I’m using an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2021 as my personal laptop and have been contemplating switching it over to Linux for a while now.
It’s sporting an AMD Ryzen 5900HS and Nvidia RTX 3060 variant and very use steam for most of my games which I’m thinking wouldn’t pose too many issue based on what I read here often.
My core concerns are:
- Gaming is the biggest worry as my last experience with Ubuntu a few years ago was extremely frustrating with poor drivers, okay performance, and frequently requiring game specific fixes
- I sometimes require Microsoft Office (collaborative documents for freelance design work).
- I would very much like the Logitech Options+ companion software to work well or an alternative with the ability to set custom actions for all the buttons on my MX Master 3
Besides those:
- This machine’s reliance on its vendor software like Armory Crate etc. to perform well; an issue I’ve recently tackled by switching over to GHelper which unfortunately isn’t available for Linux
- I see Opensuse and Fedora recommended as plug and play with this machine and other distros requiring compiling and troubleshooting to work well; most cases quote much worse battery life than Windows and the need for multiple tools and command line fixes to achieve processor boost disabling and graphic switching
- I sometimes use trainers in single player mode for games that my friends play (which I couldn’t afford or didn’t have time for when they started) so I can catch up with their progress and play together with them; I haven’t seen anything specific about trainers like those from Fling working with Linux
Can anyone advise me regarding a good distro and whether I should go ahead with the switch considering the issues outlined above?
Thank you for your time and attention reading all that.
tl;dr: I want to switch to Linux but don’t know which distro or how stable it would be for my Asus G14 with gaming and portable battery life as the primary concerns.
https://nobaraproject.org/ There is really no reason not to try. You can just try a bootable USB first to see if Linux works for you and your hardware config. It’s a great way to test things and determine what distro and desktop environment works for you.
I’ve been using Piper for my logitech mouse: https://flathub.org/apps/org.freedesktop.Piper
I wouldn’t go with Opensuse or Fedora for gaming.
Why? I use openSUSE Tumbleweed for gaming and it’s been rock solid. Seriously, I’ve never really had any issues. It has its quirks, but they are easily “fixed” by adding Packman and the Nvidia repos… and running an update.
I’ve tried Ubuntu multiple times and it was always a shitshow disaster. Mint was OK-ish, but had Ubuntu-related silliness.
+1 for Pop_OS and their Nvidia support. I’ve been using Pop_OS as my gaming rig daily driver for about a year or year and a half at this point. It has pretty much worked flawlessly. Just about the only complaint I have with System76 is their app store GUI is laggy and has a tendency to bug out if you try doing anything with it before it refreshes when first being opened.
Why not fedora? I use it with nvidia and everything works just fine. Sure you have to install nvidia drivers but that’s quite literally one line to command line and you’re set. Fedora nowadays let’s you get closed source repos on installation
The problem with purging Edge is my Windows 10 install will not open Firefox when the OS calls for a browser. For instance certain help screens are displayed in Edge or they aren’t displayed at all. And then there are Microsoft’s repeated reinstallations of Edge when running updates.
I have only one PC still running Windows and that’s only because Microsoft deleted my dual boot Linux partition and it is difficult and time consuming to reinstall, but Windows will be blown away soon…
Microsoft has been abusing their customers due to their market position for years and Justice Department needs to reopen that anti-trust suit. Time to break the company up.
There’s no way windows would’ve deleted your dual boot partition, your Linux bootloader? Yes ive seen it do that a hundred times over, but I have never seen it overwrite an entire Linux EXT4 partition. The only time it would do that is if you installed it after installing Linux and did a reccomended install instead of a custom install.
For casual users that only need a web browser, a mail client and an office suite, Linux is a great replacement for Windows.
As much as I love Linux, I can’t really suggest it to casual users because I would end up being tech support for every issue. I’d suggest it to slightly more advanced users who know the basics of troubleshooting.
I do tech support for a living. I once had a neighbor that is handicapped and she kept asking me why her computer was always asking her stuff and was rebooting ‘by itself’.
Turns out she had a very old computer that was using a very basic version of Windows Home (she couldn’t even change the background) and it was constantly choking and rebooting because of updates.
I installed Linux Mint on her computer and requests for support have dropped by 90%.
In fact, I have done this for a few unexperienced computer users and because they mainly just use a browser, it’s much simpler for them.
When you think about all the notifications Windows is showing to its users about everything, from antivirus to OneDrive, and all the actions its prompting, it’s easy to see how some very basic users may find that extremely confusing. For people like that, a stable Linux distribution will be bliss (and for the people helping them).
In my humble opinion I tend to disagree. I have installed Linux (Fedora 38) on a system of an absolute computer noob and up until now (2 months in) I haven’t heard a single complaint or question. It’s faster than Win 10 and surprisingly even more stable.
Is that because nothing works on the computer anymore, and they are unable to contact you because of it? 🤔
You all keep saying that, and I’m not saying I can’t ultimately make the move, but there’s always something that doesn’t quite work as easily.
Then there’s always a solution to that which isn’t quite what you want and involves a lot of terminal which isn’t really something casual users want.
For me this time it was OneDrive which I want to be able to use, trust, and have control over without terminal commands and a half baked GUI. I get it, fuck Microsoft, but it’s already paid for and we’re not moving because my wife, who is doing dome contracting work, doesn’t want to mess with what she is familiar with.
doesn’t want to mess with what she is familiar with
That does make change difficult.
Incredibly so.
There is also the issue that if you want to work together with other companies who use 365, they often want you to send them files in Office formats. Yes, you can also make Office 365 work on Linux, but at that point people already don’t want to try it out anymore.
Personally I just tried Linux Mint for a short period and there is a lot to love. But I’m doing a huge personal project in which I’m reorganizing tens of thousands of photos which I want to store in OneDrive and backup on a drive. Currently I’m just more familiar with Windows and I understand how OneDrive works (instead of something like rclone on Linux). After I’m done I’m going to reinstall Mint or something similar on my secondary SSD and try to set up OneDrive in a satisfying way.
Ironically I’m biting the hand that feeds me as I work as a lowcode developer using Microsoft Dynamics/Power Platform. But still, Microsoft can eat a bag of sweaty sausages for what they’ve done with privacy, bloat, annoying restrictions in Windows 10/11.
Problem is that if someone is casual user, he won’t be able to install Linux. And windows is preinstalled almost always. And then if someone is advanced user and gamer, Linux is still much worse for that than windows
Linux is the most used operating system in the world. You probably use Linux every day. Android is Linux.
Linux can be pre-installed and it can be as simple to install for a user as windows. It can also be used without the terminal or anything else. All this just depends on which distro you use. Thats the biggest pain point for new people. They think Linux is one thing, but there are so many ways Linux can be customized and used. Finding the right one is hard, especially if you don’t want to touch it and let it handle itself.
I like how you dismissed all the points that were inconvinient, and twisted one point as if I said Linux couldn’t be preinstalled. I said it’s rarely preinstalled on PCs and laptops. When was last time 45 year old dad you know installed Linux by himself, or installed custom android rom for that matter? It’s way easier to just buy laptop with preinstalled windows.
Nha, I ran away from Windows for desperation for all the bugs, issues and extra steps necessary you have if you do anything remotely advanced. Doing advanced user shit and gaming in Linux for 2 years.
I have a job as maintenance, in a two months 3 Windows devices had issues that could be attributed to Windows breaking on its own.
Fun story: we just had the first week of uni here and over the summer all the school computers had been updated to Windows 11. During the first class then naturally all the professors were logging in to the computers for the first time. Upon opening the course syllabus, every single time, a big popup would appear on the screen about how Edge is so great and asking for analytics data permission. About half of the professors just agreed to everything fast to get it out of the way but the other half did reject it. In one case a professor was reading over the whole thing for at least 30 seconds
Cool - forcing ads into the start menu, forcing edge on users. Guess like Win10 is where I leave windows forever.
I downloaded Mandrake Linux back in 1992. I’ve always fiddled with linux over the years but could never fulfill all my needs. But things have changed recently. I’ve started using ChatGPT to help me when I hit roadblocks with Linux, and it’s REALLY helped work around the various barriers that have kept me from fully adopting linux. Honestly, I am looking forward to switching entirely over to Linux for my business - I’m tired of Windows. And I’ve been here since Win3.1!!
There is an enterprise windows version that comes without tracking, telemetry and auto installed crapware, but it costs more.
“Just switch to Linux!!!1!!” - yeah sure, and throw away the 3rd party software licenses I paid money for in the last 20 years, not to mention the games…
I haven’t seen any ads, so my feelings about Windows might change at some point. But I’ve tried linux in the past, and there’s a reason why it just doesn’t get as much adoption.
First of all, linux seems to be built around the command line. I hate using the command line, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Everytime there’s something to troubleshoot I have to figure out command line inputs and outputs.
Second, the annoying issues with windows are annoying, but I’ve learnt to figure it out. No, I don’t want to set as default, no I don’t want to send data, no i don’t want to create a MS account. Even if I didn’t figure it out, I can still change it later - sending data is annoying af and i don’t like it, but it doesn’t stop me from doing something. On the other hand, i encounter issues with linux that stop me from actually using the OS all the time. Everytime I do, I have to post in forums asking for help, wait 12-36 hours while using an alternate OS/workaround, and dread the inevitable use of command-line that follows.
The use of command line is literally Linux’s biggest strength and why they dominate the server space. Linux servers can be run “headless” with no monitor and no Graphical User Interface. Command Line only. GUI takes so much processing power from the CPU/GPU and it eats up RAM.
Until very recently, Windows servers required much higher system specs to run the server because windows was never primarily command line. You always had to have a GUI, no headless.
MS has gone whole hog with PowerShell, their answer to Linux. They even have versions of server that run headless now.
Sorry, I just think its a little funny that your biggest complaint is the thing that made Linux so powerful and that Windows has been playing catch-up with Linux in that arena for over a decade now.
I have messed around with Linux for 20 years. In all that time it’s always been completely unsuable for most users. The use of the command line for anything routine is complete bullshit.
All I want to do is download a program and click on it to install. How fucking hard is that. I am not a programmer and have zero desire to be one.
I do not want to go to the command line and try to fucking remember the sudo bullshit and fail because I missed one letter in the sintax.
Just let me use the fucking computer for the tasks I need to do, not fuck around with the OS.
I don’t know if you have used Linux in the past three years, but with modern workstation distros like popos, mint, or fedora it is very rarely necessary to use the command line if you don’t have to. Both KDE Plasma and Gnome have simple and intuitive appstores with massive app libraries through flatfub, and in many ways I find the UI less confusing (especially in settings) then what windows offers.
Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows I ever used unless they change their attitude, which seems unlikely considering the entire fucking world is all about anti-trust oligopolies forcing ever increasing amounts of bullshit down people’s throats now. They pushed me past my breaking point about 2.5 years ago and I’ve been on Linux ever since. I use a Mac at work. I ordered a Windows machine from work because the hardware was considerably more powerful and within one day I remembered why I left Windows and returned it. It’s a real shame too. Windows 10 was an outstanding operating system before they started filling it with spyware and advertising. See ya Windows, it was fun for awhile.
All I want to do is download a program and click on it to install. How fucking hard is that. I am not a programmer and have zero desire to be one.
For most modern Linux distributions that’s exactly how it works. You have an app store, you look for the program, click install, then click launch.
I don’t know about “most” users but I’ve been using it for about 25 years and it’s perfectly usable for me and my family.
Keep using Windows if that’s what you like, but be aware that many non programmers use Linux and don’t need to go to the command line to install software.