Ever had a question about Linux but felt too afraid to ask? Well now’s your chance, ask any question about Linux, no matter how noob or repeated it is, and I and others will help answer them.
Previous noob question thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/14261893
I have an old (2017) Windows 10 box that is ineligible for Windows 11. Originally purchased to run my Oculus Rift, it now just streams YouTube and Twitch and plays some old Steam games and occasionally school related stuff (Lexia, Scratch, stuff like that).
I started thinking that, rather than worrying about an unsupported Windows OS on my network, I might upgrade to Mint or Ubuntu.
So, my question(s) is/are, how much of a hassle will such an upgrade be? Will I need to wipe the drive, or can I keep my files without having to back them up first? Can I run Windows games on Steam with Wine? Are there good 3D card drivers nowadays?
I’m reasonably versed in using Linux as a user, less so as an admin, in case that affects the way you answer.
To install at minimum you’ll need to likely shrink existing partitions and create new ones for linux if you don’t want to wipe the drive, that would be a dual-boot setup with Windows still installed along side. Or you can just wipe the drive entirely and have only Linux.
Regarding the files you should already have backups of anything important, if you don’t, set it up ASAP.
Messing with partitions can easily cause data loss if something goes wrong.
You also never know when hardware failure, malware, power surges, lightning strikes, or whatever other disaster will happen and cause data loss. 1 copy of files might as well be 0 copies.
I’m pretty sure anything of value is already backed up to my NAS. I’m just paranoid that my kids might freak out that I destroyed their state fair winning Scratch project or something.
There would be no hassle in wiping the drive, you can do it as part of the super easy installation process for any Linux distro. Ideally you would back up any important files and drop them into your fancy new file system once the install is finished. And you can pretty much launch almost any game directly out of steam and it will run. There are a few exceptions for some of those games with anti cheats that rootkit your system, but the majority just work out of the box. Drivers included, but Nvidia might be ever so slightly annoying
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Depends on how much crap you’re willing to put up with. It’ll all be worth it in the end! (Pro tip: disable secure boot in BIOS)
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I wrote a whole guide on the two options, but then accidentally deleted my comment. You can either install Linux on another drive, or shrink your NTFS partition and install Linux alongside it. You can always access NTFS from Linux, but not the other way around (by default). If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, you should really look it all up. I would personally just backup and wipe, you can always reinstall Windows if you want to.
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Have you heard of Valve’s Steam Deck? It’s a handheld gaming device that can play nearly every PC game, and it runs Linux! Valve made gaming on Linux an absolute breeze thanks to Proton. There are some popular games that don’t work, either because Tim Sweeney hates Linux (yes, really) or because the anti-cheat won’t accept Linux, but I only know about Destiny 2 and Rust that have that problem. Easy Anticheat works just fine, I play Apex Legends and Deep Rock Galactic with no issues!
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If you have AMD, you don’t even have to think about it. Their drivers are part of the Linux kernel. Nvidia is not impossible to use, but you might have some issues. I experience random desktop environment crashes that I can only attribute to their drivers, but it only happens on startup sometimes, which is the least annoying it could be. If you choose a distro that doesn’t mind automatically installing non-free software, you probably won’t need to think about it either. The open source driver, Nouveau, works fine but performs awfully in games (or at least it did a year ago).
If you just want some clear instructions: backup your files, wipe your disk and install Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. It’s easy peasy to use and getting the proprietary graphics drivers is only a few clicks away. Just configure your Steam games to run through Proton and you might not even tell the difference.
Everything people are saying here checks out, but you might struggle with VR. I haven’t tried VR on Linux yet, but I’ve heard some things about support being pretty janky. Maybe others with experience can weigh in.
I’d be interested to see what people have to say regarding VR setup, but the Oculus gets little use anymore. I have a few games that were never ported to the newer, self-contained systems (I have a Quest 3), and we’ve downloaded a bunch of custom Beat Saber levels that I might feel bad about, but the sensors are a big enough pain to set up that I don’t know that I’d feel that bad.
I myself have a Quest 3. I use Air Light VR as a streamer, which only worked after I added something to do with a vrmonitor.sh to the SteamVR command line. Half Life: Alyx runs natively and works just as well, but I’ve had bad luck with most other games, primarily because Steam Cloud didn’t synchronize the Windows saves to my Linux machine. VR even on Windows is already a PITA to set up, and I just don’t have the willpower to get it working properly on Linux. This is the only reason why I even keep the waste of space that is my Windows partition.
That was half the reason I upgraded. I don’t know if my old box would’ve been compatible (probably was), but I wanted it off Microsoft territory so bad and heating about Copilot sent shivers all over my spine.
I’ve never heard of installing any new OS without having to back stuff up. That’s just wishful lazy thinking lol.
You probably won’t have to do anything manually about Wine. Steam has Proton built in and it works great. As others always mention, check ProtonDB.com for user reports on how a specific game will work out.
I haven’t run into any problems in my library, but I honestly haven’t installed a ton of games.
I’ve used Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris for some other launchers (like Battle.net or Epic Games), and those have been a little hit or miss, but I think the main problem is something I’m missing. Not a huge priority but I’m still working on it occasionally.
I haven’t heard anyone call or 3D card since the 90s. They’re video cards or GPUs these days man. AMD has open source drivers that work just fine with Linux and should work just the same as the Windows version I believe.
Nvidia has open source ones, but they seem to be pretty terrible compared to the closed source ones. I had one issue with them last week but I think that was more related to KDE than it was the drivers’ fault.
I don’t really have any fancy hardware to describe how easy that was to get to work. Just a mouse, kb, headset(with mic) all of which worked fine without doing anything. I have a physical dongle for the controller, so I had to get a driver for that so I didn’t have to use a Bluetooth connection (pretty shitty comparatively speaking) or gasp plug it in. Had a few issues with it for a while, there was an updated version under a new name and such but it all works now. Just turn the controller on and it’s working instantly (unless I forget to charge it lol).
