I’m just so sick of Microsoft and Google. But there’s two things holding me back:

  1. I wanna play Steam games on my PC

  2. I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard

Is there any hope for me?

  • katy ✨@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    52 minutes ago

    linux mint was super easy for me to install and i haven’t had to do too much troubleshooting outside of the ui :)

    and i can still play most steam games (check protondb.com to see if a game works good)

  • pemptago@lemmy.ml
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    55 minutes ago
    1. As others have said, it’s possible to play most steam games, but not all. You have to decide if you like those games more than you dislike MS and Goo. I find there’s so many great games out there that I’ll never get to all of them, so I’m ok with dropping some bangers that usually want too much access to my system.
    2. Here’s a useful resource if you need to understand slightly technical linux foundations https://linuxjourney.com/ It might not be necessary but it does help to have a foundational understanding, and honestly, the command line is awesome, powerful, and one of my favorite things about linux. Beyond having a basic understanding (and maybe having one of the books the site recommends on hand), before going to an LLM as others have suggested, have official sources of various components bookmarked and go there first. There’s so much BS out there now, I actually like the fact that I can read technical documentation, test it out, and know if it’s true.

    one other tip: I’d recommend some kind of personal knowledge management (PKM) system to take notes. Linux gives you a lot of freedom-- that’s what’s great about it-- it can be complex and have a learning curve at times. It’s absolutely worth it though. It’s a totally different paradigm than windows. After a while you can really start crafting the whole system to your needs as an individual. I’m 3 years in and was using my first setup that whole time, i didn’t realize how customized I had made it until trying to set it up exactly on a new workstation. Now I’m writing a script so to automate my setup (os settings, program installs, configs) by running a single command. Then I can really start experimenting.

    Everybody’s different and with a little basic knowledge, everyone’s setup can be tweaked to their individual needs a little better than other “user friendly/polished” operating systems. I hope you find as much joy and freedom in it as I do.

  • obsoleteacct@lemmy.zip
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    You don’t need a high level of technical skill. You can learn everything you need to get started in a few minutes of tutorials or walk throughs. The rest you learn as you go.

    Bear in mind no every linux user has memorized every terminal command and the whole file structure. Lots of people are just casual users who learn what they need.

    One of the things I wish someone had told me at the start of using linux is that initially your desktop environment will effect how you feel about linux more than the distribution or specific architecture of the OS.

    The good news is they’re all free. Try a few things and see what you like. IMO Fedora is a great, beginner friendly Gnome or KDE experience. Mint has an excellent Cinnamon and XFCE desktop either of which will feel somewhat familiar to a windows user. Mint will also run on just about anything.

    Also, it’s not binary. You can dual boot. If there’s something you need windows for you can use it. Over time you’ll eventually find that you don’t really need windows anymore.

  • wesley@yall.theatl.social
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    One thing I’ll say is that for a lot of distros these days you shouldn’t really need to use the terminal much if ever. That being said don’t be scared of the terminal. It’s just another way to tell the computer what to do. It takes some learning but if you want to learn things with the terminal you might eventually find it easier/faster than using the mouse for some things. Go through some tutorials and you’ll probably find out that the terminal is not that actually all that scary.

    Most distros allow you to try them out before you install them. You can run them from a USB stick to let you try a few out before you settle on one. You won’t be able to install any programs this way but you’ll at least be able to get an idea of the interface and see if there are any you like more than others. Even still you can dual boot your PC with Windows + Linux and switch back and forth whenever you need. It’s not an all or nothing ordeal. I still have windows 10 on my machine but I rarely use it now.

    Gaming on Linux is better than it’s ever been thanks to Steam coming with proton out of the box. protondb.com is your friend for figuring out what games you can run. That being said there are occasionally some rough edges that I have run into personally. I can run most games I want just fine but occasionally I have some issues. I’m just telling you this so you know it’s not like a flawless experience. Then again I’ve also spent plenty of time trying to get games running on my windows PC in the past too so…

    My recommendation for a first Linux OS is Ubuntu because in general it’s the most popular and has the most support.

    Best of luck!

  • traches@sh.itjust.works
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    • before you switch, sort out your apps. Look at what you use on windows, see if it runs on Linux. If not, find a replacement that does and test it out.
    • Most Linux distros can boot into a desktop from a thumb drive. You can play and test without touching your windows installation.
    • in that vein, ventoy is neat. You can make a bootable drive and drop ISOs in a folder to boot from. No messing with etcher or whatever it’s called
    • desktop environment matters as much as the distro. Check out gnome, KDE, and cinnamon.
  • t_378@lemmy.one
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    What I’ll say is, I’ve got no comp sci degree, and when I started, I had no idea how the terminal worked. But… My mindset was the following:

    1. I really don’t like windows, I’m not going back
    2. I don’t like paying others to “do it for me”, I want to do it myself
    3. I want the freedom to be able to change anything to make the machine fit me, even if that means I need to learn things along the way.

    If you’re the type of person where this general philosophy, you’re going to crush it.

    But if you’re more along the lines of “I just use this computer as a tool to do the things I want, I just need the computer out of the way, and working consistently so I can get on with my actual goals”, you probably will hate it. Becuase all your troubleshooting experiences will be “why doesn’t this thing just work, like it does on Windows?”

  • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 hours ago

    Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.

    1. the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)

    2. dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.

    3. dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.

    My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.

    • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I say unplug the windows drive always, even if you don’t fuck up your Linux install may nuke your windows boot partition and it’s massive PITA to get it back

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    If your library is on steam, then there’s nothing to worry about! Works natively on Linux. If your library is on other platforms, I’d honestly think twice about switching full time. Dual booting might be a better option. My library is split amongst multiple platforms and I decided that it wasn’t working well enough for me. Steam games will work great though!

    Many distros are easy enough to install and navigate as a newbie. My go to for years now has been Linux Mint! It’s based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      If your library is on other platform like gog, epic, amazon or off platform .exe you can use heroic launcher and for most stuff it works just as well.

      For some games there is a little more learning curve because you have to translate custom steam configurations found on protondb to do the same thing in heroic but overall you actually have way more control then steam.

      The only reason “id think twice” is if you play lots of games with anticheat which does not work on every distro (like arch btw).

    • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      oh that’s cool. nope, whole library is on windows on one PC right now.

      I was thinking about trying out dual booting to get a feel for it. my understanding was that many programs wont work with linux or require complicated fixes to get them running. so id hate to be left downstream without a paddle, so to speak

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
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        Depends which programs. Also, it’s very possible that there are open source alternatives

        But if you are dead set on using exactly the same program, https://appdb.winehq.org/ is a database of if and how to make them run on Linux. Wine’s core focus is games, but many programs are covered there too

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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        They mean other platforms like GOG or Epic, not stuff like consoles.

        Steam games mostly work, with some exceptions. You can check out ProtonDB to see more precisely what games work, which ones straight up don’t, and which ones need a fix. ProtonDB will usually also tell you what that fix is, which is handy.

        But most of the time, you can just hit play and not worry about it.

        A note on dualbooting. Linux uses different filesystems from windows. It can access windows NTFS partitions, but it’s not a smooth experience.

        A common pitfall is trying use your game library while it is still on a windows filesystem, from linux. Since you can see the folders, and even add them in steam, it’ll seem like it should work. But you’ll run into issues actually running the games. It’s technically possible, but not worth the hassle.

        Generally you really want to either format your storage and redownload your games, or if you have the space, copy them over to a fully supported file system.

      • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        For testing try the live USB sticks Just flash them to an empty stick with programs like etcher, then power dowb and select the stick in your bios (usually reachable by hammering f1, f2 or Del while starting

        (Remember that performance will be much better when installing it for real compared tusing running it from a stick though)

        Dual boot will work and is not that hard to setup, but you should back up all your data before trying it.

        Also when dual booting to avoid duplicates etc I have all my documents and stuff on a USB stick, so I don’t have a version in my win and a version iny linux. Cloud works as well

      • evilcultist@sh.itjust.works
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        One thing to keep in mind is that dual booting can work to highlight what you’re missing because generally all of the games that run on Linux will run on Windows, but the reverse is not true. It becomes easy to just default to windows so you don’t have to reboot to play something that doesn’t work in Linux and that can undermine the attempt to switch the OS.

  • cRazi_man@europe.pub
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    I was you 18 months ago. It’s certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.

    Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes:

    • adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you’ll find it worthwhile in the end.
    • moving to Linux permanently wouldn’t have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you’d just have forum posts saying “just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki…noob”. But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue.
    • don’t let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won’t be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that).
    • Don’t get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else… But don’t go for anything with even moderate difficulty.
    • Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don’t work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).
    • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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      There might be a reason they are unpopular.

      Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don’t have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.

      AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn’t Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn’t really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.

      I am really curious what “system breaking problems” you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don’t forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.

      • FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml
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        AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn’t Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt.

        I have the same experience but sometimes it was even worse; Sometimes the AI would confidently recommend doing things that might lead to breakage. Personally I recommend against using AI to learn Linux. It’s just not worth it and will only give new users a false impression of how things work on Linux. People are much better off reading documentation (actual documentation, not SEO slop on random websites) or asking for help in forums.

      • cRazi_man@europe.pub
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        I’m glad it worked smoothly for you and it sometimes is a smooth effortless experience for some people; but if you want to “convert” people then you’ve got to be honest about the fact that people commonly face difficulties. I’ve commented about my Linux issues before and I can paste the comment again here to give an example:


        One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.

        A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out (AMD GPU).

        I installed VMware Horizon for my job’s remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn’t bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.

        I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies. Update: I’m using CachyOS now and the Brother website says Arch plainly isn’t supported. When I install the driver from AUR that’s specific to my printer, then it doesnt print and just spews out endless blank pages.

        I still can’t get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I’ve stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.

        I still can’t find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.

        Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute. I still can’t figure out how to use this to auto-mount my Synology NAS.

        Plasma added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can’t figure out why. It reappears intermittently, but then disappears when it feels like.

        My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can’t figure out why they’ve decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. Update: this seems to have fixed itself (maybe through am update?).

        Flatpak Steam app wouldn’t pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.

        My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn’t supported.

        Trying to set up dual boot kept destroying (I.e. making unbeatable) either the Linux install or the Windows install. I have up eventually as I couldn’t figure out how to fix GRUB from the command line.

        I’ve been trying to find a solution for keeping a downloaded synchronised copy of my online storage (Mailbox.org). Can’t figure out rsync. I get an error with Celeste and it doesn’t sync after the initial file install. Having a 2 way sync for online storage could be considered a pretty basic requirement these days and something Mailbox can easily suggest an app for in Windows.

        People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn’t include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS’s when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows. I know we all love Linux, but allow people to be honest rather than being dismissive. I had over 2 decades of experience with Windows and it had its quirks and problems, but my preexisting familiarity with it made it much easier to use and troubleshoot.

        Sure I know I’m a noob and not doing this right. But that’s the point…can someone with limited knowleddge still work this OS?

        • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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          I agree that computers can have issues. But none of these are linux only. Windows does all this stupid shit too. My printer wont work with windows, only linux (how the hell this can be true is beyond me). Bluetooth drops in windows, works fine in linux. The latest nvidia update on windows broke all games making it black screen until I used some regedit fixes. A windows update broke my firmware on a video card for a while, almost got RMA’d. I could go on, talk about Jankiness. I don’t use windows as my main computer due to it being so all over the place. I say this as a MSDN dev and windows server and azure dev and support person. I remote entirely from Linux, I need to have an OS that works.

          My point is windows does this shit too.

          But: That is your issues are a long list that seems to have a repeating theme: OpenSuse.

          You don’t need to edit FSTAB to add a drive, there is a gui for that, for whatever that’s worth.

          I have not had any of these issues on the 5 or so linux computers I use daily. I have had a few upgrades in Arch cause me to update grub or roll back, but that is about it.

          Over the last two years I have found Fedora KDE has been amazingly easy to use and update.

          I still can’t find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.

          That one has me curious: what is that? (I mean by definition - scroll - that can’t be a thing, lol) But I am sure it is, got examples?

          • cRazi_man@europe.pub
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            I’m glad it works well for you.

            OpenSUSE is what helped me get past even more basic problems with getting my PC up and running, that’s why I stuck with it because I couldn’t even get this far on other distros. I’m on CachyOS now and can manage better now that I’ve learnt to troubleshoot some of the main issues.

            Horizontal page scrolling. I want to be able to read massive documents by scrolling through side-by-side pages rather than scrolling up/down.

            • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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              2 hours ago

              Okular can be set to do that, but it doesnt have a scroll bar, which you might not like. Firefox can do that as well, but I concede that browser PDF viewers are not ideal.

      • Nefara@lemmy.world
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        Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don’t have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.

        I’ve been trying to adapt to Linux Mint/Cinnamon as my daily driver and yes, stuff breaks. My sata and nvme connected drives kept disappearing every time I started my computer so I had to learn about mounting and auto mount (they are just there on Windows). My game and program installs on Bottles and Lutris kept going “missing” and losing their .exe’s. I downloaded 70gb of Guild Wars 2 files at least 8 times because I thought each time I had fixed the “files missing” problem only to have them disappear on reboot. I still didn’t figure out what was happening and am only able to play now because I found out how to use the provider portal on Steam. I can’t make launcher short cuts from the actual executable, I have to go to the desktop and do it and when I do, it won’t let me drag it to my panel for some reason. When I thought I had found a solution, I reactivated some launcher applets and ended up with three different instances of my panel launcher icons and still no ability to add new ones. My systems connected to the same ethernet used to show up in my network panel and I was able to access my shared folders and media files but they all stopped showing up a few days ago and I had to learn all about Samba share and minimum and maximum server protocols and still am trying to find a solution.

        Yes, Windows breaks stuff too, but Linux is NOT a perfect product that works flawlessly for everyone and [@cRazi_man@europe.pub is right. All of their points are things I’ve been struggling with and would warn a Linux noob about. I personally would rather trust those random forum posts than LLM summaries (and have solved some issues that way) but otherwise I agree with each of their bullet points.

        • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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          Yes mounting is different, but that is not a Linux issue. Same as when you boot into windows, but an EXT formatted drive will not appear AND it will never mount. Windows helpful choice is “unknown” and offer to format. These are just OS differences, not breakages.

          Cinnamon might be part of your problem with shortcuts…

          Yeah SMB shares can be tricky. I have issues with them in Windows as well, not linux specifically.

          I am not saying linux is perfect. All computers rely on a person being able to deal with them. I just find it much more stable then windows ever was. You add bottles and Lutris into the mix, and now it is a third party software issue: just like plenty of software in windows as well.

          • Nefara@lemmy.world
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            I think there’s a difference in personal interpretation of what a “Linux issue” is, here. It sounds like you might be interpreting “Linux issue” as problems with the software itself, or its capabilities, features and processes etc. Personally, I am using “issues with Linux” to mean the entire user experience from start up to using the GUI and whether or not I can do the things I want and need to do on a daily basis easily and intuitively. Certainly, Linux as a software plays into it, but the things you are brushing off as 3rd party incompatibilities are absolutely part of the Linux experience in my opinion. I’m not trying to throw blame, but when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.

            • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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              when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.

              Depends on what “should” means. My printer for example will not work with windows. It works fine with linux. So… that really is a printer driver issue. No matter which one it works with.

              As for the OS out of the box, everything works on a fresh install of either - although linux is far more loaded with ready to go software, and windows requires you to add it. And any of the software you add to either can cause breakages, that is computing.

              I noticed over the years that Linux works fairly well for people who did not start with windows first. Both have learning curves, but habits are habits.

              I am going to take my linux laptop for an example: 2 years. No tinkering. There is nothing to do, it just works.

              My other laptop (windows): damn thing need tinkering all the time: turn off this, regedit that, just to get the nagware and crap out. Won’t allow remote desktop with the license, needs drivers to be updated, software that came with it is bloatware garbage.

              • Nefara@lemmy.world
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                I’ve been tinkering with my Linux machine for the past 8 months or so, and having random issues like the ones I listed and more besides that I’ve already solved. Meanwhile my old Windows 7 machine has been working flawlessly for about 8 years, no regedits or crap software issues. I think I had a driver issue with my mouse a couple years ago that I clicked a button and it fixed it. My laptop running Windows 7 also has been working flawlessly since about 2016 beyond prompting me to format media that I connect to it, but I press a button and that goes away. Recently I’ve been having compatibility issues with software because it’s such an old OS but as you said, that’s a 3rd party software issue, not a problem with Windows 7.

                Glad your Linux experience is so smooth though. Must be nice!

                • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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                  Two desktops and three laptops, they all work great. My biggest ongoing issue, and it is fair to say it is a problem, is VR. I have not tried recently, but that is one area that was smooth to set up in windows and I havent had luck in Linux.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      whelp, I’ve got a laptop and a desktop. the desktop is old as hell, maybe it’s time for a new start. I could set up a new machine to run with Linux

        • everett@lemmy.ml
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          Yeah, this. In fact, going with hardware that’s too-too new can lead to a different problem on Linux.

          OP, if you’re buying hardware, it’s worth web searching to make sure people have tried it on Linux and are having good experiences with it. Since most manufacturers only care if their stuff works on Windows, it can take a little while for Linux devs to write drivers and get them shipped in Linux distros.

  • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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    Bazzite. Set it and forget it. 2mo on my new PC build, has only ever had bazzite. Runs like a dream.

    • MrPistachios@lemmy.today
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      yeah I started with popOS, used it for about a year, then tried Fedora for a week but figured if Im moving distro to get the latest and dive deeper might as well go with Arch, that lasted like two months with hyprland then decided to try bazzite and its been solid, everything I need is just there already, shortcuts working just like windows so its easy to transition from work laptop to personal, screen shots, lock, mounting network shares etc

      • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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        Yeah I haven’t had to open the terminal or download a single driver yet. Another person says that apparently it has all kinds of problems and breaks all the time because it’s based on fedora?

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      4 hours ago

      The fact people suggest anything fedora based to new users is even more baffling then suggesting pure arch.

      Fedora loves to just randomly destroy itself every so often. Hell they are currently thinking of doing it right now!

      If your going to do a gamer distro like bazzite as a gamer your objectively better off just going with cachyOS.

      It’s literally the same base as steam OS, has half the problems. And wont just implode because fedora decides to change something stupid yet again.

      • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        It may be baffling to you but honestly I’ve had no issues and you clearly know more about the subject than I do. I just wasn’t aware of any of what you mentioned, though I certainly am not calling it into question.

        As somebody who is pretty good with computers but is by no means a coder/programmer/engineer of any sort, I’ve just been very happy with bazzite 🤷‍♂️

        I have not seen those problems, but I’ve also only been on it for a couple of months. I will keep an eye out for that and keep cachyOS in mind.

      • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        even my parents and grandparents are on bazzite which massively reduced my family tech support work, but it seems like fedora is indeed being fedora again and discussions are for dropping 32 bit which would be troubling for gamers still.

  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    This isn’t the best or most popular way to do it, but: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

    There is a way built into windows to deploy and use Linux from inside windows.

    It’s not the most pure experience, but it’s a way to make sure you have something like a feel for how some parts work before jumping in any deeper.

    A bootable USB stick is another way to try before you commit. Only reason I might suggest starting with trying it the other way first is in case you run into issues connecting to the Internet or something you won’t feel totally lost. Having to keep rebooting back into windows if you have a problem can be frustrating, so getting a little familiarity with a safety line can help feel more confident.

    Issues with a USB boot are increasingly uncommon, as an aside. Biggest issue is likely to be that USB is slow, so things might take a few moments longer to start.

    From there, you should be pretty comfortable doing basic stuff after a little playing around. Not deep mastery, but a sense of “here are my settings”, “my files go here”, “here’s how I fiddle with wifi”, “here’s how I change my desktop stuff”. At that point a dual boot should work out, since you’ll be able to use the system to find out how to do new things with the system, and also use it for whatever, in a general sense.

    If it’s working out, you should find yourself popping back into windows less and less.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    4 hours ago

    Linux is way easier than it was even 10 years ago and many games run better on Linux than they do on Windows. There’s gaming distros but I’m not sure what the benefit is other than the built-in NVIDIA drivers. I just game on Fedora. You need to enable Proton stuff in the settings and you’re off.

  • Riskable@programming.dev
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    5 hours ago

    These folks are all giving great advice but also let us know when you’re ready to really fuck around and have fun with your Linux superpowers 😀

    You, in practically no time at all: “Nearly everything is working great! Now I want to make my desktop change it’s background to NASA’s picture of the day while also putting all my PC’s status monitors on there. Oh! And I want my PC to back itself up every hour over the network automatically with the ability to restore files I deleted last week. I’ve got KDE Connect on my phone and it’s awesome!”

    Then, later: “I bought a Raspberry Pi and I want to turn it into a home theater streaming system and emulation station.”

    …and later: “What docker images do you guys recommend? I want to setup some home automation. What do you guys think of Pi-hole?”

    “I’ve got four Raspberry Pis doing various things in my home and I’m thinking about getting Banana Pi board to be my router. OpenWRT or full Linux on it? What do you guys think?”

    …and even later: “I taught myself Python…” 🤣

    • eta@feddit.org
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      4 hours ago

      And finally: I rewrote all my stuff in C because I didn’t like the overhead of Python and wanted to go more minimalist.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      5 hours ago

      lmao 🤣 wouldn’t that be nice?

      Honestly that’s kind of the dream (I already have raspi theater plans).

      It’s sad how much technology has changed since what we thought it was gonna be in the 80s. we HAVE the capacity to do all those things, but we get locked out of modifying our own devices!

  • rescue_toaster@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    There’s tons of youtube videos / tutorials on how to create a live usb of a distro, such as linux mint. This will allow you to boot into linux and play around without installing anything and get a feel for linux. It’s nowhere as tech wizardry as you think.

    And if all your games are on steam and don’t have anti cheat things, they’ll probably just all work with proton (linux compatibility tool in steam).