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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Upon switching, what should I expect to change?

    Many things are very similar on Linux compared to Windows (e.g. Browsing, Steam). One big difference is that people prefer using package managers to install software (instead of downloading and installing it manually).

    I’m considering Pop!_OS seeing as its praised for its compatibility and easy switching.

    Pop!_OS is a nice distro and it should work well for you if you like the UI. There also many other good distros if you want to play around a bit. You can easily test them using a Live ISO.

    What’s the situation with gaming look like? I know gaming on Linux has been a HIGHLY discussed topic for a while, is it easy to play any (non triple-A) steam game? I’m nowhere near involved in computer science, I’d just consider myself more stubborn than most end-users so I can persevere through some basic problems.

    I’d say that you can expect almost all games to work. The main exception are games with anti-cheat that decide not to support Linux. In my case, there has only been one game in the last two years that didn’t work (War Thunder crashes a lot more than on Windows). Playing AAA games is generally not an issue. You can check https://www.protondb.com/ for specific games.







  • Sorry to hear that Linux Mint is not working well for you. Unfortunately, things can sometimes still be rough when it comes to hardware support. I have personally also had issues with Nvidia GPUs and Bluetooth. Often this is because the manufacturers only provide drivers for Windows and Linux drivers need to be created by the community.

    Regarding Nvidia and secure boot. I’ve had the same issue (on both Mint and other distros). After some frustrations (including a BIOS update) I finally gave up and disabled secure boot. Since then, I haven’t had any issues with my dual boot with Win 10 (but I probably won’t buy another Nvidia GPU). What makes you say that Windows requires Secure Boot?

    No I didn’t. When I installed Linux mint the first time I was able to fix everything. I needed to reinstall it and that is where this controller issue started

    This seems quite weird. Are you perhaps missing a package (e.g. steam-devices)?












  • We use Alma Linux at work and it’s fine, I suppose. I see two main reasons why you’d choose an EL linux distro:

    1. You have (professional) software that officially supports it. RHEL’s release model makes it an attractive target for proprietary software and many vendors choose to support it.
    2. You need/want very long support cycles. You can run 10-year-old software even though you probably shouldn’t.

    Apart from those, it’s a competent distro, Red Hat know what they’re doing. If you want the equivalent to an Ubuntu LTS / Debian in the Fedora world, it get’s the job done. I quite like their approach of keeping the core OS stable while updating drivers, tools, and compilers (e.g., the kernel version number has very little meaning in RHEL).

    Is the experience very different from Fedora?

    Yes. the age of the core packages is very noticeable. The number of fully supported packages is also very small and you need to go to EPEL very quickly (at which point you’re no longer getting enterprise support…). On the plus side, it’s much more stable than Fedora in my experience.

    Edit: My main recommendation for a stable distro would probably be Debian unless one of the above points applies.