7mo ago

Trying Linux after using Windows for decades

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I figure this is a halfway decent place to ask, and it's on my mind. If there's a better place to ask, I'd love a point in the right direction, cause navigating lemmy well still eludes me.
Looking to test out linux for the first time and I know fuck-all about the basics, and I have a couple of questions:

Again, if there's a better place to ask (I'm sure there is lol), I'd appreciate a mention for that too.
Edit: collapsible spoilers are a damn godsend.
- I'd recommend pop os over bazzite because it's a more standard distro, bazzite is immutible (update entire system at once instead of individual apps, and part of the filesystem are read only. It's harder to break stuff on an immutible distro, but they're less common and most resources online are for normal distros). It isn't hard to get nvdia drivers working on pop os, so I'd just google it after you get it set up.
  I'd make sure your windows drive is unplugged before installing, so you don't accidentally wipe it! I've never dealt with swapping what drive the os is on, but I'd expect some stuff to break because the filesystem is pointing to unique IDs that no longer match. That shouldn't be hard to fix by googling the errors, but I'd watch out for it.
  Windows updates like to mess up bootloaders sometimes, I've never had that happen, so I don't have any advice there. Unplugging the windows drive when you instsl should help, and just make sure the default is to boot into linux, that way any auto restarts won't get into windows to mess stuff up unless you let it.
  c/pop_os@lemmy.world
  c/linux@lemmy.ml
  Could also be good places to ask
  
  The only things id be concerned about is that multi monitor will work better under Wayland but nvidia may not. Nvidia and wayland is getting better while multimonitor on X isn't, but I don't know exactly how things are rn enough to say
  
  I think I read there was a big nvidia compatibility fix for Wayland coming down the pipeline, but who knows when it'll reach distros.
  
  That started the process already with the 545 drivers, but I saw a ton of bugs when I tried to update to 545. Probably won’t be ready for another year or two.
  
  Yeah, I've heard it's getting better, but I have an amd card, so not really sure where it's actually at. X would probably be better for nvdia for a while, especially on pop_os, but idk what the actual state is.
  
  Could you expand on that a bit? What do you mean by 'work better'?
  For context, my main monitor is the one I want working well (any gaming is exclusively on my main). My second monitor is only used for more screen space, and occasionally playing videos (I don't care if it's high quality if it's on my second).
  
  Multimonitor is just a better experience on Wayland. For instance, you can have different refresh rates for your monitors and the way it's handled isn't janky and hacky.
  
  Noted. both my monitors are 75hz and capable of variable refresh rate, so in theory they don't need to have different refresh rates for my setup, but I imagine playing games and watching a video might throw a slight wrench in that. Just out of curiosity for my options, would plugging my second monitor directly into my Mother board help mitigate any issues on that front (instead of having both plugged into my GPU)?
  
  it's not a setup issue, it's a hard limit of xorg. maybe having two xservers may help, but then you wouldn't be able to move windows between them. the way multiple monitors are done using x is that they're treated as one continuous screen, but that means it can get a bit wacky because they're not the same.
  
  Ah, makes sense. I kinda figured it wouldn't be that easy to solve, but I had hope that it might have a 'cheap' workaround.
  
  Hell yeah, thanks. I'll likely not use bazzite then (I'm less concerned with breakage if it means I have more options). Is there any other distros that you might recommend? I don't know what's out there, and it seems like a lot.
  Also, thanks for the links! I'll check around there too.
  
  The basic recomendations I'd give for distro is something popular based off Ubuntu or fedora. Both are pretty friendly distros, and most things based off them aren't going to make too many changes to how core systems work.
  If it's based off one of those I'd argue the more important question is what user interface (called a desktop environment) you like. Watch a few videos of each distro in action and pick what you think looks best.
  A lot of big distros have "spins" or varieties that have different desktop environments. So if you
  Some specifics I'd recommend:
  Linux mint: a distro based on Ubuntu that's designed to be easy to use, without much setup. Most stuff will just work, but being based on Ubuntu, it's a stable distro, so updates will be a bit slower, and there won't be any major changes in the same version. (I would reccomend this over standard Ubuntu personally because the company behind Ubuntu has made decisions I don't like (like prioritizing their own way of installing programs that, in my opinion, is a inferior to other methods))
  Slightly less highly recomended:
  Fedora: takes a quicker approach to updates, but isn't as focused on being friendly to new users. It has a variety of spins: https://fedoraproject.org/spins/ if you go with fedora, I'd recommend GNOME (the default, more similar to Mac), KDE (similar to windows), or cinnamon (what linux mint uses, similar to windows).
  nobara: I've heard good things about nobara, but I'm not super familiar with it. It's basically fedora KDE with some extra patches added to better support gaming. The one negative I've heard is the maintainer is very busy, so ocasionally updates will be delayed vs fedora. It's more of a hobbyist distro, but the maintainer seems pretty dedicated, and they also maintain a version of valve's proton (one of the things that lets you play windows games on linux called proton ge that includes additional patches)
  In order I'd recommend pop_os, linux mint, fedora, nobara. If you look at KDE and decide you like it, then I'd go withth fedora or nobara.
  The main reason I'd recommend pop_os or mint is because you have an nvdia graphics card. Nvdia drivers have tended to be worse on linux, especially under a newer protocol called Wayland, which fedora is moving over to in it's next release. Mint and pop_os slower update cycles are more likely to stay on x11 (the older protocol, but better supported by nvdia cards) until everything's very solid.
  Fedora's trying to push linux forward, which is good imo, and most things should be fine with nvdia, but there will be more bugs. (I've heard it's gotten pretty good, but I have an amd card and don't want to recommend them without warning until I know for sure there aren't issues)
  
  Thanks for the recommendations, and another thanks for giving a quick rundown on them too! These comments have been wildly helpful for essentially laying down some framework in my head about it.
- I recommend downloading the latest Linux Mint .iso file and using Rufus to create a bootable, live USB drive. Also, if your computer has an internal d: drive, I would recommend using that entire drive, instead of dual-booting from c: (I had a bad experience removing Linux from a dual boot system and getting the partitions back to normal). This way, you're not touching anything on your windows (c:) drive.
  If you’re really worried about messing up your c: drive, you can physically disconnect it while you’re installing Linux, so the Live installer only has one choice for installation. After you've installed Linux, change your boot order in BIOS to boot from your d: drive first. Once you’re sure Linux is working correctly, you can run “sudo update-grub” which will add your c: drive to the boot menu on the d: drive. This allows you to dual boot into either OS without touching anything on your c: drive (so the boot menu will be on d:, your linux drive). Grub will let you choose between continuing to boot from d: or to boot windows on c: without you having to change the boot order every time in BIOS.
  If you use Steam to manage your games library, you're really going to like that Steam has been developing a proprietary Wine wrapper, called Proton, which lets you run all your Steam games from Linux. Steam also has a native linux client. So all the Steam games you backed up on windows, you can restore on Linux. I've run everything from Unreal Gold, to Witcher 3 to Techtonica to Fallout 4 without any problems.
  
  Awesome, thanks!
  I'm definitely not short on drives, so I'm not gonna bother with any partition shenanigans. The trouble is I only have one NVME drive, so it's just a question of which OS gets my best drive, but that's pretty minor honestly.
  You mentioned Fallout 4, do you have experience in playing with mods on linux? That's another unknown for me, as I like modding and have no idea how that might transfer over.
  
  I was able to move my Witcher 3 mods from Windows to Linux and the witcher 3 game recompiled the mod scripts for me just fine.
  I don't know if Nexus mod manager will work on Linux (haven't tried it yet). I'm hoping Proton is already configured for Fallout 4 mods (mod directory locations, environment variables, etc)
  
  I looked it up a bit ago because I was curious, and apparently Mod Organizer 2 works well on linux.
  Also, not to shill too hard, but I like MO2 way more than Vortex (official successor to Nexus Mod Manager). I feel like MO2's got a slight learning curve up front, but after that, it's way more capable and easier to use than Vortex, especially as number of mods increases.
- ::: filesystem's Linux uses a fuckton of different filesystems for different functions (Linux is at its core -simple, but it is voluminous in the knowledge base - 15 years later and I'm still going, 'oh, that's cool, I didn't know I could do that) Anyway, the main fs on Linux is ext4, but it can read/write/modify NTFS, fat, vfs, luks, and on and on. Windows does NTFS and fat. :::
  ::: don't be scared The terminal is actually, really, truly, for real, your best friend and portal to power potential :::
  Resources may seem overwhelming at first. Linux uses a lot of words to do things. The GUI has gotten prettier, but the real customisation comes in text files(all of Linux is text files) there's not registry that is mostly unreadable/unusable.
  Linux manages resources much better (Maybe because it doesn't try to stuff ads all over the place and spy on you)
  Use the manpages man7.org or sjmilar Use archwiki.org Use bash.org Use your distros site (or use Ubuntu.com or Debian.org for deb/Ubuntu variants like mint)
  Learn your package manager. (Apt, pacman, whatever it is). Install apps from there. Unless trusted or you've reviewed the code, avoiding installation from websitez is good practice.
  Everything is a text file. Configuration files are usually easily readable and configurable. Though some may be in json and some in Java and some in Matlab and some in sh and some in plaintext (the joys of not having monolithic monopolies controlling everything)
  Anyway. Its late. I've rambled. Happy fossing
- Consider Nobara for gaming!
  
  My only concern with nobara is that Fedora 41's dropping x11 support, and I'm not confident nvdia drivers will be in a good enough state to recommend to a beginner.
  
  Seconded, runs like butter Bazzite sounds good too but I don't like the idea of an immutable distro so until/unless nobara becomes broken I'm sticking with it.
- For both 2 & 3 the answer is the same:
  Having Mint and Windows on the same machine will end up with a completely fucked boot drive if you're not super careful.
  When I installed Mint on an NVME I installed specifically for it, either it or windows decided that the boot info should be placed on my SSD with Windows and not on the same NVME as mint (as I wanted, as windows was literally just a dead data drive to me at this point that happened to be bootable), so when it came time for the wipe and swap of drives I suddenly couldn't boot anything
  Minor headache to get boot repair rolling and get everything set up properly to the partition I'd made on the NVME, but the googling I did to fix this taught me that Mint and Windows Dual-Boot is a question of "when and what will fuck Up" rather than "if it will"
  My advice would be to just read carefully what's happening when you do drive shit and to keep a working boot USB for mint (should do this anyway, but keep it updated) for at least as long as you're dual booting. Boot repair WILL save you, its very easy to use, and remember the words emblazoned on that amazing book: Don't Panic
  
  Noted about the USB drive, I'll definitely have that available, thanks!

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