Greetings! Recently, i have ditched Windows for Linux. Why? Well, This all started with a Windows Update. I was working on a Discord bot, until my PC decided to restart without my consent. What was it? A Windows Update. I was like: “no big deal, ill just wait”. Well, it was over 100+ updates. After all the updates completed, i saw the Windows 11 setup screen. Keep in mind that I was on WIndows 10 before the updates. Now at that point i really got angry. Like, I hate Windows 11. So then i went and completed the setup, and got met with ALL THE BLOATWARE REINSTALLED. So ofcourse, since i did NOT wanna use Windows 11, i backed up my data, and switched to the Secure and Free operating System, Linux. I went with arch, since i have used Ubuntu before, and it’s terrible. And since i didn’t wanna use any fancy Desktop Enviroments, such as GNOME, KDE, HyprLand, XFCE. I went with dwm. It looks very mininal and customizable.
Now that brings me to the question, What apps should i get rid of?
I know i did the same post like a few weeks ago, but for the sake of Privacy, i know Some apps contain Telemetry, and some Don’t. But still.
I would love to do the same (although not the hardcore step with arch :D) but how would I game and also isn’t the support for drivers sometimes really iffy?
For getting a idea of how your games run check out protondb.com you can add your steam library to easily check your library.
For epic, gog and Amazon prime gaming you got heroic (https://heroicgameslauncher.com/) it also uses proton to play windows games.
GPU drivers are fine. AMD just works for gaming and Nvidia (depending on distro you need to install the drivers, search how to install them and dont install them from the Nvidia website) works fine if you just have a simple setup. The Nvidia drivers are improving alot by the way.
Random mouse, keyboard and other stuff is a hot or miss. Most of the time basic stuff simply works, but maybe there are no drivers/programma to set rgb or macros. (P.s. Try open rgb for rgb stuff)
You can always try with a dual boot. If you not used to Linux and like gaming maybe something like pop os
I am not a gaming person to be honest, but neither do i play any games.
Not a big gamer, myself, but it seems like Valve has done a lot of work to make many (most?) Steam games run well under Linux.
Drivers have come a long way, and a lot of things just work, but it can definitely depend on what hardware is in your system.
Bluefin (MacOS look) or Aurora (Windows look) are great starter Linux distros. It won’t give you the typical Linux experience (mostly that you won’t really need to do much terminal stuff).
If you won’t a more typical Linux experience, I recommend Fedora Workstation (the KDE spin if you want that Windows look).
I’m still newish to gaming on Linux but from what I’ve heard Nvidia drivers are hit or miss but much better then they used to be. AMD graphics are well supported and using a mix of Proton though Steam and Wine I haven’t really had any issues with games. I have an ROG Ally running Bazzite and a gaming PC running Vanilla OS 2, both do just fine. Additionally hosting game servers on my Debian server has been fine as well.
If you’re on the fence I’d recommend installing on a separate drive and giving it a try.
As you’ve probably heard, it’s basically just NVidia with shitty drivers. They are getting better but are not included in many distros (they can usually be added through the package manager pretty easily) since they are proprietary. Intel and AMD generally work out of the box for gaming. NVidia drivers are bad enough that I sold my 2060 for an ARC a750 just because of the drivers lol.
Just install and try to resolve all your issues (if any) in a dualboot. That way you can always go back to Windows if something doesn’t work. But if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll find that 99% works either out of the box or after some minimal configuration. The only notable exception for me are online games that insist on intrusive anti-cheat software (e.g. BattleEye) and choose not to support Proton/Wine on Linux. Curse you, Escape from Tarkov!