Local dummy here (slightly more technical than the average user, likely far less than most people in this community) considering switching over. Checked the sidebar for any beginner's resources and looked at a few of the top posts and saw mostly Linux news and stuff meant for people already using the OS.
For my specific case, I use a Mac as my daily driver and (heresy) I am happy, but I also have a Windows computer that I am thinking of switching over to Linux. I use it to play games my Mac can't, and to run [email protected] (I do not run the community but the thing the community is about) and/or Folding at Home whenever I'm not using it to game. Some of them are Steam games, some indies not on Steam, some emulated. Little to no multiplayer games, and absolutely no multiplayer that has anticheat. I have tried running some of the Windows-exclusive games with WINE and they worked but ran extremely slowly, however that was done on my Mac so it may not represent the results of running WINE on Linux.
I liked learning through osmosis watching linux videos in bed as I fall asleep. Stuff like this
Print out a linux basics cheatsheet for whatever distro you're on.
Use and practice.
Oh and don't forget timeshift snapshots.
With your usecase you should have a smooth transition. I'll recommend you skip straight to NobaraOS since you are replacing your windows and gaming on it.
Based on fedora and made by GloriousEggroll, the maker of protonGE. It the best desktop linux experience (including gaming and laptop specific usecases as well) I've had after distrohopping for a few years.
For the love of god save yourself the headache of constantly trying to undo ubuntu's stupid decisions and just don't bother with that (unwilling to just die) common recommendation. IMO its like fighting with windows' little sibling for control over your computer. Defeats the purpose of switching to linux and gives a v. bad first impression to new users.
P.S. don't dual-boot this shit is constant, its almost like Microsoft does it on purpose 🧐 just commit and you'll have an easier time.
Since
vfioexists, most people shouldn't need to dual boot.Exactly; if there's something on windows you "cant give up" then just spin up a VM and run it in there.
Unless you can’t pass through a GPU if you need one… or the program you are running has some VM detection that won’t let it run in a VM
Spoken like someone who has never tried it. Thats quite literally exactly what vfio mentioned above me is for.
From what I can tell, that won’t work for me… using a laptop with a dedicated Nvidia 2060 but no iGPU on the i7 (also pretty sure the HP uefi bios doesn’t support iommu)
Thanks for the suggestion though!
Can you elaborate? Googling linux vfio just gives me text heavy documents I dont understand. How does that replace dual booting and how would I use it?
Note: I have not done any of this myself. I've just read about it in various places. Look up "single GPU passthrough" if you need to find more info. As far as I understand it, vfio can be used to pass more than just your GPU, but that's the use case most people are probably interested in.
I've only gone through the reddit thread and tbh most people seem to be bashing this method and pointing out flaws? It doesn't seem like a magic bullet solution and dual boot seems like the better option, at least for now.
Fair, I suppose, but just remember: Reddit isn't a place for encouraging ideas. There's no shortage of people who will shit on an otherwise good idea.
But if you're looking for a magic bullet, this definitely isn't it, or else people would be using this instead of Proton/Wine. It's just an option you can use if you're dual booting for only a few apps (i.e. wasting hard drive space for a few use cases).