Planning to switch to Linux for my next PC
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Yeah I was probably gonna go with bazzite and it sounds like there’s some demo installer I can play around with but yeah definitely gonna break my nvidia streak (past 2 and my only gaming laptops) to finally get a proper tower with an amd gpu
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Yes, depending on your hardware.
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I have nvidia 4 series and my linux skill is low enough that I think its insane gnome doesn't have right click-create file by default and I have had 0 issues. You just need to disable secureboot or enroll keys.
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Yeah, on immutable distros, you can't just delete system32, it is read-only (changes on restart with updates applied)
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NVIDIA is trash anyway so no reason to buy one regardless of OS
AMD gang!
In all honesty, I think it has gotten better over the last few years and it should be less of a headache now to use NVIDIA cards, I guess that depends on the OS though
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I recently made the switch back to Linux, to Pop! OS, and I've never had such a smooth experience before. It's currently using GNOME as its desktop environment, which I find a bit shit in general, but they've modified it enough so that it's user friendly and intuitive.
It has an "app store" as well that you can use to check for and run updates, search software etc. If you have a big screen, the window tiling function is awesome. Highly recommend you have a look at it! -
Slightly higher but yeah, also you get a premium PC with no RGB and a wooden finish
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there still is a reason to buy nvidia and it's HDMI 2.1.
I want to keep using an OLED TV as my monitor, 4k and 120hz. TVs still don't have displayport for some reason... and there aren't any >50" OLED monitors in 16:9 available, at least where I live. and AMD didn't get permission to use HDMI 2.1 driver in their open source driver. there is a dp > HDMI 2.1 converter, which sucks according to reviews.
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imo kde will give a bad impression of linux as it's quite buggy and the taskbar is way too easy to fuck up completely
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i have given linux to many many people at this point and neither of these things have been problems, when's the last time you used kde?
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If you really want a prebuilt one, of course.
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Bazzite would be a great choice in my opinion. It's meant for gaming, has drivers preinstalled and is immutable (basically impossible to break). I'd suggest using KDE because it's Windows-like and is the default for desktop mode on SteamOS.
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It was explicitly specified that no tinkering should be required, also even if you custom build a PC you wont have several advantages of just going with system76. For example the mini PC uses their fork of coreboot and intigrates with Pop_OS, meanwhile on other systems you would need to manually install coreboot (if its even supported) and bios updates are still an absolute mess (even if you dont care about the privacy benefits of coreboot the extremely fast start up speed alone makes it valuable).
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It's more like, the distro is the actual “under the hood” OS and the DE is the looks and user interaction.
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I distrohop quite often, last time a couple of weeks ago. I tried nobara, fedora kde, and kubuntu. kubuntu was probably the best but some older games wouldn't run, animations stutter so bad I had to disable them, themes didn't work and some settings reset on every reboot. others had more serious issues, including constant crashing. I could blame it on nvidia, but cinnamon works just fine (except for one bug that took me over half a year to find a workaround).
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Just deleted my windows parition and grew my cachyos one, im never going back after a week with it, I like cachyos/arch since I can use gnome and plasma at the same time easily (i like swapping looks a lot), idk if its as easy with others since they reccomend you rebase for different des like bazzite, aurora, bluefin. cachyos is straightforward with a gui installer, easier and much faster than windows to install and use, I used ventoy so I can keep using my usb for data.
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I second the recommendations for Mint. It should work out of the box. You can download the .iso file from their website and use a program called Rufus to write it to a USB stick. You should be able to plug it in, boot from the USB (may have to go into the boot menu in the UEFI), and it will install linux for you. This will be the same process for most linux distributions.
For installing software on Linux, there is an important difference between Windows and Linux; on windows you typically download an installer .exe and use that to install a program. On Linux, each distro has its own "package manager" which functions a lot like an app store on a phone. The package manager will install the program for you and take care of keeping everything updated for you, so if your GPU drivers, steam, or whatever else needs updating, just run an update on the package manager and it will do everything for you.
In terms of what hardware works better, most folks will tell you to use AMD graphics cards over Nvidia, but that is about it. Nvidia still has proprietary drivers which don't always play nice with linux, but as an nvidia user myself, the problems seem to be getting fewer and fewer.
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Excellent choice. I have Bazzite on a laptop, and it's rock solid.
Feel free to DM me if you have questions. There's also a Discord, where people are quite helpful.
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Since the other replies don't seem to beginner friendly I'll try another way:
The desktop environment determines how your taskbar looks and your start menu. Also the edges windows and the buttons to close and minimize windows. Also some basic programs like the system settings.
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1. Enter edit mode 2. Click on the panel, remove the panel from the panel popup menu 3. At the top menu “add new panel” → “default panel”^^bam you can easily reset the panel to default
I could blame it on nvidia
Plasma uses wayland, wayland was much much more problematic with nvidia until very recently, if you try the latest plasma, most of those issues will likely be gone
