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

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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?

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Given that Windows 11 won't support your device, Linux may be your only option for a supported OS.

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If you feel like trying something new, why not try it? Worst case scenario you’re just changing to a different OS anyway.
Best case scenario you find something new to learn and tinker with.

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They don't have to wholesale switch, dual-booting is an option.

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If you want to know my honest opinion then instead of focusing on the operating system you should focus on the hardware. An old inefficient low-clocked six core server CPU is no match for a RTX 3060.

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