 and all of its bullshit, I don't want to go to 11. Even if I have to force myself into switching to Linux as my main platform, I don't want to go to 11. Depending on how things change it could be a year from now or 2 years, but I want to switch over to it. My plan for now is to stick to 10 for as long as I can, or until Linux becomes more attractive to me.

 

I do use Mint Cinnamon in a non-gaming laptop of mine that I just use for casual stuff. I have used Ubuntu in a couple of my older laptops years ago, since they never received manufacturer updates to support 8.1 or above. So I am somewhat familiar with the platform and how to use it.

 

PopOS and Linux Mint are the two I've heard the most about, but not really sure which one would be the better option. I remember Linus in their video series trying PopOS but there was a major issue he ran into, though supposedly they patched that since. I'm currently leaning more towards Mint since I have more experience with them. Also I did read online that Mint gets much more frequent updates than PopOS does.

 

One thing I do want to mention, I still plan on waiting to see if things improve even further before I fully switch over to it, but right now I am strongly considering dual booting it again right now to try something different and see for myself what it's currently like.

[Skiiwee29]

<-- Moved to Linux, macOS and Everything Not-Windows -->

 

Please ensure you're selecting the appropriate subforum for new threads. 

[OhioYJ]

Since you are already familiar with Mint, this seems like an easy choice. Linux Mint also has no problems with secure boot, if you choose later to dual boot it with Windows 11. I use Linux for all my day to day tasks and only use Windows for Gaming. So most of my PCs are Linux only. My gaming machine dual boots Windows 11 and Mint.

 

I've always just loaded the actual NVIDIA drivers straight from NVIDIA. On the PCs that have secure boot on them, to keep things simple I am using the NVIDIA drivers from the package manager.

[Inception9269]

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Since you are already familiar with Mint, this seems like an easy choice. Linux Mint also has no problems with secure boot, if you choose later to dual boot it with Windows 11. I use Linux for all my day to day tasks and only use Windows for Gaming. So most of my PCs are Linux only. My gaming machine dual boots Windows 11 and Mint.

 

I've always just loaded the actual NVIDIA drivers straight from NVIDIA. On the PCs that have secure boot on them, to keep things simple I am using the NVIDIA drivers from the package manager.

Back in 2016 or so with the last time I tried using Linux on my main PC I believe it was straight up Ubuntu I used, and not any of the other versions. Whenever I tried installing Nvidia drivers, even from they themselves I ran into major issues back then.

 

I bring up Pop OS and Mint since I'm willing to go with whichever is decided to be the better option, currently though I'm leaning more to Mint.

 

I know Steam has done a lot with their platform, but not all of the games I play are through Steam. I have a couple through the Epic store, and also the Rockstar games store, as well as Origin and Uplay, though with the last 2 plus Epic I don't use that often, but still don't want to lose access to those games cause of compatibility.

[Inception9269]

Since things are always changing and improving, it's hard to get a clear solution since even recent videos on Mint and Pop OS I've found on YouTube are a few months old. I've seen some recommend Pop OS, more so than Mint for gaming. I know it's the one LTT covers more than others, so I might go with it and give it a shot, but not sure.

[OhioYJ]

12 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

 I believe it was straight up Ubuntu I used, and not any of the o.

Ubuntu and Mint are not the same thing at all. Even as someone who does basically everything on Linux, I don't game on Linux. Especially once you get outside of Linux native stuff or Steam, it's still at a point If rather just dual boot.  We're getting closer to a place where Linux could be a complete gaming OS replacement but I don't think we're there yet.

 

I have various Nvidia cards that have been run in various versions of Mint through the years, my gaming machine has 3080 in it, running the Nvidia drivers and Mint 20.3. At this point you should be able to just install the driver from the driver manager and have it work in theory. 

[Inception9269]

6 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Ubuntu and Mint are not the same thing at all. Even as someone who does basically everything on Linux, I don't game on Linux. Especially once you get outside of Linux native stuff or Steam, it's still at a point If rather just dual boot.  We're getting closer to a place where Linux could be a complete gaming OS replacement but I don't think we're there yet.

 

I have various Nvidia cards that have been run in various versions of Mint through the years, my gaming machine has 3080 in it, running the Nvidia drivers and Mint 20.3. At this point you should be able to just install the driver from the driver manager and have it work in theory. 

I know they're not the same, just saying Ubuntu was the last one I tried using on my main PC back then.

 

Mint is still the one I'm leaning to. Realistically speaking it's not like I have to commit to one, I'd just prefer to spend time only setting up an OS once, and not have to do it multiple times if the one I chose the first time isn't working for me.

[FeIIex]

I am also a Linux newb, and recently switched ship from Windows 10 to Linux for the same reasons. My distro of choice was Manjaro Linux, which is Arch based instead of Debian, of which Ubuntu and Mint branched off of. Main use cases are web browsing and gaming, and other than the initial set up, I haven't had many issues past that. My GPU is an AMD card though. Using Proton and tweaks on ProtonDB, I have been able to get everything I want to run well enough, except Metro Exodus Enhanced. The standard version works without any issues, though.

 

My laptop is currently running Linux Mint, which has an aging Nvidia 680m. That experience was not nearly as great, but I cannot determine whether its due to lack of knowledge, the Nvidia card it has, or my distros of choice. (Mostly issues with non native games not running at all, even through Proton and the tricks applied from ProtonDB. Tried both Proprietary and open source drivers)

 

18 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

I've seen some recommend Pop OS, more so than Mint for gaming. I know it's the one LTT covers more than others, so I might go with it and give it a shot, but not sure.

If you have a spare old HDD/SSD lying around, you can install distros on it until you find the one you like best without committing right away. I also heard something about creating a separate partition for the /home directory to make distro hopping easier, but I have not attempted it myself.

[Inception9269]

17 minutes ago, FeIIex said:

I am also a Linux newb, and recently switched ship from Windows 10 to Linux for the same reasons. My distro of choice was Manjaro Linux, which is Arch based instead of Debian, of which Ubuntu and Mint branched off of. Main use cases are web browsing and gaming, and other than the initial set up, I haven't had many issues past that. My GPU is an AMD card though. Using Proton and tweaks on ProtonDB, I have been able to get everything I want to run well enough, except Metro Exodus Enhanced. The standard version works without any issues, though.

 

My laptop is currently running Linux Mint, which has an aging Nvidia 680m. That experience was not nearly as great, but I cannot determine whether its due to lack of knowledge, the Nvidia card it has, or my distros of choice. (Mostly issues with non native games not running at all, even through Proton and the tricks applied from ProtonDB. Tried both Proprietary and open source drivers)

 

If you have a spare old HDD/SSD lying around, you can install distros on it until you find the one you like best without committing right away. I also heard something about creating a separate partition for the /home directory to make distro hopping easier, but I have not attempted it myself.

I'll likely just create a separate partition on my main drive, that way I don't have to keep switching drives during system boot. Back when I first tried out Linux on my main PC I dual booted it.

 

I just wish I had a bigger main drive. My main drive is a 256gb nvme drive. I should have plenty of space to make room for the Linux install, just wish I had more to work with.

[jde3]

If you prefer Windows why are you switching?

 

(Oh, because Microsoft is an evil data harvesting company? makes sense..)

Having used Linux since 1995 I get frustrated when people move and they want Unix to be more like windows because that is what they know and they just want to "use linux" because it's free or it's cool. When ppl ask "where is my c: drive" or "where is my computer" it's a very facepalm moment for me.

You need to go into it expecting everything to be different. It's not free windows and should not act like it. (that is ReactOS) In order to improve things sometimes you have to break the models you have become comfortable with. Linux is probably easier to use than Windows for someone who's never used a computer before but re-learning tasks on something new is very difficult and frustrating for people.. best I can tell you is expect it ahead of time.

That being said what to use is up to you. If you are comfortable in Ubuntu use Ubuntu. I would tend to stay to the more mainstream distros that have been around a long time. (Ubuntu, SuSE, Debian etc)
(I tend to like FreeBSD and Gentoo but I'm quite a bit different.. tho *harder distros will help you learn faster..)

[RollyShed]

As I've said before, a long time Windows user, system destroyed by Microsoft in  2018, sits down at Linux Mint the next day and carries on using her computer as if nothing had happened as everything had been copied on to a Linux Mint disk previously.

That easy.

Running a business (banking and accounts on spreadsheets), writing documents, web browsing, emailing, ZOOM, writing music scores, recording audio, etc., etc. 

OK, she is older so maybe she knows more.

 

Personally I've been using Linux Mint for a over a decade. I've installed it for about 30 users who use it exclusively and on a total of near 50 computers.

[Inception9269]

Started using Pop OS and I have a big question, how do I change the file location for things such as documents, downloads, pictures, etc.?

On windows the things I always changed was setting their locations onto a separate drive, so they weren't taking up space on my OS drive. Back on Monday night I did try out Linux Mint, and spent around 2 hours trying to troubleshoot certain issues I had, before I said fuck it and went back to windows. I then decided to try out Pop OS tuesday night and I've had much better luck getting that one working for me and doing what I want it to do. I remember changing the folder location on Mint was very easy and straight forward, but here in Pop OS I can't figure out how to change it at all.

 

[Ultraforce]

36 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

Started using Pop OS and I have a big question, how do I change the file location for things such as documents, downloads, pictures, etc.?

On windows the things I always changed was setting their locations onto a separate drive, so they weren't taking up space on my OS drive. Back on Monday night I did try out Linux Mint, and spent around 2 hours trying to troubleshoot certain issues I had, before I said fuck it and went back to windows. I then decided to try out Pop OS tuesday night and I've had much better luck getting that one working for me and doing what I want it to do. I remember changing the folder location on Mint was very easy and straight forward, but here in Pop OS I can't figure out how to change it at all.

 

I believe the way would be to have \home be located in a different drive. Though I don't know how that is done after the fact as I always did it during the install process because of some weirdness in how I dual boot and my storage.

[Inception9269]

13 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I believe the way would be to have \home be located in a different drive. Though I don't know how that is done after the fact as I always did it during the install process because of some weirdness in how I dual boot and my storage.

Tried following along with a guide online, but ran into issues since the drive was created and is used by windows. I could probably change things with the terminal, but really don't want to risk breaking things for if I do have to go back and use Windows. I'll probably just buy another drive, and have that one be solely used by linux.

[thepensivemonk]

3 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

Tried following along with a guide online, but ran into issues since the drive was created and is used by windows. I could probably change things with the terminal, but really don't want to risk breaking things for if I do have to go back and use Windows. I'll probably just buy another drive, and have that one be solely used by linux.

I would strongly recommend keeping different OS on separate drives. It greatly reduces risk involved in OS messing up the others drive structure..  Just my two cents.

[Inception9269]

47 minutes ago, thepensivemonk said:

I would strongly recommend keeping different OS on separate drives. It greatly reduces risk involved in OS messing up the others drive structure..  Just my two cents.

I have a 256gb nvme ssd that I use for my os drive. I have it split pretty evenly for partitions, with Pop OS installed on the other partition. It's still the same drive, and I have switched back and forth between it and windows, things still working fine on both OS's.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, Ultraforce said:

I believe the way would be to have \home be located in a different drive. Though I don't know how that is done after the fact as I always did it during the install process because of some weirdness in how I dual boot and my storage.

 

1 hour ago, thepensivemonk said:

I would strongly recommend keeping different OS on separate drives. It greatly reduces risk involved in OS messing up the others drive structure..  Just my two cents.

Would either of you know programs I can use for setting up things with my keyboard?

I have a logitech mouse & keyboard. I downloaded Piper from the Pop shop and was able to use that to set button commands for my mouse and also set up the rgb lights, but I don't know what to use for my keyboard to set up rgb and whatever else.

[thepensivemonk]

I have not investigated that far into Linux distro's in that depth to say myself.

[Ultraforce]

42 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

 

Would either of you know programs I can use for setting up things with my keyboard?

I have a logitech mouse & keyboard. I downloaded Piper from the Pop shop and was able to use that to set button commands for my mouse and also set up the rgb lights, but I don't know what to use for my keyboard to set up rgb and whatever else.

Sorry, for my G613 I haven't been coding enough in Linux to look into how to program the G buttons and I don't do RGB stuff. For the basic functionality need for a keyboard, it works by default.

[Inception9269]

I do have a question regarding some of my experiences trying out Linux this past week (which I want to share since it's a pretty interesting experience).

 

I started off things with Mint monday night, and spent like 3 hours setting it up and troubleshooting certain issues I was having, such as games not launching on Steam, no matter what I did. By 2am that night I said fuck it, and went back to Windows.

 

Tuesday night I decided to try out Pop OS, and I was able to sort through many of the issues I was having on Mint because of many guides I found online. I definitely learned a lot more about Linux from using Pop OS, but I still ended up spending a fair amount of time trying to find alternatives for things I would use on Windows, and was annoyed when there was no alternative. It was pretty cool getting things working, but it seemed like I had to put more time into it to make that happen. The other day though after just under a week of using it as my primary platform I said fuck it and switched back to my Windows install, and nuked the Pop OS one (one of my issues I made a post about here, regarding changes I was trying to make with my drives https://linustechtips.com/topic/1416184-help-with-m2-expansion-card/ ).

 

Basically yesterday I went by Microcenter and bought a 6900 xt (nice), and while I was at it I bought a 1tb m.2 ssd. I was running into issues where that drive wasn't showing up (I use a 4 slot expansion card, but apparently only 2 can be used unless I want to forego having a gpu), while troubleshooting that I removed one of the two drives in that card and put in the new one, and when I tried booting into Pop OS to see if the drive was gonna show I was just met with the grey login screen, but nothing was showing, just the grey background. I switched to windows to troubleshoot my problem, and afterwards I put my original drive back in that spot, upon which Pop OS behaved just fine. Later when I learned of the issue, I decided to switch out one of my drives for the new one. In the second M.2 slot on my mobo I have an old 500gb sata based M.2 that I threw in there long ago, and the new one I bought was a 1tb nvme drive. Before I shutdown my pc I tried both unmounting that drive from Linux, as well as deleting the custom location I added for it in the fstab, thinking maybe that would avoid any issues. But after I switched out those drives I ran into the exact same issue when I tried to boot into Pop OS, where I was just met with a grey background. Earlier that day I spent a fair amount of time trying to get AMD and Mesa drivers installed for the new gpu, as well as spending much time finding out just how to simply enable Freesync for my monitor for the OS. With all that shit there, and with that login issue that's when I said fuck it, and was done.

 

Not quite sure what my issue was there, that being something I haven't looked into afterwards.

 

Moving forward, I still don't plan on going to W11, and still want to make the switch to Linux permanently in the next couple of years. But honestly I don't know if I want to go back to Pop OS when that time comes. Not quite sure on which distro I'd want to go with when that time comes. I feel like I learned a lot from working with Pop OS to where I likely wouldn't have those same issues I had before with Mint. I'm also considering the Ubuntu distro, since that's one I'm also familiar with to some degree (I had a 2013 laptop that I used it on in the last year or so before it died, because the manufacturer never released drivers for anything above windows 8).

 

Was hoping for advice on which one I should consider, Mint or Ubuntu. I know there's Arch based distros, but Debian based ones are the only ones that I've ever used, and am more familiar with.

 

[Nitro2985]

I've personally found Fedora to be the best mix of bleeding edge (twice yearly releases, with support updates in between and EOL sunsetting at release -2 versions (IE 2 years total of support))  You're upstream like Debian rather than downstream like Ubuntu so you're not getting software that's was in from the upstream OS 6 months before the release candidate for your current version was locked in, which might now be years old.  It's been the least prone to blowing itself up (in fact it's never happened to me, while my Installs of PopOS have as well as all the various Arch varieties I've tried have too).

 

Flatpak has made all the software I need available on any distro now.  If you DO need something only available on another distro you can try Distrobox, which lets you make a sort of quasi-VM (though not really since it uses your OS's own kernel) to another distro.  I've happily installed stuff on the AUR in arch in a distrobox on my Fedora machine and it feels like its natively running (because it mostly is).

 

Only real issue with Fedora is it's super strict about not including any patent encumbered stuff out of the box, meaning that you do need to add the repos for stuff that might not be totally FOSS.  It's really simple to do so with a click in the software manager (and to add flathub you can jump over to their website and they have instructions for all the distros there).

 

TLDR: I did a bunch of distro hopping like you did at my start in Linux, from Ubunto-based to Arch based and back.  But ultimately settled on Fedora.

[Inception9269]

2 hours ago, Nitro2985 said:

I've personally found Fedora to be the best mix of bleeding edge (twice yearly releases, with support updates in between and EOL sunsetting at release -2 versions (IE 2 years total of support))  You're upstream like Debian rather than downstream like Ubuntu so you're not getting software that's was in from the upstream OS 6 months before the release candidate for your current version was locked in, which might now be years old.  It's been the least prone to blowing itself up (in fact it's never happened to me, while my Installs of PopOS have as well as all the various Arch varieties I've tried have too).

 

Flatpak has made all the software I need available on any distro now.  If you DO need something only available on another distro you can try Distrobox, which lets you make a sort of quasi-VM (though not really since it uses your OS's own kernel) to another distro.  I've happily installed stuff on the AUR in arch in a distrobox on my Fedora machine and it feels like its natively running (because it mostly is).

 

Only real issue with Fedora is it's super strict about not including any patent encumbered stuff out of the box, meaning that you do need to add the repos for stuff that might not be totally FOSS.  It's really simple to do so with a click in the software manager (and to add flathub you can jump over to their website and they have instructions for all the distros there).

 

TLDR: I did a bunch of distro hopping like you did at my start in Linux, from Ubunto-based to Arch based and back.  But ultimately settled on Fedora.

I'll probably wait things out a year or two before I dive back into Linux. As long as W10 is still being largely supported, and W11 isn't the only option.

 

I'm still something of a newbie with linux, so I'd still prefer to stick with a Debian based distro since that's what I've used the most now.

[jde3]

It's perfectly fine to use what you like. There is nothing at all wrong with Ubuntu. I doubt very many here would dig my Gentoo or FreeBSD builds but it suits me so I use it.

[Ultraforce]

21 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

I do have a question regarding some of my experiences trying out Linux this past week (which I want to share since it's a pretty interesting experience).

 

Tuesday night I decided to try out Pop OS, and I was able to sort through many of the issues I was having on Mint because of many guides I found online. I definitely learned a lot more about Linux from using Pop OS, but I still ended up spending a fair amount of time trying to find alternatives for things I would use on Windows, and was annoyed when there was no alternative.

 

 

 

Was hoping for advice on which one I should consider, Mint or Ubuntu. I know there's Arch based distros, but Debian based ones are the only ones that I've ever used, and am more familiar with.

 

I'm curious what were some of the software you were trying to find alternatives for things you would use on Windows are.

I personally haven't tried Linux Mint but while I've not really used it since initially dualbooting it and setting it up with grub and some other custom stuff but there's not been any major issues I've had with KUbuntu which I use rather then vanilla Ubuntu just because my familiarity with Windows makes me prefer that layout to that of Gnome.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, Ultraforce said:

I'm curious what were some of the software you were trying to find alternatives for things you would use on Windows are.

I personally haven't tried Linux Mint but while I've not really used it since initially dualbooting it and setting it up with grub and some other custom stuff but there's not been any major issues I've had with KUbuntu which I use rather then vanilla Ubuntu just because my familiarity with Windows makes me prefer that layout to that of Gnome.

I might look into KUbuntu whenever I do consider getting back into Linux, I've had that one recommended to me long ago when I was first looking around to see which one would be best to put on a laptop of mine. Mint I put on a laptop of mine that I got from a friend last year, that I fully refurbished (replacing the screen, keyboard, battery, putting in an ssd, and cleaning the fuck out of it) with Mint installed it was definitely a night and day difference from how it performed before and on Windows. That said I only use that laptop for very casual stuff like web browsing, and sometimes playing OSRS.

 

As for the whole software thing. I had to look around for something for my mouse + keyboard. I found Piper which allowed me to control my DPI, RGB, and control button macros on my mouse. I couldn't find a single thing for my keyboard though. Recently been playing the GTA Trilogy Definitive edition and I liked being able to set macros to my keys to auto type some of the cheats for it, so I don't have to enter them myself. Couldn't find anything that did that. I found one program on the software manager that let me set macros to my keyboard, but the problem is with keystrokes it doesn't type them out, it just enters them. Trainers are something I also use in certain games (such as GTA, and some others) and those don't work on Linux, and there was no viable workaround. I did come across the one cheat engine alternative, Game Conqueror or whatever it's called, but that wasn't an ideal substitute.