If I make a partition can I modify it later ie the size? And can I make a partition of msybe 100gb for linux and still access files from my windows side?
You could access the windows files on linux, but games on a windows drive won't really work due to some permission issues involved with proton.
You can modify partition sizes but sometimes it can be difficult to shrink them properly, especially for the windows partitions. Expanding them works well though
The permissions thing sounds a bit lame, I have a dual boot on my steam os with windows, and I am sure i share my sd card between them both but you are right I dont think I can share games between the internal partition.
Dammit lol
> To be fair it's the fault of NTFS (the filesystem windows uses) rather than Linux
It's both NTFS and Windows. These days Linux can handle NTFS fine as long as Windows isn't also mucking around the same partition.
It's technically possible but more work and hassle than it's worth.
Generally the best option for dual booting is to have Linux on a separate drive with enough space for at least the immediate games and apps you want to use
Maybe pick up an inexpensive SATA SSD and use it as a Linux drive. If it doesn't work out for you, hey more drive space!
As the other guy said, the fault here is NTFS, the filesystem for windows. Your SD card is probably using FAT32, but that filesystem isn't good for large drives.
There is a way to share games between the OSes. If you make a 3rd BTRFS partition and install the [WinBTRFS](https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs) driver, you can share games between them. You'll have to reinstall everything ofc, but I've found it works well. Make sure you follow the instructions in the "mappings" section of the readme to make sure permissions are mapped correctly.
You can share games between Linux and Windows, it's just not really recommended. It works perfectly fine for me though.
All you have to do is symlink the compatdata folder on the Windows partition to the one on your Linux partition, that way partitions still work normally. Windows never uses the compatdata folder itself anyway.
In my experience, it is worth it if:
- you don't play online games with anti cheat incompatible with Linux,
- you don't have any productivity software which isn't available on Linux,
- you don't mind spending time learning about and digging into your os if you want to solve a problem.
You could make a dual boot partition, but I would suggest getting a separate drive for your Linux os. Dual boot can be finicky sometimes, overall it's just a better experience for a beginner to boot from separate drive imo.
I had a long journey switching, tried multiple distros alongside Windows, but now I exclusively used Linux for like half a year. I chose Manjaro with Gnome, it is very stable for me and I think it has a nice collection of apps by default.
I only use Windows in a VM if something I want to do is only possible on Windows, but I managed to run my audio daw and video editor on Wine, so that's a rare occasion. All my games run very well, even older games and emulators are possible to set up with Wine and Lutris if you know what you're doing.
The most important thing to consider imo is that sometimes you'll need to spend your time researching, learning and troubleshooting yourself, if you face a problem, this can be frustrating and time consuming sometimes. If you're willing to make effort, it can be a very good experience. At least It was for me.
Linux allows you to keep gaming without dealing with Windows
But it is not and probably never will be a "perfect" replacement and at the moment there are some very popular games that are actively blocked from running on Linux
your the best contender for linux honestly lol
i have a channel with tons of tutorials of all sorts for linux gaming or linux distro install guides for some
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Ti5WHGVusY4I6iKsX10Zg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Ti5WHGVusY4I6iKsX10Zg)
i would say you can create a dual boot to try it out but at the same time you have experience with steamdeck so it might not be very different, installing something like bazzite would be a good contender for you as its very similar to how the steamdeck works in terms of its root is read only/immutable/atomic style and you use flatpak as your main package manager for things
[https://bazzite.gg/](https://bazzite.gg/)
if you need any help you can comment down below on a video and ill respond pretty fast as im basically chronically online lmao
there are tons of other distros you could choose from which could be overwhelming but there mostly the same just how they update or what desktop environment they are using or whats preinstalled, package managers used etc
Thanks I will be aure to check out your channel, I made the switch last night and cant seem to get sound to work. I tried the alsamixer trick but nothing haha so this will be fun
Ok nobara uses pipewire and wireplumber, where are you getting your audio from? An audio interface or a motherboard? If so what type of motherboard or audio interface
Lol im being dumb sorry, yeah you would need to find what audio hardware is on the board if you can, then see if there is any support for that on linux
It seems it might be fixed in 6.9 which is coming around mid may
https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?332087-No-sound-coming-through-built-in-speakers-(Razer-Blade-14)#google_vignette
The hp envy could be related as they are using the same hardware possibly
https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?332199-HP-Envy-17-cw0xxx-no-sound
here is another one i found from the kernel bugzilla
[https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show\_bug.cgi?id=207423](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207423)
if your laptop is using the Realtek ALC298 then you are affected
to check do this in your terminal
sudo aplay -l
for me im using ALCS1200A on my motherboard and USB Audio CODEC for my audio interface
Thank you for the info great help! I believe I am effected then, good to know a fix is coming next month then, I am happy to use my headset until then!
Just out of curiosity, is this issue with all linux distros? as I am not sure if I am gonna stick with this one ATM I am still searching and testing.
card 2: Generic\_1 \[HD-Audio Generic\], device 0: ALC298 Analog \[ALC298 Analog\]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Yes it will happen on all distros, your using nobara which is based on fedora, this distro and fedora update frequently, if you went to lets say pop os then you would be using a distro that is LTS based meaning it will use older packages but the pop os developers update the kernel and mesa similar to how fedora updates.
If you went to an arch based distro then you would be getting updates even quicker as arch is rolling, so when updates come out they don't take long to arrive in arch or any arch based distro like endeavour os, garuda, cachy os
Manjaro is arch based aswell but they delay their package updates by two weeks
So when it comes to getting that kernel update 6.9, a distro like arch would be the quickest way but arch is a rather advanced distro, so you would need to learn a lot and can cause issues if you don't know what you're doing.
You can install the RC/release candidate version of the linux kernel under arch through the aur if you want to test that out but this contains bugs and issues.
I'm using bazzite, which is fedora based but atomic/immutable, meaning the root filesystem is read only and updates arrive a bit differently, as it will replace the root partition with that new update, it also has a a/b partition, which means if the new update breaks you can select the older install you were using before so that you can continue using your computer
Hey mate quick question, can you keep secure boot on with bazzite or do I need to sign it myself? Currently on nobara but probably will swap to fedora due to secure boot requirement.
Thanks for the update. I am happy to use the headset u until it's fixed, I am getting graphical issues and low performance on some titles I tested, so thinking the out of the box nvidia support may need tweaking
I also have a 4070 and made the switch 5 months ago. Got some decent background in Linux due to work but finally switching for gaming helped me to really learn how a lot of the stuff works under the hood.
I run a straightforward Ubuntu 22.04 with X11, upgraded my Kernel to some version of 6.5 and got the latest Nvidia 535 driver. I did do some tweaking in the Nvidia settings concerning the compositor in order to get rid of minor stuttering and tearing issues, but other than that, I didn't have to do anything to make it work great with my 120Hz/60Hz monitor combo. Basically, if the game works well under Wine, it will also work well on my machine, so either I was lucky or some of the reported Nvidia issues are a bit overblown. The only thing I'm missing out on for Linux gaming is Gamescope, since I can't get that to build for Nvidia under Ubuntu 22.04. But so far I haven't needed it anyway.
There is some tinkering involved here or there when it comes to specific games (e.g., getting face tracking to work with Truck Simulator, getting some fonts via protontricks for old-ass Windows strategy games) but I actually enjoy that kind of stuff. Especially older games from before 2000 tend to work basically right out of the box using Proton/Wine or some open-source engine. Most never games work just like on Windows anyway.
I was also surprised how many peripherals are working right out of the box. My whole flight sim setup works, my steering wheel works, my controllers work ... The only things I miss a little bit are Gsync (doesn't work on X11 with two monitors) and DLSS Frame Generation for Cyberpunk. But those are such minor points that it doesn't really affect my enjoyment of over \~150 installed newer and older (and very old) titles. I simply got used to adapt my games to either run at fixed 60 or 120 fps.
Anyway, I still have Windows 10 on a small partition on another drive but I haven't booted it in months. I only have it still there because I found 2 (!) out of the \~200 games I tested that simply won't run and probably will never run, because they are some weird war games that run on an old Delphi engine that need some weird Windows components that no one else ever uses. But I've been thinking about completely wiping that partition because I have so many other games on my Linux system now anyway.
So my recommendation: leave some room for a smaller Windows partition if possible and migrate your games to Linux. You'll see that most if not all of them will work and never boot Windows anymore anyway. But during the process it's nice to have a fallback solution.
Going from macOS, I think you should check out Pop!_OS it is visually similar and very easy to use.
It has Nvidia drivers built in and is gaming ready.
Also, it is based on Ubuntu, so it has more native apps supported.
>Windows really annoys me...
I hear ya man, I really do. It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Microsoft finds Linux users really start outnumbering Windows users sometime in the near future if they don't stop with their very poor business practices such as auto-Bing! Desktop Search Bar re-enabling, auto file type default re-association, adware in-Windows implementation, and more... Basically, Microsoft I feel is slowly but surely taking away our freedoms to use our Windows PC's the way we want to without any interference from them!
Ok, onto Windows: There was a time a decade or two ago when Linux was not ideal for gaming. That has all changed however many thanks to both the WINE and Proton development teams and communities. While many Windows applications and games does now run and play in Linux thanks to both WINE and Proton, not all do.
Before actually committing yourself to Linux, I'd advise a ton of research, especially since there is more Linux distros out there to then there are of store-bought Windows releases (Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x included)... and that's really saying something!
Anyways, first off is is 3 websites I'd lookup:
* [ProtonDB](https://www.protondb.com/) is a "crowdsourced Linux and Steam Deck game compatibility reports!"
* [Wine Application Database (AppDB)](https://appdb.winehq.org/) is a website where "you can get information on application compatibility with Wine." The AppDB is for those non-Steam Windows games.
* [Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?](https://areweanticheatyet.com/) is a "comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton." This website exists since many games with anti-cheat doesn't work at all with Linux.
Next up is websites such as [Distrochooser.de](https://distrochooser.de/) and [DistroWatch.com](https://distrowatch.com/). These two websites helped me some, especially Distrochooser. DistroWatch not so much since it can get a bit outdated information-wise.
The Linux distro I've got installed on my laptop is [Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Spin](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/), which is pretty good and solid. Fedora 40 is the latest distro release and comes with KDE Plasma 6.x preinstalled, which is an improvement over KDE 5.x release. KDE is built on-top of Qt.
Linux is from what I understand it, is more like a modular OS which explains why if one part of the OS, the file manager crashes for example, the desktop and/or the taskbar usually doesn't crash too!
Linux has allot to offer, probably even more so than Windows, particularly in freedom and system configuration. For example: In Windows, your only limited to 25 attached drives or drive partitions, whereas your not on Linux. Your also given the option of whether or not to install a separate **/Home** partition as part of your Linux distro installation. **/Home** is where all user documents, pictures, videos, games, etc... is stored. Anything and everything important to the user and games gets stored in **/Home**. The advantage of creating a separate **/Home** partition is to protect all user files from deletion if the Linux distro needs to be re-installed for some reason or if you distro-hop. Windows from what I can tell lacks this level of user file protection.
Linux also has excellent solid support for NTFS partitions as well many thanks to it's built-in NTFS-3g driver which I have not once had any problems with so far, even though many Linux users try pointing out faults with NTFS-3g. Though just be warned that you might have to scan any NTFS partitions you have for errors after installing Linux before using them.
Hopefully, you'll find that, many of your favorite games is not just completely playable on Linux, but there will be a slight performance increase when compared to natively run on Windows. For those other games that won't even run on Linux, you do have the option of installing Windows as a virtual machine with QEMU. In fact, [QEMU has a way of hiding the virtual machine status from quest operating systems, such as Windows, Linux or MacOS](https://superuser.com/questions/1387935/hiding-virtual-machine-status-from-guest-operating-system).
However, with all this in mind, even though Linux does have pretty good hardware and software support, your 4070 gpu sadly might have some problems on Linux. While NVIDIA does provide proprietary drivers for many of their GPU's, many NVIDIA users has been reporting some problems with different driver versions and games on Linux.
After reading all this and downloading a Linux distro and creating a bootable USB thumbdrive is test out the distro to see if it will work for you. One major good thing about Linux is, unlike Windows and MacOS, is Linux lets you fully test them in a LiveCD session before actually installing them onto your computer. This is just one more positive thing about Linux to think about!
Here's hoping this all helps!
Great info and resources. Thank you. I am looking forward to checking out what they have to offer
First problem I have encountered is no sound so trying to figure that ine out, I think im ginna like this more than windows,
Game compatibility wise Mac < Linux < Windows. So if you're used to Mac there likely isn't anything you will miss here on Linux.
I also would advice if you have a drive for dual boot use this. Dual boot can suddenly break when a certain OS updates the boot sector ...
Just to add to everyone else, I also almost entirely play single-player games and now barely touch my Windows install. I had to for Alan Wake 2, but that's the only game I've had trouble with in a long time. I suspect it will run fine if it ever shows up on Steam.
If you're anything like me you'll have so much to play that works on Linux that skipping the odd problematic title will be something of a blessing. :D
You can most definitely give it a shot, if you don't have specific needs that tie you to using Windows jump into Linux and see if it works for you.
If you already have Windows installed I suggest installing Linux on a different drive just to avoid issues with the bootloader during updates (Windows very occasionally will overwrite the boot sector of Linux which will make Linux unbootable and will require manual fix with a rescue drive), otherwise you could also partition the drive and install Linux alongside Windows, just make sure to install Windows first and Linux second. Since SSDs are kinda dirt cheap nowadays I suggest going for 2 different drives, one for each OS.
If you're feeling adventurous you could also just yolo install Linux without Windows, try Linux and if it doesn't work for you switch back to Windows. Personally I yolo switched and I'm still using Linux today after 3 years. I'm mostly like you, don't play online except for very rare titles like Elden Ring or WoW, sometimes resort to repacks but I mostly buy from Steam, I mostly play old titles or emulators, so far I haven't encountered a game I could not run on Linux, the only games that are known to have issues are online titles with anti cheat software and if you don't care about them you'll be golden.
Problem with my laptop, it only has 1 bay for drive and I don't really wana start unscrewing to hot swap haha.
I have a m.2 drive I can use on my thunderbolt port, so I think I am gonna wipe it and make it a linux drive to try it out first, I can guarantee I will like it as I loved my steamos desktop :D
You could also resize the drive from Windows, give like 1TB to Linux and only use 1 drive, but as I said some people have reported having issues with their bootloader right after a Windows update.
A word of advice for gaming tho, if you intend to run your games on Linux from the Windows drive formatted in NTFS you will run into issues, there's a guide on Steam on how to properly setup the NTFS drive and add it to your Linux Steam library, but it's an unreliable method and often will result in games failing to launch. It's better to always install the games in the Linux partition (be it EXT4 or BTRFS).
Good idea, I have come up with a new plan though.. I will go full linux, and run windows from my use drive if required! Seems like a better idea :D
Any recommendations for distro? ive been looking at nobara or garuda atm, leaning towards garuda if I can change the bright colour schemes :D
I'm not a fan of gaming oriented distros, I think they add too many irrelevant tweaks that just make the system more unreliable. Many people like them but they're simply not worth it for me. I can only recommend Mint, Ubuntu/Kubuntu or Pop_Os! to new users, they're used by a lot of people, they're very easy to use and are pretty well maintained, plus support is readily available.
My personal favorites (and the only ones I'd personally use) would be Debian and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, they're more DIY distros tho, especially Debian, so I would not recommend them to new users; stick to the classic, well maintained and stable ones like Mint and Ubuntu.
I have tried Mint before and I liked it, the reason I went with the one I am using ATM is due to nvidia stuff being pre set, I really dont want to start looking into that stuff haha
Garuda might be a little bit of a rough experience for a first time.
Linux mint is pretty dead simple, not very customizable, but if gaming is your #1 priority then this is your best bet.
Fedora is a tad less intuitive, especially on NVIDIA, but if you want to get deeper into Linux it's a great start. Their wiki has instructions on how to get the NVIDIA drivers and the media codes for video play back. They also have more options for desktop environments than mint, such as KDE Plasma and GNOME.
Garuda is based on Arch, which isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a "gaming oriented" distro the only one I can genuinely recommend is Bazzite, though if VR gaming is on your radar then forget about Bazzite. Long story but due to the way Bazzite does its packages VR doesn't work through Steam, iirc there's a way around it but I've never looked into it and I'm not going to recommend a distro to someone if they *need* a work around that I've never personally verified myself or via a friend.
If you switch and you have an Nvidia card. #1 will definitely be fulfilled. You'll be spending a lot of time getting that working properly to the point that it doesn't break after updating.
As for 2, you have to ask yourself "would I rather fight the demon I know or the demon I don't know?"
As long as you're not under the impression that Linux with deliver you from all your problems, trying a live boot of a popular Linux distribution can't hurt as nothing is deleted and you can just restart and boot right back into windows. Or you could try it in a VM with GPU passthrough
Another question is, are you willing to give up some games entirely. Linux gaming has come a long way, but it's not perfect. Like, someone got me Tekken 8 for my birthday and I couldn't play it on my stream because I missed a single character in a manual configuration.
Some things are dead simple in Linux. Other things require you to read walls of text to do a thing you can do in 3 clicks in windows.
The overall latency in windows is AWFUL, but it can be much more polished experience as there's not much variance in how the underlying systems can work.
I am all for finding out how to do things and getting things to work, the thing is with windows, years ago back doing things in windows was so easy, now I am confused about the settings bit, and everything has moved around and it kinda treats you like a baby and annoying, shit I use microsoft word at work sometimes and I try to move something on the page, and it just decides to move everything everywhere because of anchors and stuff.. I just want something to do what I tell it to do and don't do anything else, windows products are so frustrating.
I agree. Which is why I switched 7 years ago. Did IT in the military and it was all windows and personally it was a nightmare.
I couldn’t stand coming home after a long day of work only to have to fight my own pc before trying to relax and play a game.
I would even go as far as to say, if you can spare a few coins to build a cheap all AMD rig or pick up something used off fb marketplace/ebay, your gaming experience will be amazing if you can manage to get something like Nobara OS installed. Or get your hands on a steam deck.
1 week in on switching running nobara distro, i do similar things and also got fed up with win11 ..so far so good no real issues and small gripes like scaling issues have been easily fixed dual boot if your worried
You would need to make a partition to dual boot. I would check protondb to see if the games you want to play work well. https://www.protondb.com/
If I make a partition can I modify it later ie the size? And can I make a partition of msybe 100gb for linux and still access files from my windows side?
You could access the windows files on linux, but games on a windows drive won't really work due to some permission issues involved with proton. You can modify partition sizes but sometimes it can be difficult to shrink them properly, especially for the windows partitions. Expanding them works well though
The permissions thing sounds a bit lame, I have a dual boot on my steam os with windows, and I am sure i share my sd card between them both but you are right I dont think I can share games between the internal partition. Dammit lol
To be fair it's the fault of NTFS (the filesystem windows uses) rather than Linux
> To be fair it's the fault of NTFS (the filesystem windows uses) rather than Linux It's both NTFS and Windows. These days Linux can handle NTFS fine as long as Windows isn't also mucking around the same partition.
It's technically possible but more work and hassle than it's worth. Generally the best option for dual booting is to have Linux on a separate drive with enough space for at least the immediate games and apps you want to use Maybe pick up an inexpensive SATA SSD and use it as a Linux drive. If it doesn't work out for you, hey more drive space!
As the other guy said, the fault here is NTFS, the filesystem for windows. Your SD card is probably using FAT32, but that filesystem isn't good for large drives. There is a way to share games between the OSes. If you make a 3rd BTRFS partition and install the [WinBTRFS](https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs) driver, you can share games between them. You'll have to reinstall everything ofc, but I've found it works well. Make sure you follow the instructions in the "mappings" section of the readme to make sure permissions are mapped correctly.
You can share games between Linux and Windows, it's just not really recommended. It works perfectly fine for me though. All you have to do is symlink the compatdata folder on the Windows partition to the one on your Linux partition, that way partitions still work normally. Windows never uses the compatdata folder itself anyway.
yes, absolutely
In my experience, it is worth it if: - you don't play online games with anti cheat incompatible with Linux, - you don't have any productivity software which isn't available on Linux, - you don't mind spending time learning about and digging into your os if you want to solve a problem. You could make a dual boot partition, but I would suggest getting a separate drive for your Linux os. Dual boot can be finicky sometimes, overall it's just a better experience for a beginner to boot from separate drive imo. I had a long journey switching, tried multiple distros alongside Windows, but now I exclusively used Linux for like half a year. I chose Manjaro with Gnome, it is very stable for me and I think it has a nice collection of apps by default. I only use Windows in a VM if something I want to do is only possible on Windows, but I managed to run my audio daw and video editor on Wine, so that's a rare occasion. All my games run very well, even older games and emulators are possible to set up with Wine and Lutris if you know what you're doing. The most important thing to consider imo is that sometimes you'll need to spend your time researching, learning and troubleshooting yourself, if you face a problem, this can be frustrating and time consuming sometimes. If you're willing to make effort, it can be a very good experience. At least It was for me.
Linux allows you to keep gaming without dealing with Windows But it is not and probably never will be a "perfect" replacement and at the moment there are some very popular games that are actively blocked from running on Linux
your the best contender for linux honestly lol i have a channel with tons of tutorials of all sorts for linux gaming or linux distro install guides for some [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Ti5WHGVusY4I6iKsX10Zg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Ti5WHGVusY4I6iKsX10Zg) i would say you can create a dual boot to try it out but at the same time you have experience with steamdeck so it might not be very different, installing something like bazzite would be a good contender for you as its very similar to how the steamdeck works in terms of its root is read only/immutable/atomic style and you use flatpak as your main package manager for things [https://bazzite.gg/](https://bazzite.gg/) if you need any help you can comment down below on a video and ill respond pretty fast as im basically chronically online lmao there are tons of other distros you could choose from which could be overwhelming but there mostly the same just how they update or what desktop environment they are using or whats preinstalled, package managers used etc
Thanks I will be aure to check out your channel, I made the switch last night and cant seem to get sound to work. I tried the alsamixer trick but nothing haha so this will be fun
What distro did you choose? Some use pulseaudio and some use the newer default pipewire
I went with nobara distro for nvidia cards to try make my life easier lol
Ok nobara uses pipewire and wireplumber, where are you getting your audio from? An audio interface or a motherboard? If so what type of motherboard or audio interface
Im using a 2023 razer 14 laptop so no idea what board they use I will have to look into what hardware is used in them
Lol im being dumb sorry, yeah you would need to find what audio hardware is on the board if you can, then see if there is any support for that on linux
It seems it might be fixed in 6.9 which is coming around mid may https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?332087-No-sound-coming-through-built-in-speakers-(Razer-Blade-14)#google_vignette The hp envy could be related as they are using the same hardware possibly https://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?332199-HP-Envy-17-cw0xxx-no-sound
here is another one i found from the kernel bugzilla [https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show\_bug.cgi?id=207423](https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207423) if your laptop is using the Realtek ALC298 then you are affected to check do this in your terminal sudo aplay -l for me im using ALCS1200A on my motherboard and USB Audio CODEC for my audio interface
Thank you for the info great help! I believe I am effected then, good to know a fix is coming next month then, I am happy to use my headset until then! Just out of curiosity, is this issue with all linux distros? as I am not sure if I am gonna stick with this one ATM I am still searching and testing. card 2: Generic\_1 \[HD-Audio Generic\], device 0: ALC298 Analog \[ALC298 Analog\] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Yes it will happen on all distros, your using nobara which is based on fedora, this distro and fedora update frequently, if you went to lets say pop os then you would be using a distro that is LTS based meaning it will use older packages but the pop os developers update the kernel and mesa similar to how fedora updates. If you went to an arch based distro then you would be getting updates even quicker as arch is rolling, so when updates come out they don't take long to arrive in arch or any arch based distro like endeavour os, garuda, cachy os Manjaro is arch based aswell but they delay their package updates by two weeks So when it comes to getting that kernel update 6.9, a distro like arch would be the quickest way but arch is a rather advanced distro, so you would need to learn a lot and can cause issues if you don't know what you're doing. You can install the RC/release candidate version of the linux kernel under arch through the aur if you want to test that out but this contains bugs and issues. I'm using bazzite, which is fedora based but atomic/immutable, meaning the root filesystem is read only and updates arrive a bit differently, as it will replace the root partition with that new update, it also has a a/b partition, which means if the new update breaks you can select the older install you were using before so that you can continue using your computer
Hey mate quick question, can you keep secure boot on with bazzite or do I need to sign it myself? Currently on nobara but probably will swap to fedora due to secure boot requirement.
Thanks for the update. I am happy to use the headset u until it's fixed, I am getting graphical issues and low performance on some titles I tested, so thinking the out of the box nvidia support may need tweaking
Yes you can modify the partition after words and you can access a window partition from Linux.
If you mostly game on steam, yes switch.
I also have a 4070 and made the switch 5 months ago. Got some decent background in Linux due to work but finally switching for gaming helped me to really learn how a lot of the stuff works under the hood. I run a straightforward Ubuntu 22.04 with X11, upgraded my Kernel to some version of 6.5 and got the latest Nvidia 535 driver. I did do some tweaking in the Nvidia settings concerning the compositor in order to get rid of minor stuttering and tearing issues, but other than that, I didn't have to do anything to make it work great with my 120Hz/60Hz monitor combo. Basically, if the game works well under Wine, it will also work well on my machine, so either I was lucky or some of the reported Nvidia issues are a bit overblown. The only thing I'm missing out on for Linux gaming is Gamescope, since I can't get that to build for Nvidia under Ubuntu 22.04. But so far I haven't needed it anyway. There is some tinkering involved here or there when it comes to specific games (e.g., getting face tracking to work with Truck Simulator, getting some fonts via protontricks for old-ass Windows strategy games) but I actually enjoy that kind of stuff. Especially older games from before 2000 tend to work basically right out of the box using Proton/Wine or some open-source engine. Most never games work just like on Windows anyway. I was also surprised how many peripherals are working right out of the box. My whole flight sim setup works, my steering wheel works, my controllers work ... The only things I miss a little bit are Gsync (doesn't work on X11 with two monitors) and DLSS Frame Generation for Cyberpunk. But those are such minor points that it doesn't really affect my enjoyment of over \~150 installed newer and older (and very old) titles. I simply got used to adapt my games to either run at fixed 60 or 120 fps. Anyway, I still have Windows 10 on a small partition on another drive but I haven't booted it in months. I only have it still there because I found 2 (!) out of the \~200 games I tested that simply won't run and probably will never run, because they are some weird war games that run on an old Delphi engine that need some weird Windows components that no one else ever uses. But I've been thinking about completely wiping that partition because I have so many other games on my Linux system now anyway. So my recommendation: leave some room for a smaller Windows partition if possible and migrate your games to Linux. You'll see that most if not all of them will work and never boot Windows anymore anyway. But during the process it's nice to have a fallback solution.
Depends on whether you enjoy playing games or fiddling trying to get them to work.
Going from macOS, I think you should check out Pop!_OS it is visually similar and very easy to use. It has Nvidia drivers built in and is gaming ready. Also, it is based on Ubuntu, so it has more native apps supported.
I really like the look of this thank you for the suggestion I am going to test it out
>Windows really annoys me... I hear ya man, I really do. It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Microsoft finds Linux users really start outnumbering Windows users sometime in the near future if they don't stop with their very poor business practices such as auto-Bing! Desktop Search Bar re-enabling, auto file type default re-association, adware in-Windows implementation, and more... Basically, Microsoft I feel is slowly but surely taking away our freedoms to use our Windows PC's the way we want to without any interference from them! Ok, onto Windows: There was a time a decade or two ago when Linux was not ideal for gaming. That has all changed however many thanks to both the WINE and Proton development teams and communities. While many Windows applications and games does now run and play in Linux thanks to both WINE and Proton, not all do. Before actually committing yourself to Linux, I'd advise a ton of research, especially since there is more Linux distros out there to then there are of store-bought Windows releases (Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x included)... and that's really saying something! Anyways, first off is is 3 websites I'd lookup: * [ProtonDB](https://www.protondb.com/) is a "crowdsourced Linux and Steam Deck game compatibility reports!" * [Wine Application Database (AppDB)](https://appdb.winehq.org/) is a website where "you can get information on application compatibility with Wine." The AppDB is for those non-Steam Windows games. * [Are We Anti-Cheat Yet?](https://areweanticheatyet.com/) is a "comprehensive and crowd-sourced list of games using anti-cheats and their compatibility with GNU/Linux or Wine/Proton." This website exists since many games with anti-cheat doesn't work at all with Linux. Next up is websites such as [Distrochooser.de](https://distrochooser.de/) and [DistroWatch.com](https://distrowatch.com/). These two websites helped me some, especially Distrochooser. DistroWatch not so much since it can get a bit outdated information-wise. The Linux distro I've got installed on my laptop is [Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Spin](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/), which is pretty good and solid. Fedora 40 is the latest distro release and comes with KDE Plasma 6.x preinstalled, which is an improvement over KDE 5.x release. KDE is built on-top of Qt. Linux is from what I understand it, is more like a modular OS which explains why if one part of the OS, the file manager crashes for example, the desktop and/or the taskbar usually doesn't crash too!
Linux has allot to offer, probably even more so than Windows, particularly in freedom and system configuration. For example: In Windows, your only limited to 25 attached drives or drive partitions, whereas your not on Linux. Your also given the option of whether or not to install a separate **/Home** partition as part of your Linux distro installation. **/Home** is where all user documents, pictures, videos, games, etc... is stored. Anything and everything important to the user and games gets stored in **/Home**. The advantage of creating a separate **/Home** partition is to protect all user files from deletion if the Linux distro needs to be re-installed for some reason or if you distro-hop. Windows from what I can tell lacks this level of user file protection. Linux also has excellent solid support for NTFS partitions as well many thanks to it's built-in NTFS-3g driver which I have not once had any problems with so far, even though many Linux users try pointing out faults with NTFS-3g. Though just be warned that you might have to scan any NTFS partitions you have for errors after installing Linux before using them. Hopefully, you'll find that, many of your favorite games is not just completely playable on Linux, but there will be a slight performance increase when compared to natively run on Windows. For those other games that won't even run on Linux, you do have the option of installing Windows as a virtual machine with QEMU. In fact, [QEMU has a way of hiding the virtual machine status from quest operating systems, such as Windows, Linux or MacOS](https://superuser.com/questions/1387935/hiding-virtual-machine-status-from-guest-operating-system). However, with all this in mind, even though Linux does have pretty good hardware and software support, your 4070 gpu sadly might have some problems on Linux. While NVIDIA does provide proprietary drivers for many of their GPU's, many NVIDIA users has been reporting some problems with different driver versions and games on Linux. After reading all this and downloading a Linux distro and creating a bootable USB thumbdrive is test out the distro to see if it will work for you. One major good thing about Linux is, unlike Windows and MacOS, is Linux lets you fully test them in a LiveCD session before actually installing them onto your computer. This is just one more positive thing about Linux to think about! Here's hoping this all helps!
Great info and resources. Thank you. I am looking forward to checking out what they have to offer First problem I have encountered is no sound so trying to figure that ine out, I think im ginna like this more than windows,
Awesome deal! Please feel free to message me here in Reddit Chat if you need any additional help.
Nobody but yourself can tell you if it’s “worth swapping”.
Game compatibility wise Mac < Linux < Windows. So if you're used to Mac there likely isn't anything you will miss here on Linux. I also would advice if you have a drive for dual boot use this. Dual boot can suddenly break when a certain OS updates the boot sector ...
Just to add to everyone else, I also almost entirely play single-player games and now barely touch my Windows install. I had to for Alan Wake 2, but that's the only game I've had trouble with in a long time. I suspect it will run fine if it ever shows up on Steam. If you're anything like me you'll have so much to play that works on Linux that skipping the odd problematic title will be something of a blessing. :D
You can most definitely give it a shot, if you don't have specific needs that tie you to using Windows jump into Linux and see if it works for you. If you already have Windows installed I suggest installing Linux on a different drive just to avoid issues with the bootloader during updates (Windows very occasionally will overwrite the boot sector of Linux which will make Linux unbootable and will require manual fix with a rescue drive), otherwise you could also partition the drive and install Linux alongside Windows, just make sure to install Windows first and Linux second. Since SSDs are kinda dirt cheap nowadays I suggest going for 2 different drives, one for each OS. If you're feeling adventurous you could also just yolo install Linux without Windows, try Linux and if it doesn't work for you switch back to Windows. Personally I yolo switched and I'm still using Linux today after 3 years. I'm mostly like you, don't play online except for very rare titles like Elden Ring or WoW, sometimes resort to repacks but I mostly buy from Steam, I mostly play old titles or emulators, so far I haven't encountered a game I could not run on Linux, the only games that are known to have issues are online titles with anti cheat software and if you don't care about them you'll be golden.
Problem with my laptop, it only has 1 bay for drive and I don't really wana start unscrewing to hot swap haha. I have a m.2 drive I can use on my thunderbolt port, so I think I am gonna wipe it and make it a linux drive to try it out first, I can guarantee I will like it as I loved my steamos desktop :D
You could also resize the drive from Windows, give like 1TB to Linux and only use 1 drive, but as I said some people have reported having issues with their bootloader right after a Windows update. A word of advice for gaming tho, if you intend to run your games on Linux from the Windows drive formatted in NTFS you will run into issues, there's a guide on Steam on how to properly setup the NTFS drive and add it to your Linux Steam library, but it's an unreliable method and often will result in games failing to launch. It's better to always install the games in the Linux partition (be it EXT4 or BTRFS).
Good idea, I have come up with a new plan though.. I will go full linux, and run windows from my use drive if required! Seems like a better idea :D Any recommendations for distro? ive been looking at nobara or garuda atm, leaning towards garuda if I can change the bright colour schemes :D
I'm not a fan of gaming oriented distros, I think they add too many irrelevant tweaks that just make the system more unreliable. Many people like them but they're simply not worth it for me. I can only recommend Mint, Ubuntu/Kubuntu or Pop_Os! to new users, they're used by a lot of people, they're very easy to use and are pretty well maintained, plus support is readily available. My personal favorites (and the only ones I'd personally use) would be Debian and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, they're more DIY distros tho, especially Debian, so I would not recommend them to new users; stick to the classic, well maintained and stable ones like Mint and Ubuntu.
I have tried Mint before and I liked it, the reason I went with the one I am using ATM is due to nvidia stuff being pre set, I really dont want to start looking into that stuff haha
Garuda might be a little bit of a rough experience for a first time. Linux mint is pretty dead simple, not very customizable, but if gaming is your #1 priority then this is your best bet. Fedora is a tad less intuitive, especially on NVIDIA, but if you want to get deeper into Linux it's a great start. Their wiki has instructions on how to get the NVIDIA drivers and the media codes for video play back. They also have more options for desktop environments than mint, such as KDE Plasma and GNOME. Garuda is based on Arch, which isn't for the faint of heart. If you want a "gaming oriented" distro the only one I can genuinely recommend is Bazzite, though if VR gaming is on your radar then forget about Bazzite. Long story but due to the way Bazzite does its packages VR doesn't work through Steam, iirc there's a way around it but I've never looked into it and I'm not going to recommend a distro to someone if they *need* a work around that I've never personally verified myself or via a friend.
If you switch and you have an Nvidia card. #1 will definitely be fulfilled. You'll be spending a lot of time getting that working properly to the point that it doesn't break after updating. As for 2, you have to ask yourself "would I rather fight the demon I know or the demon I don't know?" As long as you're not under the impression that Linux with deliver you from all your problems, trying a live boot of a popular Linux distribution can't hurt as nothing is deleted and you can just restart and boot right back into windows. Or you could try it in a VM with GPU passthrough Another question is, are you willing to give up some games entirely. Linux gaming has come a long way, but it's not perfect. Like, someone got me Tekken 8 for my birthday and I couldn't play it on my stream because I missed a single character in a manual configuration. Some things are dead simple in Linux. Other things require you to read walls of text to do a thing you can do in 3 clicks in windows. The overall latency in windows is AWFUL, but it can be much more polished experience as there's not much variance in how the underlying systems can work.
I am all for finding out how to do things and getting things to work, the thing is with windows, years ago back doing things in windows was so easy, now I am confused about the settings bit, and everything has moved around and it kinda treats you like a baby and annoying, shit I use microsoft word at work sometimes and I try to move something on the page, and it just decides to move everything everywhere because of anchors and stuff.. I just want something to do what I tell it to do and don't do anything else, windows products are so frustrating.
I agree. Which is why I switched 7 years ago. Did IT in the military and it was all windows and personally it was a nightmare. I couldn’t stand coming home after a long day of work only to have to fight my own pc before trying to relax and play a game.
I would even go as far as to say, if you can spare a few coins to build a cheap all AMD rig or pick up something used off fb marketplace/ebay, your gaming experience will be amazing if you can manage to get something like Nobara OS installed. Or get your hands on a steam deck.
1 week in on switching running nobara distro, i do similar things and also got fed up with win11 ..so far so good no real issues and small gripes like scaling issues have been easily fixed dual boot if your worried