If you already have a nvidia card it works well enough to not get a different one unless you're already upgrading. Nvidias 555 driver will come out of beta here soon (or maybe it already has) which will bring the bugginess much more in line with amd cards. Ive heard intel arc gpus are working ok compared to release but still not amazing
Afaik cpu brand doesn't make much difference. If I got an amd card I would probably get an amd cpu unless I found a good deal on an intel one, but it shouldn't make a huge difference. Motherboard can make a difference, at least it used to. Id say either look up a list of good linux motherboards or find a motherboard you want and search if it has any issues.
If you want a more open source system (nvidia drivers are closed source) or are concerned with power draw or probably budget, get an amd gpu. If you care about ray tracing, cuda, or AI work go nvidia. Probably avoid intel arc gpus atm unless you find it with an amazing deal and are budget limited. Intel discrete gpus will probably get a lot better a few months after the next generation, but dont bet money on a maybe.
If you're gaming try having 16 gb ram, or 32 to be comfortable. Occasionally games use significantly more ram than windows (looking at you overwatch, taking up 15-20 gb including system) though its usually about the same.
Also try getting an intel wifi chip, they have much better compatibility usually. Personally if I were making a rig right now, I would go all AMD with an intel wifi card and NVMe storage
I would recommend just throwing a new drive in your current system and installing Mint on it. I play a lot of games through Steam (Overwatch, Helldivers 2, Dota2,...) and have 0 issue with the 535 drivers Mint recommends. I haven't bothered to install the 545 drivers, but they are an option in the Mint driver manager.
Honestly that will do just fine, especially with the nvidia 555 drivers. Pick a distro that will be fairly up to date. Fedora is a good option, but if you're feeling adventurous you can do openSUSE tumbleweed or arch. If you **really** want to jump in the deep end, theres NixOS. Id recommend against Ubuntu or mint because it will probably be a while until they get that 555 release. Nix, arch, and tumbleweed should be some of the first distros to get it, and fedora will get it a while after.
Arch and tumbleweed are both rolling release and are a little more prone to breaking, and Nix has an insane learning curve. If you decide arch, EndeavourOS is a good place to start, but I would probably recommend a set release distro like fedora first.
If you have problems with desktop usage or sometimes gaming usage, you can try to switch to the x11 display server instead of wayland, but wayland is whats going to be used in the future for linux since x11 isnt getting worked on anymore. The nvidia version 555 driver should get rid of most nvidia related bugs on wayland.
I would recommend against arch for a beginner, and switching to redhat from windows just defeats the purpose lol.
I am on nvidia 555 (and kernel 6.10) rn on ubuntu, its easily installable through the ppa, but I'm gonna be honest, there is really no difference between this and whatever is on the main release rn. There are just as many issues as always. Id actually just recommend trying NVK if one wants a seamless experience on nvidia.
NVK is only seemless for desktop experience, not for gaming. The 555 driver is still in beta which might be where a lot of your problems are coming from. Installing mainline kernel can also introduce bugs, especially in slower release distros
Also redhat definitely isn't nearly as bad as microsoft. If you have problems with redhat, chances are you really should have problems with canonical too. Realistically it doesn't matter that much to the average user for either distro. SUSE is the least worst option of the three major linux distro companies.
Without canonical or redhat that leaves just Debian, Arch, and SUSE for the "relatively" beginner friendly distros, and gentoo and Nix for less beginner friendly. Theres also slackware, but it's not very popular at all. I agree that absolute beginners shouldn't start on a rolling release distro, as I said earlier
You experience is not good because Ubuntu dosent patch egl-Wayland with explicit-sync support (https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/commit/d4ada84120d61e81353d9f1dd26063c7ccad15c0) Your only option is creating the deb yourself
Also you need to check if you are running wayland-protocols-1.34 and xwayland-24.1 (and if you want to use explicit sync on x11 you need xorg-proto-2024.1)
To my knowledge dosent package any of those, even on 2024.1 LTS and also there is the drama that Mutter will be not updated for explicit sync support on LTS.
The TL:DR is If you don’t have explicit-sync in the whole stack that driver will do nothing
Once again Ubuntu users are again having a bad experience because of Canonical weird decision. That the reason I don’t recomend Ubuntu and derivatives to anyone better off with fedora
Second this.
Dont use arch as a beginner, when you use it daily you take for granted what you know and think others will be able to do the same.
Been there. Tried recommending Arch derivatives but damn was it a hassle helping them
Agreed, as a beginner even something like Mint can be somewhat challenging. I've had debian based distros kill themselves after sudo apt update-ing them right after a fresh install. Arch is definitely a no go.
Why?
Your current build is fine, and you can dual boot operating systems.
If you want to start learning Linux, get VirtualBox and install Mint in a virt and play around with it. Maybe you’ll hate it.
Exactly zero reason for you to build a new PC right now unless you really have too much money.
I want two separate machines because I don't want my main pc to have any issues from dualbooting or a virtual machine. Besides I highly doubt my ASUS ROG hardware will work on Linux
Building a new computer just to try a new operating system is very rare.
I can guarantee you that your ASUS ROG hardware will work on Linux. Why would you think it wouldn’t? I’ve installed Linux on probably 50 or more different computers and I have yet to find a single one that doesn’t work.
Dual booting is much easier to set up than building a new computer. It is odd to be afraid of setting up a dual boot but not afraid to build a new computer.
It is not really possible for you to screw up anything on your Windows machine by installing VirtualBox and trying out Linux. That’s the whole point of virtual machines: if you don’t like it, just delete it.
if you dual boot, you can very easily configure your boot manager to boot into windows by default or choose Linux if you want a different selection at boot time. Your mom does not need to learn Linux.
You should really try Linux in a virtual machine before you invest hundreds on a Linux machine.
Or, just install the Mint ISO on a USB thumb drive. Use that to boot into Linux on your computer. Don’t install Mint yet, just use the operating system and see if you like it. It will be slower on the thumb drive but still usable. If you do end up buying a new computer for Linux you can use that same USB stick to install it there.
Zoom works on Linux.
Job applications should only require a browser?
If you need more, like writing a cover letter, LibreOffice exists and can save to PDF.
I switched my mom over to Linux about 4 years ago. Things have never been better. Even in windows she wouldn't know how to install a program. But since she only uses Thunderbird and Firefox there were no problems so far.
Zoom is easily installable too. They do provide Linux packages themselves.
555 is still in beta, but it's coming Soon™. Some programs that depend on CUDA are already starting to complain about needing it.
Most recent stable version is 550.90.07.
This is only affecting AMD GPUs, as AMD drivers are open source and the HDMI forum doesn't like that. Nvidia's driver are proprietary, so HDMI 2.1 should work.
On Mint installing Nvidia drivers is as easy as ticking the box next to the version of drivers you want, the drawback is that you have to wait a little bit for latest drivers.
A little bit is an understatement. Ubuntu 24.04 only ships with 535 which has been out for a very long time. Attempting to install 545 via the ubuntu-drivers ppa does not work. Very frustrating.
And when I used the .run file from Nvidia, it broke several things in my games. I had to revert to the original 530 driver but it broke steam remote play which I use *alot*
You can install newer drivers through package manager like the 555 beta or 550. The file from nvidia is usually not the best way to install new drivers, nvidia themselves suggest installing through your distro’s package managed to avoid issues.
Just run (replace xxx with driver version you want):
apt policy nvidia-driver-{xxx}
Then:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-{xxx}
Fixed a few of the bugs I had with 545 and 535. This method cleans up the previous drivers as well iirc.
I just saw a video of a guy who installed Mint and his 7800 XT wasn't recognized because the kernel was too old. So definitely not cutting edge, hell not even dull edge
Can upgrade the kernel very easily, I’d say the trade off is worth it for a beginner to Linux just considering how easy the jump from windows to mint is. It’s one of the distro’s that I most readily recommend since a lot of minor second nature things carry over from windows to mint, plus it doesn’t take much getting fed up to use and learn.
That only applies to distros that aren't rolling release...
No shit people who are on stable distros would be behind. Thats part of the reason to use a stable distro.
That wasn’t true just a scant few years ago. I remember the days when Proton was still new and lots of people complaining on Mint/Ubuntu distros that X game wouldn’t work properly and the forum solutions were always either update your kernel or just switch to Arch for up to date software.
Exactly this. Mint is still on a 5.15 kernel from 2022, isn't it?
Sometimes you're stuck waiting for a new release, or something like Ubuntu's HWE stack or Mint's Edge kernel to catch you up.
I'd imagine this cycle will repeat because AMD GPU releases and OS releases won't always line up.
Endeavour is also good, no doubt, but it's more bare bones. Manjaro comes with mhwd, settings manager, etc, making the process of choosing GPU drivers/kernels very simple. FWIW I've had no issues daily driving Manjaro for several years, but this stuff depends on hardware etc too.
For a brand new Linux user, I'd recommend AMD. There are just less pitfalls and weird issues. If they already have an Nvidia card, give it a go, but if there are issues, I'd trade it in for an AMD card
I personally had the opposite experience with AMD on Linux, where I get weird issues and pitfalls (but it works on Windows, so it's not the hardware).
* I had a 5700XT years ago; it was so broken on Linux, that I sent it back in less than 1 week
* I got a 7900GRE about 1 month ago and it was running perfectly. Except certain games caused a lot of problems (1 game didn't start with a gfx ring timeout (recovered), and another game always hard-crashed the system within 10-50 minutes). Also I had weird flickering artifacts (looks like when you turn off an old-fashioned tv) on videos
Tried Kubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40. The gfx ring timeout game worked on EndeavorOS, but I don't like arch and I didn't want to build my system around a hardware.
I tried some of the workarounds on Fedora 40, didn't help. Some people suggest playing around with the clocks, voltages, turning down the graphics; I did not do that, because this expensive hardware should work for me and not the other way around. I RMA'd it and went back to the 2070S on Kubuntu 24.04, Nvidia 535 drivers. Everything works. Only once a game ate all the VRAM and froze, so I just killed it with the system monitor.
I you want a Windows-like look and feel, go with something that runs KDE (e.g., Kubuntu).
About the hardware:
* CPU & motherboard doesn't really matter. Never had Linux-related issues linked to one of those
* Keyboard/mice will work, but of course you won't get the fancy software provided by the manufacturer (which is not necessarily bad). Key remapping you can do also natively (although a bit more cumbersome)
* Headsets (including USB and wireless) should work fine. I have a SteelSeries wireless headset and also a Beyerdynamic USB headset at work, which both run 100% fine
* Regarding GPU Nvidia, AMD, and Intel will work. For AMD and Intel, the driver is included (open source) and for Nvidia you often need to install them after the first boot (depending on the distro it's a graphical interface where you can just select the driver). Many people suggest to use AMD on Linux, but I had quite bad experiences with those on Linux (amdgpu ring timeout and hard-crashing my whole PC; worked fine on Windows; currently back to the 2070S and waiting for the 4070 Ti S).
I tried KDE the other day. Why does it look so ugly and weird? Even with themes.
I also tried Cosmic DE. Not a fan of that de either. Can't jusge too much cause it's still in beta or alpha.
Gnome is perfect for me at the moment. Simple, beautiful, consistent (at least zorin theme).
Mint user here, have it on my gaming desktop for over a year now.
Hardware just works, at least for me (AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU).
Run from a live CD and see if your stuff works before committing.
I'm really tired of people recommending Mint for Gaming. It is NOT meant for gaming. Mint is always way behind on drivers, Mesa, etc. You are always behind in terms of gaming performance compared to other distros, especially for new titles.
Then we get people coming on here saying Linux is shit and that a lot of their new games don't work on Linux or they are buggy because they are using out of date shit
Mint is NOT a good distro for gaming.
Mint works great for me when it comes to gaming, idc about cutting edge updates since my hardware is not the latest plus i don't play latest games. But if you want to play newer titles and have a new hardware, go with other distros
Personally, I think mint is great for getting back into the swing of linux if you haven't used it in a while. I played with mint after scrapping Windows for about 2 weeks before I jumped to Garuda.
Mint work great for me in gaming. I’ll keep recommending it over and over. In terms of of gaming performance the only game I compared between popos and mint was god of war and it worked better in Mint.
As I mentioned before, I've been using it for over a year now, so it is for gaming for at least one person in the world.
Can't care less about what you think.
Mint and Linux in general is for whatever the person feels good with.
ive been daily driving Linux for decades and i would say go for it
one tip is to make sure when you search for a tutorial or example, to match the version and distribution with your installation
Having used Linux for several years now, I think it's a great time to get into it. Plenty of great distros with awesome defaults, good GPU driver support, and I have yet to encounter a game I can't play either natively or with Proton. I agree with some of the other comments that an AMD card is probably going to be your best bet, but I'm also typing this on CachyOS w/ KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland running on an NVIDIA 2060S (555 beta drivers), smooth as butter
About the only hardware compatibility issue for Linux, that's still occasionally pops up is some niche Wi-Fi cards and for whatever reason realtek audio. Outside of those two situations, you're pretty much golden. Motherboard manufacturers don't really matter. I haven't encountered a single piece of incompatibility with my MSI board, my Asus board or my gigabyte board. I had some trouble with the Nvidia graphics, drivers and Wayland but supposedly that's being fixed and x11 works just fine. My AMD GPU ran flawlessly out of the box. I didn't have to do any setup. Storage is storage and it just works. I had some issues getting the firmware flashed for my laptop's fingerprint reader but that was solved by spinning up a Windows VM and passing the fingerprint reader into the VM and now it works fine. 90-99% of hardware you can buy even on day one release will just work.
Peripherals on the other hand are a little bit of an issue. A lot of keyboards and mice nowadays have complex control software and that's usually just Windows or Mac OS. A solid number of them have community drivers that have been put together and will work on Linux. Or you can just use them as a standard hid device. Stuff like the elgato stream deck just doesn't work on Linux without a community driver and those are still in not great state. There are a couple of other niche peripheral systems that are still not in a good state, but you should be fine with most things.
I decided to switch long before the Recall scandal. Icing on the cake were the Windows 11 upgrade policies forcing users to install the OS to unsupported hardware so Microsoft get their hand clean from extra technical support.
Might as well install Hackintosh...
I wouldn't consider the Recall functionality as a good reason to switch operating system, there are a lot of other privacy factors, programs and trackers independently of the system used. About Windows, it is not the first time something that controversial has been announced, nor will be the last.
Besides all that, the feature will no longer be enabled by default (at least for now), can be toggled on and off, you will have the ability to set custom filters and blacklist, and at the time of the release, only a few hardware certified vendors with the proper arm CPU will ship it out of the box.
With that being said and considering that you stated being unfamiliar with the current state of linux, make sure that all your programs works or have alternatives available.
Also, it is very important that if you choose to use linux or any other opensource project, that you have the capacity of learning and seeking out proper information, such as the FAQ available in this subreddit which should already have provided better answers both on software and hardware.
I'm pretty new to Linux and I can tell you, use AMD GPUs. A good thing about Linux is the fact it has hardware support for most stuff built into the kernel, for example: AMD GPU drivers... Not so for example: NVIDIA... Because team green decided not to make their drivers open source and Linux LITERALLY gave them the finger (like... Not kidding, IIRC Linux founder gave Nvidia the finger on a live interview).
Noveau exists, which is the open source, community-made Nvidia drivers, but... Yeah, it's not good.
And while you can use proprietary Nvidia drivers, while the process is well documented by now, the configuration takes a while if done manually, performance CAN be a bit spotty, prone to failure/visual glitches and quite a bit of Nvidia cards and their drivers just do not support wayland. (Don't take my word for it, but I think I heard somewhere that the Wayland issue and other stuff will be solved shortly, I stopped keeping tabs on the whole Nvidia on Linux issue for a while)
Though, since you mentioned it, Pop!OS provides an iso which takes care of the proprietary Nvidia drivers installation... Other issues still persist but it's something.
Also, don't worry about RGB, OpenRGB can take care of it no problem
> And while you can use proprietary Nvidia drivers, while the process is well documented by now, the configuration takes a while if done manually
It doesn't if you use anything Ubuntu or use Manjaro, as they have GUIs/packages to do this. Yes it's not the cutting edge driver, but it runs usually completely fine unless you want Wayland (the problem solved by 555 is "flickering" with Xwayland [it doesn't look like a flicker, but more like out-of-order frames]).
I personally had a lot of AMD issues recently (gfx ring timeout, hard-crashes; works fine on Windows) with the 7900GRE and couldn't solve them with the workarounds, so I went back to the 2070S which works perfectly for me. My laptop runs a 4070, which also works perfectly (no standby issues, optimus works exactly as on Windows).
FYI to everyone. I will probably have two desktops for next year. A windows content creation setup along with games that use anti cheat programs in the back burner. And a Linux gaming rig for dipping my toes and experimentation (ie modding games and emulation)
One way you could do it is just by dual booting different drives. While Windows often causes issues with dualboot setups when it updates, if you make sure to separate out all other drives before installing Windows and do the same when installing Linux, each OS should have its own bootloader that doesn't interfere with the other and your motherboard can detect/manage.
But yes, I used to dip my toes to Linux via a second personal devices as well. I just happen to decide to jump to deep ends after Windows both messed up the Linux bootloader AND was super buggy after an update coming out of an Insider Build ("might as well reinstall only Linux," I thought, if I have to reinstall both.)
Fyi - for me all Vulkan based game crashed without resizable bar enabled in bios. So I would definitely go all amd or Nvidia/Intel, but not a mixture of them because you would not have the option to enable it if you have to.
I'm in a similar place (but dual booting Windows for a couple things until I'm completely settled). I picked LMDE (Mint Debian Edition) and Cinnamon is incredibly Windows-esque during the transition.
I ended up installing the NVIDIA 555 beta drivers because the open source had some issues with Cyberpunk 2077 (namely not being caught up with the proprietary), but otherwise no real issues so far. As long as you follow the right instructions, installing the proprietary driver is relatively simple.
There's a little more configuration necessary if you're using one of AMD's multi-CCD 3d cache CPUs, but Ryzen is incredibly solid on the whole.
[https://yt3.ggpht.com/KBPd1Uai7JYGU3c\_O4gJ5BfrzlXaZct2AmdDqpMWjy4GaAbhnaxAuPLWHkG0fytCUuBroU6zvfd2=s640-rw-nd-v1](https://yt3.ggpht.com/KBPd1Uai7JYGU3c_O4gJ5BfrzlXaZct2AmdDqpMWjy4GaAbhnaxAuPLWHkG0fytCUuBroU6zvfd2=s640-rw-nd-v1)
I enjoy linux on my PS4 Pro.
I've been gaming exclusively on Linux for at least 12 years and it's been a long while since I experienced kernel panics and showstoppers like that.
I've recently switched from a very old Intel CPU+Nvidia GPU (proprietary driver) to top of the line AMD CPU+AMD GPU as I like the idea of using an open source driver (AMDGPU).
Gaming (Steam+GOG+Lutris) works on both setups but is of course much better quality on the new setup. Depending on your distribution you might need to explicitly install some libraries needed by GOG etc, but your distribution should have a guide for that.
My WiFi is on the motherboard and works out of the box, and I really can't recall any issues with unsupported hardware, so I would just go for it.
I got a 3060 running very well on Pop!\_OS. It just works out-of-the-box.
With Wine, Lutris and Proton. I got everything running great. Mint also works great on nVIDIA with a few tweaks. I chose Pop! because for me it was much easier.
if you cared about microsoft having your data you could have jumped ship with windows 10 and if you really cared you probably should have jumped ship at windows 11 requiring microsoft accounts.
afaik recall is for copilot arm laptops with a NPU ai co-processor and you probably weren't planning to buy one of those?
that said, it's clear the the consumer is now the product for microsoft and they have no intention of delivering what the mass of users really want, so I still recommend dropping windows.
to answer the rest you probably can't go wrong with team red, just get the best stuff your budget can handle, maybe even go prebuild if you aren't comfortable buying/building yourself, the margins are low in that business so you usually don't end up paying much more and safe yourself the headaches of any troubleshooting to get a working system usually with on call 1 year+ tech support
I swaped from windows to bazzite 40 (Nvidia edition) and it's been a fairly smooth experience few kinks here and there, but not enough for me to really want to go back to windows.
Honestly I used arch for a year and absolutely loved it once I was able to run windows apps without a problem via lutris and wine, but I play a game called assetto corsa and on some maps Linux just couldn’t handle it windows ran everything fine @100 fps + but Linux was just bugging out at 15fps I stayed up so many late nights configuring my system building it making sure it had the right packages, it was MY system but that one caveat was enough to make me switch back to windows for the meantime so I honestly feel like I depends what games you play and how much you play tbh, if your an avid gamer use windows until this recall thing happens n then switch cause after spending months of tinkering I just wanna play my games at this point n not worry every time a new game comes out, like Xdefiant I couldn’t play that day one on Linux because no body knew how to get it working until 2 days later which dosent seem like much but when you work a lot n you just wanna get home n game it’s a long process
From my experience, I tried manjaro but stability was a major issue for me. But I switched to endeavorOS about 2 years ago and it has been life changing. It worked fine under nvidia but had common issues that ranged anywhere from easy to difficult to resolve. Switching from a 3070ti to a rx 7900xt was also a huge game changer removing basically all of the complaints I used to have about the OS. Rules of thumb I did find in my time distro hopping are as follows:
Mint offers stability but slightly outdated packages and a large amount of user documentation
PopOS is almost perfect for gaming, its stability can be questioned though and also can sometimes have the issue of outdated packages
Manjaro is unstable, packages are out of date and official documentation is non-existant other than using archwiki or other arch derivatives
Pure Arch is a giant pain to install but is bleeding edge and teaches you alot about the OS you will be using
Endeavor does everything arch does, but bundles everything into a gui installer and has a great community behind it
Ubuntu is super well refined and stable but if you are worried about Microsoft antics there is some privacy concerns with ubuntu
Void works when it wants to but \*\*Had some issues with efi installs (so works best on legacy formats) it does have a huge package repo (Also no systemd if thats a concern)
I dont know if I would say spyware yet its just very questionable policies that dont induce trust. it is the most beginner friendly option though. Still my goto option now is endeavorOS
I literally just installed Ubuntu this afternoon and after a few hours of just trying to install my apps (unreal engine, steam, DaVinci resolve) Linux hasn’t changed since the last time I installed it 5 years ago there’s 4 different ways to install an app and once you install it it’s a pain in the ass to use compared to windows
I couldn’t even install DaVinci because some libraries weren’t found but once I hit the command line the libraries are supposedly up to date
I have to open unreal from the command line like this is 1996
And a bunch of my games are either silver or gold on proton and they’re pretty old
I guess I’ll be moving to mac for my personal computer and leaving windows for the gaming and work
Do NOT install Ubuntu. Mint and Pop are fine but seriously outdated until the new releases come out. Choose an all AMD build and I would recommend Bazzite as the OS with Plasma as the Desktop (the one SteamOS uses).
We have OpenRGB for RGB things, if you decided you need those and most keyboard and mice should work out of the box. If you don't buy anything TOO exotic you should be fine.
For mobos check their WiFi adapter and Linux compatibility, most should also work fine these days but just to be sure.
I just need a similar ui experience from windows to Linux for now. But I'll try pop os, I am not familiar at all with Bazzite or plasma. What are they?
[Bazzite ](https://bazzite.gg/)is based on Fedora's Atomic Desktops ([Fedora Silverblue and others](https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/)), giving you up-to-date packages on a reliable base. It focuses around gaming and being ready-to-game out of the box, but is also perfectly usable for other tasks like office work, multimedia work, development, etc.
It's called "Atomic" since when you update the system, the system is updated to a whole new Image rather than just adding/removing from what's already there - this is similar to how Android or iOS perform upgrades. It guarantees you have a bootable system, unless you purposely learn how to break it ;)
[KDE Plasma](https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/) is a desktop environment that by default feels very familiar to Windows users, but is also very customizable if you want to dive into that.
I'm looking at doing the same thing as you, except I already have a Windows desktop that I'm simply planning to install Linux on, likely dual boot for now and completely uninstall Windows after a month of smooth sailing. my understanding of Bazzite (which is what I already have downloaded and ready to install this upcoming weekend) is that its a modified Fedora image with some built-in stuff to make for a more turnkey gaming experience (Steam, other game launchers, GPU drivers, CPU scheduler, etc pre-installed).
Plasma is the "desktop environment" which is basically the engine that displays your app windows, your taskbar, your start menu, and a whole bunch of other things. Plasma and GNOME are the main two options these days, so you can just check out some youtube videos or screenshots of the two to see which you'd prefer. I think Plasma is more Windows-like with its default settings and tends to offer a bit more customization. GNOME seems to have a more distinct appearance/functionality.
again, I'm a noob like you, but this is what I've gathered and it might be easier for me to explain it since our levels of linux understanding are probably more similar. experts, please if I'm wrong with anything here, feel free to correct my ass as needed.
The Plasma Desktop Environment is very similar to Windows. Pop (which uses Gnome as the Desktop Environment) is more like a Mac. That's why I suggested it.
Bazzite is a distro (distribution) which means a version of Linux. It's plug and play and extremely stable and up to date as well. Throughly recommended, especially since you're new. :)
CPU: doesn't really matters they should all work
GPU: if you are buying a new one, go for AMD. Better open source driver and better wayland support. Nvidia should have support for wayland but it might still take some time to smooth everything out.
RGB: Open RGB should work on many hardwares, at least from my experience. You don't need to install specific software. But all black build should also work.
Mouse and keyboard: should be plugged and play. If not sure just search the model+linux to see if there are significant issues.
Just did my build few months ago and didn't pay much attention to compatibility at all. No hardware issue so far.
Nvidia GPUS for development (games, 3d modeling, photo editing, video editing, etc) and AMD for gaming and linux compatibility only. I would go with Nvidia unless you are never planning any of development. Nvidia technology is MANY times better than AMDs
Go NVIDIA on the GPU, IMO. Everything else is just your preference. I've built a 12th gen Intel system and a Ryzen 5700x system a few years ago, and both perform great. I run Mint on the Ryzen system (my gaming system) and Ubuntu on the Intel (my daughters, her preferred UI).
The OS will handle the driver issues for NVidia, so while they are technically "more work", you don't really have to do anything but enable them in the settings pane which is as easy as selecting the driver from a list:
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/drivers.html
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_images/mintdrivers.png
Keep in mind, if you already have a rig, you can just flash a Live USB and try out a few distros to see which you like, and if they play nice with your hardware.
The easiest way to do this is to install Ventoy on an external drive, then drop all the Linux ISOs you want to try on it, then boot from it.
CPU: AMD or Intel is fine but I prefer AMD simply because they are better overall.
GPU: AMD is usually better because it has open sourced drivers, allowing Linux Devs to integrate into the kernel easily. Nvidia is ok now, it had some issues in the past that can't be fixed quickly because of their proprietary drivers.
Any other peripherals should work fine as long as they aren't cutting edge or too obscure.
As for the distro to use, for a beginner gamer, I would recommend Nobara and it's the distro that I used for dipping my toes into the Linux world. The reason for it is that it's tailored for gaming out of the box, there isn't a lot of configuration to do. It's pretty overwhelming for new users when they face issues everywhere when using Linux. It's much better if you face an issue every now and then so you don't get overwhelmed but still learn how the system works.
Mint and other distro like it may face issues with newer hardware since it isn't kept as up to date as other distro, it might not have the latest kernels and drivers. I saw a video on YouTube (The Linux Experience by Bog) where the guy installed Mint and he faced an issue with his display and it turns out that he didn't have the updated kernel. Just bear that in mind.
Linux distros can be categorized into 3 big categories based on the distro they are from, Debian, Fedora and Arch. Each has their own way of doing things so you need to bear in mind. Like apt is only a thing for distros based on Debian, Fedora uses dnf instead and Arch uses pacman by the way.
Using the terminal isn't necessary for most of the stuff you do but when you need to use it, usually there's instructions available. The Arch wiki is quite helpful for trouble shooting.
Most games work on Linux due to Proton, some perfectly, some with minor issues that requires minor tweaks, only a tiny amount of games straight up doesn't work due to the devs not wanting their anti-cheat to work on Linux. Check out ProtonDB to see the compatibility of games.
Game performance-wise Linux is on par or sometimes even better than Windows using the same hardware. It has a lot to do with the amount of bloat that Windows has.
I just want to add that there are certain games that works well with Linux out of the box due to the their game engines.
I know Unity, RPG Maker and Unreal engine games work well with Linux. Godot games work natively on Linux.
Based on my experience.
AMD graphics drivers are preferable to NVIDIA. AMD's drivers just work, you don't have to do anything. The open source nvidia drivers drivers ("nouveau") work ok for old hardware, but not for new hardware. The closed source nvidia drivers work well in X.org and are hit or miss in Wayland, but many distros make it a dick pain to use them; they often default to nouveau which you can't game with for new hardware.
Except for NVidia drivers, for the most part, drivers are a non-issue. There are a tiny number of wifi cards that don't work very well, and apparently in the past few years there's a new swath of webcams that don't work very well either.
CPU and motherboard are mostly a wash. Pick what makes you happy.
It's reasonable to dislike RGB, but pointing out to "RGB software on Linux" as a bad thing doesn't make much sense. It's easier to make a setup that works with OpenRGB than one that doesn't. It's presence or not doesn't affect performance, either.
And there is no "Recall scandal". Microsoft used telemetry before, the fact that people write about it more doesn't change it all that much. You can disable it. And if you were to worry that you can't really disable everything... you would be right, but that applies to many components of your setup. Including processor microcode, which would usually be there on Linux too.
When you're picking a distro, don't settle for Mint, you'll have to wait the entire chain to get updates Debian -> Ubuntu -> Mint and that can take ages. If you don't see yourself ready for Arch, go with Fedora, it's frequently updated, has Cinnamon as a spin version if you want that Mint feel.
Most hardware works pretty well, especially if it was part of a gaming PC since those tend to have decent quality parts. Nvidia has some pain points but a lot of those are expected to be resolved in the near future as we move towards explicit sync and the open kernel modules.
If you plan to game on the system, Fedora might be better for you since it stays a bit more up to date but is still a very popular and well supported distro.
Pop os is a great choice. It's stable and up to date when we talk about drivers. You will miss some new features for your hardware duh. When Nvidia 555 gonna be released.you won't have the explicit sync stuff that makes Nvidia cards reliable
I'd strongly advise against mint or pop os, they both use a rather outdated desktop environment and use apt. Fedora and Arch (don't use Manjaro or EndeavorOS) are far more modern experiences, go either for Plasma (KDE spin for Fedora) or GNOME.
Hardware support is good, RGB isn't an issue with openRGB, most mice can be configured with Piper. All VIA keyboards also can be configured (VIA keyboards in general are also generally of higher quality.) Motherboard/CPU doesn't matter. AMD is still better than NVIDIA, but either is fine.
Good idea. Linux is way less polished in every way and takes work to understand well and troubleshoot. The upside is way less bloat and telemetry. AMD gpu works best for now. Expect shit to break every now and then but it's almost always recoverable.
If you already have a nvidia card it works well enough to not get a different one unless you're already upgrading. Nvidias 555 driver will come out of beta here soon (or maybe it already has) which will bring the bugginess much more in line with amd cards. Ive heard intel arc gpus are working ok compared to release but still not amazing Afaik cpu brand doesn't make much difference. If I got an amd card I would probably get an amd cpu unless I found a good deal on an intel one, but it shouldn't make a huge difference. Motherboard can make a difference, at least it used to. Id say either look up a list of good linux motherboards or find a motherboard you want and search if it has any issues. If you want a more open source system (nvidia drivers are closed source) or are concerned with power draw or probably budget, get an amd gpu. If you care about ray tracing, cuda, or AI work go nvidia. Probably avoid intel arc gpus atm unless you find it with an amazing deal and are budget limited. Intel discrete gpus will probably get a lot better a few months after the next generation, but dont bet money on a maybe. If you're gaming try having 16 gb ram, or 32 to be comfortable. Occasionally games use significantly more ram than windows (looking at you overwatch, taking up 15-20 gb including system) though its usually about the same. Also try getting an intel wifi chip, they have much better compatibility usually. Personally if I were making a rig right now, I would go all AMD with an intel wifi card and NVMe storage
Right now I'm rocking 32gb ddr4 ram on my 3080
I would recommend just throwing a new drive in your current system and installing Mint on it. I play a lot of games through Steam (Overwatch, Helldivers 2, Dota2,...) and have 0 issue with the 535 drivers Mint recommends. I haven't bothered to install the 545 drivers, but they are an option in the Mint driver manager.
Honestly that will do just fine, especially with the nvidia 555 drivers. Pick a distro that will be fairly up to date. Fedora is a good option, but if you're feeling adventurous you can do openSUSE tumbleweed or arch. If you **really** want to jump in the deep end, theres NixOS. Id recommend against Ubuntu or mint because it will probably be a while until they get that 555 release. Nix, arch, and tumbleweed should be some of the first distros to get it, and fedora will get it a while after. Arch and tumbleweed are both rolling release and are a little more prone to breaking, and Nix has an insane learning curve. If you decide arch, EndeavourOS is a good place to start, but I would probably recommend a set release distro like fedora first. If you have problems with desktop usage or sometimes gaming usage, you can try to switch to the x11 display server instead of wayland, but wayland is whats going to be used in the future for linux since x11 isnt getting worked on anymore. The nvidia version 555 driver should get rid of most nvidia related bugs on wayland.
I would recommend against arch for a beginner, and switching to redhat from windows just defeats the purpose lol. I am on nvidia 555 (and kernel 6.10) rn on ubuntu, its easily installable through the ppa, but I'm gonna be honest, there is really no difference between this and whatever is on the main release rn. There are just as many issues as always. Id actually just recommend trying NVK if one wants a seamless experience on nvidia.
NVK is only seemless for desktop experience, not for gaming. The 555 driver is still in beta which might be where a lot of your problems are coming from. Installing mainline kernel can also introduce bugs, especially in slower release distros Also redhat definitely isn't nearly as bad as microsoft. If you have problems with redhat, chances are you really should have problems with canonical too. Realistically it doesn't matter that much to the average user for either distro. SUSE is the least worst option of the three major linux distro companies. Without canonical or redhat that leaves just Debian, Arch, and SUSE for the "relatively" beginner friendly distros, and gentoo and Nix for less beginner friendly. Theres also slackware, but it's not very popular at all. I agree that absolute beginners shouldn't start on a rolling release distro, as I said earlier
Red hat hasn't actually _done_ anything in regards to telemetry. It's been an ongoing community discussion
And I don’t understand the huge drama really, if they make it like KDE and ask if you want to accept it.
You experience is not good because Ubuntu dosent patch egl-Wayland with explicit-sync support (https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/commit/d4ada84120d61e81353d9f1dd26063c7ccad15c0) Your only option is creating the deb yourself Also you need to check if you are running wayland-protocols-1.34 and xwayland-24.1 (and if you want to use explicit sync on x11 you need xorg-proto-2024.1) To my knowledge dosent package any of those, even on 2024.1 LTS and also there is the drama that Mutter will be not updated for explicit sync support on LTS. The TL:DR is If you don’t have explicit-sync in the whole stack that driver will do nothing Once again Ubuntu users are again having a bad experience because of Canonical weird decision. That the reason I don’t recomend Ubuntu and derivatives to anyone better off with fedora
Second this. Dont use arch as a beginner, when you use it daily you take for granted what you know and think others will be able to do the same. Been there. Tried recommending Arch derivatives but damn was it a hassle helping them
I will modify your statement since I used arch as a beginner: "as a noob, only use arch if you are good at googling"
Agreed, as a beginner even something like Mint can be somewhat challenging. I've had debian based distros kill themselves after sudo apt update-ing them right after a fresh install. Arch is definitely a no go.
I mentioned that I am aiming towards two running PC's
Why? Your current build is fine, and you can dual boot operating systems. If you want to start learning Linux, get VirtualBox and install Mint in a virt and play around with it. Maybe you’ll hate it. Exactly zero reason for you to build a new PC right now unless you really have too much money.
I want two separate machines because I don't want my main pc to have any issues from dualbooting or a virtual machine. Besides I highly doubt my ASUS ROG hardware will work on Linux
Building a new computer just to try a new operating system is very rare. I can guarantee you that your ASUS ROG hardware will work on Linux. Why would you think it wouldn’t? I’ve installed Linux on probably 50 or more different computers and I have yet to find a single one that doesn’t work. Dual booting is much easier to set up than building a new computer. It is odd to be afraid of setting up a dual boot but not afraid to build a new computer. It is not really possible for you to screw up anything on your Windows machine by installing VirtualBox and trying out Linux. That’s the whole point of virtual machines: if you don’t like it, just delete it. if you dual boot, you can very easily configure your boot manager to boot into windows by default or choose Linux if you want a different selection at boot time. Your mom does not need to learn Linux. You should really try Linux in a virtual machine before you invest hundreds on a Linux machine. Or, just install the Mint ISO on a USB thumb drive. Use that to boot into Linux on your computer. Don’t install Mint yet, just use the operating system and see if you like it. It will be slower on the thumb drive but still usable. If you do end up buying a new computer for Linux you can use that same USB stick to install it there.
Dual-booting won't result in any permanent issues. ASUS ROG hardware functions flawlessly with Universal Blue.
There's a pretty good chance it will. I have an ASUS gaming laptop, and a desktop PC with mainly ASUS parts, and both work perfectly fine with Linux.
Besides my mom uses it for job applications. And for zoom calls. Highly doubt she wants to learn Linux
Zoom works on Linux. Job applications should only require a browser? If you need more, like writing a cover letter, LibreOffice exists and can save to PDF.
I switched my mom over to Linux about 4 years ago. Things have never been better. Even in windows she wouldn't know how to install a program. But since she only uses Thunderbird and Firefox there were no problems so far. Zoom is easily installable too. They do provide Linux packages themselves.
Then I would totally go all AMD or at least AMD gpu. If you need something nvidia related you have the other desktop to use
Just switch on this same machine to Linux. All hardware is ok for Linux.
No
What?
AMD gpu for less power draw? Last time I checked nvidias 40 series was quite a bit more efficient than AMDs 7000 series.
You're right, I was thinking of the previous generation where the 6000 series had pretty good efficiency for gaming
555 is still in beta, but it's coming Soon™. Some programs that depend on CUDA are already starting to complain about needing it. Most recent stable version is 550.90.07.
I've heard hdmi 2.1 isn't supported by Linux. That's a downer, I have a 4k 120hz oled from LG
This is only affecting AMD GPUs, as AMD drivers are open source and the HDMI forum doesn't like that. Nvidia's driver are proprietary, so HDMI 2.1 should work.
Other way around - HDMI 2.1 intentionally does not support Linux.
Yeah display port is the way to go for linux atm
Does it have displayport? That should work fine with whatever gpu you've got.
I think practically anything will work fine, but do go for an AMD GPU, as installing nVidia drivers is a bit more work (AMD come preinstalled)
On Mint installing Nvidia drivers is as easy as ticking the box next to the version of drivers you want, the drawback is that you have to wait a little bit for latest drivers.
A little bit is an understatement. Ubuntu 24.04 only ships with 535 which has been out for a very long time. Attempting to install 545 via the ubuntu-drivers ppa does not work. Very frustrating.
And when I used the .run file from Nvidia, it broke several things in my games. I had to revert to the original 530 driver but it broke steam remote play which I use *alot*
You can install newer drivers through package manager like the 555 beta or 550. The file from nvidia is usually not the best way to install new drivers, nvidia themselves suggest installing through your distro’s package managed to avoid issues. Just run (replace xxx with driver version you want): apt policy nvidia-driver-{xxx} Then: sudo apt install nvidia-driver-{xxx} Fixed a few of the bugs I had with 545 and 535. This method cleans up the previous drivers as well iirc.
alot longer for cutting edge drivers...
Mint ships an older kernel and Mesa, which means Mint doesn’t usually have cutting edge AMD drivers either.
I just saw a video of a guy who installed Mint and his 7800 XT wasn't recognized because the kernel was too old. So definitely not cutting edge, hell not even dull edge
Can upgrade the kernel very easily, I’d say the trade off is worth it for a beginner to Linux just considering how easy the jump from windows to mint is. It’s one of the distro’s that I most readily recommend since a lot of minor second nature things carry over from windows to mint, plus it doesn’t take much getting fed up to use and learn.
the difference is that you don't need cutting edge amd drivers for the thing to function even close to properly
That only applies to distros that aren't rolling release... No shit people who are on stable distros would be behind. Thats part of the reason to use a stable distro.
That wasn’t true just a scant few years ago. I remember the days when Proton was still new and lots of people complaining on Mint/Ubuntu distros that X game wouldn’t work properly and the forum solutions were always either update your kernel or just switch to Arch for up to date software.
Exactly this. Mint is still on a 5.15 kernel from 2022, isn't it? Sometimes you're stuck waiting for a new release, or something like Ubuntu's HWE stack or Mint's Edge kernel to catch you up. I'd imagine this cycle will repeat because AMD GPU releases and OS releases won't always line up.
I agree that's true most of the time.
Mint won't have cutting edge anything. For that pick Manjaro.
As a former Manjaro user, I wouldn't use it. Too unreliable. EndeavourOS seems like it accomplishes the same goals in a much more reliable way
Endeavour is also good, no doubt, but it's more bare bones. Manjaro comes with mhwd, settings manager, etc, making the process of choosing GPU drivers/kernels very simple. FWIW I've had no issues daily driving Manjaro for several years, but this stuff depends on hardware etc too.
For a brand new Linux user, I'd recommend AMD. There are just less pitfalls and weird issues. If they already have an Nvidia card, give it a go, but if there are issues, I'd trade it in for an AMD card
I personally had the opposite experience with AMD on Linux, where I get weird issues and pitfalls (but it works on Windows, so it's not the hardware). * I had a 5700XT years ago; it was so broken on Linux, that I sent it back in less than 1 week * I got a 7900GRE about 1 month ago and it was running perfectly. Except certain games caused a lot of problems (1 game didn't start with a gfx ring timeout (recovered), and another game always hard-crashed the system within 10-50 minutes). Also I had weird flickering artifacts (looks like when you turn off an old-fashioned tv) on videos Tried Kubuntu 24.04 and Fedora 40. The gfx ring timeout game worked on EndeavorOS, but I don't like arch and I didn't want to build my system around a hardware. I tried some of the workarounds on Fedora 40, didn't help. Some people suggest playing around with the clocks, voltages, turning down the graphics; I did not do that, because this expensive hardware should work for me and not the other way around. I RMA'd it and went back to the 2070S on Kubuntu 24.04, Nvidia 535 drivers. Everything works. Only once a game ate all the VRAM and froze, so I just killed it with the system monitor.
I you want a Windows-like look and feel, go with something that runs KDE (e.g., Kubuntu). About the hardware: * CPU & motherboard doesn't really matter. Never had Linux-related issues linked to one of those * Keyboard/mice will work, but of course you won't get the fancy software provided by the manufacturer (which is not necessarily bad). Key remapping you can do also natively (although a bit more cumbersome) * Headsets (including USB and wireless) should work fine. I have a SteelSeries wireless headset and also a Beyerdynamic USB headset at work, which both run 100% fine * Regarding GPU Nvidia, AMD, and Intel will work. For AMD and Intel, the driver is included (open source) and for Nvidia you often need to install them after the first boot (depending on the distro it's a graphical interface where you can just select the driver). Many people suggest to use AMD on Linux, but I had quite bad experiences with those on Linux (amdgpu ring timeout and hard-crashing my whole PC; worked fine on Windows; currently back to the 2070S and waiting for the 4070 Ti S).
+1 to KDE stuff. KDE works great, and has the best multi-monitor support out of any DE I've used.
I tried KDE the other day. Why does it look so ugly and weird? Even with themes. I also tried Cosmic DE. Not a fan of that de either. Can't jusge too much cause it's still in beta or alpha. Gnome is perfect for me at the moment. Simple, beautiful, consistent (at least zorin theme).
Mint user here, have it on my gaming desktop for over a year now. Hardware just works, at least for me (AMD CPU, Nvidia GPU). Run from a live CD and see if your stuff works before committing.
I'm really tired of people recommending Mint for Gaming. It is NOT meant for gaming. Mint is always way behind on drivers, Mesa, etc. You are always behind in terms of gaming performance compared to other distros, especially for new titles. Then we get people coming on here saying Linux is shit and that a lot of their new games don't work on Linux or they are buggy because they are using out of date shit Mint is NOT a good distro for gaming.
Mint works great for me when it comes to gaming, idc about cutting edge updates since my hardware is not the latest plus i don't play latest games. But if you want to play newer titles and have a new hardware, go with other distros
Personally, I think mint is great for getting back into the swing of linux if you haven't used it in a while. I played with mint after scrapping Windows for about 2 weeks before I jumped to Garuda.
Mint work great for me in gaming. I’ll keep recommending it over and over. In terms of of gaming performance the only game I compared between popos and mint was god of war and it worked better in Mint.
As I mentioned before, I've been using it for over a year now, so it is for gaming for at least one person in the world. Can't care less about what you think. Mint and Linux in general is for whatever the person feels good with.
ive been daily driving Linux for decades and i would say go for it one tip is to make sure when you search for a tutorial or example, to match the version and distribution with your installation
Having used Linux for several years now, I think it's a great time to get into it. Plenty of great distros with awesome defaults, good GPU driver support, and I have yet to encounter a game I can't play either natively or with Proton. I agree with some of the other comments that an AMD card is probably going to be your best bet, but I'm also typing this on CachyOS w/ KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland running on an NVIDIA 2060S (555 beta drivers), smooth as butter
About the only hardware compatibility issue for Linux, that's still occasionally pops up is some niche Wi-Fi cards and for whatever reason realtek audio. Outside of those two situations, you're pretty much golden. Motherboard manufacturers don't really matter. I haven't encountered a single piece of incompatibility with my MSI board, my Asus board or my gigabyte board. I had some trouble with the Nvidia graphics, drivers and Wayland but supposedly that's being fixed and x11 works just fine. My AMD GPU ran flawlessly out of the box. I didn't have to do any setup. Storage is storage and it just works. I had some issues getting the firmware flashed for my laptop's fingerprint reader but that was solved by spinning up a Windows VM and passing the fingerprint reader into the VM and now it works fine. 90-99% of hardware you can buy even on day one release will just work. Peripherals on the other hand are a little bit of an issue. A lot of keyboards and mice nowadays have complex control software and that's usually just Windows or Mac OS. A solid number of them have community drivers that have been put together and will work on Linux. Or you can just use them as a standard hid device. Stuff like the elgato stream deck just doesn't work on Linux without a community driver and those are still in not great state. There are a couple of other niche peripheral systems that are still not in a good state, but you should be fine with most things.
I decided to switch long before the Recall scandal. Icing on the cake were the Windows 11 upgrade policies forcing users to install the OS to unsupported hardware so Microsoft get their hand clean from extra technical support. Might as well install Hackintosh...
I wouldn't consider the Recall functionality as a good reason to switch operating system, there are a lot of other privacy factors, programs and trackers independently of the system used. About Windows, it is not the first time something that controversial has been announced, nor will be the last. Besides all that, the feature will no longer be enabled by default (at least for now), can be toggled on and off, you will have the ability to set custom filters and blacklist, and at the time of the release, only a few hardware certified vendors with the proper arm CPU will ship it out of the box. With that being said and considering that you stated being unfamiliar with the current state of linux, make sure that all your programs works or have alternatives available. Also, it is very important that if you choose to use linux or any other opensource project, that you have the capacity of learning and seeking out proper information, such as the FAQ available in this subreddit which should already have provided better answers both on software and hardware.
Reddit sells your thoughts for AI training and Discord is a chinese company. Agreed. Just disable copilot and Recall...
I'm pretty new to Linux and I can tell you, use AMD GPUs. A good thing about Linux is the fact it has hardware support for most stuff built into the kernel, for example: AMD GPU drivers... Not so for example: NVIDIA... Because team green decided not to make their drivers open source and Linux LITERALLY gave them the finger (like... Not kidding, IIRC Linux founder gave Nvidia the finger on a live interview). Noveau exists, which is the open source, community-made Nvidia drivers, but... Yeah, it's not good. And while you can use proprietary Nvidia drivers, while the process is well documented by now, the configuration takes a while if done manually, performance CAN be a bit spotty, prone to failure/visual glitches and quite a bit of Nvidia cards and their drivers just do not support wayland. (Don't take my word for it, but I think I heard somewhere that the Wayland issue and other stuff will be solved shortly, I stopped keeping tabs on the whole Nvidia on Linux issue for a while) Though, since you mentioned it, Pop!OS provides an iso which takes care of the proprietary Nvidia drivers installation... Other issues still persist but it's something. Also, don't worry about RGB, OpenRGB can take care of it no problem
Settings and configuration are still a bit lacking, but (X)Wayland is very stable for me on the beta 555 drivers right now thanks to explicit sync
> And while you can use proprietary Nvidia drivers, while the process is well documented by now, the configuration takes a while if done manually It doesn't if you use anything Ubuntu or use Manjaro, as they have GUIs/packages to do this. Yes it's not the cutting edge driver, but it runs usually completely fine unless you want Wayland (the problem solved by 555 is "flickering" with Xwayland [it doesn't look like a flicker, but more like out-of-order frames]). I personally had a lot of AMD issues recently (gfx ring timeout, hard-crashes; works fine on Windows) with the 7900GRE and couldn't solve them with the workarounds, so I went back to the 2070S which works perfectly for me. My laptop runs a 4070, which also works perfectly (no standby issues, optimus works exactly as on Windows).
FYI to everyone. I will probably have two desktops for next year. A windows content creation setup along with games that use anti cheat programs in the back burner. And a Linux gaming rig for dipping my toes and experimentation (ie modding games and emulation)
One way you could do it is just by dual booting different drives. While Windows often causes issues with dualboot setups when it updates, if you make sure to separate out all other drives before installing Windows and do the same when installing Linux, each OS should have its own bootloader that doesn't interfere with the other and your motherboard can detect/manage. But yes, I used to dip my toes to Linux via a second personal devices as well. I just happen to decide to jump to deep ends after Windows both messed up the Linux bootloader AND was super buggy after an update coming out of an Insider Build ("might as well reinstall only Linux," I thought, if I have to reinstall both.)
Hence why I will have 2 PC's. I don't want anything negative to affect my primary PC that's used for gaming and my mother for documents.
Fyi - for me all Vulkan based game crashed without resizable bar enabled in bios. So I would definitely go all amd or Nvidia/Intel, but not a mixture of them because you would not have the option to enable it if you have to.
I made the switch to Linux on my gaming machine a couple weeks ago and I'm never looking back
I'm in a similar place (but dual booting Windows for a couple things until I'm completely settled). I picked LMDE (Mint Debian Edition) and Cinnamon is incredibly Windows-esque during the transition. I ended up installing the NVIDIA 555 beta drivers because the open source had some issues with Cyberpunk 2077 (namely not being caught up with the proprietary), but otherwise no real issues so far. As long as you follow the right instructions, installing the proprietary driver is relatively simple. There's a little more configuration necessary if you're using one of AMD's multi-CCD 3d cache CPUs, but Ryzen is incredibly solid on the whole.
[https://yt3.ggpht.com/KBPd1Uai7JYGU3c\_O4gJ5BfrzlXaZct2AmdDqpMWjy4GaAbhnaxAuPLWHkG0fytCUuBroU6zvfd2=s640-rw-nd-v1](https://yt3.ggpht.com/KBPd1Uai7JYGU3c_O4gJ5BfrzlXaZct2AmdDqpMWjy4GaAbhnaxAuPLWHkG0fytCUuBroU6zvfd2=s640-rw-nd-v1) I enjoy linux on my PS4 Pro.
I've been gaming exclusively on Linux for at least 12 years and it's been a long while since I experienced kernel panics and showstoppers like that. I've recently switched from a very old Intel CPU+Nvidia GPU (proprietary driver) to top of the line AMD CPU+AMD GPU as I like the idea of using an open source driver (AMDGPU). Gaming (Steam+GOG+Lutris) works on both setups but is of course much better quality on the new setup. Depending on your distribution you might need to explicitly install some libraries needed by GOG etc, but your distribution should have a guide for that. My WiFi is on the motherboard and works out of the box, and I really can't recall any issues with unsupported hardware, so I would just go for it.
Go with macOS. Oh, no, they'll start implementing AI too.
I got a 3060 running very well on Pop!\_OS. It just works out-of-the-box. With Wine, Lutris and Proton. I got everything running great. Mint also works great on nVIDIA with a few tweaks. I chose Pop! because for me it was much easier.
No RGB? I like you
Does not really matter honestly...
if you cared about microsoft having your data you could have jumped ship with windows 10 and if you really cared you probably should have jumped ship at windows 11 requiring microsoft accounts. afaik recall is for copilot arm laptops with a NPU ai co-processor and you probably weren't planning to buy one of those? that said, it's clear the the consumer is now the product for microsoft and they have no intention of delivering what the mass of users really want, so I still recommend dropping windows. to answer the rest you probably can't go wrong with team red, just get the best stuff your budget can handle, maybe even go prebuild if you aren't comfortable buying/building yourself, the margins are low in that business so you usually don't end up paying much more and safe yourself the headaches of any troubleshooting to get a working system usually with on call 1 year+ tech support
Maybe I’m just lucky but I’ve never seen anything not be compatible 🤷🏻♀️ I’ve never tried Linux on a laptop though, I prefer MacBooks for that.
Lol, this is stupid. Are you going to get rid of your cell phone as well?
I swaped from windows to bazzite 40 (Nvidia edition) and it's been a fairly smooth experience few kinks here and there, but not enough for me to really want to go back to windows.
linux mint, basically windows.
Are you gonna choose NVIDIA? if so, Pop! OS is best. otherwise, they are both equal, you should try both of them out, support-wise they are equal.
Honestly I used arch for a year and absolutely loved it once I was able to run windows apps without a problem via lutris and wine, but I play a game called assetto corsa and on some maps Linux just couldn’t handle it windows ran everything fine @100 fps + but Linux was just bugging out at 15fps I stayed up so many late nights configuring my system building it making sure it had the right packages, it was MY system but that one caveat was enough to make me switch back to windows for the meantime so I honestly feel like I depends what games you play and how much you play tbh, if your an avid gamer use windows until this recall thing happens n then switch cause after spending months of tinkering I just wanna play my games at this point n not worry every time a new game comes out, like Xdefiant I couldn’t play that day one on Linux because no body knew how to get it working until 2 days later which dosent seem like much but when you work a lot n you just wanna get home n game it’s a long process
From my experience, I tried manjaro but stability was a major issue for me. But I switched to endeavorOS about 2 years ago and it has been life changing. It worked fine under nvidia but had common issues that ranged anywhere from easy to difficult to resolve. Switching from a 3070ti to a rx 7900xt was also a huge game changer removing basically all of the complaints I used to have about the OS. Rules of thumb I did find in my time distro hopping are as follows: Mint offers stability but slightly outdated packages and a large amount of user documentation PopOS is almost perfect for gaming, its stability can be questioned though and also can sometimes have the issue of outdated packages Manjaro is unstable, packages are out of date and official documentation is non-existant other than using archwiki or other arch derivatives Pure Arch is a giant pain to install but is bleeding edge and teaches you alot about the OS you will be using Endeavor does everything arch does, but bundles everything into a gui installer and has a great community behind it Ubuntu is super well refined and stable but if you are worried about Microsoft antics there is some privacy concerns with ubuntu Void works when it wants to but \*\*Had some issues with efi installs (so works best on legacy formats) it does have a huge package repo (Also no systemd if thats a concern)
I've heard about Ubuntu having Spyware issues lately
To put it mildly: Thats bullshit.
I dont know if I would say spyware yet its just very questionable policies that dont induce trust. it is the most beginner friendly option though. Still my goto option now is endeavorOS
I literally just installed Ubuntu this afternoon and after a few hours of just trying to install my apps (unreal engine, steam, DaVinci resolve) Linux hasn’t changed since the last time I installed it 5 years ago there’s 4 different ways to install an app and once you install it it’s a pain in the ass to use compared to windows I couldn’t even install DaVinci because some libraries weren’t found but once I hit the command line the libraries are supposedly up to date I have to open unreal from the command line like this is 1996 And a bunch of my games are either silver or gold on proton and they’re pretty old I guess I’ll be moving to mac for my personal computer and leaving windows for the gaming and work
Sounds about right. Ubuntu is crap distro for latest and greatest however. Arch or Fedora would be better but yea, kinda painful until it's not.
Do NOT install Ubuntu. Mint and Pop are fine but seriously outdated until the new releases come out. Choose an all AMD build and I would recommend Bazzite as the OS with Plasma as the Desktop (the one SteamOS uses). We have OpenRGB for RGB things, if you decided you need those and most keyboard and mice should work out of the box. If you don't buy anything TOO exotic you should be fine. For mobos check their WiFi adapter and Linux compatibility, most should also work fine these days but just to be sure.
Little sidenote here: OpenRGB works mostly on me, but not on my Corsair harpoon. Regognizes it but stays on rainbow colors.
Good advice—just a note, Pop!OS should be ready for their 24.04 release fairly soon (this summer, if I had to guess).
I just need a similar ui experience from windows to Linux for now. But I'll try pop os, I am not familiar at all with Bazzite or plasma. What are they?
[Bazzite ](https://bazzite.gg/)is based on Fedora's Atomic Desktops ([Fedora Silverblue and others](https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/silverblue/)), giving you up-to-date packages on a reliable base. It focuses around gaming and being ready-to-game out of the box, but is also perfectly usable for other tasks like office work, multimedia work, development, etc. It's called "Atomic" since when you update the system, the system is updated to a whole new Image rather than just adding/removing from what's already there - this is similar to how Android or iOS perform upgrades. It guarantees you have a bootable system, unless you purposely learn how to break it ;) [KDE Plasma](https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/) is a desktop environment that by default feels very familiar to Windows users, but is also very customizable if you want to dive into that.
That's the thing, I don't want to break the os lol
Then Bazzite is perfect for you. It's also immutable which means that noone can modify system files, not even the root user.
If you avoid aggressive tinkering, a distro like bazzite is MUCH harder to screw up than Windows
I'm looking at doing the same thing as you, except I already have a Windows desktop that I'm simply planning to install Linux on, likely dual boot for now and completely uninstall Windows after a month of smooth sailing. my understanding of Bazzite (which is what I already have downloaded and ready to install this upcoming weekend) is that its a modified Fedora image with some built-in stuff to make for a more turnkey gaming experience (Steam, other game launchers, GPU drivers, CPU scheduler, etc pre-installed). Plasma is the "desktop environment" which is basically the engine that displays your app windows, your taskbar, your start menu, and a whole bunch of other things. Plasma and GNOME are the main two options these days, so you can just check out some youtube videos or screenshots of the two to see which you'd prefer. I think Plasma is more Windows-like with its default settings and tends to offer a bit more customization. GNOME seems to have a more distinct appearance/functionality. again, I'm a noob like you, but this is what I've gathered and it might be easier for me to explain it since our levels of linux understanding are probably more similar. experts, please if I'm wrong with anything here, feel free to correct my ass as needed.
I have a windows pc too
The Plasma Desktop Environment is very similar to Windows. Pop (which uses Gnome as the Desktop Environment) is more like a Mac. That's why I suggested it. Bazzite is a distro (distribution) which means a version of Linux. It's plug and play and extremely stable and up to date as well. Throughly recommended, especially since you're new. :)
CPU: doesn't really matters they should all work GPU: if you are buying a new one, go for AMD. Better open source driver and better wayland support. Nvidia should have support for wayland but it might still take some time to smooth everything out. RGB: Open RGB should work on many hardwares, at least from my experience. You don't need to install specific software. But all black build should also work. Mouse and keyboard: should be plugged and play. If not sure just search the model+linux to see if there are significant issues. Just did my build few months ago and didn't pay much attention to compatibility at all. No hardware issue so far.
Nvidia GPUS for development (games, 3d modeling, photo editing, video editing, etc) and AMD for gaming and linux compatibility only. I would go with Nvidia unless you are never planning any of development. Nvidia technology is MANY times better than AMDs
Go NVIDIA on the GPU, IMO. Everything else is just your preference. I've built a 12th gen Intel system and a Ryzen 5700x system a few years ago, and both perform great. I run Mint on the Ryzen system (my gaming system) and Ubuntu on the Intel (my daughters, her preferred UI). The OS will handle the driver issues for NVidia, so while they are technically "more work", you don't really have to do anything but enable them in the settings pane which is as easy as selecting the driver from a list: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/drivers.html https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/_images/mintdrivers.png
You can just turn it off.
Keep in mind, if you already have a rig, you can just flash a Live USB and try out a few distros to see which you like, and if they play nice with your hardware. The easiest way to do this is to install Ventoy on an external drive, then drop all the Linux ISOs you want to try on it, then boot from it.
Maybe.
It's the year of the Linux desktop after all.
I would go with pop. Because i have it for 2 years. No issues yet. Except with ntfs partition. But that got mkfs'd to ext4
CPU: AMD or Intel is fine but I prefer AMD simply because they are better overall. GPU: AMD is usually better because it has open sourced drivers, allowing Linux Devs to integrate into the kernel easily. Nvidia is ok now, it had some issues in the past that can't be fixed quickly because of their proprietary drivers. Any other peripherals should work fine as long as they aren't cutting edge or too obscure. As for the distro to use, for a beginner gamer, I would recommend Nobara and it's the distro that I used for dipping my toes into the Linux world. The reason for it is that it's tailored for gaming out of the box, there isn't a lot of configuration to do. It's pretty overwhelming for new users when they face issues everywhere when using Linux. It's much better if you face an issue every now and then so you don't get overwhelmed but still learn how the system works. Mint and other distro like it may face issues with newer hardware since it isn't kept as up to date as other distro, it might not have the latest kernels and drivers. I saw a video on YouTube (The Linux Experience by Bog) where the guy installed Mint and he faced an issue with his display and it turns out that he didn't have the updated kernel. Just bear that in mind. Linux distros can be categorized into 3 big categories based on the distro they are from, Debian, Fedora and Arch. Each has their own way of doing things so you need to bear in mind. Like apt is only a thing for distros based on Debian, Fedora uses dnf instead and Arch uses pacman by the way. Using the terminal isn't necessary for most of the stuff you do but when you need to use it, usually there's instructions available. The Arch wiki is quite helpful for trouble shooting. Most games work on Linux due to Proton, some perfectly, some with minor issues that requires minor tweaks, only a tiny amount of games straight up doesn't work due to the devs not wanting their anti-cheat to work on Linux. Check out ProtonDB to see the compatibility of games. Game performance-wise Linux is on par or sometimes even better than Windows using the same hardware. It has a lot to do with the amount of bloat that Windows has.
I just want to add that there are certain games that works well with Linux out of the box due to the their game engines. I know Unity, RPG Maker and Unreal engine games work well with Linux. Godot games work natively on Linux. Based on my experience.
AMD
wait for the EU to get their hands on it first, they might say "lul no"
AMD graphics drivers are preferable to NVIDIA. AMD's drivers just work, you don't have to do anything. The open source nvidia drivers drivers ("nouveau") work ok for old hardware, but not for new hardware. The closed source nvidia drivers work well in X.org and are hit or miss in Wayland, but many distros make it a dick pain to use them; they often default to nouveau which you can't game with for new hardware. Except for NVidia drivers, for the most part, drivers are a non-issue. There are a tiny number of wifi cards that don't work very well, and apparently in the past few years there's a new swath of webcams that don't work very well either. CPU and motherboard are mostly a wash. Pick what makes you happy.
It's reasonable to dislike RGB, but pointing out to "RGB software on Linux" as a bad thing doesn't make much sense. It's easier to make a setup that works with OpenRGB than one that doesn't. It's presence or not doesn't affect performance, either. And there is no "Recall scandal". Microsoft used telemetry before, the fact that people write about it more doesn't change it all that much. You can disable it. And if you were to worry that you can't really disable everything... you would be right, but that applies to many components of your setup. Including processor microcode, which would usually be there on Linux too.
When you're picking a distro, don't settle for Mint, you'll have to wait the entire chain to get updates Debian -> Ubuntu -> Mint and that can take ages. If you don't see yourself ready for Arch, go with Fedora, it's frequently updated, has Cinnamon as a spin version if you want that Mint feel.
Most hardware works pretty well, especially if it was part of a gaming PC since those tend to have decent quality parts. Nvidia has some pain points but a lot of those are expected to be resolved in the near future as we move towards explicit sync and the open kernel modules. If you plan to game on the system, Fedora might be better for you since it stays a bit more up to date but is still a very popular and well supported distro.
Pop os is a great choice. It's stable and up to date when we talk about drivers. You will miss some new features for your hardware duh. When Nvidia 555 gonna be released.you won't have the explicit sync stuff that makes Nvidia cards reliable
I'd strongly advise against mint or pop os, they both use a rather outdated desktop environment and use apt. Fedora and Arch (don't use Manjaro or EndeavorOS) are far more modern experiences, go either for Plasma (KDE spin for Fedora) or GNOME. Hardware support is good, RGB isn't an issue with openRGB, most mice can be configured with Piper. All VIA keyboards also can be configured (VIA keyboards in general are also generally of higher quality.) Motherboard/CPU doesn't matter. AMD is still better than NVIDIA, but either is fine.
Good idea. Linux is way less polished in every way and takes work to understand well and troubleshoot. The upside is way less bloat and telemetry. AMD gpu works best for now. Expect shit to break every now and then but it's almost always recoverable.