this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025

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137

Planning to switch to Linux for my next PC (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 day ago by FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So all I know that the Linux mascot is a penguin and Arch users meme about using Arch. Jokes aside I’m planning on making to the jump to Linux as I’m planning on getting a tower PC. I recently got a steam deck and that kinda demystified the (unrealistic) expectation I had of Linux was all command line stuff and techno babble. This all very future oriented questions* as I haven’t even picked out hardware (probably gonna go prebuilt since I do not trust me) and there’s also the matter of saving up the money for a new PC.

As for my use case (cus I know some software is wonky on Linux compared to windows) it’s mostly between games running on steam, which most of my games play fine on the steam deck, and essays and note taking for my college classes, which I use libre office and obsidian (with excalidraw to hand write my notes) saved to my proton drive and also sync those documents between my surface laptop and home laptop

My ideal OS would be plug it in, let it do… things… and it’s ready to be a PC to install steam and stuff

But first question, as someone who isn’t tech inclined and tinkering is pretty much just a few VERY basic settings in the settings app on windows, so is there a Linux… idk what to call it, type? OS? Thing??? that runs out of the box without me having to install additional software manually or at least automatic setup wizards because like hardware, I do not trust me with setting it up. As for installing it after I wipe whatever computer I choose I assume I’m gonna have some OS installer on a USB and let it work its magic.

Second question, is there any specific hardware that works easier with Linux, I can’t really think of any examples cus with installers and updaters I just the computer handle it, like updating Nvidia stuff in the GeForce app for all I know it’s genuinely performing dark magic during the automated updates

Anyways I probably have way more questions that I have no idea I had, but to wrap up I’m not super tech inclined since I let automated stuff do its thang on windows (if the computer can manage and install it I’m gonna let it do that) and my pc mostly just plays games and do documents on libre office and obsidian

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[–] Veraxis@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

I second the recommendations for Mint. It should work out of the box. You can download the .iso file from their website and use a program called Rufus to write it to a USB stick. You should be able to plug it in, shut down windows, boot from the USB (may have to go into the boot menu in the UEFI), and it will install linux for you. This will be the same process for most linux distributions.

For installing software on Linux, there is an important difference between Windows and Linux; on windows you typically download an installer .exe and use that to install a program. On Linux, each distro has its own "package manager" which functions a lot like an app store on a phone. The package manager will install the program for you and take care of keeping everything updated for you, so if your GPU drivers, steam, or whatever else needs updating, just run an update on the package manager and it will do everything for you. Some will support automatic updates, so you may need to google how to turn that on for any given distribution's package manager.

In terms of what hardware works better, most folks will tell you to use AMD graphics cards over Nvidia, but that is about it. Nvidia still has proprietary drivers which don't always play nice with linux, but as an nvidia user myself, the problems seem to be getting fewer and fewer.

[–] penguin202124@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Bazzite would be a great choice in my opinion. It's meant for gaming, has drivers preinstalled and is immutable (basically impossible to break). I'd suggest using KDE because it's Windows-like and is the default for desktop mode on SteamOS.

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Ah nice, yeah I was thinking bazzite since it looks hard to break based on what you’ve all been saying and KDE so I have some vague sense of familiarity between windows and my steam deck

[–] EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 14 minutes ago (1 children)

Bit of warning about KDE:

It is very customizable, but as a by product is also really easy to completely fuck up. The first time I used it (eons ago) I ended up removing the task bar and couldn't figure out how to bring it back or launch programs.

Just spend a bit of time reading up on it and you'll be fine though.

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 1 points 3 minutes ago

Good to know

[–] RadDevon@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 hours ago

I feel it’s important to note for new people that, while an immutable OS is great at keeping you from breaking your system, the way it achieves this can make some things you would want to do more difficult. In Bazzite, installing software, for example, works differently than under a typical distribution.

I’ll give the example of two pieces of software that I use regularly: 1Password and Espanso. It took a fair bit of digging to figure out how to install 1Password in a way that would preserve its tight system integration… and it still doesn’t quite work — copying a password in particular contexts just doesn’t put that password on the clipboard, while it works fine in other contexts. Espanso on the other hand just won’t work under Bazzite best I can tell. I haven’t found a way to install it at all so I’m just doing without. Oh My ZSH was also quite tricky, and I got yelled at in the Bazzite Discord for doing it the wrong way. 😅

Plenty of the software I use works fine and was easy to install: FreeTube, Kdenlive, VLC, Zen Browser… unless you count the fact that the 1Password browser integration just won’t work with Zen Browser, presumably because I haven’t found the exact right combination of Flatpak permissions plus settings that will allow it to.

All this to say, I love Bazzite for gaming and use it every day, but the moment you step outside that world and want your computer to do something a little bit differently, it’s a major headache. In the context of gaming, it’s much closer to “just works” than any other distro I’ve tried.

[–] Dil@is.hardlywork.ing 2 points 8 hours ago

Just deleted my windows parition and grew my cachyos one, im never going back after a week with it, I like cachyos/arch since I can use gnome and plasma at the same time easily (i like swapping looks a lot), idk if its as easy with others since they reccomend you rebase for different des like bazzite, aurora, bluefin. cachyos is straightforward with a gui installer, easier and much faster than windows to install and use, I used ventoy so I can keep using my usb for data.

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org 4 points 11 hours ago

I recently made the switch back to Linux, to Pop! OS, and I've never had such a smooth experience before. It's currently using GNOME as its desktop environment, which I find a bit shit in general, but they've modified it enough so that it's user friendly and intuitive. It has an "app store" as well that you can use to check for and run updates, search software etc. If you have a big screen, the window tiling function is awesome. Highly recommend you have a look at it!

[–] The_Sasswagon@beehaw.org 3 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

I'd just recommend against NVIDIA GPUs if you don't want to tinker, I'm sure it's not as bad as it was back when I had NVIDIA cards, but faffing around trying to get NVIDIA drivers to play nice was the bane of my existence (and where I was forced to learn the most about Linux).

Oh and the screen tearing was a nuisance too that went away as soon as I got an AMD card.

Looks like you got lots of great advice on the OS. Good luck, and enjoy whatever you end up doing!

[–] j4yt33@feddit.org 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

NVIDIA is trash anyway so no reason to buy one regardless of OS

AMD gang!

In all honesty, I think it has gotten better over the last few years and it should be less of a headache now to use NVIDIA cards, I guess that depends on the OS though

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago

there still is a reason to buy nvidia and it's HDMI 2.1.

I want to keep using an OLED TV as my monitor, 4k and 120hz. TVs still don't have displayport for some reason... and there aren't any >50" OLED monitors in 16:9 available, at least where I live. and AMD didn't get permission to use HDMI 2.1 driver in their open source driver. there is a dp > HDMI 2.1 converter, which sucks according to reviews.

[–] endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 points 12 hours ago

I have nvidia 4 series and my linux skill is low enough that I think its insane gnome doesn't have right click-create file by default and I have had 0 issues. You just need to disable secureboot or enroll keys.

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 1 points 12 hours ago

Yeah I was probably gonna go with bazzite and it sounds like there’s some demo installer I can play around with but yeah definitely gonna break my nvidia streak (past 2 and my only gaming laptops) to finally get a proper tower with an amd gpu

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Imo you should get a System76 computer, it comes with a gaming focused Distro and its the most well respected Linux brand (in the US, for EU I would reccomend Tuxedo). Their mini PCs cost $799 and for a decent full sized PC (with a GPU) prepare to pay over $1.5k.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

If you really want a prebuilt one, of course.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 hours ago

It was explicitly specified that no tinkering should be required, also even if you custom build a PC you wont have several advantages of just going with system76. For example the mini PC uses their fork of coreboot and intigrates with Pop_OS, meanwhile on other systems you would need to manually install coreboot (if its even supported) and bios updates are still an absolute mess (even if you dont care about the privacy benefits of coreboot the extremely fast start up speed alone makes it valuable).

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

So kinda standard PC prices

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Slightly higher but yeah, also you get a premium PC with no RGB and a wooden finish

[–] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago

Ooooooooo that sounds nice

I might just go from Amazon depending on hardware and price but I’m definitely gonna add this to my list

[–] RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works 28 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (4 children)

Generally, Linuxmint is the go to distro if you want something that holds your hand, but due to your limited needs outside of gaming and already having a Steam deck you should take a look at Bazzite, which is basically the desktop mode of the Steam deck for PCs.

As for hardware, one thing that can be annoying is NVIDIA (drivers), but that shouldn’t be a major problem with these distros as mint has a built in manager that does everything for you and with Bazzite you just need to specify your GPU when downloading and don’t have to do anything.

My recommendation is download the distros you want to try, get Rufus put them on a USB and then play around with them in demo mode, make sure everything works (graphic card, printers) and if you like the distro then start the installer. If you don’t like it you can just unplug the USB and reboot without anything persisting.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 10 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Super happy with Bazzite as a gaming PC. I think only a power user might find the "immutableness" of it annoying. You can still install OS packages, it's just highly discouraged. 90% of the time you'd just be running Flatpaks (a mostly self-contained app that is easy to install and remove). I'm using it with an old-ish NVIDIA card and at first it was troublesome but I think it worked itself out after a few updates. AMD has better compatibility from what I understand.

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[–] JustFudgnWork@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

Seems like you've got a lot of distro recommendations haha which is good - go for one of those and you should be ok (I'm on mint for the record). My suggestion if you have a bit if extra money and less time is to buy a prebuilt system with linux already installed, tuxedo and system76 are two big names but I can't comment on what to go with there.

However the advantage with buying an integrated system like that is that the hardware is all guaranteed and you can ring them for support if needed.

My other suggestion is to BACKUP your files!

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 13 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (12 children)

Linux mint is a common recommendation but I think a bad one (for beginners anyway), I highly recommend bazzite with kde, I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to do infinite troubleshooting if you add me on matrix (which is on my profile) I've onboarded many people and this is my experience with beginners

in short, linux mint is bad vs bazzite with kde for 3 reasons

kde is much more well supported and developed than cinnamon, it's not even close especially if you care about security

immutable distros are much more forgiving for new people, immutable means that the core OS can't be modified.

and finally bazzite has more up to date software, linux mint is a "stable" distro, stable in the linux context means unchanging, not unbuggy

if you don't know what any of that means, go bazzite over mint, you'll have an easier time.

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

imo kde will give a bad impression of linux as it's quite buggy and the taskbar is way too easy to fuck up completely

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

i have given linux to many many people at this point and neither of these things have been problems, when's the last time you used kde?

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

I distrohop quite often, last time a couple of weeks ago. I tried nobara, fedora kde, and kubuntu. kubuntu was probably the best but some older games wouldn't run, animations stutter so bad I had to disable them, themes didn't work and some settings reset on every reboot. others had more serious issues, including constant crashing. I could blame it on nvidia, but cinnamon works just fine (except for one bug that took me over half a year to find a workaround).

and the taskbar... any time I try and resize it or move any item, it completely borks and it's quite hard to fix.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

1.    Enter edit mode
2.    Click on the panel, remove the panel from the panel popup menu
3.    At the top menu “add new panel” → “default panel”

^^bam you can easily reset the panel to default

I could blame it on nvidia

Plasma uses wayland, wayland was much much more problematic with nvidia until very recently, if you try the latest plasma, most of those issues will likely be gone

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago

last time I finally realized you could delete the panel and add new ones, but I remember the first time I just lost my shit and switched to another distro 😂 and I agree it's better now, it was basically unusable a year ago. btw kubuntu uses x11, and it was still on plasma version 5.27.

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[–] asap@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (14 children)

Try Bazzite:

https://bazzite.gg/

It will give you an experience that's familiar compared to the Steam Deck, and everything will "just work" out of the box.

It already has Steam installed and is a great desktop for general use.

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[–] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 14 points 1 day ago (22 children)

I really like fedora out of the box but if you’re used to windows some will recommend Linux mint. In fedora there are a lot of packages installable via the software store as well as downloading app images and RPM files.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

The various versions or flavors of Linux are called "distributions" or "distros." There are several that are intended to be ready to go out of the box. Linux Mint is a pretty good one for general desktop use though they're kinda behind the times with Wayland and such. I see a lot of folks recommend Bazzite but I personally know nothing about it. I'm using Fedora KDE, Fedora is meh, KDE is pretty good.
If you're building a gaming desktop specifically for Linux, I recommend going with AMD GPU and an Intel wi-fi adapter. There are some Wi-Fi adapters that don't play nice with Linux but Intel's drivers are pretty good. AMD releases their drivers right into the kernel, there's nothing you need to do at all to get AMD GPUs working on Linux, Nvidia is a bit more of a pain. Also, with desktop peripherals, avoid anything that needs one of those configuration utilities, they tend not to be available for Linux. I use a Coolermaster MasterKeys Pro M keyboard which all configuration happens on the board, they don't offer any software for it. Highly recommended.

Oh also: Asrock's RGB lighting weird and non-standard. If you want to use open source stuff to control your RGB lighting and that's important to you, I recommend against Asrock. Just so happens my build's RGB is controlled via a controller built into my case.

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