Welcome to the other side, make sure to enjoy and use actual documentation of your software instead of random Q&A answered by ‘Community Moderators’ on Windows forums :)
They are on that website, not just only the activator. They are better than retail isos because they come without bloat. I use iot LTSC permactivated with HWID on all my PCs and VMs
Check Proton DB. If the games you enjoy work fine on Linux, which is the case for most games these days thanks to Proton, you should be good. The big exception is games with kernel-level anticheat.
If not, you can always dual boot for the few games that don’t.
I made the switch to pure Linux gaming when I got my Steam Deck two years ago. Been loving it ever since. Even SteamVR games work great streaming to my Quest headset.
If I can get it working, I will absolutely use debug mode on pokemon fan games because it saves me time not to have to do things like going back for healing my party, grinding to a certain level defeating bosses I’m not supposed to using cheated in legendaries, etcetera.
Definitely not developer intended, nor am I sure this would count for an intended answer to the question. Otherwise, I cannot think of any other answers to this question.
Linux would still be a good option. The driver isn’t as simple as AMD but not nearly as complicated as you would think. Unless you’re a Destiny 2, Fortnite, or League player you wouldn’t have any issues gaming either.
Already fiddling around enough with tge stuff I do with my PC which I installed Win11 on and I am in the EU meaning less BS than the US version (no forced upgrades, no ads (as described by US citizens) and so on).
I use Debian on my server as it’s a tool. Same for my pc. And I have a steamdeck.
And every tool has it’s worth no matter if it’s made from shitty chinesium or baller titanium.
I like the way Windows handles most things and I prefer it over having to fiddle with the way every Linux distro does it’s own thing (and I will never use Ubuntu).
Sooo, I’m in the same boat. Only, I sold my GPU expecting to get an upgrade and then didn’t for a long while - which is when I decided to make the switch to Linux, just to see how things go.
Now I added the GPU and - with issues - managed to get gaming going. It’s fine, I think. Played Hogwarts Legacy yesterday for a couple of hours. Got a 7800x3d and RX 9070 XT, with everything on Ultra (including Ray Tracing) and upscaling disabled, my GPU would be sitting between 80 and 100% utilisation, but FPS was very comfortable (don’t have a counter so don’t know exactly how many, but it was smooth).
HOWEVER, after a couple of hours my main monitor turned off and the other one turned… green. I think the graphics driver crashed? Not sure, honestly. Anyway, after a reboot everything was fine. Overall, I had a nice four hour-long session yesterday.
I guess what I’m saying is - give it a go! KDE is beautiful (do recommend Garuda Linux just for the design choices, but they also have A TONNE of “I’m a noob, help” features pre-configured), gaming is fine, you might enjoy it. And if you don’t, just switch back to Windows.
I have an ad hoc media server on 10. If it’s super working, you can bet I will replace it with something other than Microsoft. Unless work requires it, everything I use is Linux, Android, or Apple based. I don’t hate Windows, I just like everything else more.
Is there an easy way to port all my stuff to Linux? I would not have made the switch in the past, but all the good will I attributed to Microsoft is pretty much gone. I’ve heard Mint is petty easy to hop onto?
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Thank you for you detailed response! I think something like Bazzite would be more up my alley based on what you said. Something that is hard to mess up is something I’d be more comfortable with for sure.
I appreciate your offer for troubleshooting help as well!
Can anyone recommend a distro (and desktop environment?) that’s going to be almost the same as desktop mode on the Steam deck? I’m getting more comfortable in that than I expected to be in any Linux, and to my surprise and delight I haven’t had to delve into the command line at all yet.
The steam deck uses KDE Plasma 5 as its desktop environment, so anything that uses that should feel very similar. I recommend bazzite if familiarity is something that would appeal to you.
+1 for Bazzite. It has just enough guard rails to keep you from (easily) making your system unusable while still providing more freedom than windows. Install is cake. Literally clear a drive or partition for your OS and storage, download it, and you’re off to the races. just make sure to always check your build against protondb For games to see if there are any special run commands to put into steam, and you will be golden.
Very much so. Even for non-gaming, most stuff works out of the box from the package manager, everything else you can get working with a distrobox. Ended up getting blender to work better on Bazzite with AMD GPU rendering than I could on Windows lol
Would I fuck myself over by putting it on a partition on the same drive as my Windows install? It’s my fastest hard drive, but I can’t just immediately give up everything I have on Windows.
I hav heard that there can be issues with windows updates messing up Bazzite if installed on the same drive. I got a separate drive just for my Bazzite install to be on the safe side.
That is the old Debian-based operating system that ran on Steam Machines and is no longer supported. Valve really needs to remove it from their website. The version of SteamOS running on the Steam Deck is Arch-based.
Have you considered making a Linux virtual machine now, and learning small things a few minutes at a time between other tasks? That ought to give you a head start when it comes time to commit.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that it generates a new system for you on update and lets you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lmde is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
I installed Linux on a raspberry pi recently (first time using Linux in 15+ years), and in addition to reading stuff on Lemmy, I found that this is a really good use case for chatgpt or similar LLMs.
I was able to get chatgpt to explain stuff to me, ask it to dumb it down further, provide examples, correct my incorrect assumptions, etc.
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Aktywne