If you need bleeding edge gaming support, is Arch (using Arch-install)or an Arch based distro like Garuda. I believe OpenSUSE Tumbleweed could also be alternative to Arch.
The next best thing is a Fedora based distro like Nobara.
The major tip I always give is: Linux is different from Windows, this means things are done differently and if you try to do things the windows way you’re going to have a bad time.
As for distro hoping forget about this, you’ll experience it but it shouldn’t start for a while, pick something you’re comfortable with (maybe the same you use on your server) and a DE that looks good to you (personally I like KDE Plasma, but this is a very personal choice, and I don’t even use KDE but I’m not going to recommend i3 for someone who’s just starting now). Distro hoping will start whenever you see something that picks your interest on a different distro, and you decide to give it a try, but that should only come into place after you’re comfortable with the one you’re using. But I always also recommend keeping /home in a different partition just so it’s easier to switch or reinstall the system if needed.
I’ve had the desire to leave for a while, that’s why I thought creating a linux server to self host apps with my former gaming PC would be a great way to get started with Linux and learn the basics while still relying on Windows for my main stuff for a while.
Games were my last point of resistance, but I don’t play as much anymore so I think I should just take the plunge.
Can you elaborate the /home on a different partition part? How do you split your partition and does it mean you can switch distro and still have your stuff laying around as if you plugged an external disk?
Gaming is actually really good on Linux now. Proton is friggin amazing!
Putting all your files on one partition is fine and simple. The only downside is that if you go to install another distro, you’ll have to back up and restore those files after you wipe.
Welcome to greener pastures, it’s good to have you 🙂
I personally keep /home on a completely separate drive; I have an NVMe SSD for / (root partition, where the OS is installed) and /home lives on a SATA SSD. There’s a page in the install process that lets you do this, create partitions on various devices, or select existing ones.
Having /home on a different partition means that you can swap out the root partition from around it to repair or replace the OS and you don’t have to move your files around. It makes the process of recovering from certain kinds of calamities and the process of distrohopping a lot faster.
Having them on a completely separate drive like mine does a couple things, the main one is it adds “drive failure” to the list of “certain kinds of calamities” I can quickly recover from. I can swap out a dead system drive for a new one, reinstall the OS in about 15 minutes, and then just run a little utility to reinstall all my software automatically. My files and settings are all still there.
Here’s the thing no one tells beginners: You’re familiar with hidden files on Windows? How you can right click a file and click “Hide” and it disappears from the list unless you go up to View > Show Hidden Files then it reappears and its icon is blurry? Linux has a similar system for hiding files. To hide a file in Linux, you put a period at the beginning of the file name. In a GUI file manager you can show them similarly to how you do it in Windows, in the terminal you ls -a (dash a for “all”). The Linux ecosystem uses this heavily for app config files. If you ever uninstall software, reinstall it, then notice your settings are still there…this is why. It’s stored in a hidden file somewhere in your /home directory, probably inside of ~/.config.
When I was a beginner, I specifically backed up my Documents, Downloads, Music, Videos etc. folders. And when I had to occasionally restore something from a backup, not only did I have to reinstall everything, but I had to reconfigure all my apps from scratch. Understanding the above paragraph, I backup or maintain my entire /home drive, and when I install a new OS all my settings are already there, including my preferred theme and wallpaper.
I’ll try to tell a shorter version of this story: My father bought his most recent computer, a Dell XPS tower. He got it set up, and the process of moving out of his old one and into his new one, just transferring files, installing software and configuring everything took him a solid two weeks of manual work. In that same time, I ordered the parts for my computer, waited for them to be shipped, assembled the machine, installed the OS on bare metal, restored a backup of my /home folder from my old computer, ran this utility which took a list of all the software I had on my laptop and then installed it all from the package manager automatically, and I was up and running. What he did in two weeks of hands-on work I did in three hours of mostly doing something else while the computer transferred data from an HDD or the internet.
TL;DR of the /home partition is this: One partition is gonna be the bootloader, typically a small /boot folder. This thing starts the booting process from efi, boot the kernel, this will mount the root partition (/). then, according to the File System TABle, typically a text file in /etc/fstab, you can mount whatever drives (and more!) Anywhere in the file system tree. A common setup is to partition your drive into a smallish / partition and a bigger /home partition. Under /home will be your /home/username folder, roughly the equivalent of C:\Users\username on windows, but even more of your install lives there now: any userspace application (usually a flatpak, which works crossdistro), ideally all user configuration, as well as of course your files. So, once you either need or want to switch distro, you leave the home partition untouched, format / and make a new user with the same username and home folder and bam, most if not all of your configuration and at least some of your apps will be there from the start You should probably do this, it’s not too complicated and it may save the ou a headache in the future.
On Windows you have drives C, D, etc, on Linux everything is inside the root folder (i.e. /), and you can mount different partitions or even disks anywhere, so / can be the second partition on your M.2, /boot be the first partition formatted as vfat, /home be on an SSD and /home/nibodhika/hdd be an internal HDD. After you set it up (which you can do during most of the distros graphical installation) it will feel as if those are all just folders, but the important part is that if you ever format one of them the other remain intact. So for example if you have the setup I described above and you format and change your entire Linux distribution, that should only affect the M.2 disk, so the home and HDD are intact, which means that if you set the new distro to mount things in the same place you’ll have all of your configurations and media in place (all you need to do is reinstall the programs you use)
Plasma is the only good Linux desktop left. Gnome has shit itself, all the other alternative DEs are too feature-poor, and WM “desktops” are for people who have more time on their hands than common sense. I’m just afraid that just like the past, Plasma will discover new ways to screw itself over and become trash again and have to climb back out of being complete garbage back up to usable again.
Plasma is the best for me also. Ever since GNOME 3 went “convergence,” I’ve been looking for a traditional desktop experience. Xfce, cinnamon, and budgie all have good things going for them. I choose to use KDE because I love the customizability of the desktop and the settings menu is easy to use. The theming is also very nice on KDE.
Default gnome has a great keyboard based workflow or the option for a pointer-device based workflow. It doesn’t copy the outdated windows workflow and actually succeeds in pushing its own ideas.
I've been using it for a long time. I've personally found that there is essentially no impact on gaming performance--or if there is, it's so slight that it's totally negligible on midrange hardware, especially with feral gamemode. It might be more impactful on low spec PCs, I would assume, but I'm not sure of that. In my case, it's plenty lightweight and offers lots of customizability.
Can confirm. Used it early on (around Suse 7.3) and it took ages to compile and was bloated and buggy as heck. I switched to WindowMaker and never really looked back. Recently gave it a whirl on steamdeck and was pretty shocked at how polished and nice it is. If you haven’t given it a fair shake recently, you might be surprised.
Welcome! I made the leap not long ago as well. I’m using Linux Mint, and I’ve had a great experience with it (including gaming).
My recommendation: when you get to installing games, use something like Lutris or PlayOnLinux. These are frontends (like Steam) that will help manage any special configurations you might need. They can even connect to online sources and apply settings that have worked for other people. I’ve been using Lutris and it’s been pretty good (I’ve been playing a lot of BG3 lately, runs like a dream).
I’ve been using Linux for ~14 years and am not a computer person at all. Of all the distros, Linux Mint is by far the easiest, most intuitive, and works without problems. I think that the installation is even easier than Windows. There’s also a large supportive community in case you should into any problems, abd because it’s tailored for newer users, whatever problem you run into has likely already been resolved by someone else.
My personal favorite at the moment is KDE Neon tho.
So far I’ve tried Debian12 on my old laptop and Mint on my self hosting rig. I think I’ll sping so VMs and test new distros before commiting to a full install. I wasn’t too happy with Mint because its boot time is much slower than Debian on a comparatively better machine so I’m not too tempted to go for it again. But maybe I messed up something and caused slow boot times.
Yeah, Mint will tend to be a little slower than Debian since Mint is Debian plus Ubuntu plus Mint. If you’re looking for speed, LMDE or XFCE desktop environments would be the quickest. Of those 2, LMDE might be faster, but it’s almost a bare bones GUI. XFCE might be just a little slower, but the GUI will be more adjustable.
I’ve been crucified for mentioning this before. But Bottles is another alternative that allows easy configuration of Wine prefixes for gaming. It is another alternative worth considering, not better or worse, just different.
Welcome to the club! My advice is, after you’re done with the installation, make a bootable external device with a live distro (e.g. a USB stick) and keep it around. Now, if your main system ever gets messed up and can’t boot anymore, you can boot the live one and start troubleshooting.
Don’t be scared by this suggestion: getting an unbootable system is not so common, but if it happens you’ll be glad you have something ready to work on it
I made a video going over my own experience. But I feel the biggest tip is to understand the difference between the OS and the Desktop Environment, since in Linux these are separate.
In Windows I found myself identifying the OS based on how the start menu looks and how the file explorer is.
But in Linux these are separate and are called Desktop Environmenta (DE). Your desktop can look like Windows with DE’s like KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or Mate. It can be Mac like with KDE Plasma, or Gnome. Or it can be unique like Gnome.
If you noticed I repeated a few names, that’s because they can be customized, and some distributions make them look and feel the way they want them too.
Meanwhile the distro is more focused on what applications are pre-installed and what software will run and are available. I.e. Debain is more stable while arch is more up-to-date.
There are many guides going over this, but distro hopping is the best for narrowing this down. I found finding applications that need to work and seeing if the distro can do it, can weed out any distro that won’t work for you. If you don’t like the feel of a distro but like the functionally, then look for a similar distro but with a new GUI.
For example Ubuntu ships with a mostly unmodified Gnome. I personally am not a fan of Gnome and prefer a more Windows-like feel. So I look around and find Zorin, Kubuntu, and Mint.
Word of the wise though, while you can install more than one de on install, you are better off either making a new profile or not swapping your de. Something something shared resources, something something breaking your install.
The only thing that is stopping a Windows user from becoming an average Linux user is the package manager. Just ask Duckduckgo about “(Your distro name here) package manager cheat sheet”, memorize it, and thats it.
The next step would be installing a minimal installation of your distro – which is (also) really easy as well. All you have to do is to install (either Xorg or sway or Hyprland) with the --install-recommends flag (or similar), edit a specific file (.bash_profile) inside your home directory (cd ~), add the binary file of your chosen package (same name as its package name – sway or Hyprland, etc.) and thats it.
Friendly reminder that this is a “very short resumée” of what you have to do. But it will (definitely) get you sorted.
That’d be true if Windows users were a some sort of “excluded humans from society” kinda thing where the English language was entirely new to em. Or like Linux users used some “exclusive-never-heard-anywhere-else” terms. Which thankfully, both are a fallacy.
I’m linux user for years and, while I can understand what he say I cannot get what he means wtf. Why would a new user install the graphic server manually? You only would do this on arch.
I would also add on that saying “Just ask Duckduckgo” further obfuscates everything. Yes, it is a generally good search engine choice. But “Google” is the verb people use. Even us sickos who use Bing will say “google that”.
Which more or less highlights one of the biggest problems for further adoption of linux among sane users. The current users.
Because the entirety of that post can be rewritten as “The big difference between Windows and Linux is the approach to installing software. There have been improvements on the Windows side over the years, but the idea is still that you search the internet for installers. On Linux, you use a ‘package manager’ that is sort of like a phone app store for your computer”. And since I actually have recent windows experience i would add on “If you ever used ‘winget’ or ‘chocolatey’, it is like that but it actually works and the entire system is built around it”
But nah, gotta get that greybeard on and gatekeep as many people as possible. Its like people see “hey, I am a newbie and want to try this out” and decide that means they need to big league everyone to prove how smart they think they are.
Agreed. Personally I never found getting almost any distro up and running difficult but I’ve been coding since the 80s in a variety of systems so the cli is second nature to me. Hell, I even know how to exit vi.
I disagree with the minimal install, especially for new users. It’s probably easier to get going when everything you need is installed and configured. Once you know the tools and what you want, then go for the customization.
I’ve been using Linux for over 20 years and I still prefer a full install (EndeavourOS is my choice). I’d just rather spend my time doing anything else than manually installing every package.
I can say about CS, I can run on average 150hz in low setting and FSR on performance, the game seems like shit, but you can. On medium, I can run around 120, and I feel that some maps are heavier.
Do you are playing on Xorg? Usually wayland can have some impact on your game.
Are you experiencing too much stuttering in all games? Recently I discovered my MOBO was trolling and I had to disable some energy related features.
Are you running your game with gamemode? It can make a great difference.
You can also try different kernels youtu.be/qNzd57b0h08
Operating System: EndeavourOS KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.8 Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor Memory: 31,3 GiB of RAM iirc it is 3200 Mhz but it should not have a so big impact Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Thanks! Yep, Xorg. I mucked with some setting in BIOS, enabling EZ Tune, and have had a slight performance improvement from doing so, so something was throttling it there. Hadn’t heard of gamemode before, might give that a go, along with mangohud.
I can provide nothing specifically to the topic at hand, but a great resource is ProtonDB (here the CS2 specific page). You can see which launch options, workarounds, etc work on which distro, GPU, …
If you get it working, consider posting there, so others can benefit from your knowledge 😀
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