I’m just so sick of Microsoft and Google. But there’s two things holding me back:
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I wanna play Steam games on my PC
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I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard
Is there any hope for me?
If your library is on steam, then there’s nothing to worry about! Works natively on Linux. If your library is on other platforms, I’d honestly think twice about switching full time. Dual booting might be a better option. My library is split amongst multiple platforms and I decided that it wasn’t working well enough for me. Steam games will work great though!
Many distros are easy enough to install and navigate as a newbie. My go to for years now has been Linux Mint! It’s based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
If your library is on other platform like gog, epic, amazon or off platform .exe you can use heroic launcher and for most stuff it works just as well.
For some games there is a little more learning curve because you have to translate custom steam configurations found on protondb to do the same thing in heroic but overall you actually have way more control then steam.
The only reason “id think twice” is if you play lots of games with anticheat which does not work on every distro (like arch btw).
oh that’s cool. nope, whole library is on windows on one PC right now.
I was thinking about trying out dual booting to get a feel for it. my understanding was that many programs wont work with linux or require complicated fixes to get them running. so id hate to be left downstream without a paddle, so to speak
Depends which programs. Also, it’s very possible that there are open source alternatives
But if you are dead set on using exactly the same program, https://appdb.winehq.org/ is a database of if and how to make them run on Linux. Wine’s core focus is games, but many programs are covered there too
They mean other platforms like GOG or Epic, not stuff like consoles.
Steam games mostly work, with some exceptions. You can check out ProtonDB to see more precisely what games work, which ones straight up don’t, and which ones need a fix. ProtonDB will usually also tell you what that fix is, which is handy.
But most of the time, you can just hit play and not worry about it.
A note on dualbooting. Linux uses different filesystems from windows. It can access windows NTFS partitions, but it’s not a smooth experience.
A common pitfall is trying use your game library while it is still on a windows filesystem, from linux. Since you can see the folders, and even add them in steam, it’ll seem like it should work. But you’ll run into issues actually running the games. It’s technically possible, but not worth the hassle.
Generally you really want to either format your storage and redownload your games, or if you have the space, copy them over to a fully supported file system.
One thing to keep in mind is that dual booting can work to highlight what you’re missing because generally all of the games that run on Linux will run on Windows, but the reverse is not true. It becomes easy to just default to windows so you don’t have to reboot to play something that doesn’t work in Linux and that can undermine the attempt to switch the OS.
For testing try the live USB sticks Just flash them to an empty stick with programs like etcher, then power dowb and select the stick in your bios (usually reachable by hammering f1, f2 or Del while starting
(Remember that performance will be much better when installing it for real compared tusing running it from a stick though)
Dual boot will work and is not that hard to setup, but you should back up all your data before trying it.
Also when dual booting to avoid duplicates etc I have all my documents and stuff on a USB stick, so I don’t have a version in my win and a version iny linux. Cloud works as well
- before you switch, sort out your apps. Look at what you use on windows, see if it runs on Linux. If not, find a replacement that does and test it out.
- Most Linux distros can boot into a desktop from a thumb drive. You can play and test without touching your windows installation.
- in that vein, ventoy is neat. You can make a bootable drive and drop ISOs in a folder to boot from. No messing with etcher or whatever it’s called
- desktop environment matters as much as the distro. Check out gnome, KDE, and cinnamon.
A start for alternate softwares, though other resources available this is just a first to come to mind: https://www.alternative.to/
I saw some cinnamon stuff and i still dont get what that means!
I was you 18 months ago. It’s certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.
Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes:
- adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you’ll find it worthwhile in the end.
- moving to Linux permanently wouldn’t have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you’d just have forum posts saying “just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki…noob”. But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue.
- don’t let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won’t be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that).
- Don’t get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else… But don’t go for anything with even moderate difficulty.
- Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don’t work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).
whelp, I’ve got a laptop and a desktop. the desktop is old as hell, maybe it’s time for a new start. I could set up a new machine to run with Linux
Linux is perfect for hardware that is old as hell.
Yeah, this. In fact, going with hardware that’s too-too new can lead to a different problem on Linux.
OP, if you’re buying hardware, it’s worth web searching to make sure people have tried it on Linux and are having good experiences with it. Since most manufacturers only care if their stuff works on Windows, it can take a little while for Linux devs to write drivers and get them shipped in Linux distros.
There might be a reason they are unpopular.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don’t have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn’t Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn’t really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.
I am really curious what “system breaking problems” you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don’t forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.
I’m glad it worked smoothly for you and it sometimes is a smooth effortless experience for some people; but if you want to “convert” people then you’ve got to be honest about the fact that people commonly face difficulties. I’ve commented about my Linux issues before and I can paste the comment again here to give an example:
One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.
A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out (AMD GPU).
I installed VMware Horizon for my job’s remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn’t bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.
I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies. Update: I’m using CachyOS now and the Brother website says Arch plainly isn’t supported. When I install the driver from AUR that’s specific to my printer, then it doesnt print and just spews out endless blank pages.
I still can’t get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I’ve stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.
I still can’t find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.
Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute. I still can’t figure out how to use this to auto-mount my Synology NAS.
Plasma added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can’t figure out why. It reappears intermittently, but then disappears when it feels like.
My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can’t figure out why they’ve decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. Update: this seems to have fixed itself (maybe through am update?).
Flatpak Steam app wouldn’t pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.
My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn’t supported.
Trying to set up dual boot kept destroying (I.e. making unbeatable) either the Linux install or the Windows install. I have up eventually as I couldn’t figure out how to fix GRUB from the command line.
People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn’t include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS’s when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows. I know we all love Linux, but allow people to be honest rather than being dismissive. I had over 2 decades of experience with Windows and it had its quirks and problems, but my preexisting familiarity with it made it much easier to use and troubleshoot.
Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.
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the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)
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dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.
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dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.
My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.
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These folks are all giving great advice but also let us know when you’re ready to really fuck around and have fun with your Linux superpowers 😀
You, in practically no time at all: “Nearly everything is working great! Now I want to make my desktop change it’s background to NASA’s picture of the day while also putting all my PC’s status monitors on there. Oh! And I want my PC to back itself up every hour over the network automatically with the ability to restore files I deleted last week. I’ve got KDE Connect on my phone and it’s awesome!”
Then, later: “I bought a Raspberry Pi and I want to turn it into a home theater streaming system and emulation station.”
…and later: “What docker images do you guys recommend? I want to setup some home automation. What do you guys think of Pi-hole?”
“I’ve got four Raspberry Pis doing various things in my home and I’m thinking about getting Banana Pi board to be my router. OpenWRT or full Linux on it? What do you guys think?”
…and even later: “I taught myself Python…” 🤣
And finally: I rewrote all my stuff in C because I didn’t like the overhead of Python and wanted to go more minimalist.
lmao 🤣 wouldn’t that be nice?
Honestly that’s kind of the dream (I already have raspi theater plans).
It’s sad how much technology has changed since what we thought it was gonna be in the 80s. we HAVE the capacity to do all those things, but we get locked out of modifying our own devices!
Linux is way easier than it was even 10 years ago and many games run better on Linux than they do on Windows. There’s gaming distros but I’m not sure what the benefit is other than the built-in NVIDIA drivers. I just game on Fedora. You need to enable Proton stuff in the settings and you’re off.
There’s tons of youtube videos / tutorials on how to create a live usb of a distro, such as linux mint. This will allow you to boot into linux and play around without installing anything and get a feel for linux. It’s nowhere as tech wizardry as you think.
And if all your games are on steam and don’t have anti cheat things, they’ll probably just all work with proton (linux compatibility tool in steam).
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yeah I started with popOS, used it for about a year, then tried Fedora for a week but figured if Im moving distro to get the latest and dive deeper might as well go with Arch, that lasted like two months with hyprland then decided to try bazzite and its been solid, everything I need is just there already, shortcuts working just like windows so its easy to transition from work laptop to personal, screen shots, lock, mounting network shares etc
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The fact people suggest anything fedora based to new users is even more baffling then suggesting pure arch.
Fedora loves to just randomly destroy itself every so often. Hell they are currently thinking of doing it right now!
If your going to do a gamer distro like bazzite as a gamer your objectively better off just going with cachyOS.
It’s literally the same base as steam OS, has half the problems. And wont just implode because fedora decides to change something stupid yet again.
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Yes. Steam is available on Linux, pretty easy to install and it comes with a compatibility layer (Proton) which works quite well.
Linux is a bit different than Windows. But I’d say just using it is about as complicated as using Windows. You’ll just have to try and see whether you like it. And if it’s hard or easy for you to relearn a few things. I mean if you’re in the Browser and Steam all day, those will be the same applications and also look and work the same way. Other than that you could face some issues with gaming hardware and you have to fiddle with things, or everything works out of the box. You can’t tell beforehand.
Consider your library: most games will be able to run fine on Linux. However, if you predominantly play online multiplayer games which require anticheat you should check compatibility on ProtonDB.
Second, consider your hardware: if your GPU is AMD you’re good to go. Nvidia might have issues (not sure if this has been resolved since I last had to look into it).
Finally, choose a distro: I’d recommend Ubuntu or anything Ubuntu-based. There’s a lot of mixed answers in the Linux community and definitely a ton of hate for Ubuntu. However, as someone who has been running Linux for nearly a decade at this point, there are a few key points:
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Ubuntu is debian based, so it’s extremely stable(but not as slow to update)
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Ubuntu is very beginner friendly, and you won’t need to touch the terminal if you don’t want to
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Everyone hates on snaps, but for you I don’t think you’ll run into an issue with it.
Personally, I steer towards debian based distros for my devices as well because I’d rather spend time messing with the software I’m running or other things NOT debugging why my config is suddenly shitting the bed
GPU is Nvidia. I’m gonna have to look up the words distro, Ubuntu, and debian and get back to you. just to demonstrate where I’m at lol
Distro: short for distribution. Linux is not an operating system. It’s a piece of technology (specifically something called a kernel) you can use to create an OS. Those Linux based OSs are referred to as distros. We are usually not calling them “Versions” because the Linux Kernel is also frequently seeing updates and that would just cause confusion.
Debian and Ubuntu: Popular distros. Ubuntu tends to be a bit more user friendly than Debian and was the default recommendation for new user for a long time. In recent years its popularity among enthusiasts declined because of a series of unpopular decisions, mainly the adaptation of something called snaps which is not completely open source and takes a bit more time to launch apps than alternatives. Debian on the other hand really values stability. Updates arrive less frequently than on other distros but undergo really rigorose testing.
Oh boi, for gaming Ubuntu and it’s family is… Iffy at best. You tend to end up with weird problems cause of the older software frequently. Not a problem till it VERY much is.
Modern gaming basically requires you to be really close to cutting edge if you want remotely reliable performance and timely bug fixes. Which you just do not and will never get on Ubuntu.
It’s why valve choose arch for steam OS. It’s why cachyOS exists. It’s why the big popular alterative is fedora based.
Tho suggesting bazzite is iffy with how fedora likes to break things with dumb changes.
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Yes, ez one (if you have installed operating systems before and know how to paste an error passage into google ) -4hours and your done start to finish. (Given you have standard hardware and don’t want to set up something crazy like dual boot with raid and nas)
Moderate complexity if you have never done anything like that, plan 2-6 evenings to get it fully working with everything you need
Also: consider your scopes. For most cases Linux will just work, you just have to get used to some different interfaces.
BUT: some things will not run under linux no matter how hard you try --> google if stuff you can’t live without will work
(for me I still have a dual boot windows for playing league of legends and running my vive wireless adapter, as those will not run under Linux.
For games use protonDB
I may be oldschool, but for people not comfortable around terminals I would suggest Debian KDE as it never breaks and the transition from windows is easy. You can do everything from GUI (clicky button interfaces)
For the installation of steam you might need a terminal, but there are good guides online (and you really dont need to be a wizard for that) from where you can just copy paste (when searching just add your distro e.g. “install steam Debian”, and once you’ve got that running you can just run every game from within steam.
Since Steam has done a lot of work with proton, most games just run under Linux. In steam: Install–>play
For nearly all games not directly running, you can just force them to run with proton. It will say: “Game not compatible” in steam, you just click the gear icon on the right to open settings, go to “compatibilty” and tick “force use of compatibility layer” and select the newest proton from the drop down
The button where steam previously said “not compatible” magically turns into the blue “install” button we all know and love. And nearly all games run with only minor inconveniences (like showing keyboard hotkeys even when playing with a gamepad) or no issues at all.
You need to be aware that some games using kernel level anticheat (e.g. league of legends, valorant) can not and will never run on Linux, if the developers of the games don’t add the possibility.
EDIT: for programs not related to gaming its often easier to use an alternative, if the program is not available for Linux. Most times its also more privacy foccused, open source and free
Adobe light room --> darktable
Microsoft office --> libre office
Adobe Premiere pro --> davinci resolve/shotcut
Paint/Photoshop --> gimp/davinci/dark table
Edge --> firfox
Notepad --> Kate
Fraps/relive/shadowPlay --> OBS
Etc. Pp.
Unless the Steamdeck flew under your radar you should know that you can absolutly play games on Linux. Most of the exceptions are big online games with crazy anti-cheats (yeah in that case no luck).
As for hope : migrating to another OS (be it Linux, MacOS or whatever) can be disorienting at first, wich tend to repel some people (it’s like learning how to use a pc for the first time), that’s actually the most important thing to keep in mind for everything to go smoothly, you don’t need to be a tech wizzard, just to be patient.
As long as you don’t rush things, don’t expect everything to behave as somekind of windows clone and learn how it works a bit you should be fine.
Before you try anything I’d also suggest you check if all the software you are using are available on Linux and if not what alternative you can use : alternativeto.net can help. To check if the games you play work you can also go to protondb.com. Preparing as much as you can before install is a huge plus, and it’s really not that hard.
As an exemple I’ve helped a curious friend who wanted to try Linux, they’re the most tech illiterate person I’ve ever known…like even worse than some old people. It took them two hard month to be fully acclimated, like as fine as they were doing on windows if not better. Never even asked me for help ever since. (My eyes still bleed when I see how they’re using their pc but they clearly have no issue doing whatever they’re doing) So if they can I’m sure anyone can.
I’m not sure what you mean by flew under my radar but I don’t really even know what steamdeck is. some kind of handheld console? how’s it relevant here?
It’s because it’s quite popular so alot of people know it exists, but yes it’s a handheld console made by steam and it’s using linux, it’s basicly a Linux console.
Sure there is hope! Admitting you have a problem is the first step in tackling that problem!
Welcome to the club 😀
I’m moving at the moment. Linux Mint is a good stable Windows alternative, but I wanted to separate gaming from other things so I am dual booting. I have had luck with Pop_OS! before but recently had issues with a laptop WiFi adapter, had some issues getting Bazzite working, so ended up with CachyOS, which has been really slick and easy so far.
A nice thing with Linux is how easy it is to cycle through a few distros if you have your main files on a different drive or partition, since you don’t lose anything important when switching that way.
Yes, go for it.
The two distros I recommend for beginners, these helped me start using Linux:
- Kubuntu
Kubuntu uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment, which is the closest experience to Windows 10 imo. Very good for easing you in. Plus, it’s based on Ubuntu - the most commonly used distro. So if you have issues, just google “(problem) Ubuntu” and you’ll find a fix.
- Pop!_OS
Pop!_OS is preconfigured for gaming. If you have anything Nvidia in your PC, just start with this one. Nvidia doesn’t play nice with Linux, and the company that develops Pop!_OS has a specific version with Nvidia drivers. Driver configuration can be annoying, you don’t have to worry about it with Pop!_OS.
Both of these distros will work for gaming out of the box pretty much (provided you use AMD products). Steam’s Proton tool is insanely useful, and it’s not too hard to figure out how to tweak games that are still having issues after it works its magic.
Basically, your choice boils down to:
Kubuntu - an easier time with the PC side of things
Pop!_OS - an easier time with the gaming side of things
As for being a tech wizard, don’t worry about it. If you know how to look up your problems, there’s always some guy on a forum with some commands you can copy/paste into the terminal and fix everything.
I started with popOS but now recommend bazzite if you mainly use your machine for gaming, I just setup a pc for someone and gave them bazzite and now I see them on steam playing games and no complaints. bazzite or maybe fedora, the issues I had with PopOS was just apps being outdated in the app store, like darktable came out with an update and like a month passed and the update still wasnt showing in the app store so I had to use the appimage from the darktable site
See, I haven’t had any issues with Pop!_OS, but I also don’t use apps outside of Steam and LibreOffice much. To add to your point, I will say that for how much they hype up the Pop! Shop, it kinda works terribly.
I haven’t tried Bazzite, but Fedora-based distros are starting to pique my interest.
