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Linux for NewB question

N

narsbars

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Jan 18, 2006
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Tired of windows. The goal is to dual boot and I can buy a 2nd NVME if needed. I will maintain only my gaming on Windows. I want to run a browser or two, word processing, email, generic stuff from Linux with all the privacy, non tracking options that will give me. I want the easiest out of the box experience with as little command line effort as possible. What is your recommendation for a lazy wannabe Linux user?
 
I would recommend distro with KDE, but I haven't used anything other than ArchLinux recently so I don't know how well it runs on other distros.

Arch is fantastic, but you need to learn at least the basics of CLI administration to use it, so I wouldn't recommend it for someone who wants something that just works. Arch based distros can be more noob friendly, but because of its nature it's best if you have some CLI experience with them as well.
 
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If you are coming from Windows, another vote for Linux Mint. Easy to setup as dual boot with Windows.
 
mullet said:
Linux Mint 22, super easy transition. all software installed standard. my HP printer/scanner work perfectly. I have it on 5 machines all different sockets, ages..... All works great.
Click to expand...
You are number 1, seems that you picked Mint and everyone agrees. Now to figure out how to dual boot with lazy man's effort.
 
narsbars said:
I have blown things up before! As soon as I clone my main drive I am heading to Linux Mint.
Click to expand...
Good. It's always a great idea to back up everything before playing around with this stuff. Even if things are done perfectly, stupidness can still happen.
 
uOpt said:
Mint with KDE Plasma.
Click to expand...

If using KDE for the desktop environment it seems kinda odd to go with Mint. I'd just go with Kubuntu (Ubuntu w/KDE instead of Gnome). Generally, I feel that the main reason to go with Mint is if you want Cinnamon as your DE.

Mint also pins itself to Ubuntu LTS release, so packages won't be as current as they are simply running Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
If using KDE for the desktop environment it seems kinda odd to go with Mint. I'd just go with Kubuntu (Ubuntu w/KDE instead of Gnome). Generally, I feel that the main reason to go with Mint is if you want Cinnamon as your DE.

Mint also pins itself to Ubuntu LTS release, so packages won't be as current as they are simply running Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
Click to expand...

True, but Ubuntu is kind of insane ;)
 
My main desktop (in sig) is Debian with KDE Plasma. While I wouldn’t recommend plain Debian for a seamless out of the box experience, I will say KDE Plasma is quite nice.

As far as dual booting is concerned, I’d get a second drive, remove all drives from the system other than what you want to install Linux on. When done, put your other drive(s) back in the system and use your BIOS as your boot selector. That way, you can ensure not getting Linux on Windows or Windows on Linux issues. I’ve messed up too many installs by keeping all the drives in the system (though that was mostly with FreeBSD installs and not Linux).
 
I'll add another vote for Mint... it is very new user friendly and I have been using it on the Thinkpad T450S I got for free awhile ago... it has been very solid and I am quite happy with it.
 
Debian!

Use what Linux Mint / Ubuntu etc... use as their base. It's great for beginners and during install you can pick from a number of desktop environments. Easy to use and tons of software available via aptitude package manager and flatpaks too.

I suggest when you're coming from WIndows, run LXQt on older/underpowered machines or KDE Plasma on "mid-range" or better hardware.
 
Are you sure you need windows for gaming?

I don't know your level of general PC know how... or Linux know how. Linux gaming has come a very very long way. Linux gaming is viable on pretty much all decently modern gaming hardware. It being > or = or slightly < windows will really depend a bit on what hardware your running.

If your on a AMD/AMD system your a first class Linux citizen. The only reason to keep windows around if your on modern AMD/AMD is if your play specific online shooter type games that might ban you as a cheat for being on Linux. If you don't play any of those types of games I don't see the point of retaining a windows gaming partition.

I haven't ran Linux with an Nvidia GPU in awhile. Nvidia is a bit more tricky. NV has been bringing up open source driver support... and if your willing to run a cutting edge distro all reports I have seen are then Nvidia open source drivers are edging right up to windows performance, like AMD even besting windows with specific games. Nvidia also has a closed source driver which can be a bit more of a pain to install and maintain under Linux. Having said that many people do run the closed source with no issues. If you choose a less cutting edge distro the closed source is the best option.

Intel GPUs are about the only real Linux no gaming option... but few people are running Intel GPUs right now anyway. (and hopefully Intel gets their shit together on Linux GPU support. The A cards are not great under Linux, hopefully they have been working on battlemage.

If you do want to give Linux gaming a go... and why not try it out. Worse case you wipe the drive and go with something else. Look at CachyOS. It is based on Arch (like steamos), of all the based on arch distros it is imo one of the most pure as 90% of packages will just install from arch repos. The difference is Cachy recompiles core Arch packages (kernel, mesa gpu drivers) for x86-64 V3 and V4. Its basically performance tuned. CachyOS is the second fastest distro overall right now... next to Clear Linux. Clear isn't really the most user forward distro... its Intels distro its heavilly optimized but not a great user experience its more a tech demo of a distro. CachyOS installs with a pretty minimal sane Arch install with optimizations. For gaming they add anacity-cpp which is a software that gives preference to software when it is detcted. So it will give gaming higher priorty and imrprove latency and responsiveness. Anacity also has profiles for lots of general purpose software like blender. Its a great low resource add on that makes things like "Game Mode" redundent. Cachy also has a cachy-gaming-meta package you can install... in fact from the hello welcome to cachy program you can go to tweaks after install and just click "install gaming packages" under their tweaks section. This package will install Steam, Heroic, Lutris, a custom optimized version of valves proton "cachy-proton" (it even makes updating easier as updates for cachy proton just roll over it and you don't end up with odd things with some games trying to use old versions of proton), their gaming meta package also installs a bunch of 32 bit libraries and font packages that often trip people trying to game on linux up. There are some games with launchers and the like that display odd if you don't know which "microsoft" font pack to install... the gaming meta covers all this stuff for you. Oh I almost forgot as well Cachys defualt kernel uses a scheudler called BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) Linux has recently switched over to the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First) scheduler which is great and was an imrovement. For Desktop things, espeically gaming I really like BORE... its a little less fair and it does exactly what you would expect it to do and gives preference to end user responsiveness. It plays hand in hand with anacity which lets it know which programs to allow to burst and over serve with cores. :)

If you do try cachy out. Run all your games under steam. Steam allows you to add third party games. Set up Heroic for your Epic, GOG, and Amazon store game installs. The proton default setup is pretty much click and go with Heroic. It should default ot use Cachy-Proton and auto add your installed games to your steam library. For installing games in steam... run the Steam (native) this will use the enahnced cachy system libraries. (It will install steam runtime for you as well which will use the official valve libraries instead if you run into issues) go to settings when you first start steam go to comaptability and flip "Enable steam play for all titles" and select run titles with "Proton-cachyos".

If you don't play any of the games that will ban you as a cheat. Give cachy a spin for a few days. Its a smoother gaming experinece the windows imo. Don't be scared off by "arch" its as stable a distro as any of the other big names. Just know with Linux in general if you are brand new to it. Expect to do some learning, and maybe even hit the odd snag. Hey we hit them in windows as well, people just have 20 years of experience to fall back on... and say oh I bet their is a registry fix for this that type of thing. It takes awhile to build the same familiarity is all.
 
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ChadD said:
Are you sure you need windows for gaming?

I don't know your level of general PC know how... or Linux know how. Linux gaming has come a very very long way. Linux gaming is viable on pretty much all decently modern gaming hardware. It being > or = or slightly < windows will really depend a bit on what hardware your running.

If your on a AMD/AMD system your a first class Linux citizen. The only reason to keep windows around if your on modern AMD/AMD is if your play specific online shooter type games that might ban you as a cheat for being on Linux. If you don't play any of those types of games I don't see the point of retaining a windows gaming partition.

I haven't ran Linux with an Nvidia GPU in awhile. Nvidia is a bit more tricky. NV has been bringing up open source driver support... and if your willing to run a cutting edge distro all reports I have seen are then Nvidia open source drivers are edging right up to windows performance, like AMD even besting windows with specific games. Nvidia also has a closed source driver which can be a bit more of a pain to install and maintain under Linux. Having said that many people do run the closed source with no issues. If you choose a less cutting edge distro the closed source is the best option.

Intel GPUs are about the only real Linux no gaming option... but few people are running Intel GPUs right now anyway. (and hopefully Intel gets their shit together on Linux GPU support. The A cards are not great under Linux, hopefully they have been working on battlemage.

If you do want to give Linux gaming a go... and why not try it out. Worse case you wipe the drive and go with something else. Look at CachyOS. It is based on Arch (like steamos), of all the based on arch distros it is imo one of the most pure as 90% of packages will just install from arch repos. The difference is Cachy recompiles core Arch packages (kernel, mesa gpu drivers) for x86-64 V3 and V4. Its basically performance tuned. CachyOS is the second fastest distro overall right now... next to Clear Linux. Clear isn't really the most user forward distro... its Intels distro its heavilly optimized but not a great user experience its more a tech demo of a distro. CachyOS installs with a pretty minimal sane Arch install with optimizations. For gaming they add anacity-cpp which is a software that gives preference to software when it is detcted. So it will give gaming higher priorty and imrprove latency and responsiveness. Anacity also has profiles for lots of general purpose software like blender. Its a great low resource add on that makes things like "Game Mode" redundent. Cachy also has a cachy-gaming-meta package you can install... in fact from the hello welcome to cachy program you can go to tweaks after install and just click "install gaming packages" under their tweaks section. This package will install Steam, Heroic, Lutris, a custom optimized version of valves proton "cachy-proton" (it even makes updating easier as updates for cachy proton just roll over it and you don't end up with odd things with some games trying to use old versions of proton), their gaming meta package also installs a bunch of 32 bit libraries and font packages that often trip people trying to game on linux up. There are some games with launchers and the like that display odd if you don't know which "microsoft" font pack to install... the gaming meta covers all this stuff for you. Oh I almost forgot as well Cachys defualt kernel uses a scheudler called BORE (Burst-Oriented Response Enhancer) Linux has recently switched over to the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible Virtual Deadline First) scheduler which is great and was an imrovement. For Desktop things, espeically gaming I really like BORE... its a little less fair and it does exactly what you would expect it to do and gives preference to end user responsiveness. It plays hand in hand with anacity which lets it know which programs to allow to burst and over serve with cores. :)

If you do try cachy out. Run all your games under steam. Steam allows you to add third party games. Set up Heroic for your Epic, GOG, and Amazon store game installs. The proton default setup is pretty much click and go with Heroic. It should default ot use Cachy-Proton and auto add your installed games to your steam library. For installing games in steam... run the Steam (native) this will use the enahnced cachy system libraries. (It will install steam runtime for you as well which will use the official valve libraries instead if you run into issues) go to settings when you first start steam go to comaptability and flip "Enable steam play for all titles" and select run titles with "Proton-cachyos".

If you don't play any of the games that will ban you as a cheat. Give cachy a spin for a few days. Its a smoother gaming experinece the windows imo. Don't be scared off by "arch" its as stable a distro as any of the other big names. Just know with Linux in general if you are brand new to it. Expect to do some learning, and maybe even hit the odd snag. Hey we hit them in windows as well, people just have 20 years of experience to fall back on... and say oh I bet their is a registry fix for this that type of thing. It takes awhile to build the same familiarity is all.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the detailed information. My interest in Linux is to start exploring the privacy options available. I am on AMD X570, 5900x, 64gig, 3700 gpu and play nothing I would get banned for. Just to be extremely basic I thought I would start with Linux Mint, a VPN (undetermined brand yet) and try to separate every possible identifying action. I know I am not going to beat google but I can give it a try. Now that they are claiming they can scrape any health related information without permission I would at least want to try to make them jump thru hoops and possibly make mistakes.
 
narsbars said:
Thanks for the detailed information. My interest in Linux is to start exploring the privacy options available. I am on AMD X570, 5900x, 64gig, 3700 gpu and play nothing I would get banned for. Just to be extremely basic I thought I would start with Linux Mint, a VPN (undetermined brand yet) and try to separate every possible identifying action. I know I am not going to beat google but I can give it a try. Now that they are claiming they can scrape any health related information without permission I would at least want to try to make them jump thru hoops and possibly make mistakes.
Click to expand...
Well if you do dry cachy at some point. It ships with cachy browser. Their own firefox build. Built for security. It is a further optimized and security enhanced version of ironwolf. (another hardened version of firefox) It looks and works just like firefox. With a little better security. (which to be fair mainly comes from an optimized rule set for pre installed ublock, Librewolf also pre installs ublock)
https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-Browser-Settings

Differences from LibreWolf:​

  • Enhanced security & privacy.
  • Gentoo patches. Taken from Gentoo's Firefox.
  • uBlock Origin added.
  • Moonlight theme added.
  • Preset for "Profile Sync Daemon" and Firejail/Firejail(hardened) available.
  • Custom Rules for uBlock Origin.
  • Custom branding.
And of course if you Librewolf should be in the main mint repos.
https://librewolf.net/
 
ChadD said:
Well if you do dry cachy at some point. It ships with cachy browser. Their own firefox build. Built for security. It is a further optimized and security enhanced version of ironwolf. (another hardened version of firefox) It looks and works just like firefox. With a little better security. (which to be fair mainly comes from an optimized rule set for pre installed ublock, Librewolf also pre installs ublock)
https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-Browser-Settings

Differences from LibreWolf:​

  • Enhanced security & privacy.
  • Gentoo patches. Taken from Gentoo's Firefox.
  • uBlock Origin added.
  • Moonlight theme added.
  • Preset for "Profile Sync Daemon" and Firejail/Firejail(hardened) available.
  • Custom Rules for uBlock Origin.
  • Custom branding.
And of course if you Librewolf should be in the main mint repos.
https://librewolf.net/
Click to expand...
Thanks, will be using probably Mint 22 and the tip on ironwold, ublock, and the cachy browser sound good if they work on Mint, but if not you have given me a great research project. I am going to have to research outgoing information as so much is going out without permissions ever being granted.
 
Easiest? Any Ubuntu flavor. I suggest Kubuntu or Ubuntu Budgie.
Maybe learn a tiny bit more? Any Ubuntu based distro like Mint, KDE Neon, or Elementary OS. I recommend Pop_OS!
Start into the weeds? Arch based distro like Manjaro.
In the weeds? Arch Linux. "I use Arch btw." I find this is the sweet spot. Every time I delve elsewhere, I always end up coming back.
Beyond the weeds and start into Dante's 7 circles? Gentoo. Good luck you masochist.
Hell itself? Linux from Scratch. You're insane and need to check into a padded room.

For gaming at the moment...stick with distros that don't default to Wayland, XWayland is good but not great. General Wayland gaming is meh. X11 is still the best way to go if you want to game. I've been strictly Wayland for about a year now and gaming is the only problem child.
 
Kubuntu as it's true LTS. Last I checked, the mainstream (non edge) variants of Mint weren't actually true LTS releases and ran far older kernels. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to run any higher than KDE Plasma 5.27 under Mint.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Kubuntu as it's true LTS. Last I checked, the mainstream (non edge) variants of Mint weren't actually true LTS releases and ran far older kernels. I'm pretty sure you won't be able to run any higher than KDE Plasma 5.27 under Mint.
Click to expand...
This is definitely the case. Plasma 6 does not run under mint.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
It works well for me with almost everything.
Click to expand...
I concur with uOpt. As a protocol Wayland is too stripped out, furthermore fractional scaling under Wayland sucks with the cursor going either really small or really big when passing over GTK application windows.

Under Wayland, FF scrolling as well as certain desktop animations, are janky - and that's with GSP firmware disabled (Nvidia 560.35.03 drivers/RTX 2070S). Running CS2 either Wayland native or via xwayland, I get almost half the performance I do under X11. Wayland is improving, but at this stage it's just not there for me yet, at the rate it's improving I'll be hanging onto X11 until the bleeding end.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I concur with uOpt. As a protocol Wayland is too stripped out, furthermore fractional scaling under Wayland sucks with the cursor going either really small or really big when passing over GTK application windows.

Under Wayland, FF scrolling as well as certain desktop animations, are janky - and that's with GSP firmware disabled (Nvidia 560.35.03 drivers/RTX 2070S). Running CS2 either Wayland native or via xwayland, I get almost half the performance I do under X11. Wayland is improving, but at this stage it's just not there for me yet, at the rate it's improving I'll be hanging onto X11 until the bleeding end.
Click to expand...
I stopped using NVIDIA due to the headaches I had in Wayland. AMD works w/o any major issues for me.
 
My Linux IRQs were working but didnt parse out nicely lately, IRQ sharing (usb - sound - video) killed it for me. Maybe I'll invest some time down the road to sort it out but right now - Windows just works. Funny, It was working just fine eight months ago. Whatever.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
I stopped using NVIDIA due to the headaches I had in Wayland. AMD works w/o any major issues for me.
Click to expand...
I've never had a problem with Nvidia under X11, furthermore Nvidia supports Wayland just fine now. The problem isn't an Nvidia one, the problem is a Wayland one - Wayland sucks at this point in time on a single HiDPI monitor.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I've never had a problem with Nvidia under X11, furthermore Nvidia supports Wayland just fine now. The problem isn't an Nvidia one, the problem is a Wayland one - Wayland sucks at this point in time on a single HiDPI monitor.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. One positive is HDR but most games can't detect w/o gamescope.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
Fair enough. One positive is HDR but most games can't detect w/o gamescope.
Click to expand...
Bearing in mind that there's a big difference between correctly calibrated HDR using color profiles, and a simple HDR toggle. Truth be told, HDR on desktop computers is still very much in it's infancy - Something made worse by the fact that monitors that can truly handle HDR without washing out all colors with 1000 nits of brightness are terribly expensive.
 
I'd try Mint first AND I'd load the steam flatpak and try your games there. If you're having problems, you could try fedora workstation - the rpmfusion team does a great job making installing nvidia drivers easy (installing the correct ones and correctly). If that all fails (unlikely), I'd bet my bottom dollar endeavorOS will work - it also does a great job of installing proprietary stuff with the installer. BUT it's arch and that's a bit of a learning curve to maintain.

I'd bet you'll find like many people that you really don't need your windows install much, if at all. For me - openRGB won't permanently write to my RAM unless I use the windows program, some anti cheat BS games don't work (I just stop playing the game), and I haven't tried to get my nzxt aio cooler's software running under bottles yet - but I'm not sure that'll work.

I had win11 installed in a dual boot config until this past weekend. I finally nuked it. There was a recent exploit that everyone was urged to patch immediately - the patch wouldn't install. Win11 updates have been nothing short of a disaster for the last half year. After spending a few hours (again) trying to make them work, I was faced with a reinstall of the OS. And I decided, screw it, I'm not even going to bother. For the first time since the early 90's, I'm not running some form of windows and I don't miss it at all. Good luck - if you have issues we'll help you get them sorted out. Mint will probably get the job done unless you have super new hardware.
 
Yeah, what's up with Windows updates sometimes "not fitting" your current install?

Never have that happen with macOS, but then all of macOS installs as one big readonly blob by now. Maybe Windows need to get a move on?
 
Kongar said:
I'd try Mint first AND I'd load the steam flatpak and try your games there. If you're having problems, you could try fedora workstation - the rpmfusion team does a great job making installing nvidia drivers easy (installing the correct ones and correctly). If that all fails (unlikely), I'd bet my bottom dollar endeavorOS will work - it also does a great job of installing proprietary stuff with the installer. BUT it's arch and that's a bit of a learning curve to maintain.

I'd bet you'll find like many people that you really don't need your windows install much, if at all. For me - openRGB won't permanently write to my RAM unless I use the windows program, some anti cheat BS games don't work (I just stop playing the game), and I haven't tried to get my nzxt aio cooler's software running under bottles yet - but I'm not sure that'll work.

I had win11 installed in a dual boot config until this past weekend. I finally nuked it. There was a recent exploit that everyone was urged to patch immediately - the patch wouldn't install. Win11 updates have been nothing short of a disaster for the last half year. After spending a few hours (again) trying to make them work, I was faced with a reinstall of the OS. And I decided, screw it, I'm not even going to bother. For the first time since the early 90's, I'm not running some form of windows and I don't miss it at all. Good luck - if you have issues we'll help you get them sorted out. Mint will probably get the job done unless you have super new hardware.
Click to expand...
I also went all in with Linux this year. Windows 11 is only a VM on my desktop & a 2nd drive on my laptop. Both rarely used, too.
 
For shits and giggles, I did a search for "best linux distro for gaming 2024". The AI said "Garuda Linux" was at the top. Others:
Ubuntu Game Pack
Pop!_OS
Fedora Games Spin
I have some spare older laptops and I may install Garuda to see how it works.
 
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