i like gaming,browsing(brave),im open to using open source software like gimp,libreoffice,qbittorrent etc i don’t really care about specific software other than brave.
i don’t use steam,i use pirated games so they should work on whatever distro i will use.
i have no problems with learning more,searching,or posting about linux to learn. and im open to using terminal i already like it somewhat on windows.
my laptop that i will install linux on is msi gf63 with gtx 1650,i5-10500h,16gb ram,1tb ssd sata and 256gb ssd nvme.
so should i switch to linux? i feel like i don’t exactly like where microsoft is taking windows to,but im not sure if my games will work on linux.
you can ask me more questions to see if my usage is supported or not by linux. im open to any easy distro. i don’t relay on microsoft office or adobe apps or any of these things. my usage is pretty generic.
You should switch to Firefox with ublock origin.
Brave is a mess of a browser and a dumpster fire of an organization, even compared to the famously dysfuctional Mozilla.
You can look up your games on ProtonDB and see which will and won’t work. Pirated games are no different from retail compatibility-wise but there might be one or two extra steps
i suggest waterfox or librewolf instead of normal firefox because they are just better. Waterfox also has the bonus of having an android app and allowing to download all addons (but some will not properly work because phone)
Firefox allows all addons now on mobile but for a while it was only a few selected addons (ublock origin being one of them)
I am currently using 19 extensions on mobile
oh nice :D
why do you think firefox is better? i generally don’t care about a corp Politics or historical errors. i care about current product as of now.
Firefox is unlikely to ever sell your data or redirect websites or participate in a cryptoscam or show you advertisements with an adblocker on. Brave has done, at one point or another, all of that.
Plus firefox is not manifest v3, so you can actually have a safe browsing experience whereas all chromium based browsers are now inherently more vulnerable to malware thanks to google.
all chromium based browsers are now inherently more vulnerable to malware thanks to google.
Could you explain why? While at it, would you be so kind to mention why security-focused projects like GrapheneOS and secureblue stick to Chromium-based browsers despite that?
https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
Chromium and their particular fork have much better exploit hardening via sandboxing.
My understanding is Firefox has better anti-fingerprinting and uBlock origin via manifest v2 support (or v2 features ported to v3).
The argument often used is malicious ads. Sandboxing and hardening largely mitigates ads that contain exploits, but it doesn’t protect against social engineering, crypto mining, tracking, etc.
So I guess it comes down to your threat model and desired experience.
I personally prefer the uBlock origin experience, but an ad free experience and escape from targeted advertising was my target opsec when venturing into privacy.
Thanks! Your comment prompted me to check out this entry in uBlock Origin’s documentation that also underlines why Firefox(-based browsers) work better for the purposes of content-blocking.
So I guess it comes down to your threat model and desired experience.
Can’t agree more.
Past behavior can be a pretty good indicator of future behavior. Brave has done several shady things, and they will do more shady things in the future. It’s just stupid to ignore that.
Edit:
Oh hey, look at that, not even a day has gone by and… https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-is-charging-60-to-remove-features-it-added-in-the-first-place/
Brave is a bad product as of now.
Firefox with ublock is at least acceptably performant on desktop and mobile without all the crypto/tracking downsides of Brave or the open unpatched vulnerabilities (as of this posting) of Chrome/chromium (that also affect Brave)
You could click the link already provided above. Just the Table of Contents at the top gives you a good overview about issues with Brave without reading anything else…
Not OP, but I’m not switching to Firefox until they get their heads out of their asses and add tab groups to mobile. The fact they’ve gone this long without the feature is shameful.
They did add tab groups to desktop, but that’s stupid because there was already something that did the same thing: opening a new window
Unfortunately, no.
Due to the year of the linux desktop, new user applications have been closed. The overwhelming positive response has just completely bypassed the available seats.
I’m sorry, but we’re full.
On lemmy u will always get a yes for that question lol.
Checkout distrosea.com, u can test different linux distros through your browser. This saves u alot of time in testing distros.
U will want to install steam either way. Their proton layer works great to run acquired booty. If u have questions on how, lemmy know.
If you ask in a Linux community on Lemmy, Reddit or anywhere you’ll get a yes.
yea true, but let’s not pretend as if lemmy isn’t a linux echo-chamber lol. 2 things are certain on lemmy. Linux and politics
You don’t need Steam to run games with Proton. Something like Faugus Launcher is much more light weight if you’re not interested in using Steam’s other features (though many of them are very good, like Steam Input)
Haven’t heard of Faugus before, I will check it out. I found both Lutris and Heroic less hassle-free than Steam. Thanks for sharing, love me some linux goodies
It’s like getting children. You only know afterwards how it really feels and even if it’s a hassle sometimes you wouldn’t ever change back.
so im thinking about getting something debian based bec its easy is that a good path of distros?
debian is not that up to date, so it might cause problems for gaming
neither are ubuntu-based debian-based distros (mint, pop_os)
debian cycle is 2 years, ubuntu cycle is 6 months
opensuse tumbleweed is similar to debian but is very up to date (and less unstable than other rolling release distros), it updates packages in the repo every 6 hours i think
Mint or ubuntu are classics, you won’t make a mistake choosing either.
If you’re going easy but need something more up to date, Fedora based is a good middle ground. Nobara more gaming oriented.
If you like gaming and aren’t fussed about the other stuff, Bazzite and CatchyOS are gaming tailored distros that are probably worth a look.
What about Nobara?
First I’ve heard of it, there’s so many distros.
Fair enough, I’m still trying to figure out most of them myself. It’s just the first first distro I used that my son set up for me. It’s a gaming oriented Fedora with KDE and comes preloaded with stuff for playing games. It did seem like it was working pretty well for a lot of stuff, but I went against my son’s advice and started trying to learn the terminal and borked some stuff, so he switched me to vanilla Fedora and now I’m missing stuff I need to run some of the games. I don’t know if anybody else has used it much it that has had any experience. Like I said I’m only on my second distro myself.
yeah you should
you should definitely try it out and see if you like it; try various distros and desktops
the distros id recommend are fedora (simply good), opensuse tubleweed (versatile and unobtrusive), cachyos (designed for gaming), bazzite (fedora-based steamOS clone, designed for gaming), or mint (very easy), and the de id recommend is kde plasma
can keep windows on a separate drive to boot for the games that dont work (and in case u want to switch back)
but if ur pirating, those wont be kernel anticheat games, which are the main offenders
And ntfs does not work with proton so if you keep your Windows games that don’t work on a separate drive, they won’t work on linux. Make sure all of your games played on the Linux install are downloaded separately onto a Linux file system like ext4
NTFS works with proton as long as you set up your /etc/fstab properly to make sure it’s mounted as writeable, but I believe you also need proprietary drivers… I can’t remember now, but up until a couple weeks ago I had my storage drive with all my games mounted in Fedora and it was NTFS from my previous win11 install.
NTFS has gotten better on Linux but it’s still not there. It is still highly prone to corruption, especially for a task like proton requiring constant read, write. You might get by for a little bit, but it is highly prone to failure
Source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows
Fortunately the only issue I’ve had with mine is one time it decided it didn’t want to mount properly. I got it fixed, but then pulled everything I wanted to keep off it and switched to BTRFS. I imagine people with dual-boot are more likely to see issues though.
People with dual boot are more likely to have games on NTFS and think that they can use them under Linux and not realize that just because some people get lucky with it for a while does not override the fact that the proton GitHub itself says do not use NTFS for the previously stated reasons
good to know
im pretty sure that this statement is not true tho.
source: used a ntfs-drive 4 yeara ago before i switched completely. windows fast boot has to be diseabled because otherwise the drive will not be writeable or something. also the disk needs to get mounted correctly in linux.
Use something else instead of Brave
Personally I still use Brave because Firefox still doesn’t have tab groups on mobile and it’s more private than Chrome
Firefox did add tab groups to desktop, which is dumb because they already existed. They’re called windows. And they’ve been stringing the community along regarding mobile tab groups for years.
Until Firefox get their heads out of their asses, they’re a non-starter as far as I’m concerned
Every time Firefox groups my tabs on desktop I get pissed off and say I’m going to disable it… Then immediately forget because I was in the middle of something.
They can take the tab groups from me and give them to you, no charge.
Tab groups are easier to handle than windows though
Also:
I am on nightly tho, maybe standard firefox doesn’t have them yet
it totally does have tab groups, it had them for a long time edit: what i meant is collections, and i think thats something different from tab groups
Collections are mainly a weird alternative to bookmarks
I would also recommend against using Brave, but it’s available on Linux if you want to use it.
Pirated games work just fine with Heroic, Lutris or Bottles.I personally like Heroic and I’ve not had many issues with steamrip releases (they don’t need to be installed).
In case you dont already know, use protondb to find if you games will work.
i don’t use steam
notices username
Sure you can, but gtx 1650 is not cutting it if you wanna play modern “AAA” games even on low settings 1080p unless you sacrifice resolution, as for everything else you should be fine
Just try and see how it goes - it’s not like you can’t go back
…or OP could buy another PC and use it solely to run Windows whilst s/he gets the hang of Linux on his/her main PC.
Grab a few usb sticks and put different images on them to try some different OS’s. Get a feel for how easy they are to install / config / use.
Then put your favorite on your internal drive, and maybe keep a couple of specialized sticks for whatever: troubleshooting, browsing, streaming, gaming, office…
or use ventoy which allows to boot from as many images as the space on the usb allows
Seconding ventoy for installation media. It’s awesome
Does Ventoy still use blobs in its distribution?
Should perhaps add that you can generally run Linux distributions off of a USB stick for that first impression.
Just follow a tutorial for how to install Linux and when you see the actual installer on screen, you can just close the installer without installing and then click around in the UI.
It will be slow, because it’s running off that slow USB connection, but otherwise this is pretty much the operating system as it is when fully installed.
Yes
should i switch to linux?
So, as this is a Linux community, do you expect anything but an astounding “Yes!”?
Going through the rest of your post, you’d have to be cautious with the Nvidia GPU. It can go anywhere from working almost seamlessly without any tinkering to causing nigh-unsolvable problems you (regretfully) might have to work around.
But, aside from that, you should be pretty much good to go.
Absolutely. Just replaced my 3080 with an AMD 9060 on opensuse and everything is smooth as butter. The AMD drivers are part of the linux kernel itself.
Just try it out for a bit. If you don’t like it, switch back. That’s it. It’s not one of lifes major decisions.
which distro do you recommend?
I don’t. I’ve been running Debian since 1997.
From what I read on the Internets, lot of gamers seem to like Bazzite.Bazzite has been the easiest distro I’ve used to set up for gaming. I recommend KDE with it, coming from Windows.
