Should i switch to linux? please tell me why or why not.
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64 GB DDR3, interesting. That's a lot for that old tech.
It's a Xeon, workstation and server CPU, so made to take a lot of RAM, 4 memory channels.
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So i have a gaming desktop that not the best or the newest. What takes up most of my drive space is games, updates, and software's. Im wondering if i should switch to linux and if linux will improve any performance for my main machine? If you believe i should switch what os should i go with or why or why not should i switch?
I mostly game and do mess with ollama/ai tools because i think that's cool. I want to do more things in the future but that might beyond my drive space?
What would you advise?
Other people have given you good responses about switching so I'll give some distro recommendations:
- Bazzite. This is what I use on fairly similar hardware. Looks like you've got a v1 or v2 chip as it's still DDR3, I'm on an E5-2680v2 and it works great under Linux while Windows 10 just caused it to freeze up so much by the end. All the background updates and indexing and whatever else were such resource hogs. The NVIDIA Bazzite iso also includes the official drivers out of the box, which many other distros don't (looking at you Linux Mint!!). It's designed to be super easy for gamers newly switching from Windows, with Steam pre-installed and everything just ready to go.
- CachyOS. I don't have personal experience with it, but I know it also includes the official NVIDIA drivers out of the box, and it's designed as a gaming distro first and foremost as well.
- Nobara. Another gaming distro, it also includes the NVIDIA drivers and is ready to go. It's made by a dev known as Glorious Eggroll who is well respected in the linux gaming community.
The reason I recommend distros that have the official NVIDIA drivers OOTB is that they work much, much better than the Noveau open source driver that most traditional distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) include. The offical drivers also have a steep learning curve for a new Linux user to install themselves, it's nowhere near as simple as installing them on Windows.
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CachyOS might get you some modest performance gains on that hardware*edit, see reply
I have a similar usecase w/ games and ollama, good support for that on linux
Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
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Other people have given you good responses about switching so I'll give some distro recommendations:
- Bazzite. This is what I use on fairly similar hardware. Looks like you've got a v1 or v2 chip as it's still DDR3, I'm on an E5-2680v2 and it works great under Linux while Windows 10 just caused it to freeze up so much by the end. All the background updates and indexing and whatever else were such resource hogs. The NVIDIA Bazzite iso also includes the official drivers out of the box, which many other distros don't (looking at you Linux Mint!!). It's designed to be super easy for gamers newly switching from Windows, with Steam pre-installed and everything just ready to go.
- CachyOS. I don't have personal experience with it, but I know it also includes the official NVIDIA drivers out of the box, and it's designed as a gaming distro first and foremost as well.
- Nobara. Another gaming distro, it also includes the NVIDIA drivers and is ready to go. It's made by a dev known as Glorious Eggroll who is well respected in the linux gaming community.
The reason I recommend distros that have the official NVIDIA drivers OOTB is that they work much, much better than the Noveau open source driver that most traditional distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) include. The offical drivers also have a steep learning curve for a new Linux user to install themselves, it's nowhere near as simple as installing them on Windows.
Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
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Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
If you look at recommended requirements on that page, it suggests the x86_v3 but minimum doesn't. It's a little confusing but the following section seems to just be explaining that term for the recommended level? If I'm wrong though I'll gladly cross it out.
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Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
Wrong, I'm running a sandy bridge on cachyos right now
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So i have a gaming desktop that not the best or the newest. What takes up most of my drive space is games, updates, and software's. Im wondering if i should switch to linux and if linux will improve any performance for my main machine? If you believe i should switch what os should i go with or why or why not should i switch?
I mostly game and do mess with ollama/ai tools because i think that's cool. I want to do more things in the future but that might beyond my drive space?
What would you advise?
wrote last edited by [email protected]As long as you back up your data, experiment to find what you want. If you have an empty spare drive, try out the different options there.
It's been a month since I moved to Bazzite. My plan was to try Mint and Bazzite while also keeping a Windows 10 ISO in my boot drive (Ventoy will allow you to have as many ISO in your USB stick). If things get too difficult, I could always go back to Windows 10. But using Bazzite has been a breeze, I decided I didn't even need Mint. Every time I think I need to open up the terminal for any issues, I find that the solution doesn't require it. -
Other people have given you good responses about switching so I'll give some distro recommendations:
- Bazzite. This is what I use on fairly similar hardware. Looks like you've got a v1 or v2 chip as it's still DDR3, I'm on an E5-2680v2 and it works great under Linux while Windows 10 just caused it to freeze up so much by the end. All the background updates and indexing and whatever else were such resource hogs. The NVIDIA Bazzite iso also includes the official drivers out of the box, which many other distros don't (looking at you Linux Mint!!). It's designed to be super easy for gamers newly switching from Windows, with Steam pre-installed and everything just ready to go.
- CachyOS. I don't have personal experience with it, but I know it also includes the official NVIDIA drivers out of the box, and it's designed as a gaming distro first and foremost as well.
- Nobara. Another gaming distro, it also includes the NVIDIA drivers and is ready to go. It's made by a dev known as Glorious Eggroll who is well respected in the linux gaming community.
The reason I recommend distros that have the official NVIDIA drivers OOTB is that they work much, much better than the Noveau open source driver that most traditional distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) include. The offical drivers also have a steep learning curve for a new Linux user to install themselves, it's nowhere near as simple as installing them on Windows.
I like bazzite but the immutable aspect makes downloading some thing even more complicated for a newb. Truly can never go wrong with zorinos or mint
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It's a Xeon, workstation and server CPU, so made to take a lot of RAM, 4 memory channels.
Still a lot for that old tech and a desktop gaming computer.
For a server, it's not a lot.
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Lots of mention of dual booting- I recommend getting an e-waste tier 256gb SATA SSD for your first Linux install if you just want to try it out.
No one wants those old drives because they are small but they are plenty quick and you only need 15 to 30 gigs for most distros.
Can you use the existing Windows partition for the games though (without it fucking them up)? Because while Linux fits in that easily, games do not.
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Still a lot for that old tech and a desktop gaming computer.
For a server, it's not a lot.
Yeah but why wouldn't you when sticks are so cheap now? I have an E5-2680v2 and 32GB of RAM. I can have SO many browser tabs open, and games actually run quicker because Linux does a really good job of using excess RAM as file cache. If a game accesses a texture more than once it almost always ends up in cache. I probably will upgrade to 64GB at some point, because I've got two 16GB sticks so only using half the memory channels. Wanna get an E5-2697v2 first though, much better single core performance.
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I like bazzite but the immutable aspect makes downloading some thing even more complicated for a newb. Truly can never go wrong with zorinos or mint
I've been using Linux for 25 years and I kinda hate how clunky immutable Fedora is.
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So i have a gaming desktop that not the best or the newest. What takes up most of my drive space is games, updates, and software's. Im wondering if i should switch to linux and if linux will improve any performance for my main machine? If you believe i should switch what os should i go with or why or why not should i switch?
I mostly game and do mess with ollama/ai tools because i think that's cool. I want to do more things in the future but that might beyond my drive space?
What would you advise?
Nvidia is a bit of a risk under Linux. It might work.
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I haven't. That wasn't one of the mistakes I made!
Lucky you!
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I like bazzite but the immutable aspect makes downloading some thing even more complicated for a newb. Truly can never go wrong with zorinos or mint
That's exactly why I'm recommending it. For a user that just wants to game, it has the guardrails in place to stop them from bricking their install. Think about how comparatively hard it is to severely mess up a Windows install.
There are plenty of other ways to install software, Bazzite highly recommends Flatpak and AppImage. As well, if you do really need anything else, it can be run in a Distrobox and there are plenty of people on the forums who can help with that.
Recommending Mint to users that just want to game, that don't want to learn technical stuff, needs to die. Sure, if someone comes in and says they're happy to learn tech stuff, Mint is a great option. But for everyone else, something like Bazzite is just so much closer to "it just works". Hell, I have technical skills, headless Debian over SSH is my happy place, but I have Bazzite on my desktop and handheld because I can't mess with it. It's always ready to game when I am!
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So i have a gaming desktop that not the best or the newest. What takes up most of my drive space is games, updates, and software's. Im wondering if i should switch to linux and if linux will improve any performance for my main machine? If you believe i should switch what os should i go with or why or why not should i switch?
I mostly game and do mess with ollama/ai tools because i think that's cool. I want to do more things in the future but that might beyond my drive space?
What would you advise?
You've already got plenty of comments explaining why you should switch. You obviously should ideally. Check Protondb.com to see if your games runs on Linux.
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That's exactly why I'm recommending it. For a user that just wants to game, it has the guardrails in place to stop them from bricking their install. Think about how comparatively hard it is to severely mess up a Windows install.
There are plenty of other ways to install software, Bazzite highly recommends Flatpak and AppImage. As well, if you do really need anything else, it can be run in a Distrobox and there are plenty of people on the forums who can help with that.
Recommending Mint to users that just want to game, that don't want to learn technical stuff, needs to die. Sure, if someone comes in and says they're happy to learn tech stuff, Mint is a great option. But for everyone else, something like Bazzite is just so much closer to "it just works". Hell, I have technical skills, headless Debian over SSH is my happy place, but I have Bazzite on my desktop and handheld because I can't mess with it. It's always ready to game when I am!
True true, still modern linux doesn't break as easily as u frame it. And is user friendly enough for even non tech ppl. A user would have to go out of their way todo something weird in cli. As long as they are just installing games then not a whole lot can go wrong.
On bazzite if u want to install something that isn't virtualized like flats, than u would have to dive more into cli. That instead of simply typing sudo apt install.
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True true, still modern linux doesn't break as easily as u frame it. And is user friendly enough for even non tech ppl. A user would have to go out of their way todo something weird in cli. As long as they are just installing games then not a whole lot can go wrong.
On bazzite if u want to install something that isn't virtualized like flats, than u would have to dive more into cli. That instead of simply typing sudo apt install.
I mean, I've bricked plenty of installs before I knew what I was doing more. I still regularly see, in certain places, people give purposefully destructive commands.
rm -rf /doesn't work directly anymore, but it'll work on your home folder for example. You also don't need CLI to install games, I would say literally never.If a good third-party launcher that needed to be run as a system package showed up, Bazzite would just add that. Games that just ship a Linux executable like a lot of itch.io stuff generally works regardless and doesn't need the CLI. Can you give an example of a gaming usecase that requires
sudo apt?You can also install packages to the system on Bazzite by the way. It's atomic, not actually immutable. It's just frowned upon because it makes things less stable, and increases the length of updates. You use
sudo rpm-ostree installin the same way, and it layers the package on top of the current version. It's treated as an absolute last resort, but it is way easier to reset to the base image if anything goes wrong. -
Nvidia is a bit of a risk under Linux. It might work.
There’s hardly any risk anymore. The drivers themselves are mostly fine, with a couple exceptions.
The only two risk factors are either using an immature distro with no properly packaged drivers, or an outdated one
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There’s hardly any risk anymore. The drivers themselves are mostly fine, with a couple exceptions.
The only two risk factors are either using an immature distro with no properly packaged drivers, or an outdated one
Yep, for example Ubuntu took like 4 extra months to get a late enough driver to fix the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth texture issue. Completely unplayable until I believe driver 570.123. I had the updated driver pretty early on Arch, but wouldn't ever suggest that to someone casually considering switching.
