(February 15, 2024 at 12:56 pm)Ravenshire Wrote:

(February 15, 2024 at 5:43 am)emjay Wrote: I didn't know that, no. I've never really looked into the Steam Deck, because I'm not a great fan of handheld consoles, but it might be a sacrifice worth making to get away from Windows, and even better if it can somehow be used with a TV and/or external controller like the Switch?

That is really good to hear... what distro do you use or would you recommend if you don't mind me asking? I suppose the key question it comes down to is how well it works with the various game engines - Unreal Engine, Unity, and Godot - because they are essentially the common denominators of many games, but what you're saying definitely sounds very hopeful

I have dual booted in the past, but a long time ago, and not for gaming. I'll definitely look into doing it again now, with what you've said, and if it feels really viable then hopefully I can make the full break from Windows at some point. Thanks for your advice.

Most any Debian fork (ubuntu, kubuntu, mint, etc...) works well for gaming. I've also heard good things about gaming under Arch Linux, but Manjaro is the only good stand alone Arch installer that doesn't taka a ton of backend work, and they are notorious for breaking their OS with rolling updates. Last I heard, Steam OS (a debian fork based on, I believe, ubuntu) was supposed to be made available (again) as a stand alone distro. At a guess, I would think that would be the best pure gaming solution if/when it's available.

There are way more choices than I can list, but Mint seems to be the current top choice for Steam (outside a steam os re-release), though that may have changed since I did my latest gaming PC build. The best source for Linux Steam gaming I've been able to find is ProtonDB. You can find advice there on subjects ranging from "what's the best distro for Steam?" to "how do I get 'X' game to stop doing 'Y' when 'Z' happens?"

Honestly, It's more work to game in Linux than Windoze but, I think it's more than worth it. And, when you buy/build a new gaming rig, you clone the system drive from your old PC, drop it in the new system as the system drive, and Linux just runs, so you only have to do that work once. Something that will likely never happen in Windoze!

If you go the dual boot route, you can set up Steam on both with common libraries. Then you can game from either OS without maintaining two installs of each game, eating twice as much drive space. This will also let you really compare the differences and the pros and cons, on the same hardware, very easily.

Cool, looks like it's going to have to be Linux Mint then; that's the distro my dad uses, so I do have a little bit of familiarity with it... it certainly looks very polished, and is often heralded as a great stepping stone from Windows to Linux.

Yeah, I understand how it's going to be more work; my dad for instance spends most of his time either configuring things or looking up how to do things, but he still loves Linux with a passion... he/we just accept that things rarely work perfectly straight out of the box in it.

Yeah, I think I will be going the dual boot route, so that common libraries thing looks very interesting, and something I'll need to research. Thanks for all your advice.... I'll be bookmarking/noting it for future reference

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(February 15, 2024 at 6:35 pm)emjay Wrote:

(February 15, 2024 at 12:56 pm)Ravenshire Wrote: Most any Debian fork (ubuntu, kubuntu, mint, etc...) works well for gaming. I've also heard good things about gaming under Arch Linux, but Manjaro is the only good stand alone Arch installer that doesn't taka a ton of backend work, and they are notorious for breaking their OS with rolling updates. Last I heard, Steam OS (a debian fork based on, I believe, ubuntu) was supposed to be made available (again) as a stand alone distro. At a guess, I would think that would be the best pure gaming solution if/when it's available.

There are way more choices than I can list, but Mint seems to be the current top choice for Steam (outside a steam os re-release), though that may have changed since I did my latest gaming PC build. The best source for Linux Steam gaming I've been able to find is ProtonDB. You can find advice there on subjects ranging from "what's the best distro for Steam?" to "how do I get 'X' game to stop doing 'Y' when 'Z' happens?"

Honestly, It's more work to game in Linux than Windoze but, I think it's more than worth it. And, when you buy/build a new gaming rig, you clone the system drive from your old PC, drop it in the new system as the system drive, and Linux just runs, so you only have to do that work once. Something that will likely never happen in Windoze!

If you go the dual boot route, you can set up Steam on both with common libraries. Then you can game from either OS without maintaining two installs of each game, eating twice as much drive space. This will also let you really compare the differences and the pros and cons, on the same hardware, very easily.

Cool, looks like it's going to have to be Linux Mint then; that's the distro my dad uses, so I do have a little bit of familiarity with it... it certainly looks very polished, and is often heralded as a great stepping stone from Windows to Linux.

Yeah, I understand how it's going to be more work; my dad for instance spends most of his time either configuring things or looking up how to do things, but he still loves Linux with a passion... he/we just accept that things rarely work perfectly straight out of the box in it.

Yeah, I think I will be going the dual boot route, so that common libraries thing looks very interesting, and something I'll need to research. Thanks for all your advice.... I'll be bookmarking/noting it for future reference

A word of warning if you have an Nvidia 40xx video card. The Linux Kernal may not yet be updated to drive it. In that case, you can use the motherboard's on board video until you can get the proper Nvidia Linux driver installed. It's fairly easy and pretty straightforward, even if you have to compile from source as I did. There are loads of tutorials for it. Mint should have a place in the settings where you can select to use proprietary drivers but, YMMV.

ETA:
The latest Steam OS (in all honesty it's a fork, but compatibility is there) is now available here. It's an Arch Linux fork, but being developed for Steam, by Valve, (then translated for desktops/laptops) it will probably run steam games better than a Debian system. When I get time, I have a spare SSD partition to give it a spin on.

(February 15, 2024 at 9:12 pm)Ravenshire Wrote:

(February 15, 2024 at 6:35 pm)emjay Wrote: Cool, looks like it's going to have to be Linux Mint then; that's the distro my dad uses, so I do have a little bit of familiarity with it... it certainly looks very polished, and is often heralded as a great stepping stone from Windows to Linux.

Yeah, I understand how it's going to be more work; my dad for instance spends most of his time either configuring things or looking up how to do things, but he still loves Linux with a passion... he/we just accept that things rarely work perfectly straight out of the box in it.

Yeah, I think I will be going the dual boot route, so that common libraries thing looks very interesting, and something I'll need to research. Thanks for all your advice.... I'll be bookmarking/noting it for future reference

A word of warning if you have an Nvidia 40xx video card. The Linux Kernal may not yet be updated to drive it. In that case, you can use the motherboard's on board video until you can get the proper Nvidia Linux driver installed. It's fairly easy and pretty straightforward, even if you have to compile from source as I did. There are loads of tutorials for it. Mint should have a place in the settings where you can select to use proprietary drivers but, YMMV.

ETA:
The latest Steam OS (in all honesty it's a fork, but compatibility is there) is now available here. It's an Arch Linux fork, but being developed for Steam, by Valve, (then translated for desktops/laptops) it will probably run steam games better than a Debian system. When I get time, I have a spare SSD partition to give it a spin on.

Thanks for the head's up. I've just checked and it's not that graphics card. It's a gaming laptop rather than a custom built PC, so not the latest and greatest graphics card, if that's what that is.

And yeah, deal, you can be the guinea pig on Steam OS I think I'd best stick with Linux Mint to start with, if nothing else so my dad can help me set it up. I'm not as tech savvy as I used to be... I guess that's a result of the complacency that using Windows breeds

@Ravenshire

Sorry, just one more quick question... with that common libraries thing for Steam, did you mean I'd need to set up an NTFS partition between the Windows partition and the soon-to-exist Mint partition? So three partitions in total, one for Windows, one for Linux, and one for any shared data between the two, in this case Steam files, but could also work well for anything else that needs to be shared. Or did you mean, only two partitions, Windows and Linux, with Linux reading the Steam files on the Windows partition directly? I'm thinking you probably mean the latter? because I don't know if Steam can be installed or moved separate from Program Files... ie onto a non booting partition?

(February 16, 2024 at 8:44 am)emjay Wrote: @Ravenshire

Sorry, just one more quick question... with that common libraries thing for Steam, did you mean I'd need to set up an NTFS partition between the Windows partition and the soon-to-exist Mint partition? So three partitions in total, one for Windows, one for Linux, and one for any shared data between the two, in this case Steam files, but could also work well for anything else that needs to be shared. Or did you mean, only two partitions, Windows and Linux, with Linux reading the Steam files on the Windows partition directly? I'm thinking you probably mean the latter? because I don't know if Steam can be installed or moved separate from Program Files... ie onto a non booting partition?

I keep all my games on a separate NTFS formatted, non-bootable drive but, that's a matter of convenience for my system. You can easily keep games on your Windoze bootable partition but, because of Windoze restrictions, you can't keep them on your Linux partition. While Linux can read most any disc format you can throw at it, Windoze is restricted to M$ approved formats. When dual booting, I've found it easier to establish the gaming folder structure for the Steam client under Windoze first, then set up the Steam client in Linux and change the game directory to the folder on the Windoze partition. I can't remember the exact steps, but it's easily googled.

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(February 16, 2024 at 11:54 am)Ravenshire Wrote:

(February 16, 2024 at 8:44 am)emjay Wrote: @Ravenshire

Sorry, just one more quick question... with that common libraries thing for Steam, did you mean I'd need to set up an NTFS partition between the Windows partition and the soon-to-exist Mint partition? So three partitions in total, one for Windows, one for Linux, and one for any shared data between the two, in this case Steam files, but could also work well for anything else that needs to be shared. Or did you mean, only two partitions, Windows and Linux, with Linux reading the Steam files on the Windows partition directly? I'm thinking you probably mean the latter? because I don't know if Steam can be installed or moved separate from Program Files... ie onto a non booting partition?

I keep all my games on a separate NTFS formatted, non-bootable drive but, that's a matter of convenience for my system. You can easily keep games on your Windoze bootable partition but, because of Windoze restrictions, you can't keep them on your Linux partition. While Linux can read most any disc format you can throw at it, Windoze is restricted to M$ approved formats. When dual booting, I've found it easier to establish the gaming folder structure for the Steam client under Windoze first, then set up the Steam client in Linux and change the game directory to the folder on the Windoze partition. I can't remember the exact steps, but it's easily googled.

Cool... I think I'll follow your approach then; a separate data partition makes the most logical sense to me, and I'm not sure I'd trust Linux to be accessing/modifying another bootable volume without potentially corrupting the file system. Thanks again for all your help... I'm really looking forward to all of this now

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