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

[telorand@reddthat.com]

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.

[transdesitrekkie@startrek.website]

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

[telorand@reddthat.com]

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.

[pezhore@infosec.pub]

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

Ouch. Accurate, but ouch.

[webcam_stalker@lemmy.world]

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

[sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works]

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.

[auth@lemmy.world]

I only roast NixOS from a place of love.

[cyberseeker@discuss.tchncs.de]

Your biggest issue is going to be dealing with multiple partitions, unless you can find another boot disk, because your disk is pretty full. I would strongly recommend getting a second disk, unless you are willing to delete a lot of (presumably) game executables.

It is also a good idea to have a relatively smaller Linux partition, and point your Steam library and other documents to a separate data partition. My 1TB nvme has 150MB EFI FAT32 partition, a 100GB ext4 root partition (Linux is installed here), and the remaining ~900GB as my ext4 data partition. This way, if you choose to install a different Linux, or blow away your root partition, you can relink your Steam/Music/Video Libraries and local AI models, and get up and running again very quickly.

Outside of the disk, my top recommendation is to archive your active steam games, so you can restore them into Linux without fully re-downloading later. Additionally, unless your games are in Steam Cloud, you will also have a bit of a time restoring save files to the new OS, as the file paths will be different than you are used to on Windows.

My second recommendation is to ensure secure boot is disabled in your BIOS; there are currently known issues with driver signing with the NVIDIA driver.

Finally, assuming you’re on a Ubuntu-based distro like Mint, ensure you install Steam from the .deb or apt package, not the flatpak. On Mint, “Install Steam” is available right in the start menu.

[jtskulk@lemmy.world]

In the past certain distros were better for certain tasks, but not really anymore. The thing that separates distros is how they do package management and how many packages they have. All that's to say, just pick something easy to start with like Kubuntu, Mint, or Debian if you're ok with older software.

[benaaasaaas@group.lt]

Just a point about phrasing but pretty much all MP games work flawlessly, just not the esports titles with draconian anticheats.

[auth@lemmy.world]

Yeah but for a new user its nice to see how different groups configure linux out of the box. Once you know what you're doing you can tweak the distro to your liking but new users seem to search for a default they like and stick with it until comfortable.

[littleomid@feddit.org]

And there’s the issue. Guy is confused, and everyone is recommending him ten thousand distros. We need to understand that not everyone understands half of what we talk about more than half the time.

OP: just get mint, try it out, make a thread again in a couple months if you need help choosing another distro.

[bigtrout75@lemmy.world]

Switch when Microsoft ads, bloat, telemetry and reboots starts to test your sanity.
Didn't switch if everything seems fine.

[potatobro@lemmy.blahaj.zone]

Just dual boot. Boot in to Linux only for a week or two, if it's working for your needs keep it. If not, delete the partition and it's like nothing ever happened.

[mrsulu@lemmy.ml]

Dual boot is the way.

[mrsulu@lemmy.ml]

1. Load onto USB thumb drive and boot into it to see if you like the outline feel. Try different ones (Debian is good)
2. Dual boot If you like outline feel from USB drive
3. Give it a month as your daily driver
4. Consider the Chris Titus option of thinned down windows.

I'm using Debian on my machine and it just works.

[ziglin@lemmy.world]

I'm still going to ask how you ended up with a server CPU. Does it help with the tasks you do?

[afaix@lemmy.world]

Mint is better IMHO, it’s based on Ubuntu which is in turn based on Debian, but includes quality of life improvements and newer packages. Debian is nice for servers, but I would get something that is stable but still has faster updates for my desktop

[thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world]

Iirc Intel xeon is shitty, installing linux might make your overall experience with your computer better. Especially if you run something like xfce as the desktop environment.

[banzai51@midwest.social]

I wouldn't even go that far. Boot to a live USB of a distro you want to try.