Ok so a little background first. I’m an older millennial. I started using Linux when I was in college back in 2001. It was Mandrake Linux back then. I had an Asus V6800 DDR Deluxe graphics card with 3D shutter glasses and video-in for video capture.
The kernel module for my graphics card was limited and the shutter glasses didn’t work in Linux. For the video capture, I actually had to download an open source kernel module from some enthusiast. Then I had to literally recompile the kernel with the NVidia and video capture kernel modules to support my graphics card. And when I finally got this to work, I could finally play 3D OpenGL games in Linux. Except there weren’t that many.
If you wanted to run a Windows application, there was Wine, but it took a lot of technical knowhow and a lot of troubleshooting just to get something as simple as freakin’ NOTEPAD to run. Let alone a whole god damn game!
Over time Linux improved quite a bit and received more support from NVidia, but it was still a bit complicated until Ubuntu provided some repos with pre-built modules you could install. Wine was still a pain in the butt and it was mostly used to run MS Office anyways.
When I heard Steam was working on a Linux-based console and that they were working with a pimped up version of Wine, I was a bit skeptical. I was certain there wouldn’t be any support for advanced graphics stuff like ray tracing and DLSS.
On my home PC I have a dual-boot setup with Win 10 and Ubuntu. I’ve been spending most of my time in Win 10 for gaming and entertainment and just the simplicity of it.
Since a couple of years I’ve been hearing more and more about Windows 11 and how everything was going to be tied to your Microsoft account and how much they were going to collect information on your usage and how your privacy was simply gone in that new OS. Also the user interface looked horrible. I love the Win 10 UI. It’s flat, square, the start button is easy to click, the start menu has huge tiles that can be organized in groups making it really simple and quick. I mean, the ergonomics of the UI in Win 10 is the best I’ve ever had. Win 11 is a fucking downgrade. And this week I had to upgrade my work laptop to Win 11 and it’s fucking horrible! Microsoft really screwed up the ergonomics.
Knowing that one day it will be inevitable and that I’ll have to upgrade from my beloved Win10, I decided to give gaming in Linux a go since the gaming part is basically the only thing keeping me from switching entirely to Linux. So booted in Ubuntu, installed the Steam Linux client and started reading on how to take advantage of Proton to run Windows games in compatibility mode.
I went ahead and set it up and installed Ghostrunner. I immediately ran into some problems, but I was expecting this. However, they were simple error messages and within 5 mins of Googling I found out I only had to add some command line parameters to set some environment variables. The game launched! And holy shit! It ran flawlessly! There were no issues with the graphics! I could enable all the NVidia RTX options! Everything worked practically out of the box! I was blown away.
We went from a time where you had to rebuild your fucking kernel to get your graphics card to work and fucking around with Wine to get to a point where you nearly throw your PC out the window until you can get a little app to run to simply running apt install nvidia-driver-xxx and clicking on a button to make a Windows game run in Linux.
You guys. This changes everything.
I think my dream is coming true. I think I might finally go 100% Linux on my PC. I never thought I’d see the day!
Holy shit!
I’m a Linux virgin and I’m working to install my first distro ever this week. Ngl, it’s daunting. I’m not tech illiterate but damn it’s so hard to know where to even start
EDIT: got lots of replies while I was trying to save my WSL2 files from before I upgraded windows (unsuccessfully) but I’ve been eyeing nobara and will give it a try tomorrow or friday, thx for all the replies
EDIT2: hoping to learn how to dual-boot with separate drives before actually installing
Installing Ubuntu is so easy a raccoon could accidentally accomplish it while bumping into a keyboard in a trash bin
I’m sorry, but I need to steal that line.
I’m sorry, but I need to steal that line 🤓
Just go with something popular and supported. You can always change later
Someone responded that you should install a gaming centric distro for your first rodeo. We’re all entitled to an opinion, but I couldn’t disagree more.
Linux Mint. It’s a breeze to install, and it’ll help you learn without being too intense until you’re ready to graduate to EndeavourOS or vanilla arch. Mint is the perfect place to get your sea legs.
Keep good backups of anything you care about, so you can let yourself make mistakes and learn in the command line. Wipe and reinstall is a viable option when you break shit, and once you’ve done it a few times you’ll get good at configuring your system back to where you had it before you broke it. Takes me like 20 minutes.
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I had issues at one point, but it was right after a major version release, and they were fixed not long after. Mint is my number one recommendation to anyone getting started. If I ever get tired of a rolling release, it’s likely what I’ll go back to.
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Is there a reason to prefer Rufus over balenaEtcher?
Personal preference I think. I’ve alwyas been a Rufus fanboy but I recently tried Etcher and it worked just fine. Etcher has less options so might be better for someone new to flashing ISO images to USB.
That’s where I’m at, I think. I’ve used both with success, but I’m a relative newbie, so I don’t think I understand the cases where the greater flexibility of Rufus is helpful
Rufus tends to give you extra options for Windows images. Stuff like skipping the privacy questions during install and automatically creating a user account. It lets you customise the install for UEFI only or BIOS and UEFI. Other options that aren’t necessary but might matter to more advanced users.
Etcher only does DD mode and it’s spyware.
Well it doesn’t offer anything Rufus doesn’t. Guess I’ll stick to Rufus.
What makes it spyware? I’ve seen it recommended a lot and never come across this before
Telemetry.
Can you explain more? I don’t really use Windows - is balenaEtcher injecting something into my Linux ISOs to get telemetry after I install the OS?
No, the program itself spies.
Also, Electron fucking sucks.
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Start with something easy. Usually Kubuntu is a good start for someone used to Windows.
If you mainly game there are limited options tbh. Garuda, PikaOS and Nobara. I wouldn’t look at anything beyond these which are made for gaming.
Arch has some serious pull with the wiki being nicely fleshed out for gaming. Ubuntu works great. The hardest part is enabling flatpak to get Steam.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has worked well on my laptop running lighter games. I’ve not tried anything on my main PC yet because I’m honestly worried about compatibility* but OPs’ post gave me hope.
I fired up Horizon Zero Dawn by clicking play. Which is wild compared to back when I tried to understand wine for Word back on 12.04. Super slick! Ubuntu 23.04 with Steam flatpak.
Yeah, I remember those days. I’ll try it some day, but right now I’m playing my third cyberpunk run.
Why do you need flatpack for steam?
You don’t. But flatpak can be easier to use for a beginner.
You don’t. I had a few issues because I’m not using LTS. There were just enough differences that the flatpak was the way that worked easily.
Pop!_OS is a good option too imo. I game a lot on it with no issues, even something like cyberpunk 2077.