So all I know that the Linux mascot is a penguin and Arch users meme about using Arch. Jokes aside I’m planning on making to the jump to Linux as I’m planning on getting a tower PC. I recently got a steam deck and that kinda demystified the (unrealistic) expectation I had of Linux was all command line stuff and techno babble. This all very future oriented questions* as I haven’t even picked out hardware (probably gonna go prebuilt since I do not trust me) and there’s also the matter of saving up the money for a new PC.
As for my use case (cus I know some software is wonky on Linux compared to windows) it’s mostly between games running on steam, which most of my games play fine on the steam deck, and essays and note taking for my college classes, which I use libre office and obsidian (with excalidraw to hand write my notes) saved to my proton drive and also sync those documents between my surface laptop and home laptop
My ideal OS would be plug it in, let it do… things… and it’s ready to be a PC to install steam and stuff
But first question, as someone who isn’t tech inclined and tinkering is pretty much just a few VERY basic settings in the settings app on windows, so is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards because like hardware, I do not trust me with setting it up. As for installing it after I wipe whatever computer I choose I assume I’m gonna have some OS installer on a USB and let it work its magic.
Second question, is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux, I can’t really think of any examples cus with installers and updaters I just the computer handle it, like updating Nvidia stuff in the GeForce app for all I know it’s genuinely performing dark magic during the automated updates
Anyways I probably have way more questions that I have no idea I had, but to wrap up I’m not super tech inclined since I let automated stuff do its thang on windows (if the computer can manage and install it I’m gonna let it do that) and my pc mostly just plays games and do documents on libre office and obsidian
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Using Linux since 2008 ish… (As non IT user), I recommend going and route, and using pop os (or bazzite which people say also works well but is personally haven’t tried), I am currently using tuxedo os on my laptop but my pop os journey for your use case on the home machine has been the smoothest, and if you go do route which I did, I had never thought about any driver issues… The only thing in pop (which I haven’t updated for a year now, yeah life got crazy), was that always do apt get updates / upgrades as pop OS’s package manager gui used to get stuck sometimes, once the terminal completes the updates then use the GUI to update the pop os things. Other than this small hiccup, never had to do anything else. (Oh yeah when buying hardware some people told me that getting the latest and greatest cutting edge sometimes takes time for the kernel to catch up to the optimizations of drivers, but I always bought 1 or 2 gen behind the latest and never had any issues, I mostly play Indy games other than 1/or 2 like Tekken series at 2k monitor so I never cared about 4k 120 or above fps.)
I’m going to go against the grain here and recommend that you NOT use Mint. I’ve been using a linux for a month now, so I’m new to it like you.
My first time trying Linux was Mint, and I didn’t like it at all. There was too much crap downloaded on it, and it abstracted the underlying systems too much, so I found it all very confusing. I suggest that you download a distro that Mint is based on, and then install the actual stuff you want on it.
Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. I decided to go with Debian as a total noob and it makes waaay more sense to me this time around. I enjoy customizing it to my liking rather than Mint doing it all for me—often in ways I don’t like.
Thanks for the input, like I said though in my post I’m not really looking for something I can fiddle with but thanks for advice
I’m going to agree with you, and I’ve been using Linux for over 25 years, and used to moderate the Mint subreddit.
Mint isn’t ready for gaming without a lot of work that I don’t think you want to put in, it’s Wayland support is sadly lacking, and overall it’s gotten a bit behind for anything more demanding than browsing and office work.
If you want a low-fiddle distro with good gaming support and graphics tweaks already in there, I’d say Nobara or Bazzite. Bazzite is very similiar to SteamOS in that it’s an immutable distro, and it is very up to date without you having to do much beyond keeping it updated. But the immutable part might make installing things a little non-intuitive. In which case, Nobara is a normally installed distro with all the tweaks, and it’s based on Fedora, uses Wayland, and has pretty much all the gaming software pre-installed.
Well that’s quite the resume! Yeah idk if I mentioned it to you but I was planning on using bazzite first
I second the recommendations for Mint. It should work out of the box. You can download the .iso file from their website and use a program called Rufus to write it to a USB stick. You should be able to plug it in, shut down windows, boot from the USB (may have to go into the boot menu in the UEFI), and it will install linux for you. This will be the same process for most linux distributions.
For installing software on Linux, there is an important difference between Windows and Linux; on windows you typically download an installer .exe and use that to install a program. On Linux, each distro has its own “package manager” which functions a lot like an app store on a phone. The package manager will install the program for you and take care of keeping everything updated for you, so if your GPU drivers, steam, or whatever else needs updating, just run an update on the package manager and it will do everything for you. Some will support automatic updates, so you may need to google how to turn that on for any given distribution’s package manager.
In terms of what hardware works better, most folks will tell you to use AMD graphics cards over Nvidia, but that is about it. Nvidia still has proprietary drivers which don’t always play nice with linux, but as an nvidia user myself, the problems seem to be getting fewer and fewer.
Bazzite would be a great choice in my opinion. It’s meant for gaming, has drivers preinstalled and is immutable (basically impossible to break). I’d suggest using KDE because it’s Windows-like and is the default for desktop mode on SteamOS.
I second this. I installed bazzite on my basement pc and am very happy with it. As a total linux noob it was easy to use. I use that pc more now than my actual gaming pc, because win 11 is just so annoying and slow. I’d like to add one thing: Don’t use Nvidia graphics, as they don’t play nice with linux. It saves you a lot of time in the future if you build your computer with amd stuff.
I feel it’s important to note for new people that, while an immutable OS is great at keeping you from breaking your system, the way it achieves this can make some things you would want to do more difficult. In Bazzite, installing software, for example, works differently than under a typical distribution.
I’ll give the example of two pieces of software that I use regularly: 1Password and Espanso. It took a fair bit of digging to figure out how to install 1Password in a way that would preserve its tight system integration… and it still doesn’t quite work — copying a password in particular contexts just doesn’t put that password on the clipboard, while it works fine in other contexts. Espanso on the other hand just won’t work under Bazzite best I can tell. I haven’t found a way to install it at all so I’m just doing without. Oh My ZSH was also quite tricky, and I got yelled at in the Bazzite Discord for doing it the wrong way. 😅
Plenty of the software I use works fine and was easy to install: FreeTube, Kdenlive, VLC, Zen Browser… unless you count the fact that the 1Password browser integration just won’t work with Zen Browser, presumably because I haven’t found the exact right combination of Flatpak permissions plus settings that will allow it to.
All this to say, I love Bazzite for gaming and use it every day, but the moment you step outside that world and want your computer to do something a little bit differently, it’s a major headache. In the context of gaming, it’s much closer to “just works” than any other distro I’ve tried.
I think a lot of the problem is every tutorial expects Fedora/RedHat/Ubuntu/Debian and it’s easy to figure out which instructions are compatible with your distribution, but there isn’t a good knowledge base for Fedora Atomic or related OS. I have a Bazzite VM. Normally I use Ubuntu and am familiar with RHEL compatible, but am constantly lost with Bazzite, trying to use the wrong instructions.
Ah nice, yeah I was thinking bazzite since it looks hard to break based on what you’ve all been saying and KDE so I have some vague sense of familiarity between windows and my steam deck
Bit of warning about KDE:
It is very customizable, but as a by product is also really easy to completely fuck up. The first time I used it (eons ago) I ended up removing the task bar and couldn’t figure out how to bring it back or launch programs.
Just spend a bit of time reading up on it and you’ll be fine though.
Good to know
FWIW, if you decide to go with KDE and manage to delete your panel, it’s
- right click on the desktop
- enter edit mode
- add panel
- default panel
😉
Good to know
Generally, Linuxmint is the go to distro if you want something that holds your hand, but due to your limited needs outside of gaming and already having a Steam deck you should take a look at Bazzite, which is basically the desktop mode of the Steam deck for PCs.
As for hardware, one thing that can be annoying is NVIDIA (drivers), but that shouldn’t be a major problem with these distros as mint has a built in manager that does everything for you and with Bazzite you just need to specify your GPU when downloading and don’t have to do anything.
My recommendation is download the distros you want to try, get Rufus put them on a USB and then play around with them in demo mode, make sure everything works (graphic card, printers) and if you like the distro then start the installer. If you don’t like it you can just unplug the USB and reboot without anything persisting.
Super happy with Bazzite as a gaming PC. I think only a power user might find the “immutableness” of it annoying. You can still install OS packages, it’s just highly discouraged. 90% of the time you’d just be running Flatpaks (a mostly self-contained app that is easy to install and remove). I’m using it with an old-ish NVIDIA card and at first it was troublesome but I think it worked itself out after a few updates. AMD has better compatibility from what I understand.
Wow, I’m completely out of the loop as far as Linux on the desktop is concerned (run Debian on a bunch of servers, used to run Debian on a laptop as well), but Bazzite looks really cool!
The difference between NVIDIA and AMD/Intel is that Linux has a different way of handling drivers compared to windows (all drivers are part of the Kernel). AMD/Intel respect this. NVIDIA develop there drivers like on windows even though Linux is not designed this way. Also sometimes a new standard is made (eg Wayland) but NVIDIA has little to no support for a long time. Additionally there drivers are proprietary which limits how distros can/want to ship them.
Yeah I was gonna check out bazzite first then Linux mint
Another comment said that mint will wipe the windows install if I “run” it from an external usb so would I just boot windows like normal
Also does bazzite do the same thing cus I’m probably gonna use that first
As for that Rufus tool is the demo mode something I would use on the new pc
If you start the demo mode there will be no changes to disk until you open the installer for both distros. Most distros will boot into the demo mode directly from the USB and then have a shortcut to start installing. Once you have created a bootable USB it will work with any device so you can test the distros out now with your current machined and when you get the new one you can just plug it in there and see if there are any hardware specific issues
Oh nice, I think that makes some sense to me lol
I recently made the switch back to Linux, to Pop! OS, and I’ve never had such a smooth experience before. It’s currently using GNOME as its desktop environment, which I find a bit shit in general, but they’ve modified it enough so that it’s user friendly and intuitive. It has an “app store” as well that you can use to check for and run updates, search software etc. If you have a big screen, the window tiling function is awesome. Highly recommend you have a look at it!
I’d just recommend against NVIDIA GPUs if you don’t want to tinker, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it was back when I had NVIDIA cards, but faffing around trying to get NVIDIA drivers to play nice was the bane of my existence (and where I was forced to learn the most about Linux).
Oh and the screen tearing was a nuisance too that went away as soon as I got an AMD card.
Looks like you got lots of great advice on the OS. Good luck, and enjoy whatever you end up doing!
NVIDIA is trash anyway so no reason to buy one regardless of OS
AMD gang!
In all honesty, I think it has gotten better over the last few years and it should be less of a headache now to use NVIDIA cards, I guess that depends on the OS though
there still is a reason to buy nvidia and it’s HDMI 2.1.
I want to keep using an OLED TV as my monitor, 4k and 120hz. TVs still don’t have displayport for some reason… and there aren’t any >50" OLED monitors in 16:9 available, at least where I live. and AMD didn’t get permission to use HDMI 2.1 driver in their open source driver. there is a dp > HDMI 2.1 converter, which sucks according to reviews.
I have nvidia 4 series and my linux skill is low enough that I think its insane gnome doesn’t have right click-create file by default and I have had 0 issues. You just need to disable secureboot or enroll keys.
Yeah I was probably gonna go with bazzite and it sounds like there’s some demo installer I can play around with but yeah definitely gonna break my nvidia streak (past 2 and my only gaming laptops) to finally get a proper tower with an amd gpu
Linux mint is a common recommendation but I think a bad one (for beginners anyway), I highly recommend bazzite with kde, I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to do infinite troubleshooting if you add me on matrix (which is on my profile) I’ve onboarded many people and this is my experience with beginners
in short, linux mint is bad vs bazzite with kde for 3 reasons
kde is much more well supported and developed than cinnamon, it’s not even close especially if you care about security
immutable distros are much more forgiving for new people, immutable means that the core OS can’t be modified.
and finally bazzite has more up to date software, linux mint is a “stable” distro, stable in the linux context means unchanging, not unbuggy
if you don’t know what any of that means, go bazzite over mint, you’ll have an easier time.
So I think another comment talked about this but I’m having a brain fart so mint or bazzite (the distro) is like the os but how does plasma the desktop environment fit in?
Since the other replies don’t seem too beginner friendly I’ll try another way:
The desktop environment determines how your taskbar looks and your start menu. Also the edges windows and the buttons to close and minimize windows. Also some basic programs like the system settings.
Mint and bazzite are distributions. They bundle software, test it and sometimes develop it further (like the mint guys do with their desktop environment cinnamon). Also they provide the package manager and the packages and their versions that can be installed through it. (Others can always be installed through other means but a lot is available through it)
Thanks for the info, I was probably gonna try bazzite with KDE first
the simplest way to think about is the distro is your app store
what versions of apps available and how many as well as when they’re updated are determined by distro
the desktop environment is the thing you interact with aside from the installation of software, the entire gui
The desktop environment is just the graphical interface. The OS doesn’t handle the GUI(not directly), some people run Linux without a GUI at all, opting for life in the command line. (Don’t do that) Plasma is just a flavor of it that looks more windows like (but customizable beyond a windows user’s wildest imagination). Gnome looks more Mac like.
You might run across the term Compositor, this sits between the OS and the DE. IT handles graphical input(mouse, game controllers) and display. Wayland is newer with modern features, Xorg is technically more reliable but legacy and missing some modern elements. You don’t have to worry about this unless it comes up in a prompt when you install your distro. If it does, go with the suggested option in the prompt. Otherwise default to Wayland.
A whole bunch of software goes into making a distro a distro, and the desktop environment is a major component.
If you were to compare, say, Kubuntu to Fedora KDE edition, they would look fairly similar because both are using the KDE Plasma desktop environment. On Kubuntu you’d have the APT package manager, on Fedora you have the DNF package manager.
In a lot of cases, a distro will have their underlying tech, “We use this package manager and this feature and that feature, and we publish versions with the Gnome desktop, KDE desktop, xfce desktop and i3 window manager.” Or some combination thereof. Linux Mint for example offers their own Cinnamon desktop, MATE, and xfce.
If you’ve ever used an Android phone and swapped out the launcher, it’s kinda that.
As for you android analogy I’m locked on iPhone since I’m not the one paying the phone bill lol
As for the rest of the stuff I feel like that’s gonna make more sense once I actually use Linux cus I see the concept of ideas here lol
Once you get into the ecosystem it probably will, yeah.
If you think of the Linux ecosystem as a whole, it’s like a big salad bar. There’s a bunch of stuff to choose from, several kinds of each thing. An individual distro is a salad made from that salad bar, you might have romaine lettuce, tomato slices, onion, green pepper and thousand island dressing and that’s Fedora KDE, change the thousand island to ranch and that’s Fedora GNOME. Switch out the romaine lettuce for spinach, switch the onion for cucumber and go with raspberry vinaigrette dressing and you’ve got Mint Cinnamon.
Ah i like that analogy, basically a lot of interchangeability with each part so you can make your perfect system that works for you
To further the analogy, most distros are pre-packaged salads. Somebody figured up a salad recipe they like and they put it in to go bowls. You know what’s in it so you can grab it and go. Some distros like Arch hand you a empty bowl and invite you to fill it yourself, so each copy of Arch is at least somewhat unique. Gentoo expects you to slice your own veggies.
A lot of the choices basically don’t matter to you at this point; like the process manager. There are people who are irritated with Systemd, the de facto standard one, and prefer some other. They’ll all work fine for desktop use, you’ll probably never notice let alone form an opinion. The main things you will experience as meaningful differences between distros are the Desktop Environments and Package Managers. The GUI and the app store.
Thanks for the explanation
imo kde will give a bad impression of linux as it’s quite buggy and the taskbar is way too easy to fuck up completely
i have given linux to many many people at this point and neither of these things have been problems, when’s the last time you used kde?
Fwiw I’m new to Linux and went with KDE (using X11) and it seems totally buggy as shit. I love it though. I don’t even wanna try the other desktop environments
I distrohop quite often, last time a couple of weeks ago. I tried nobara, fedora kde, and kubuntu. kubuntu was probably the best but some older games wouldn’t run, animations stutter so bad I had to disable them, themes didn’t work and some settings reset on every reboot. others had more serious issues, including constant crashing. I could blame it on nvidia, but cinnamon works just fine (except for one bug that took me over half a year to find a workaround).
and the taskbar… any time I try and resize it or move any item, it completely borks and it’s quite hard to fix.
1. Enter edit mode 2. Click on the panel, remove the panel from the panel popup menu 3. At the top menu “add new panel” → “default panel”^^bam you can easily reset the panel to default
I could blame it on nvidia
Plasma uses wayland, wayland was much much more problematic with nvidia until very recently, if you try the latest plasma, most of those issues will likely be gone
last time I finally realized you could delete the panel and add new ones, but I remember the first time I just lost my shit and switched to another distro 😂 and I agree it’s better now, it was basically unusable a year ago. btw kubuntu uses x11, and it was still on plasma version 5.27.
Just deleted my windows parition and grew my cachyos one, im never going back after a week with it, I like cachyos/arch since I can use gnome and plasma at the same time easily (i like swapping looks a lot), idk if its as easy with others since they reccomend you rebase for different des like bazzite, aurora, bluefin. cachyos is straightforward with a gui installer, easier and much faster than windows to install and use, I used ventoy so I can keep using my usb for data.
Try Bazzite:
It will give you an experience that’s familiar compared to the Steam Deck, and everything will “just work” out of the box.
It already has Steam installed and is a great desktop for general use.
Bazzite is probably the best recommendation out of everything I’ve seen so far. It is meant to be like the Steam Deck experience on any machine, and if OP is already familiar with that, why not transition easily?
Couple the familiarity along with Bazzite being an immutable distro, OP can just roll back if they break something.
So what does immutable mean?
But I’ve seen it’s similar to the decks desktop mode from some other comments as well so that seems nice
I haven’t really interacted with desktop mode outside setting up emudeck (mostly DS and switch games)
So what does immutable mean?
The easiest explanation is: You can’t screw it up :)
That’s the reason I use it. It means that the system areas are read-only, and as a user you can’t “wreck” anything by mistake.
Ok cool so that’s probably a positive thing in my case since I don’t plan to tweak things and have no idea what I’m doing
Yeah, on immutable distros, you can’t just “delete system32” (rm -rf /* in Linux parlance), it is read-only (changes on restart with updates applied)
Depending on how you define immutable distros, you absolutely can.
For example with Fedora Atomic, which most peeps refer to when talking about immutable distros, you absolutely can do
rm -rf /*. At best, it might require you to include the--dont-preserve-rootflag (or something like that) to actually start the process. And, arguably, it ain’t as satisfying as doing it on say Arch due to the many error messages. But you’ll end up breaking your system.Immutable distros aren’t indestructible by definition. Even a dumb user can break it without ill intent; I know cuz I have done so myself 😅. However, it does offer better protection. Furthermore, there are multiple issue trackers on GitHub that indicate that the developers want to iron out these things and perhaps convert them to features instead. Like, wouldn’t it make sense for an immutable distro to ‘factory-reset’ whenever
rm -rf /*is invoked?
what does immutable mean?
Strictly speaking, ‘immutable’ means unchanging. For Linux distros, this means that (at least some part of) the OS is read-only.
On any distro, you could invoke the
chattr +i path/to/file_or_directorycommand to make a file or directory of your choosing immutable. Thus preventing you or anyone else from changing that until it’s revoked.The so-called ‘immutable’ distros employ this at the OS-level. However, their implementations (and the implications thereof) may vary significantly amongst them, unless they share some ‘heritage’.
Going over the many different implementations and their implications is out of scope for what this comment intends. Especially as the ‘immutable Linux landscape’ is fast moving. Thus, potentially making it outdated the very next landscape-defining change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX0f_vyV06k
This video explains it well
While it could be functional as a cursory watch, it doesn’t seem that Michael Horn has done a good job investigating the subject matter. So, no, I actually disagree with it offering a good explanation. Granted, I couldn’t find any video that does this subject any justice; more often than not, they just tend to overgeneralize or oversimplify.
I was just going for a very high level explanation. If you feel like offering a more in depth definition, feel free to do so here.
I was intending to, but it got very unwieldy real fast. I did provide some very basic pointers, but nothing earth-shattering. I suppose this is a decent read with the acknowledgement that the author has primarily read up on Fedora Atomic (and not the other 'immutable distros). Which ain’t bad for our use as Bazzite is derived from Fedora Atomic anyways.
Yeah I’ve seen bazzite pop in a few steam deck discussions, some other comments recommend Mint how do they compare/differ
But like I said in another comment I’m not looking to tweak much, if anything at all, so I think it might be a good fit, definitely gonna take a look at that link when I’m off work
I completely agree, cannot recommend Bazzite enough. Installed it a year ago, first time linux, has been just smooth sailing
Alright good to hear. I was gonna try bazzite first then mint if I couldn’t get it going
Cool I’ve never seen this.
I run Linux Mint for years and years, I think you will be happy with it.
Yeah mint and bazzite are gonna be the ones I check out and I was leaning towards bazzite at first but now I just need to do a bit more research and figure out what the heck it what but at least I have a starting point now
Practice in a VM. Go from the base install to setting up all the apps to customizing the look of everything (commonly called “ricing”). That should give you a sense of what to expect.
When you think you’re ready, maybe give a few Live ISO’s a demo to see if there’s any immediate glaring issues when it’s running on bare metal. If not, then proceed to install when you’ve picked the one you like the most!
Yeah once I got a bit more research I was gonna get some vms and play around a bit but that’s a thing for future me
I know people have recommended Bazzite already, and I would too, but be sure to give PikaOS a look as well.
It’s a gaming distro, but it’s not immutable/atomic, though it uses a similar build process. Definitely one to consider if gaming is your goal.
I’m probably gonna go with bazzite first then mint if that doesn’t shake out but hey the more names I can look at the better
Excellent choice. I have Bazzite on a laptop, and it’s rock solid.
Feel free to DM me if you have questions. There’s also a Discord, where people are quite helpful.
Thanks!
The reason why I would choose linux mint. Is the stability of the whole distro. It’s pretty solid. You can still upgrade kernels. Or even install mainline kernel tool if you wish.
Furthermore, Linux mint provide an easy tool to install drivers, in case you’re running a Nvidia card. And Mint is just basically Ubuntu under the hood,without the crap of Ubuntu. Meaning mint also support PPAs (personal package repositories). If you wish to get some updated package.
Go with Bazzite (if you end up liking it, you can install it on your steam deck, which will be the same process you use to install it in your laptop… but that’s for the future.)
Mint is okay, but it’s a bit behind and you have a greater chance of something going wrong than with one of the atomic distros (Bazzite). With atomic distros all the important stuff you can’t really touch and the only things you can change are your personal files that are important to you but don’t affect the system at all.
As long as you reboot your computer from time to time, it’ll always be the latest everything. And if something goes wrong with an update, you just choose to boot into the previous version you were just using and everything is back to how it was. Non-atomics you can affect files that are important and you have to stay on top of updating.
Between that and being built for gamers it’ll have everything already installed for you, though if something is missing, just click to install from the “app store”.
When you go to bazzite.gg to download it, you answer a few questions about your hardware, and pick a desktop environment. Some others have touched on Gnome and KDE for desktop environments, the choice is yours. Do you want a desktop that looks more like windows (or desktop mode on your steamdeck) or do you want it to look more like a Mac? Windows and highly customizable is KDE, Mac and just use it as is but still able to customize through extensions, is Gnome.
Really the hardest part is going to be installing it, but it’s really not too bad. There are plenty of guides, but it’s use a software to get the downloaded Bazzite file onto a flash drive, boot your laptop from that flash drive, follow the prompts and wait. Don’t try to dual boot (keep part for windows part for Linux). It’s possible, but from how you described yourself, not worth the headache.
Thanks for the write up, based on the information from all the comments and this I might go with bazzite then but I still have to do some research
I might make a follow up post eventually with a little more specifics now that I have some vague ideas
As for the survey thing is that something I do on my current windows laptop or is it during the install process?
As for constantly restarting I always press shutdown every night before I go to bed
You can do it right now and see what happens. Go to Bazzite.gg and go to the download section. It just wants to know where you’re installing it so it knows what version to give you to download. Installing to a laptop will be a different file than installing to your steamdeck.
And since you shut down nightly you’d always have the most current version when you boot up the next day. But that only applies to atomic (formerly called immutable) distros like Bazzite. If you go Mint, which isn’t atomic/immutable, that won’t be the case and you’ll have to stay on top of updating.
It’s early still, so you have plenty of time to do some research and when you’re ready ask the questions you still don’t understand and generally we’re pretty helpful around here. 😁
Yeah I definitely have a lot of info here, feeling a little overwhelmed but I just need time to sift through the nitty gritty and digest this
But I’m super early in the process haven’t even thought about what hardware I’m gonna get get (at least from this post I know need something AMD probably so that’s a start lol)
Also if I swap out to bazzite on my steam deck will I have to reinstall stuff like emudeck (only thing I’ve installed in desktop mode)
I guess in case no one else mentioned anywhere, when you install Bazzite (or any distro) it will wipe everything and you will start from scratch, so make sure your important stuff is saved elsewhere before you begin. Same with steamdeck. But one nice thing about Bazzite is that since it’s made by gamers for gamers, it has a lot of the things you’ll need preinstalled, or like emudeck you can just click to install it through their portal, so it should be minimal hassle.
Alright I’ll probably stick to whatever’s on my steam deck then since it ain’t broke
As for whatever new (prebuilt) PC I was gonna get I was gonna get Linux going first thing after I finish booting up the computer and speed running through the first time set up on windows (skip sign in, one drive all that)
I really like fedora out of the box but if you’re used to windows some will recommend Linux mint. In fedora there are a lot of packages installable via the software store as well as downloading app images and RPM files.
Agreed here. On CPU side, don’t go with Intel 13th or 14 th gen, mostly due to the manufacturing defects, check gamers nexus on YouTube if you want to catch back up to speed, the new Intel stuff is fine manufacturing wise, terrible performance, check if the prices are good. GPU, NVIDIA usually has kinkier/ more annoying drivers, but if you want to play with AI or anything like that, NVIDIA is still better.
Mint vs fedora is completely irrelevant here. GNOME vs KDE is more important and fedora supports both.
Which packages can be installed is also completely irrelevant since you can use nix and distrobox and flatpaks on all distros. Package availability is no reason to choose one distro over another.
So nothing in that sentence made sense to me lol, mind explaining?
Distro - System level stuff. A “type” of linux. Mint, Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu etc.
DE (Desktop environment) - Surface level stuff, i.e. how it looks, behaves, and often what default apps you use for basic stuff like text editing. Gnome, KDE, etc.
Distros have a default DE but often provide different versions using others for people who prefer them.
You likely won’t need to interact with any of that other stuff except flatpaks. Just think of it as a form of distributing and running software.
Ah so it’s just how the software works essentially
It’s more like, the distro is the actual “under the hood” OS and the DE is the looks and user interaction.
Ah that makes sense (i think)
The difference between distros are the package manager and choice of default software and settings.
E.g. Debian has no wifi enabled. Hence, ubuntu (which is like debian) is much easier because it’s user friendly. Ubuntu uses a disliked packaging format, snap, which is not used by mint. That’s why people love mint, becaus it’s as easy as ubuntu and has no snaps. Blablabla
Whenever you want to know some linux thing, read the arch wiki and you’ll know more about it.
Distrobox is like a vm, you spin up a distro within your OS with no overhead and can use arch on debian. Or ubuntu on arch. Or fedora on opensuse, or all at the same time because why not?
I’d try https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/ or https://vanillaos.org/ and install most apps as flatpaks. Vanilla is like ubuntu but you don’t mess with the underlying system. Atomic fedora is “the same” but with fedora style. Problems arise at the dev level, not the user level. It should be good to go on your system
Good point. I still use what it came with, gnome, but kde is more windows like
Some distro’s still require you to setup those things yourself and in the terminal.
So bazzite and mint seem to be recurring themes here for my needs of something that works out of the box, do those need any set up or stuff? I don’t really know exactly what I’m asking here :/
On Mint, flatpaks is enabled in the Mint software center.
Sorry but what’s a flat pack? Is that like an installer?
Flatpak (flathub) is a universal app store. You can install pretty much any app from it, but you do need to be careful of what you install, as always.
Usually software centers have it enabled (supported) by default, so that you can install app from flatpak within the center.
There are other options of install source, like the distro’s own installer - you can think of them as another “app store”, one which is more restricted and more secure.
Oh that’s much simpler than I was expecting lol
So I think I’ll look at mint then considering I have no idea what you mean by RPM files but app images ring a bell when I was getting yuzu set up on my steam deck
Definitely go Linux Mint. Especially if it’s your first time with Linux.
I was gonna try bazzite first any words of wisdom on it?
Yea, make sure you download the correct edition of Bazzite.
Is there multiple versions or something?
Yes, depending on your hardware.
I looked on the bazzite website and I’m assuming as long I select whatever hardware I’m using (or planning to use) I’ll get the correct version
Imo you should get a System76 computer, it comes with a gaming focused Distro and its the most well respected Linux brand (in the US, for EU I would reccomend Tuxedo). Their mini PCs cost $799 and for a decent full sized PC (with a GPU) prepare to pay over $1.5k.
If you really want a prebuilt one, of course.
It was explicitly specified that no tinkering should be required, also even if you custom build a PC you wont have several advantages of just going with system76. For example the mini PC uses their fork of coreboot and intigrates with Pop_OS, meanwhile on other systems you would need to manually install coreboot (if its even supported) and bios updates are still an absolute mess (even if you dont care about the privacy benefits of coreboot the extremely fast start up speed alone makes it valuable).
So kinda standard PC prices
Slightly higher but yeah, also you get a premium PC with no RGB and a wooden finish
Ooooooooo that sounds nice
I might just go from Amazon depending on hardware and price but I’m definitely gonna add this to my list
If you go with Amazon you might get a PC that works with Linux but it probrally wont be preinstalled or optimized for Linux
Oh I highly doubt something has Linux which is why I wanna figure out installation and stuff
Keep in mind by purchasing from Linux brands such as System76 you directly support the development of Linux. In addition Amazon is great for finding PC parts but awful for finding a decently priced prebuilt.
Ah good to know, any recommended parts I don’t really keep up with hardware
Pro tip is to install a virtual machine like virtualbox or something on your Windows system. They’re super easy to set up with loads of tutorials on youtube.
From there you can install any number of linux distros (I recommend Mint or Pop!) and try them out without having to commit to real hardware. I would put the VM in fullscreen and pretend it was a real system, and use it as my dedicated machine for as long as possible. You can even install steam to get a feel of the setup process (bear in mind you’ll need to set up stuff for graphics acceleration to play most games but the basic setup should be fine!)
As for setup. Most Linux distros are as easy to set up as Windows or MacOS: USB in, boot, select a few basic options and stick to defaults. Reboot. Install stuff. You don’t even need to deal with drivers (even Nvidia is cared for by most installers) which was nicer than burrowing through NV/AMD’s websites to get their driver installers set up.
At that point you won’t be wondering if youve made the right choice when it comes to your next build, and you can get right down to actually using your PC instead of googling things. Good luck!
Yeah a few other comments were talking about the installation process but I just run windows like normal on the new PC then run the Linux installer
is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards
The word you are looking for is called a distribution, or distro for short.
I’m surprised no one else has mentioned Bazzite, which should be exactly what you’re looking for.
is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux
An AMD GPU for sure. Nvidia drivers have come a long way, but they don’t generally behave as well out of the box like AMD.
Yeah bazzite seems like a recurring topic here so I think I’ll check it out first since others have all said it’s similar to the steam decks setup (which has been limited to me installing emudeck but seeing familiar stuff might help me
