I would recommend Mad Max on Steam. It is a great open world game with much freedom of movement. Obviously, you will do more driving than walking, but the driving feels very satisfying.
The combat is mostly in Batman-style group brawls, where you have to dodge/block when a prompt appears over an enemy’s head.
How do I even get started? Do I just install Mint and figure it out from there? Linux seems so complicated but it’s been a decade since I last tried. Nowadays, I feel old and this seems like it needs too much research
Honestly, one of the great uses for gen ai is “write me a script to diagnose this problem” and then pass the output back with “write me a script to fix it”
I don’t have the bandwidth in my life to diagnose and tinker for fun, and it’s really made a bunch of big annoying things easy.
I found KDE way more intuitive than gnome, even though I was last on a Mac before the switch. Perhaps pick a KDE distro.
Also maybe list here if you have any deal-breaker apps or workflows to the folks can say if it’s worth your effort.
I would recommend to try linux first by dualbooting. Try Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux MINT and KDE Neon (i really like it because it has a Windowsy feel). You can see how those distros look here: distrosea.com
I personally dont like the stock ubuntu, was really suprised by fedora.
Whatever you do. Don’t dualboot. It gives a wrong impression of what Linux is, and complexity is not inherently a part of it. Try Mint as a live USB OS first. That means the OS runs from a USB thumb drive. This will allow you to dip your toes before you dive in. Just like dipping toes, it’s a no-compromise way of testing, but if you choose to install you already have 90% of what you need.
Also it’s soooo easy for someone not very knowledgeable to misconfigure the boot loader. Don’t touch boot loaders unless you’re okay with potentially losing access to both your original OS and the new Linux install. You’d then have to either learn on the go and repair it yourself, or beg/pay someone else to repair it.
I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the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 have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows. Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on. Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup. Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
I have to disagree here. I find using Cinnamon is very close to using windows.
So is KDE, that’s why I recommend it over cinnamon and not gnome.
Everything hardware wise pretty much runs out of the box on all desktops and laptops I have installed it on.
That has (mostly) nothing to do with your desktop environment!
Have been using it for years. The one thing I can’t comment on is hdpi. I never owned a high enough resolution screen to have problems with scaling I guess, although I do have a three monitor setup.
Just because you’re familiar with it doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for beginners. People want HDR, mixed refresh rates, and mixed DPI displays to work properly, they do on KDE, they possibly never will on cinnamon. Just as an example, look at the rate of development on KDE based distros vs cinnamon… cinnamon is entirely outclassed. The KDE team is massive, the cinnamon team is a few people with no real funding. ( if you don’t believe me, here are the stats for the last month cinnamon side: github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/pulse/monthly vs github.com/KDE/plasma-desktop/pulse although you’ll note kde isn’t developed on github and that’s just a mirror. It’s not even close, cinnamon has less monthly than 1/10th of the weekly for kde. The KDE text editor alone outpaces all of cinnamon dramatically, github.com/KDE/kate/pulse ) The rate of code output and refinement is not even close. The level of customization you can do with KDE vs cinnamon isn’t even comparable. If you run into an issue with cinnamon, you’re SOL, whereas KDE can actually worry about your bugs, because they have so many more developers.
That’s not even going into the massive disparity in security between the two, KDE uses wayland by default, and as a result is SIGNIFICANTLY more secure, just off the top of my head, here’s some problems with cinnamon that will not be resolved anytime soon, that have all already been resolved by this transition KDE-side:
Every single app can read your keyboard input without asking
Every single app can see what every single other app is doing without asking
Apps can fullscreen themselves and go over everything else, because they can control their own window placement to any degree they want, again, without asking.
Immutability might be nice, but I think it’s also personal preference. Windows doesn’t have it so it might be a strange feature to new users coming from Windows.
Windows does have it… actually, it only has it. UAC already prevents you from modifying system files. There’s no way to turn it off without mucking about in the console. And it’s not a personal preference thing at all, it’s objectively superior for a beginner, and anything you can do with a normal distro can still be done with an immutable one assuming you have root access.
Reminder that just because something works for you, doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for a beginner. Try all the options extensively before you make a suggestion, you might not have made the right choice for everyone just because you have made the right choice for yourself. I make these suggestions after YEARS of extensive testing with many people as my guinea pigs.
I have tried giving people cinnamon, it has gone disasterously, usually due to DPI problems. But I don’t think it’s a safe recommendation at all, just given the security issues.
In short, i think the only reasonable recommendations for beginners in terms of desktop environments, are KDE or Gnome (if they’re mac users and are willing to learn something different), unless their hardware is TERRIBLE and old, in which case they might want lxqt or xfce, maybe.
I have no idea. I rely on music software that doesn’t have a Linux port. This sucks, because that software cost money, and if I can’t get it running reliably on Linux I might have to… either that, or get a Mac :/
So 43% of Steam users are the kind of stickler that refuse to update their Windows to an objectively better version because it’s something new and different and breaks their habits. What would make you think these people would possibly just switch to a different OS altogether if a simple update was too much to ask for the past years?
Maybe 43% have hardware that is not supported by Windows 11. And don’t want to run windows 11 on unsupported hardware or go through the hassle of even installing on unsupported hardware.
If doing one registry edit and installing Win11 from the iso to bypass the silly “processor unsupported” message is a too high barrier for these 43%, how do you realistically expect these same people to go out of their way and install a Linux distro? Why should they be motivated to learn in which ways it works differently from the Windows architecture? And let’s not get started with “unsupported hardware” - even though the Linux experience has gotten so much smoother, it’s still not uncommon to have components with subpar or no real support.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Linux and I use it for work - but to think a huge part of gamers will switch to Linux with just because they don’t want to update their Windows is just illusory.
I don’t expect them to switch. I think it’s more likely they will stay until there games are no longer supported. Simply because a lot of people just don’t want or can’t edit the registry, because they think stats for people with technical knowledge. But I also don’t believe they will all switch to Linux.
Made the upgrade last week to Linux mint and I’m loving it. Got my Arr stacks and stuff setup as dockers and it’s never worked so well. All the connection issues I’ve had on windows is now gone.
The interface is nice and not bloated. And I’m not being tracked which feels liberating.
Welcome :), if we’re being honest lot of the tracking still happens on Linux once you open your web browser but it definitively feel nice to be liberated of the one at OS level and a solid start for caring about online privacy
Yeah, it’s about reducing the amount of tracking though. I’ve since deleted my Google account, stopped using gmail, moved to proton, stopped using online password managers, deleted Reddit, quit watching YouTube, moved everything I can to open source programs. Libre office instead of 365 etc.
My gaming pc has just switched over to bazzite (as I use it like a console/htpc). Been wanting to do it for ages but needed to get an amd card beforehand for the best experience. Windows really started to grind my gears in the last few months too.
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.
I run Linux on a small mini pc for some casual browsing.
I run windows on my main pc.
As long as some kernel anticheat (fortnite, cod, etc…) doesn’t run on Linux, I won’t be swapping.
30+y of windows use also makes me infinitely more comfortable with windows. All the complaints I always read about are totally moot for me (I understand the issue of privacy in windows. It’s the price I pay to have an OS that “just works” for me) .
While I enjoy tinkering, Linux is a royal PITA to use if you’re not used to it. I spend hours trying to figure out how to fix something that takes me 5m max in windows. I understand it’s a more a me than a Linux problem. But I’m certain many people struggle with the same things.
Maybe the last time you tried Linux was 30 years ago, but Linux compared to Windows just works.
If it takes you HOURS to find a fix to something that takes you literally 5 minutes on Windows, you are doing something wrong. Your research methods are flawed.
Some of my friends still use Windows, fixing their problems takes me half an hour to find a solution, while on Linux, I just open the terminal and insert one command. Last time that happened it was about a VPN kill switch. So the person had a VPN App installed on Windows with a kill switch enabled. Then they uninstalled the VPN application and the kill switch was still there.
How do you remove the kill switch? On Linux it’s ‘nmcli c ‘killSwitchName’ del’ on Windows it’s a journey to a new adventure.
For how I use my pc, everything just works. To give you a counter argument. My logitech devices just work out of the box on windows. For Linux I had to get a little specific tool. Also try installing Japanese language input on Linux. Compare how much simpler it is on windows. Linux is NOT simpler than windows in all situations. Maybe your own research methods are flawed?
I game, manage my NAS (truenas running jellyfish for media etc) , sail the high seas, and browse on my pc. I also remote into a small spare mini pc running Ubuntu server with a minecraft server on it. (Could’ve ran the server on windows, but wanted to tinker with Linux to learn)
It all works flawless.
Also, give me a Linux alternative for parsec that just works as well for remote gaming, both from other desktop devices as from a mobile devices.
Yeah I do OS installs for other people all the time but my main PC is a hot mess and I run a bunch of problematic software including VR. I’ll probably end up setting up a dual boot of Win11 & Linux and avoid Windows as much as possible. But I will procrastinate because I already use both OS’s on other PCs so I know what to expect. I’ll put it off as long as possible, hoping they postpone. Never do today what you can put off til next year :)
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.
I think I’ve seen a video showcasing this tactic. Dude with a Syringe just running around, picking up his teammates as soon as they downed. It was great :D
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