this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Probably a good move on your part. When they try to force windows 11 on me, that's when I will be moving to Linux.
Why wait, do it now.
I jumped ship to Linux when Win 7 died, cause I'd rather be fucked by a rusty fencepost than be forced to use 10, and 11 is right out.
Looking to move an older Windows 7 laptop to Linux this week, any suggestions? Feels like there’s so much.
I've been doing the same thing, trying out distros on an old laptop in anticipation of moving all my machines over to Linux.
Linux Mint is by far the most popular for noobs on older hardware, has a clean if simple interface, and will run on tiny amounts of RAM, so if you have no other suggestions and don't know much about Linux, I'd say start there.
Linux Mint is not Ubuntu, but based on it, so there's a lot of support. As a Windows and Mac user I found the Linux Mint "Cinnamon" desktop environment easy enough to navigate, it's solid in terms of broad hardware support, and there are a LOT of resources if you have questions, want to watch a tutorial, or need a helping hand, all pluses for a noob. (And I don't think I had to touch the command line once, when I had it installed: bonus.)
But the cool thing is that most Linux distros have a "LiveUSB" install, meaning that you can load the .iso of your choice onto a 4GB USB drive, boot off the USB, and take the hardware for a spin without installing anything. LiveUSB means you can try as many distros as you like until you get tired of making USB drives, and all for free.
Somebody else here suggested "Ubuntu" to you without saying another word about it, but there's a lot more to it than that. You still have to pick a desktop environment, for example, and while there's nothing wrong with plain Ubuntu, I honestly don't think that's the most user-friendly distro you could start with.
Try it, see if you like it. Most distros are completely free, including Ubuntu. But if you're just looking at finding ONE to start with, again, try Linux Mint: it's popular for Linux noobs for a reason, it's stable, and even if you find you don't like it, it's a great place to dip your toe in and see how Linux works for you personally.
I agree with every point you make except for the desktop environment front end.
While it is nice to install a distro with a given desktop environment OOTB, you can always change it, and even have multiple ones installed at the same time. This is typically a better approach to testing out desktop environments because you don't have to reinstall every time.
I am testing both, so for me a mix of both is best.
This is true for Debian, but not for many others. Even Fedora ships with preloaded DE "spins" now. And changing it post-install requires more than beginner level knowledge, specific to that OS. For someone coming over to Linux directly from Windows/Mac, that's not really feasible upfront.
If you just need a general purpose desktop and it's your your first time, I would suggest just picking a popular and stable one with lots of documentation like Debian, Mint or Ubuntu.
I'm leaning towards Debian myself. I don't like the direction Ubuntu (mint is essentially Ubuntu too) is going. Ubuntu is ran by a for profit company, and it is only going to get worse after snaps.
From what I've read Debian is about as new user friendly as Ubuntu is.
As someone who switched a year ago and started from Debian - yes, it absolutely is beginner-friendly)
How's the gaming support on debian?
I only play Team Fortress 2, and it runs with no issues) But when it comes to normally-windows games, people say it's mostly fine. Haven't yet tried myself though.
Yeah I would definitely choose Debian in that case. Enjoy :)
Fedora saved my old Windows laptop and it was a pretty smooth switch from Windows for me (though I had a bit of Linux experience). That thing became quicker than when I first bought it haha.
Choose a variation of Mint. They have a lighter weight build that is perfect for older hardware just read their site. Mint operates and feels extremely close to w7 and its easy to use! Promise you'll like it
Ignore all the “this distro is the best”
Just use Ubuntu to start until you know what you wish was different
My new hardware is literally incompatible with Windows 11. They're doing me a kindness I don't want all this AI shit on my PC
Excuses.
Haha, I had a partition on my pc for the longest time to put Linux on it. But I do a lot of game dev stuff, so I've been reluctant to switch from windows.
Switch to Linux! If nothing else, run stuff with wine and most things will work seamlessly
Real question. Is gaming (not game dev) significantly better than it was 5 years ago on Linux? I really want to switch, but I also really don't want to give up everything "just working" and doing it smoothly when gaming on windows.
I've even considered having 2 PC's for my 4 monitors, and having the middle monitor run windows and the other 3 on a Linux box. I used to use a program that could simulate my mouse moving from one pc to an entirely different one even across windows and Linux, and also share the clipboard. I could try that again.
But if the gaming experience is sufficient and convenient on Linux I might switch entirely.
It's vastly better than it was 5 years ago. You can get an idea by going to protondb.com and looking at games. Basically, most games work out of the box with minimal to no issues. Even most new games work on release without major issues.
The biggest issue is anti-cheat and DRM. That can be a show stopped for some users, but for me it hasn't been an issue.
I switched full time to Linux about 3 months ago, I had been wanting to for a long time since I prefer dev work on Linux and generally hate Windows.
Gaming is nearly as easy on Linux as on windows, especially through steam imo. Almost all games will work right out of the box, just set steam to use proton for any non linux-natve games and it does it. The only game I've had an issue with is cyberpunk 2077, and that was fixed with a few minutes of googling, then pasting a launch config into the settings, now it runs perfectly. One thing to watch out for, no games that use a kernal-level anticheat will work on Linux unless they specifically support it, sucky but those anticheat software makers are coming around to support it slowly.
I actually prefer installing software on Linux to doing it on Windows. Same process for finding software, just Google it and look for stuff that works on Linux. Even proprietary stuff runs natively on Linux sometimes, I personally look for free and open source software as an alternative every time and it usually is better imo. Once you find what you want, it's super easy to install. No need to deal with downloading files, clicking them to install, and all that jazz. Just open a terminal and do "yay -S {package name}" and it'll install. Also makes it very easy to install multiple things at once, especially if you already know what software you want. Cherry on top, updates aren't forced on you. You can update all of your packages with "yay -Syu", or update individual ones if you want, there's a lot of control over it, and you don't need to rely on the app to have its own update tool.
Sometimes there's windows specific software that isn't on Linux, it kind of sucks, but almost everytime I'm able to find free and open source software that's natively Linux compatible and is better than the closed source software I initially wanted. Even with windows-specific software, most things can be run with wine and work just like a native Linux app. Sometimes things don't work on wine, but basically all of them will have free and open source alternatives you can use instead, or there are workarounds that are probably easy to find.
If you wanted to do the 2 PC's you definitely can, I would recommend one PC and just add a Linux partition or hard drive, you then boot into Windows or Linux but don't need a whole new PC. You have to reboot to go between them, but you can access each systems files from the other one (can't run games, but like documents and such). If you do go with 2 PC's though, I recommend using an app called Barrier for the mouse/keyboard sharing. I use it between my PC (Linux) and my work laptop (windows) and it's great, my work laptop stays folded up and I have only one mouse and keyboard on my desk.
I have a 64bit Mac that can't play 32bit Steam games anymore (which is all of them). I'm thinking of switching to Linux specifically for games. What you're saying so I could play whatever on Linux via steam? And Steam isn't a massive pain in the ass to install and configure like it used to be?? Holy shit, that's game changing. Pun intended.
Is Master Chief Collection on Steam? That would be amazing since the only instance of Windows I had decided to change it's own password and essentially lock me out.
Yep! Idk if the apple architecture caused any issues but I highly doubt it. At least on arch Linux it's as easy as "sudo pacman -S steam". It has some dependencies obviously, but after that it'll be installed and you can sign in easy peasy. It'll install proton through the steam downloader too, the only setting you even need to change is steam > settings > compatibility > Enable Steam Play for all other titles; run with proton experimental.
Master chief collection is on steam, and is playable with proton
Dammnn you just made my day! I'm not using my Mac for that. It doesn't have enough storage space on a good day. I have a Windows 10 computer that decided to change it's own password that I'll erase and put Linux on.
Do you have any recommendations on Linux OS? Right now I'm using Fedora but it seems like there are better options out there, especially if playing games.
Avoid Ubuntu, it uses flatpak. Besides that it's really personal preference. I personally love endeavouros, very easy installation process and a lot of desktop environments to choose from. Comes with some helpful initial setup tools too. It's arch Linux based and there's a ton of resources for arch too, but arch does come with a learning curve. Backups are your friend
I'll look into barrier, thanks. I work in the gaming industry (from home, on my own pc) and so I am constantly running games and doing non-gaming tasks on and off so dual booting is not really an option for me. I often need to do normal tasks while games are running too. Which is why I wanted that 2 pc setup I mentioned above.
However I think I might dual boot just to try Linux out with gaming for now (I have a spare ssd I can use to keep it simple) since I see a lot of people saying it's pretty good now. Then if it works out I can just transition to only Linux.
If you have the money for a second PC then I see no reason not to do it. If you want to use the same PC, you can also very easily make a windows virtual machine to do windows specific work in if you have something that doesn't work with wine for whatever reason. A vm won't be able to play the kernal monitoring anticheat games as far as I know, but any miscellaneous programs that may not like or run well on wine can be run there if needed
That's what a lot of Linux people miss. They've been dealing with it for a while already so a lot of them are like "it's so easy!" and then they have to start explaing repos and containers to people and the person just sticks to Windows.
Linux won't capture the users until it can handle an idiot as well as Windows.
I have two hard drives. One dedicated to each Windows and Linux. It maies life easier.
If you play a lot of competitive multiplayer games, it would be better to keep a windows partition for them (overwatch is the only game that I had a good experience on Linux).
I used to play some competitive Apex, I was overjoyed when I heard anti cheat support is available on Linux, and quickly installed it. I tried it a couple of times since then, the most recent being last month - The game is playable but not on a competitive level imho. The smoothness is just not there. Then again this might be because of my low spec hardware.
Games like Valorant just won't work because of their kernel level anticheat. (But hey we have Conter-Strike 2 now)
AAA games run just fine for the most part, its playable and I usually get performance similar to windows.
The steam deck uses a custom Linux distro made by valve specifically for it. So it's at least good enough for gaming that valve trusted it for their mainstream handled gaming PC.
I've got one and tbh it's pretty good. As long as you stick to games that are rated as either verified or playable on steamdeck you'll probably have a good time.
Oh cool, I didn't realize that was a thing. If I can run Unreal Engine on Linux, that's pretty much the only thing stopping me from switching.
Yep! Quick search turns this up, looks like you don't even need wine for it which is even better.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/Linux/BeginnerLinuxDeveloper/SettingUpAnUnrealWorkflow/#:~:text=Whether%20you%20downloaded%20the%20Unreal,located%20on%20your%20hard%20disk.
(Unreal engine also has a specific Linux page, but I don't have an epic games account so I can't view it - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux )
Wine basically let's you run windows-only software on Linux by making a directory that emulates windows, installs needed dependencies, etc. Most windows programs can be run smoothly using wine in my experience, the main ones that can't are games with kernal-level anticheat. If you've heard of Proton, that's valves fork of wine that they've built up specifically for games
I have heard of Proton. Just didn't realize it was for gaming. Thanks for the info! I'm seriously thinking about switching now. Just gotta figure out what to do with all my current game repository on windows.
You could get a second hard drive and install Linux on that so you can boot into either, you can also access the files on your Windows drive from Linux (and vice versa) so you can grab the files if needed. If by game repositories you mean GitHub repos you can also just clone those down to the Linux one too
Some of them are github repos, others are not version controlled. But good to know, didn't even think about re-cloning them.
You can also transfer those files to the Linux partition directly, your file browser will (or at least should) be able to find your Windows drive or partition and let you browse all the files there, it's easy to then drag them to a folder on the Linux side and get them copied over
I took a quick screenshot of the page while it was loading, before the login overlay was visible:
I also quickly hit the link, which lead to this: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/linux-development-requirements-for-unreal-engine/
You've made me remember that quite not long ago I wanted to play on Linux (precisely on Mint, but I've also tried pop os), and I had three results:
1 - Game not even trying to launch/wine error (usually related to graphics) (did happen once or twice, tested few games): Factorio, without magic wine parameters and magic overall
2 - Game runs, but graphical glitches makes it unplayable: Factorio after tweaks
3 - Game running fine, fps lower or equal than on windows: Minecraft, Kerbal space program
(Yes, now I know Factorio also had Linux version, but it's too late for that)
So while it may be playable for some 9999 IQ rice master couch-looking moderator after just touching the demon named Wine, I don't have the brains, patience or time tweaking every little parameter/environmental vars/wine prefixes on top of each other to make a game play at 2 fps. It also didn't help that when trying to resolve apt conflicts, Mint just killed itself (looking at you
aptitude). My overall experience of Linux isn't bad, it may be good for customization masters, but for me, which would like having things "just working", and maybe after that some trial and error tweaks, Windows is closer to that wish. Although when MS forces W11 onto me, I'm jumpshipping to Linux, no matter how shitty my UX is (at least I hope so)Edit: forgot that there is markdown, formating fix
Edit2: bad brain, missing word fix
Nono, please do hurry to switch to Linux.
How well will my Index work on Linux?