Switching to Linux...

[Eighjan]

Given the machine set-up that's in my profile, am I looking at a bigger headache that I need, to switch - or try/experiment switching - to Linux...?

[OhioYJ]

4 minutes ago, Eighjan said:

that's in my profile

I posted my reply on Google.

[thrasher_565]

my reply is on ebay...

[Thomas53]

If you're not sure about switching, you have 2 choices. The easiest is to download any application that will allow yo to make a bootable flashdrive to copy any Linux .iso.

This will allow you to liveboot the Linux distro to try without the need to install it, or you could install it and dual boot.

[Eighjan]

10 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

my reply is on ebay...

28 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I posted my reply on Google.

NOT very helpful... VERY juvenille.

[Eighjan]

12 minutes ago, Thomas53 said:

If you're not sure about switching, you have 2 choices. The easiest is to download any application that will allow yo to make a bootable flashdrive to copy any Linux .iso.

This will allow you to liveboot the Linux distro to try without the need to install it, or you could install it and dual boot.

I think I'd opt for a 'second machine', to go a better comparison. 

[OhioYJ]

19 minutes ago, Eighjan said:

NOT very helpful... VERY juvenille.

I know, but I figured the effort of the reply should match the effort of the post. 

 

16 minutes ago, Eighjan said:

I think I'd opt for a 'second machine', to go a better comparison. 

Huh, no the live distro lets you check out that OS on your actual hardware before installing.  It will also let you check apps, as you can install them too. A second machine will likely be different hardware which will give you different results. 

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Eighjan said:

am I looking at a bigger headache that I need, to switch - or try/experiment switching - to Linux...?

Hard to say. 

 

I have a 5700x, 16 gigs of ram and a RTX2070 super and Linux Mint runs pretty good. I have had issues when I alt tab out of a game some times the game might crash or lock up the system. So, I just dont alt tab. That being said, Mint is not one of the gaming oriented distros. 

 

The fact you have an AMD GPU you will likely have a better time, as the drivers are built in to the distro. 

 

The biggest headache is deciding on what distro. There are many distros and many desktop environments. As others have suggested test out the LIVE CD before installing, this will allow you to at least make sure things work. The big things to check is networking as not all vendors are Linux friendly. Some hardware might require extra steps to get working. 

 

You have to decide also if your switched to Linux or dual booting. Some people dual boot to start. However I will warn you, while Linux can read and write NTFS formatted drives, I have heard of issues with playing games from NTFS formatted drives on Linux, so be aware. You might want to just download the games to your Linux drive to test things. 

[asdasdasdasdasdasd]

Fedora is great, stable and modern. Source: Fedora user.

[TetraSky]

Looking at your specs, all AMD... You will likely have an easy time.

 

Just try a distro. Any distro. Fuck around in it. Learn stuff. Reformat. Fuck around some more.

If you're used to the way windows works, it may take a while for you to unlearn your way around an OS. Especially for gaming.

For steam games, it's typically super easy. Same with Epic Games Store using Heroic Games Launcher.

If you have games or applications that are not one these, there are ways to use them. Except it's not super easy to do if you don't know how.

But when you do, it's relatively easy to remember.

 

Keep in mind for Linux gaming, while you can keep your game drive as NTFS in case you want to dual boot with windows, you would be better off formatting your drive or a smaller partition to EXT4 or some other linux specific file system to use for games.

Leaving your game drive as NTFS, you would encounter permission issues and may very well run into games that refuses to work.

 

Personally, I tried Mint and Ubuntu a long time ago. They were fine. But they didn't keep me and I went back to windows.

Recently I tried CachyOS in January and rage quit within a week. It was too complicated for a beginner. But you can do a LOT on it. Enough that you can fuck it up very easily as well. You do need to install the gaming package manually.

 

Now I am on Bazzite. It just works for Steam. It comes with pretty much everything you need from the get go for Steam gaming. For other stores like EGS, there's the Heroic Games Launcher that can be found in the "Bazaar"(store).

And for everything else there's Lutris or Bottle. Those are the ones that do require a bit of figuring out.

 

While you can ask your questions about some issue on Linux online, you will likely hit a lot of "RTFM" people outside of this forum. Especially if you go with CachyOS since it's Arch based and that community is toxic AF (they do have a very extensive wiki... but ain't nobody reading ALL of that for a very specific question that you likely don't even know what tf it is you need to look up in the first place).

 

AI is your friend when you have questions on how to do stuff (except co-pilot). They lie and hallucinate a lot. They can fuck your OS up with what they tell you. Try it out, if it messes up, reformat and don't do that anymore. But it makes things a lot easier for figuring some things out. I just found out I CAN mod steam games with mod launchers that would normally be just for windows, using Protontricks. It's nice how you can take sceenshots and show them and they just tell you "do this and that" like your own personal tech support.

 

It's a bit harder to fuck up Bazzite, since that one is "immutable" (meaning you can't really edit the filesystem, it's read only), but it also makes it a bit more of a pain for Linux. Since you can't just do whatever you want on it and a lot of Fedora specific information found online may not work on it.

 

So overall... Just try it. It entirely depends on your specific use case on whether it will be a pain to use. And on whichever Distro you use.

[Wh0_Am_1]

Hardware-wise your setup should have virtually no trouble running Linux, the only issues you may run into may be related to peripherals, MOBO functions, and networking.