Should i switch to linux? please tell me why or why not.

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You can bypass the TPM requirements for windows using Rufus to get Windows 11. There are tons of videos on how to do that.

That being said, I use Linux as a daily driver and love it. You can always test it out on a USB and decide if you want to install it. It won't run games well from a USB, but it at least will allow you to see what you like.

Either way good luck with your adventure and if you have questions this community is spectacular and really likes to help people!

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My biggest problem right now it picking a linux destitution or os. There's so many how do i choose?

Also if anyone is wondering this machine is a overpriced prebuild i got because my parents forced me to pick a prebuild instead of building a pc.

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A lot of folks will recommend Mint as the first option, since it's pretty straightforward and will feel a lot like older editions of Windows. Personally, I use Fedora Plasma, because it feels like what Windows 11 should have been, and it supports just about everything I've thrown at it. It's got pretty broad support, so it's easy to get into.

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Manjaro xfce. There is ollama if you want.

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Choosing a distro is both very easy and very hard. The easy answer is go with the flow, look for what the most popular distros are and see what appeals from those. A common distro will have lots of other people with the possibility of having the same issues you have finding solutions. It makes troubleshooting way easier and is worth the distro not being perfect if you can get more support.

The hard answer is don't choose a distro. Try distros. Maybe before killing your Windows install get VirtualBox and install various distros in VMs and try them out. Performance is fairly good in a VM so you can get a realistic idea if how it will work for you in terms of how intuitive it is to find things, how the workflow is, and whether it is too opinionated about how things are done.

For example, Ubuntu has a little less ability to control things at a deep level, but it is more supportable because everyone using it either does or does not have a given problem.

At the other end is something like Arch which is more of a base than a distro. You choose your desktop environment, what services you want, all the back ends, and you have to configure it yourself.

I would recommend EndeavourOS as a great Arch based distro.

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Try it! You can always go back.

If you can find another HDD or SSD then you can keep your windows drive full of games intact.

I dual booted for years (for gaming) and as of now haven't used a non-linux PC for more than a decade at home or professionally.

I recommend starting with either Fedora or Ubuntu as they're among the most popular and have a large community for support.

Set yourself a goal on Linux, even if it's just "check my email" or whatever. Rinse, repeat.

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Yes, from my personal experience:

It'll be a lot faster.

Edit: there's ollama-cuda on the repos and alpaca-ai on the AUR, but I changed from the self managed to use the local ollama server. For games, there's lutris, wine-cachyos, proton-cachyos, dxvk-mingw-git and vkd3d-proton-mingw-git all on the repos, so dxvk and vkd3d (the translation layers from directx to vulkan) are updated when the system is updated, but need to be installed with the provided scripts to work automagically after that.

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I'm using Nobara and Fedora. I think Mint is the most popular.

Check out distrowatch.com it explains it well.

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Do you have HDR monitors? If you do and care about having the HDR part working, you'll likely want to pick one that uses KDE Plasma for the desktop environment.

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Just pick something. They are all free (nearly all of them), so you can always install something else pretty easily. Spend some time to get your feet wet and get the lay of the land. After a week or two, you'll probably have a really good direction on what you actually want. You can also run them as live oses, so download a few with different Desktop Environments you think are interesting and test them out. Then install one.

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The big ones for general use are Ubuntu and Fedora. KDE is gonna feel most windows like on any distro.

If you want something security focused there's quebesOS that breaks everything out into VMs. For gaming there's bazzite which is just modified fedora and several other gaming spins like steamOS.

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There’s a lot of good suggestions here and I wanted to add pop os! it’s a beginner friendly Linux distribution but with more of a focus on gaming.

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Linux takes like 5-10mins to setup. You can dedicate your first day/week to trying out a few different flavors to see which one you like.

I'd try distro's in this order Mint with Cinnamon > fedora KDE > Ubuntu Gnome > cachyOS if you're a baller > Arch if you want to learn and break things while doing it > NixOS if you absolutely hate having things work easily and learning transferable knowledge.

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Pop is great, but I wouldn't currently recommend it, since they're putting 99.9% of their effort into Cosmic. I have heard longtime users mention how certain packages and updates are behind, and while they're willing to wait, I wouldn't want to put that upon somebody new.

Not a bad recommendation in general, but just my two cents about the current state of things.

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That’s a really good point and I had forgotten about the updates being behind. Thank you for bringing that up!

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Bazzite isn't just modified Fedora, it's based on Fedora Atomics, like Silverblue and Kinoite. If OP isn't even sure about which distro to use, tossing them into the world of ostree might be a little much, since a lot of the online advice doesn't take immutable systems into account. The Discord community they have is helpful, though, and there's more than a few users here on Lemmy who use it, who I'm sure would be willing to help.

Nobara is just modified Fedora, however, and it's also nice.

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NixOS if you absolutely hate having things work easily and learning transferrable knowledge.

Ouch. Accurate, but ouch.

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i cut my teeth on linux mint with cinnamon before moving to garuda dragonized. it was my daily driver for the last four years, then i switched to proxmox and just run everything on VMs

lots of resources and documentation available for mint, but it's pretty turnkey. best advice i'd give to a newfriend is make sure you read any articles or documentation start to finish, instead of trying to follow along. also, employ good backups practice: learn what timeshift/snappy is, how it works, and how to use it.

taking a backup before making big changes has saved my ass more than once

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Linux probably wouldn't make your games any faster, but it could make the OS feel snappier.

Reasons to switch:

you hate Windows
you like to customize stuff
you're curious about Linux
you don't play many MP games
you tend to leave a ton of stuff open, which makes things run slowly
saving 40GB or so of space means the world to you (Linux is pretty lean)

Reasons not to switch:

you need Windows-specific software, like Adobe stuff or games w/ anti-cheat
you're not interested in tinkering at all, and having any minor issue would frustrate you
you want the best possible performance for games

Linux is better at memory and task management, generally speaking, but performance in specific apps depends a ton on the specific app, from being slightly better to being noticeable worse.

As for which Linux distro to go with, I hear good things about Linux Mint, though I don't use it myself. But honestly, look at the most popular distros and find one that looks cool to you, they're all pretty good. Ones to check out are:

Debian (or Linux Mint Debian Edition) - ol' reliable, may have some issues on newer games
Fedora - tries to be close to bleeding edge, without as many sharp edges
Bazzite - gaming focus, tries to imitate Steam OS
openSUSE Tumbleweed - my personal daily driver, though I generally don't recommend it for new users since there's not a huge community to find help

There are tons more great ones. If you list your must-have apps/games, maybe someone can give a better recommendation, though honestly most distros are similar enough that if it works on one, it'll work anywhere.

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I only roast NixOS from a place of love.

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Should i switch to linux? please tell me why or why not.