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SSD crapped itself finally, so good excuse as any to do the switch.

  1. Linux Mint? Is that recommended? Is this the one "you wish you started with"?

  2. I have some files on my HDD, I would rather not lose any of them, can they still run on Linux?

  3. Gaming. Any suggestions on running Steam and such?

I don't want "if this doesn't work out, I can stick with Windows." Fuck, I'm sick of Windows, when/where do you learn to love Linux? Thanks for your help.

Edit: Holy shit you guys respond fast. Thank you, you all deserve a beer. I won't know everything at the start, I was only hoping for some training wheels (tutorial vids) on how to do the basics.

I lied a bit, I still have an old gaming laptop (where I'm posting now). It runs Minecraft on medium (and I still love her). I'm already transferring files to it just in case.

SSD crapped itself finally, so good excuse as any to do the switch. 1. Linux Mint? Is that recommended? Is this the one "you wish you started with"? 2. I have some files on my HDD, I would rather not lose any of them, can they still run on Linux? 3. Gaming. Any suggestions on running Steam and such? I don't want "if this doesn't work out, I can stick with Windows." Fuck, I'm sick of Windows, when/where do you learn to love Linux? Thanks for your help. Edit: Holy shit you guys respond fast. Thank you, you all deserve a beer. I won't know everything at the start, I was only hoping for some training wheels (tutorial vids) on how to do the basics. I lied a bit, I still have an old gaming laptop (where I'm posting now). It runs Minecraft on medium (and I still love her). I'm already transferring files to it just in case.

(post is archived)

[–] • 10 pts

Don't consider any of your data truly saved unless you have it saved in a minimum of 3 places. At least one should be off-site. What if your place gets burglarized by a local jogger? Fire? Flood? Toxic explosion and gubmint doesn't let you return to your home?

[+] [deleted] • 6 pts
[–] • 5 pts

Not exhaustive but, linux-gaming-guide (itsfoss.com)

[–] • 2 pts

Excellent. This is what I wanted.

[–] • 5 pts

I got super drunk and installed Linux Mint on a thinkpad and it turned out ok

[–] • 4 pts

Mint is fine. Steam works on it. I prefer xfce.

[–] • 4 pts (edited )

Basically, just get it done, I am transferring over to Mint Cinnamon, plan your move and be realistic, here's mine:

Prep new hdd with eseaus copy all non system files to reserve hdd DL Cinnamon Make boot USB--> I use Ventoy-- nice and simple Swap C: old hdd for new

Install Mint-->Run all updates Tweak and tune to my desire Confirm install works ok

On confirm transfer all files from reserve to new hdd

Install graphics card-->find Linux drivers (MSI TwinFrozrIII)

Confirm Graphics card

Install sound card--> find Linux drivers (Xonar Xense HD)

Confirm sound card

Find software components --> Thunderbird for email, Replacement for WinAmp, GIMP ect ect. . .

Sounds complicated but once you plan and start it flows quite well.

Good luck!!

[–] [deleted] • 3 pts

My experience of switching to Linux Mint:

Steam allows nearly all of my games to run even if they aren't officially supported. A few games break, though.

Wine runs the other Windows-only programs I need.

I don't need as many Windows-only programs as I thought I would.

I don't think using and configuring Linux is harder than Windows, but it felt that way early on because it's different and I was used to Windows.

There are annoyances about it; Linux isn't what a good operating system should be like, it's just less bad than Windows has become.

[–] • 3 pts

  1. If by "run" you mean "execute," then you can use emulators or compatibility layers to do that, but not everything is supported. Other than that, NTFS is supported by Linux distros, so you'll be able to browse and work with the files, assuming they're in some format other programs recognize. Images, music, text, office-like files, etc. are all widely supported.

  2. No experience here, so can't advise you. I'm sure someone else can.

[–] • 2 pts

Nice. At least I have those.

[–] • 2 pts

Dont try to use NTFS as a primary drive in linux, mount it, get the stuff off of it, and then reformat into ext4 or something else. Youw ould be surprised by the misc problems that come up attempting to use an NTFS volume.

When i first swapped out of winblows, I left the games on the NTFS volume they were on. Lots of games failed to run properly, even reinstalling them to the NTFS volume.

Once I eliminated that last vestige of winblows from my machine, all the things worked.

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

Steam is pretty much plug and play with Proton now. Some stuff doesn't work right of course but it's better than it's ever been before with the Vulkan translation layers and such. I think even most of the games with anti-cheat work now.

Translation of DirectX into Vulkan calls is much better than OpenGL to DirectX ever was.

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

  1. It's one the best distros out there, especially for beginners.

  2. You should be fine as long as you can copy that stuff over with something like a USB flash drive.

  3. Go to settings and there should be an option you can enable along the lines of "Enable Proton on all games". There's also quite a few games that support Linux out of the box.

Also I recommend installing Wine, it's a program that allows you to run exe files (mileage may vary depending on the application).

[–] • 2 pts

I will sub to Wine gaming, thanks.

[–] • 2 pts (edited )

It may be a bit harder start.

If gaming and such is the main purpose of your machine.

I am going to recommend SalientOS (sourceforge.net). Its Arch based, so not as newb friendly. but not really any harder to manage either. Lots of good help out there for it, just like any other distro.

The bonus. It plays AAA games right out of the box. Drivers, steam, gaming addons loaded already.

Try to load up Salient, and just play steam. You'll enjoy it just working for you. In a 450 game steam library I have found few that don't work at all.

A great resource you will come to love is ProtonDB (protondb.com). It tells you how others made the game work on Linux and what type and hardware they used.

Edit to add. Also dont forget Lutris (lutris.net)! Amazing tool for gaming on Linux. (also pre-installed on SalientOS)

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