6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?
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I got a new PC recently so unfortunately I am now on Windows 11. I’ve been wanting to make the swap to Linux but I can’t really make a clean break because at least some of the games I play a lot won’t work on Linux. I do think I’m gonna try to set up another hard drive with Linux on it to try to slowly start learning it and ideally move over anything that I can over there eventually and just keep the windows drive for those few games.
Does anyone have any recommendations related to that? Distro for gaming/ease of use? What’s the best option for setting up the dual boot? Anything I wouldn’t have thought of that’s relevant?
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Upgrade tool says my hardware isn't supported, seems like I can enable TPM on my motherboard but it doesn't work right for some reason I think I managed to install Windows 10 without secure boot or something, not sure if those two are even related. I was thinking maybe I'd have to reinstall windows 10 with those modules enabled in order to upgrade to windows 11... Has anyone else encountered something similar?
Those two are related. Windows 11 requires both UEFI (secure boot) and TPM. Microsoft has a tool for converting a legacy install to UEFI. (backup your data beforehand as always)
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I'm already on Linux, gaming isn't as good but I only play old games anyway so it doesn't matter.
Fwiw, a great majority of my Steam library plays great in SteamOS.
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Nvidia user, i saw a 10-15% performance difference (maybe more in some games), some anti-cheat do not work, so i can not install these games. I used both Mint and Nobara with latest drivers running and proton-GE.
Might be game dependent but nowadays games like withcher 3 run better on linux then windows for me.
Anti-cheat is admittedly a pain though. Chivalry 2 used to work and now no longer does.
Though those anti cheats tend to be very invasive so i prefer if everyone moved to a system thats is user personal security first so the market would align with that.
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That's where the "analysis" part of "cost-benefit analysis" comes in and it doesn't make sense to generalize like you seem to want to.
Is it really that much more responsible to run Windows 11? You seem to have a LOT of faith in Microsoft to keep you safe. There's plenty of reasons to not switch to Windows 11.
I also use Linux on some machines. But I can also see why there are reasons why one distro or another, or even Linux in general, may not be the right call for some people.
I use Linux exclusively but I don't think it's relevant to the discussion.
I would rather use windows 11 than any other EOL version of windows. I loved windows XP when it came out, wouldn't dare to use it today.
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Those two are related. Windows 11 requires both UEFI (secure boot) and TPM. Microsoft has a tool for converting a legacy install to UEFI. (backup your data beforehand as always)
Wow, looks like exactly what I need! I'll give it a try, thanks!
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I don't really feel like going down the rabbit hole of trying a hundred different distros to maybe find one that works. My experiences with those two were that things were completely broken, randomly. Like just trying to boot the USB installer would lock up half the time, the installer itself would fail partway through most of the time, when things got fully installed, trying to update or install new things would just fail randomly. The kde desktop would crash just from me changing settings in the kde menus.
sounds like you've made up your mind. wnjoy windows 11!
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Definitely you should look into Linux, it's really gotten quite good. Especially if you don't need games with anti cheat.
But if you just want to use Windows 11, it's super duper easy. Just Google "download Windows 11 iso" and grab the iso file from Microsoft website.
Then download Rufus.
Then pop in a thumb drive that's at least 8gb. Open Rufus, select your thumb drive and the iso, then choose the option to remove windows requirements, then click start.
Backup your files on Windows 10, save them somewhere. Then pop in the thumb drive and install windows 11 fresh.
The requirements aren't actually required. Win 11 runs fine on all sorts of hardware. Support stops at 8th Gen Intel, but I've installed it on 5th Gen. My work laptop is 2nd or 3rd Gen. It's fine
️Technically less secure? Yeah, in some ways. But it's miles ahead of running unpatched windows 10 after September.
Oh shit this is actually really helpful, I might end up doing the Rufus USB route when I get my stuff back up and running (apartment flooded and I have to wait until the finish fixing my ceiling before I can plug everything back up.)
Thanks for the in-depth info!
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For the first 2 there are 3rd party programs for it the rest yea probably won’t work
Yeah I’m aware of openrgb, it has limited compatibility but seems to work ok for most of my stuff. Still haven’t found a great way to run my favorite corsair keyboard reactive lighting theme I had setup with their software in windows, but what I came up with in openrgb is good enough.
However, I didn’t think it was possible to run autoIt or autoHotkey at all in Linux. Are you suggesting a Python script to replace it, or something else? AHK has a very peculiar syntax which I don’t believe would translate well to other languages.
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It's tricky because I have things that just don't translate well to linux, or become considerably more expensive or time consuming to manage / deal with. Linux has a lot to offer and a lot of great. But I'm just going to keep running an out of date OS until I can switch.
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There's also the issue of people who regularly play games with kernel AC, particularly with studios who intentionally refuse Linux support.
Yes, but honestly, I find that games enforcing incompatible AC are often poorly developed games. The latest that disappointed me was EA WRC. It was quite good, but the gameplay was less interesting that Dirt Rally 2, for exemple, and since they enforced AC, they also started to deploy DLC, and destroy the game. The lesson was to never ever buy something from Electronic Arts (the last time was more than 10 years ago for me). And kernel level anti-cheat is NO GO on my computer. It doesn't matter if the game is awesome or not, I disagree with the fact that a game company has root access on my computer just for entertainement.
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Fwiw, a great majority of my Steam library plays great in SteamOS.
Indeed. I use a steam deck primarily for gaming and it surprises me every day how well it performs.
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I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that... all my documents say "Auto-recover (version 1)" because it forcibly rebooted on me.
This! A game is a game. There are often good alternatives that gives as much entertainment. If a publisher doesn't want you to play, that's their problem, they won't get money from you.
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I tried a few but couldn't get them to work. I think the issue was my 1080ti GPU. I did get one of the other recommended Debian kde plasma builds installed and that one is looking nice. I was having issues with getting the same games to run that work on my steam deck. Probably just need to spend more time on it.
SteamOS-like distributions probably aren't for you right now. nvidia has massively improved over the year but it's still not on par with AMD.
Using an immutable distro (which Steam OS and its kind are) is just going to complicate things. Your easiest bet is using a distro that will install the correct drivers at install, like pop_os or mint.
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@MattTheProgrammer @The_Picard_Maneuver
Since you wanna Game using network anyway did you ever thought of Cloud Gaming (aka Geforce Now) ? That way you don't have a "unsecure" device in your network. From a security standpoint even an device only used for gaming is a security risk
That would require me to abandon half of my Steam library and pay an additional cost for games I already can play. My device is on Windows 11 so I am not worried about security updates, more so the Recall "feature" and AI training.
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I just gave up on windows gaming. If the game cant be played on my steamdeck, I just find something else. Otherwise its macos and linux for anything non-professional that requires windows. And even then I fucking hate it. Oh look at that... all my documents say "Auto-recover (version 1)" because it forcibly rebooted on me.
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Why Gates in the picture tough?
He stepped down as a chairman over 10 years ago and didint he leave the microsoft board like 5 years ago?
I always think the same. But everybody knows Bill Gates by sight. Do you think everyone instantly recognizes Satya Nadella?
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Terminal usage is inevitable with Linux. It's not as scary as it seems and can actually create a sense of accomplishment when you use it. Pop is a solid distro for sure but you don't need a "gaming distro" to game on Linux these days (not that Pop is a gaming distro specifically). There's actually a Linux Experiment video where he proves this with a thorough test. All major distros work fine for gaming.
I encourage people to not go for SteamOS unless you're setting up a PC you want to use solely as a home console, or if you're flashing it to a different handheld.
That, all coming from a big Valve fan. I simply don't think it's a good idea for people to get their hopes up over SteamOS somehow being a no-terminal, peak gaming Linux experience. I also don't think it's a good idea to hold off until SteamOS gets its full PC release, because most major distros today will work just as well. It'd literally only benefit people to start learning Linux now so that by the full SteamOS launch, they'll be more informed as to whether it'll be something they'll find useful enough to use as a daily driver.
I understand where you're coming from. I myself prefer using a terminal for most things, and use arch (btw) for the PC I game on. I understand that learning Linux is the best move for folks, but I don't see that being an option, at least initially, for people on the fence.
I know that, from a Linux user's perspective, it is the wrong move, but I have plenty of friends that want a "no terminal, gaming ready" distro before they make the move. I see it more as a first step, removing the barrier for making the switch to Linux. Once they are already there, it's much easier to convince themselves to learn Linux a bit deeper if needed over time.
I don't know, maybe I'm just naive and hopeful, but there are a good number of my friends that I think will make the switch to Linux that wouldn't have without SteamOS.
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I moved to endeavouros. First time using a rolling release, and I was struggling with some webdev stuff cause node was on a recent non-lts build and a few other things.
Not a problem for building, cause I already have that containerised. But things like installing packages was refusing, and obviously couldn't run dev workflows.Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
I know vscode is still Microsoft (and I'm sure I could get it to work with vscodium), but the dev container workflow is fantastic.
Absolute game changer.
And I know I can easily work on a different platform, os whatever. And still have the same dev environment.Until I realised I should just work inside a container.
Yeah, it's a game changer. Especially if you have different projects on the go. I'm used to having to deal with an ugly path with all kind of random things in it because I need them for one project. But, with containers / distroboxes / toolbx you can keep those changes isolated.
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It's the other way around. In general, you should choose Linux over Windows, and only if you really need it, use Windows. Also, if you need Windows just temporarily for some things, consider running it in a VM inside Linux just for those occasions.
Why - well, to keep it short, Linux' main weaknesses for common users (difficulty, compatibility) are gradually fading away (they are already almost non-existent these days if you have mainstream hardware and a mainstream desktop distro like Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu) while Windows' main disadvantages (forced stuff like cloud/AI integrations/ads, complete disregard of user's privacy, increasing security issues due to outdated stuff being kept in the OS for backwards compatibility reasons, and many more things) keep on increasing at a rapid rate. Microsoft has a big business interest in getting all users locked into their cloud ecosystem, locked into a subscription with ever-increasing monthly fees, and give up control over their own computer and their digital privacy. They want users to pay them with their data AND monthly subscription fees. MS Office, for example, will probably not have a pure locally runnable version after 2029 (or around that year) anymore. Sure, it's still 4 years away. And you might still be able to use a supported local version of MS Office for a bit longer after that. But this Microsoft train is still heading towards that wall. And the speed is increasing. And tons of users are still inside that train.
Furthermore, by supporting Microsoft you're supporting a very unethical company. They partner with big surveillance companies like Palantir and the despicable ad-tech-industry (the industry that's spying on literally everyone and buying/selling/storing tons of intimate user data even though it's illegal in most countries), they partner with the military, law enforcement and other things.
Also, they are a US company, and we all know how US politics is like these days, and this can have a big influence on how "trustworthy" US-based proprietary software will become in the near future. Since 2020, arguably no US-based proprietary software or online service is trustworthy anymore anyway, because of the CLOUD act, which is current law in the US - it means that the US government has access to any customer data stored by a US-based company, regardless of where on Earth they are storing it. This means the often-used claim "my data stored by that US company is safe because it's in a European-based datacenter!!!!11" is false since at least 2020, because MS is forced by US law to grant technical access to customer data to their government. Also, all previous "data transfer privacy agreements" between EU and US like Privacy Shield were all a joke and were dismantled in courts already. So there's currently zero legal data protection - any data you send to a US company is theirs to do with as they please, essentially. And even if there were any meaningful legal data protections left, those big tech companies might still simply ignore that data protection law and only face minor or no fines at all.So this is not a baseless claim. Just because I might keep some statements short doesn't mean that there are no backing arguments. It's a very good idea to reduce your dependency on Microsoft's (or in general, US-based) proprietary software and services. For multiple reasons. Digital sovereignty has never been more important than these days. It has always been important but it was maybe too abstract in the past for many common users to realize. They are slowly starting to realize now that dependencies on proprietary software from any rogue regime (and the current US regime also falls into that category now) are not great to have. Plus, there is Microsoft on its own already putting ever-increasing user- and customer-hostile features into their products. It's like being in an abusive relationship. It's just not good for you long-term.
So as a user, you should instead choose software which allows you to retain your digital sovereignty and control over your own computing, and simply not take all that abuse. Linux- or *BSD-based OSes with their open/transparent development models, fork-able/modifiable code bases, permissive licensing and essentially zero unwanted crap like adware, spyware, bloatware etc. offer exactly that. And because mainstream Linux distros have already become so easy to use these days, there are almost no reasons not to start using them.
All your arguments are logically sound and completely miss the main point.
The issue with Linux is not that "it's getting there" in terms of user friendliness. It's that it's not there YET.
On top of that you have the community - just the other day I was searching to solve an issue, found a very similar thread, and the only reply the guy got was "here's a link to the ArchWiki, welcome to the Linux world, you need to figure this out yourself".
My 80 year old mother is not figuring out shit, she's terrified when she has to copy a photo from a USB stick to here Photos folder.
Saying "Linux is fine for the masses today" is just showing how detached many Linux users are from reality.
