I have always been tempted by Linux, and the past few times I have tried it, I spent days setting it up, only to be forced back to Windows.
I want to be more committed, and create a support network before I format everything and start again.
I use my PC for gaming and work. For work I connect to the system via a vpn client which has a linux version, so thats ok
Games are mostly Steam, though I occasionally play Fortnite with my son, and I am aware Heroic/Lutris can help with that.
The last time I installed Linux (Ubuntu) my second monitor kept switching from extend to mirror. It might not sound like a big deal, but having to change it back every time it went to sleep was a pain, and it never happened on Windows which just worked. I also had some trouble with dark mode, some apps would set the text to white but not the background to black, so you couldnt read anything.
The time before I think I was using Mint, there was an issue with the boot script which made boot up times take up to 15 minutes which again just doesnt happen on Windows.
I dont know Linux enough to be able to sort these things myself, and I have tried message boards, but it can take days for a reply, if you get a reply at all.
I have heard a lot of people are switching to Bazzite, but does it have a desktop like other OSes, or is it just gaming? Its hard to figure out.
Is one of these better for support, advice, compatibility?
Bazzite is just Fedora Atomic with extra things slapped on top (Nvidia drivers if u have an Nvidia card, kernel tweaks for gaming, Steam and Lutris preinstalled, etc.). It functions just as well as a normal desktop as any other distro. It’s also my default recommendation for anyone that plans on doing any gaming, where my recommendation for complete non-gamers is Fedora Atomic, which is what it’s based off. Since it is Atomic (the root file structure is kept consistent across all installs, and updates aren’t applied while the system is running), it’s very resilient and reliable. If anything ever does break (which won’t happen under normal conditions), then you can revert to the previous version from the boot menu and restore it, then either try to update again, or wait a bit before you upgrade if you suspect the issue was a bad update or something. All you need to know is that is called a
rollback
, and you should be able to find all the information you need about how to do it via a quick search. I can tell you to memorizesudo rpm-ostree rollback
, but chances are you would rather look it up in case you remembered wrong anyway.For people coming from Windows, I recommend the KDE Plasma version, as the UI is more Windows-like than GNOME, so it’s a smoother transition. It isn’t like GNOME is difficult to learn or anything (it’s likely what you used with Ubuntu), it’s actually simpler, it’s just very opinionated and differs in design philosophy from both Windows and KDE Plasma. You can always feel free to look into the differences on your own by watching videos, as they show off the desktop environments more than text ever could.
Thumbs up for the thorough recap!
I am dailying Aeon for a while, which is a OpenSuse + GNOME version of Bazzite, which I also tried. I can highly recommend both!