On Moving From Windows To Linux

[okkee]

On Win10. Want to see if Linux is viable so I switch beginning of the year. All I really do is browse the web and play games, mainly on steam or from GoG. 

Main questions:

1. What's the best distro for gaming?

2. Does a switch mean a loss of data?

 

Current System:

i7-4790

5600xt

16gb ddr3

b85 board

240gb sata ssd (boot)

500gb hdd

[Senzelian]

My Linux experience is pretty limited, but the best experience I ever had was with Pop!_OS. 

 

https://pop.system76.com/

[whispous]

1 hour ago, okkee said:

2. Does a switch mean a loss of data?

This question being asked could indicate you're not ready to switch to Linux.

 

The key things I think this indicates:

 

1. you and you alone are responsible for your data - if you value it, you need a backup of it that you test so you know it's there and safe. A backup means a copy of it in a second, and ideally a third location on different devices.

 

2. Typically, you are wiping the partition/whole drive when you switch OSs, so yes, data will be lost.

 

3. Some people, when they say data mean not just their images and documents but their programs too.

Windows versions will not run on Linux.

[okkee]

53 minutes ago, whispous said:

This question being asked could indicate you're not ready to switch to Linux.

 

The key things I think this indicates:

 

1. you and you alone are responsible for your data - if you value it, you need a backup of it that you test so you know it's there and safe. A backup means a copy of it in a second, and ideally a third location on different devices.

 

2. Typically, you are wiping the partition/whole drive when you switch OSs, so yes, data will be lost.

 

3. Some people, when they say data mean not just their images and documents but their programs too.

Windows versions will not run on Linux.

i'd like to not lose my multimedia but i think an external drive will help with that

[okkee]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

My Linux experience is pretty limited, but the best experience I ever had was with Pop!_OS. 

 

https://pop.system76.com/

as long as setting up gaming isn't too much of a drag

[masked]

13 hours ago, okkee said:

as long as setting up gaming isn't too much of a drag

It depends heavily on the game. Steam has put a lot of work into setting up Proton so that you can download a game, enable a setting in Steam and run the game mostly normally. It is not quite perfect and there are games (frequently due to anti-cheat measures for multi-player games) that it won't work with. There are also games that aren't available through Steam. Many of these can be made to work without abundant hassle through a program called Lutris but again, it's not guaranteed. Searching a game on ProtonDB will generally help figure out your odds of getting it to work and some potential difficulties.

[CosmicEmotion]

On 12/18/2023 at 1:17 PM, okkee said:

On Win10. Want to see if Linux is viable so I switch beginning of the year. All I really do is browse the web and play games, mainly on steam or from GoG. 

Main questions:

1. What's the best distro for gaming?

2. Does a switch mean a loss of data?

 

Current System:

i7-4790

5600xt

16gb ddr3

b85 board

240gb sata ssd (boot)

500gb hdd

 

Try NobaraOS, I think it's the best one. PikaOS and Garuda are good alternatives though.

 

Nobara also has an "Install Alongside" option that automatically creates the partitions for you so you don't lose your data and can easily dual boot. Still, I would keep a backup just in case.

[10leej]

On 12/18/2023 at 6:17 AM, okkee said:

1. What's the best distro for gaming?

"Good Enough" Answer:

Any distro you can install steam on

 

Best Answer:

It's dependent on how much pain you want

 

Chad Answer:

In truth basically ever distro under thew GUI hood is the same except for a how the binaries are compiled and config files. Yes you can get some improvements using a distro that ships upstream drivers like Arch Linux, but that won't matter as much if you use nvidia.

Other distros might ship wayland over X11 which is the future of the linux desktop graphical environment system, which nvidia doesbn't support nearly as well as AMD and Intel.

But realistically there are work around on top of work around for everything in the Linux ecosystem, so is there a defacto "best distro" ??? not really. Whats considered best is whatever works out of the box with as few changes as you yourself need to make. That's why there are so many different "Gaming Distro's"

I myself can game on Gentoo pulling everything from the bleeding edge and running a system that uses more up to date packages than even Fedora's Rawhide branch and get the same or similar enough performance as running Debian 11. It's just a question of "Do I really want to do that?"

 

Real Answer:

Use an Ubuntu based distro, so Ubuntu, Pop, Mint, what have you. Why? Because Ubuntu has the magic powers of the google search result which can answer things that even the ArchLinux wiki doesn't have a page for.

On 12/18/2023 at 6:17 AM, okkee said:

2. Does a switch mean a loss of data?

not if you backup your data. But the most painless change is to use a Linux native filesystem which ntfs is not,. Yes you can install a linux distro beside a windows install and duel boot and be ablke to access your windows data from the linux system. But in my personal experience duel booting is a gate way to leaving a good portion of your dydtem drive to essentially be wasted space and never used.

[sggtt]

On 12/18/2023 at 2:31 PM, okkee said:

i'd like to not lose my multimedia but i think an external drive will help with that

Yeah, you can open basically any file on Linux you can on Windows (well unless the software does simply not run). You can just copy everything important off of your main OS drive. Then install Linux. I always recommend either Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, EndeavourOS or Nobara for beginners. Choose which one you like best. Keep in mind that on EndeavourOS you can choose between 7 different user interfaces, so the first one you see might not be the one you like or the one you'll actually use.

[Dat Guy]

On 12/18/2023 at 12:17 PM, okkee said:

Want to see if Linux is viable

 

No. Try BSD.

[dragonfly43]

Yes.

Win10, sooner or not later than 2025 you will be forced out.

 

[dragonfly43]

On 12/21/2023 at 4:34 AM, Dat Guy said:

 

No. Try BSD.

Why ? Linux has much much more support than BSD.

[Dat Guy]

This is not true. It all depends on what you want to achieve. The OP has not really stated his motivation why he would want to try Linux, so he might as well try even more (and older and more rock-solid) options. Granted, gaming isn't great on most BSDs.

[Red Nova]

Whichever you choose, just don't use gnome, I'm having bad experiences with it to play video games, better use KDE plasma.

[nasir91]

I heard really good thinks about Nobara, it's basically Fedora but optimized for gaming (it's made by the same guy behind proton)

[E-waste]

On 12/18/2023 at 6:17 AM, okkee said:

500gb hdd

The virtual machine idea is great, but you will not be able to use your gpu to test games.  On some specific hardware, that can be done on Linux, but it is still hardware depedent, so you'll need to install the system bare-metal to use all the hardware.

 

Keep your files on the larger disk, and for any stuff you want to keep that are currently on your SSD, move those over to your larger disk.

 

It would be advisable to have another 250 or 500GB disk no backup at least your windows boot disk.

 

Ubuntu and most other Ubuntu-based systems (Linux mint, pop_os) have an option (if your windows storage has enough free space) to shrink that and install Ubuntu on the same disk.  By default, this will take over the windows bootloader, so even if you delete the Linux partition, grub will still be on your computer, but may not be able to boot Windows.  It will not be able to find the files it uses, and will be unusable.  But, when both systems are installed, grub will boot to your choice.

 

To solve that, you can change where the grub bootloader is installed, by choosing from a small list of available partitions, pick the part of the storage that will be used for Linux.

 

Alternatively, find or purchase an old hard disk, even 20 GB is enough to get started.  Then, you can have grub bootloader only on that disk, and it will not interfere with Microsoft's bootloader.

 

For games, Valve is making it easier, just install steam in your system of choice.  Pop_os! gets updated for game / gpu software faster than stock Ubuntu, as Linux is constantly being developed.

 

Suggested above is Ventoy.  It is a great small program directly installed onto your flash drive.  Instead of extracting pop_os .iso file and having that be the only system to boot, you can put tens of ISO files, and, even .img files, which are used by data backup tools.

 

If you have trouble figuring out ventoy, Balena Etcher, Rufus, Unetbootin can work just fine.  You'll just be limited to one extracted iso file for your flash drive.

 

As stated above, Linux will be able to read and write to Microsoft Windows NTFS format disks, but, Microsoft has no plans to read EXT4 or other Linux filesystems.  This means that in Linux, if you install steam, and add your 500GB disk into your steam library, you can try playing those games without a reinstall.  You will need to right click on your games in steam library, one by one, and go to properties.  Then, turn on proton compatibility mode.

 

This allows you to play Windows / directX games on Linux, which has been a goal for Valve since 2011.

 

Linux mint is also a great pick, and comes with beautiful wallpapers, to the point that there is a collection of all the wallpapers from all releases on github.  If you like the cinnamon desktop, that can be installed on any Linux system, but may look better on the system it was designed for.  Ubuntu also has a cinnamon desktop spin, as do many other systems.

 

I use kde, because of how I can theme it, and is loaded with options.  If you want a very basic interface, LXQT is a desktop system that doesn't have effects or many background tasks.  This can save resources for games.

 

Come back with another post if you have issues with steam, or Linux in general.