switch to Linux distro...

[Killjoy_NS]

Hi to all!

I've seen similar topics...but...

I need help.

I have problems with Windows 10 which I'm sick to fix and to reinstall Windows every few months.

 

I'm gonna try to switch to any Linux distro which supports Steam, Origin/EA and Epic platform for gaming.

I'm not a "gamer"...but occasionally I like to play something...

 

I don't know anything about Linux.

 

Maybe I can install it myself...but that's it.

 

Any suggestions, tips...which distro should I try?

Any particilar commands...I should know about/remember them...

 

Thank you.

 

P.S. I've got connected 48" TV through HDMI as a secondary display just for watching movies and stuff.

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, Killjoy_NS said:

I'm gonna try to switch to any Linux distro which supports Steam, Origin/EA and Epic platform for gaming.

Steam supports Linux, but the others don't (the software has to support/run on the OS, not the other way around). You may be able to get them running through Wine (a compatibility layer that translates Windows API calls to Linux), but no guarantees.

 

8 minutes ago, Killjoy_NS said:

Any suggestions, tips...which distro should I try?

The go to for beginners is usually Ubuntu or something based on Ubuntu like PopOS!. Maybe go for dual boot first, see if it's for you, before you commit to it full time.

[thevictor390]

Nothing supports EA or Epic officially. They have no Linux Clients.

Steam works on nearly everything.

Unofficially you can run the EA or Epic clients through Steam, or through WINE/WINE-based projects, or the third party launcher Heroic for Epic Games.

Just pick a common distro and go, you'll get a thousand suggestions, but which one works for you you won't know until you try a few out and learn what you like.

If you want it to feel kind of like Windows, use something that includes KDE or Cinnamon. My suggestion among the thousands would be Linux Mint.

[Killjoy_NS]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

Steam supports Linux, but the others don't (the software has to support/run on the OS, not the other way around). You may be able to get them running through Wine (a compatibility layer that translates Windows API calls to Linux), but no guarantees.

 

The go to for beginners is usually Ubuntu or something based on Ubuntu like PopOS!. Maybe go for dual boot first, see if it's for you, before you commit to it full time.

Thank you for your answer.

I don't even know how to make dual boot, but I'll find out.

 

I'm sick of drivers...(AMD).

Yesterday I had to uninstall all my drivers cause of random crashes etc.

 

I simply can't take it anymore.

[Killjoy_NS]

1 minute ago, thevictor390 said:

Nothing supports EA or Epic officially. They have no Linux Clients.

Steam works on nearly everything.

Unofficially you can run the EA or Epic clients through Steam, or through WINE/WINE-based projects, or the third party launcher Heroic for Epic Games.

Just pick a common distro and go, you'll get a thousand suggestions, but which one works for you you won't know until you try a few out and learn what you like.

If you want it to feel kind of like Windows, use something that includes KDE or Cinnamon. My suggestion among the thousands would be Linux Mint.

Well, I'm not afraid of GUI so to speak, but those commands if I have to use them here and there (terminal thing)

I hated even MS-DOS back in the day.

I know about Linux Mint.

Looks nice though.

[Killjoy_NS]

3 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

Nothing supports EA or Epic officially. They have no Linux Clients.

Steam works on nearly everything.

Unofficially you can run the EA or Epic clients through Steam, or through WINE/WINE-based projects, or the third party launcher Heroic for Epic Games.

Just pick a common distro and go, you'll get a thousand suggestions, but which one works for you you won't know until you try a few out and learn what you like.

If you want it to feel kind of like Windows, use something that includes KDE or Cinnamon. My suggestion among the thousands would be Linux Mint.

Is WINE some sort of emulator for Windows apps?

[thevictor390]

Just now, Killjoy_NS said:

Is WINE some sort of emulator for Windows apps?

WINE stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, it's kind of a joke but it's basically what you would expect, it is used to run Windows apps. It's how you do a lot gaming in Linux since games don't support Linux that often. Steam has a version of it built-in called Proton.

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Killjoy_NS said:

Is WINE some sort of emulator for Windows apps?

Wine stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's a compatibility layer. It translates API calls made by Windows software against the Windows API into API calls against the Linux API instead. It doesn't really emulate anything.

[Killjoy_NS]

1 minute ago, thevictor390 said:

WINE stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator, it's kind of a joke but it's basically what you would expect, it is used to run Windows apps. It's how you do a lot gaming in Linux since games don't support Linux that often. Steam has a version of it built-in called Proton.

Haha! That's funny.

Wine

Is

Not an

Emulator!

[Killjoy_NS]

Ok, cool.

Ok, recommendation is Mint and Ubuntu.

Thanks guys.

I'll let you know of my progress.

[NinJake]

Can't go wrong with either of those! Look into the different graphical interfaces for each and choose what you think looks best.

[corrado33]

1 hour ago, Killjoy_NS said:

I have problems with Windows 10 which I'm sick to fix and to reinstall Windows every few months.

If you're having trouble with stuff in windows 10, you're not going to have a good time in linux.

 

48 minutes ago, Killjoy_NS said:

Well, I'm not afraid of GUI so to speak, but those commands if I have to use them here and there (terminal thing)

I hated even MS-DOS back in the day.

I know about Linux Mint.

Looks nice though.

If you hate the terminal, you're not going to have a good time on linux.

 

I'm going to be 100% honest with you here. You don't seem very computer savvy. I think you're going to have extreme difficulty with linux and just getting stuff to work in general. 

 

EDIT: You can certainly... try... it. Lookup "live distributions" and you can boot into one just by booting off of the usb, but to switch over to linux with so little experience is a bad idea. 

[thevictor390]

3 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

If you're having trouble with stuff in windows 10, you're not going to have a good time in linux.

 

If you hate the terminal, you're not going to have a good time on linux.

 

I'm going to be 100% honest with you here. You don't seem very computer savvy. I think you're going to have extreme difficulty with linux and just getting stuff to work in general. 

Can't disagree here, I don't know what happens with Windows that you have to reinstall so often to be honest. You'll probably be fixing Linux just as often. Personally I haven't reinstalled Windows on my desktop since XP but I've been through 4 Linux Distros on my laptop.

[corrado33]

3 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

You'll probably be fixing Linux just as often.

More often. 100% more often. 

 

And that's assuming he ever gets it installed and booted to a GUI. 

 

And you're right. If you're having to reinstall windows 10 every few months, then you're doing something wrong and/or you need to stop downloading sketchy hentai games. 

[Zando_]

18 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

If you hate the terminal, you're not going to have a good time on linux.

You can do pretty much everything in Mint in GUI, barring RAID setup, which I doubt OP needs.

18 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

If you're having trouble with stuff in windows 10, you're not going to have a good time in linux.

^^^ This is true, especially for gaming. As others said, only Steam supports Linux right out of the gate, and only some Steam games will run well, and of those that can run well only some will run flawlessly. It's the easiest as Steam has put in a lot of work to try and improve the situation due to their Steam Deck running Linux. The other platforms will be much worse, and I wouldn't even bother with trying to get anything EA to run. They tend to ban people using emulators/translation layers as that sort of thing interfaces with the game in the same way cheats do. They do not support Linux and so they've obviously never bothered to update the anti-cheat to recognize the difference. Anything with an anti-cheat is going to be similar, if they don't support Linux officially then it's likely gonna get you banned. Even anti-cheats that do technically support Linux, only do so with a toggle, that most developers do not enable, as it's less secure.

 

If you just want to enjoy games, install windows 11 (no reason to use 10 over it, and 11 has some improvements and has been stable for me and many others) and call it a day. If you're having to reinstall every few months, then either you're messing with things you shouldn't, or your RAM is running unstable enough to corrupt things, but not enough to cause constant BSODs.

[whispous]

What on earth are you doing to your computer to "need to reinstall windows every few months"?

 

By the way, switching to linux doesn't fix busted hardware or incessant user-meddling software breakages, whichever is causing your OS to get utterly mashed repeatedly

[corrado33]

7 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

You can do everything in Mint in GUI, barring RAID setup, which I doubt OP needs.

They say this, then you run into a problem which inevitably requires you to go into the terminal. That's just linux in a nutshell. 

 

With that said, it's been a good 5 years since I've messed with linux. 

 

Despite being a programmer and being intimately familiar with bash, the reason I left linux was "because I got sick of having to go into the terminal to fix things after doing an hour of research." Everything I wanted to do just... worked better on mac or windows. Sure, I could do MORE on linux, but I didn't need to do more. I wanted the things I did to work better and with less maintenance. 

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

They say this, then you run into a problem which inevitably requires you to go into the terminal. That's just linux in a nutshell. 

I'm saying it. To be fair, I did not run like that for terribly long, but I did have a good try at doing everything through GUI, I only had to open up terminal when trying to configure some RAID stuff. This was a few months ago, Linux Mint 21.something. Terminal is still much faster to get anything done, but if you hate copy pasting commands (that's all I do aside from the few I have memorized that I use all the time ) then GUI is a decent option now, and it's unlikely you'll have to use the command line.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, Killjoy_NS said:

Hi to all!

I've seen similar topics...but...

I need help.

I have problems with Windows 10 which I'm sick to fix and to reinstall Windows every few months.

 

I'm gonna try to switch to any Linux distro which supports Steam, Origin/EA and Epic platform for gaming.

I'm not a "gamer"...but occasionally I like to play something...

 

I don't know anything about Linux.

 

Maybe I can install it myself...but that's it.

 

Any suggestions, tips...which distro should I try?

Any particilar commands...I should know about/remember them...

 

Thank you.

 

P.S. I've got connected 48" TV through HDMI as a secondary display just for watching movies and stuff.

What I'd recommend doing is familiarizing yourself with Linux, and not doing braindead Linus shit. That being when he dived head first into it without doing his homework or at least checking out video guides, only to cry about how it's not the same as windows. That video truly irritates me so much.

 

I've learned a lot about Linux from folks on Youtube, such as Chris Titus Tech and also TechHut (with TechHut having many in depth videos showing how to setup new installs of various distros).

 

As far as which distributions to look into, Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is the one that I recommend, with me preferring that one over their main piece that's based on Ubuntu. Debian is rock solid, and more stable than Ubuntu, and with this version of LMDE being based on the most recent release of Debian things should work just fine.

 

Mint does have really good software and driver installation tools, which would minimize the need to use the terminal. That said you should still know and respect the terminal for what it is. Trust me when I say once you understand how it works and get comfortable using it, it makes things a whole lot quicker and easier. Mint uses the Apt package manager, which means if you wish to download a program (for example Steam) you would need to use the command "sudo apt install steam". For a new install you'll also want to install wine and winetricks, with that being ""sudo apt install wine" and ""sudo apt install winetricks" one thing you can do is include multiple names to install several programs at once instead of one at a time. But in the case of Wine & Winetricks I've run into some hiccups in the past when trying to install both at the same time.

 

Another thing I recommend installing is NTFS-3g ""sudo apt install ntfs-3g" it's preinstalled in a lot of distros, but that will help you access drives that are NTFS format, that being the format Windows uses. Also in the case of playing Steam games on Linux, one issue that I've run into in the past when using NTFS formatted drives with Steam in Linux is that Steam not wanting to recognize those drives and allow me to run games that are stored on them. If you have all your drives formatted with "EXT4" or "BTRFS" those being the standard ones for Linux then you won't have any problems, but if you wish to use an NTFS formatted drive for your Steam library than this video guide here works really well, and still holds up.

 

When it comes to playing games on Linux, it's all possible thanks to Proton. Proton functions similarly to Wine, but designed specifically for games. If you check out video guides on playing games on Linux they'll walk you through this one, but inside of the Steam settings there's a tab for compatibility, with there being two boxes you need to check, with Steam prompting you to relaunch it once you enable them. When it comes to playing games with proton, the initial start is pretty slow since a lot of times they need to compile vulkan shaders or something along those lines. By default it will try using whichever version of proton you selected in the compatibility tab, with Proton Experimental usually being the best option to go with. Sometimes though certain games will require you to use different versions of proton, or even custom commands in order to get certain games to work. https://www.protondb.com/ is a really useful site to see info on this, and what versions of proton might be required and any other argument. You can use different versions of proton (and also add arguments) for each individual game by right clicking on them and going to properties.

 

One thing I recommend when it comes to proton is looking into GloriousEggroll's custom proton, with there being a simple app that can download and install it for you https://flathub.org/apps/net.davidotek.pupgui2 , when it comes to downloading and installing different versions of proton generally speaking you'll need to close out of Steam and relaunch it for the newly added versions to be shown. GE's custom proton a lot of times has better compatibility than Valve's.

Other things to note, when it comes to drivers. AMD drivers are always installed by default on Linux, though when it comes to Nvidia drivers most distros don't install those by default. Based on your posts up above it sounds like you're using AMD gpus, so you should be fine.

[E-waste]

@Killjoy_NSPlease do NOT let Linux commands kill your joy of learning Linux.  I'll share a newbie secret that doesn't seem to exist in Windows dos / powershell command line.

 

First, @Inception9269is spot-on and you for 100% sure absolutely must add the mounted folder path to your windows games directory, into this file.  It seems archaic at this point, but it hasn't changed in 30+ years...  Redhat gets it:

 

https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/etc-fstab

 

Directly from link above:

Quote

For all of the improvements made, there are still "old school" pieces of the puzzle that we simply can't live without. Filesystems, and by necessity, filesystem tables, are one of these constants. These can be a bit tricky for a lot of users, so we will look at /etc/fstab (fstab) a little closer.

 

I'd like to add some detail to it though.  I do not add the uid and guid 1000 bits.  I don't think it is required, please try it without that.

 

Also, the very last two 0 0 at the end are quite important.  As the article states leave the very antiquated and unused first 0 at that, and make sure your Linux filesystem has a 1 at the very end to do a filesystem check.

 

Make sure the directory of the games you add has 0 2

 

This way, it will also get a filesystem check.  Speaking of filesystems, there is a new NTFS driver directly inside the Linux kernel, starting with 5.15, and Linux kernel is well into the 6.6 series now, so there is no need to install ntfs-3g.

 

KDE is a great desktop, but has a LOT to load with their personal information management KDE PIM software, that I still don't know how to turn off.  It slows down the speed of loading into the desktop, and if you want to go very light and fast

 

LXQT

 

very basic and simple themes and colors, but lighter or resources for keeping more memory free for games, instead of your desktop.  Linux offers choice (some might say too many mediocre choices) so there are about eight different desktops and ten's of "window managers".  WindowMaker is cool as you can create your own color gradients (smooth gradients too) with as many colors as you want, for both menus, and your wallpaper too, so that's fun to theme.

 

__

__

__

 

I am still struggling to get Dirt 2 to open on Steam in Linux.  The install is done, but I think it is still getting stuck adding some directX or Games for Windows Live stuff, which I hate.  Even on windows I added the xlive.dll to use a local file save.  My point is, not all games work, and you can check

 

https://protondb.com

 

for game compatibility.

 

___

___

 

The commandline can seem like a drag, but to update your system, it can take 20+ seconds just to open the update manager and have it refresh.  In linux, you can make your own commands.

 

Instead of trying to remember:

 

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade (it will ask yes or no before it continues)

 

You actually have the option to name this command string whatever you imagine.

 

It does require either editing the file in /home/.bashrc

 

or create the file specifically for aliases designated inside that file:

 

/home/.bash_aliases

 

I have posted about aliases today on the forum, as there is a post about it here.

 

Open command prompt and type:

 

sudo nano ~/.bashrc

 

sudo is super user do, nano is quite an easy-to-learn text editor with shortcuts listed at the bottom of the page, and ~/

 

means your current users /home directory, so you don't have to type /home

 

In this file, it has a section near the end for aliases, but you can put them wherever you want, and even delete the current ones after you use the existing ones to copy the required fornat.

 

If you read the very bottom of the bashrc file, it tells you to run a command (that you could also make an alias for!) which is:

 

. ~/.bashrc

 

That updates the file.

 

alias install-steam='sudo apt install steam'

 

alias delete-everything='sudo rm -rf /*'

 

Warning, because all active / mounted / explorable drives are now a part of the system, (I learned this after I also ran the comnand) it will also include anything mounted, such as your Windows games drive.  I saw my computer screen flying text up the screen, with a black background, and just the console still open thinking, what else is there to delete.

 

That's when I saw "music".  That's all I could see as I had the console zoomed in, as I usually do, and it would not show more than the end of that folder name.  So I caught it quick and it only deleted just a handful of music files.  No idea which ones though.  That was several years ago, I think I'm definitely missing supertranp - goodbye stranger as I haven't had that song for a while now, but not sure about the other few.

 

To cancel a command, ctrl c

 

 

So if you want to try this, unmount all drives that aren't the main Linux storage.

 

alias install-googleearth='sudo apt install googleearth'

 

alias install-marble='sudo apt install marble' this one is KDE's marble / globe program, worth a try.

 

So there is a lot of command customization you can do, if you dislike the style of the included commands, and use them a lot, name them something else.  Does that allow you to dislike commands less?

 

__

 

You most likely want to change the swappiness value.  By default, Ubuntu uses a swap file, incredibly similar to Windows Pagefile, used since probably Windows 98.

 

For whatever reason, I'm still liking the use of swap partitions, I guess because I can make a partition on a disk, and can usually make sure it is near the beginning of the hard disk, incressing the speed by 20%.

 

The default value assumes a 4x speed difference between your memory and your storage.  That's way off, even for old hard disks.

 

To change it from 60, make an alias, add this to the ~/.bashrc

 

alias swappiness10='sudo echo vm.swappiness=10 > /etc/sysctl.conf'

 

That changes it across reboots, but, not immediately.  To test the performance difference and try other values live:

 

alias swap10now='sudo echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness'

 

That will immediately (but only until you log out) tell the system to keep more programs in memory, as moving things to a swap file will slow down the system quite a bit.  Setting it higher, larger values, it goes up to 200, will also tell the system to keep more buffers / cache in memory, instead of just programs.

 

free -m will show you Linux memory usage, and the buff/cache in megabytes.

 

Linux is the world's most used operating system to date, from the device in your pocket (could be UNIX, apple, but that is what Linux is based on very closely), to your wifi router, smart TV, network switch, to the web server you are connected to viewing this website.

 

It is also used by all top 500 supercomputers in the world and major film studios, in both visual design and especially render farms.  So even if you don't enjoy Linux, it is still a good idea to know about it, and learn a little bit, as it is used all over the world, and runs basically all web servers.  There are also great podcast about Linux to stay updated about what is going on:

 

Destination Linux, and, I'm still not sure if they are joking or serious, it's not at all unlikely, but they claim they know some Microsoft employees listen to this podcast during work... Could be.

 

Linux out Loud

 

Hardware addicts

 

Das Geek, also on youtube, if it is difficult to find.

 

Those are all from the same network of podcast, Tux Digital.

 

https://phoronix.com/

 

great resource for Linux news and hardware performance.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, E-waste said:

This way, it will also get a filesystem check.  Speaking of filesystems, there is a new NTFS driver directly inside the Linux kernel, starting with 5.15, and Linux kernel is well into the 6.6 series now, so there is no need to install ntfs-3g.

Not entirely sure if that's the case.

 

I did a recent install of Arch, and had issues using my NTFS formatted drives with Steam. I could access the drives and the data on them, but was limited in what I could do until I installed ntfs-3g. Still had to add the lines in fstab to make them work like in the vid I linked.

 

One thing I've seen some vids on is with AMD gpus on Linux, where oftentimes I guess the system by default has them set to a energy saving profile that really hurts performance, and there's an edit you can make with the terminal to set it to high performance as intended, but I was having trouble finding intel on that. Me personally I've had significantly better performance with Nvidia hardware on Linux than with AMD on Linux. The only exceptions that I've run into being the HoloIso, which makes sense considering it's based on the Steam Deck's OS. Also for whatever reason OpenSuse (a distro I've tried many times now and really want to daily drive) runs like complete ass with my Nvidia hardware (3080 ti) with me getting really bad artifacting and ripples and shit that I don't get on any other distro. Am using Arch again for now, but once Fedora 40 comes out with Plasma 6 that's one that I really want to play around with.

[Killjoy_NS]

10 hours ago, corrado33 said:

If you're having trouble with stuff in windows 10, you're not going to have a good time in linux.

 

If you hate the terminal, you're not going to have a good time on linux.

 

I'm going to be 100% honest with you here. You don't seem very computer savvy. I think you're going to have extreme difficulty with linux and just getting stuff to work in general. 

 

EDIT: You can certainly... try... it. Lookup "live distributions" and you can boot into one just by booting off of the usb, but to switch over to linux with so little experience is a bad idea. 

Well, I never reinstalled Win in a few months. Back in the day it was in a year and a half.

But in recent months, something happened.

I've experienced crashes, unexplained...daily...can'r even watch a movie without crash.

I'm fixing computers for 20 years...

I don't know what is going on...and I don't care.

So for daily needs, Mint is awesome.

I installed it last night.

Installed it with RufusUSB cause tool from Mint site gave me black screen...and now everything works fine.

I'm not planing to "program" or what not...just regular use.

[Killjoy_NS]

10 hours ago, corrado33 said:

More often. 100% more often. 

 

And that's assuming he ever gets it installed and booted to a GUI. 

 

And you're right. If you're having to reinstall windows 10 every few months, then you're doing something wrong and/or you need to stop downloading sketchy hentai games. 

Haha! I don'r download "hentai" games nor I'm a MMO fan.

My 11yo son is playing Fortnite I play on daily basis Asphalt 9 Legends and that's it.

I have Steam with 130+ games, Epic with 300+ games (bunch of them were free) and EA app/Origin which I don't use.

I didn't test my ram, but I "tested" cpu in Prime95 and gpu in FurMark.

Cpu had some "miscalculation"...something was expected to be 0.4 but I had 0.5.

FurMark was running for an hour and half...72-73c with 100% load.

Everything was fine.

[Killjoy_NS]

My basic daily needs:

-Firefox which is connected through account on my Android and Windows.

-Office suite, which there is Libre on Mint.

-Steam.

 

That's it.

I didn't turn on Terminal not even once.

I just want stability.

Nothing more.

 

P.S. I left dual boot with Windows 10.

 

As soon as I used to Mint, Windows is going down.

[Killjoy_NS]

Well, I have encountered first problem.
I will try to redirect folders such as "Music, Videos, Downloads etc." to a hard drive (NTFS), drive created through Windows.

Also, qBittorrent does not allow me to save downloaded files to another drive except HOME or Computer (where you can browse between Music, Video, Downloads in HOME) also.

So...this is like "mediocre" function in Windows...why can't I do it in Mint?

 

P.S. Please, don't tell me that I have to format all HDDs to ext4 or something like that...
Cause I have 3TB HDD which is almost full and 1TB HDD which is half full.