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?

  • Albbi@lemmy.ca
    3·
    9 hours ago

    I was in the sane situation as you and what I did was buy a new drive to put Linux on so I could dual boot and get used to things without wiping everything. Linux can even mount your Window drive if you need to access data on it.

    I tried a few distro myself but landed on Garuda Dr460onized Gaming. (You can look at different versions here) The gaming version came with steam and Heroic installed and had a nice colour theme picked. Gaming has been great and all Windows games that I’ve tried have worked better than when I was running Windows. (Rocket League, Hades 2, Uncharted 4 to name some) You can always keep Windows on your other drive and boot it for games like Fortnite that have kernel level anti cheat.

    The only issue you might have is that Garuda is pretty bleeding edge with when updates get applied. This can be good or bad. There were some issues getting dual screens working for me at first, but those issues have gone away completely now. I also had issues with the top menu bar crashing and disappearing. Lasted about 2 weeks and then an update fixed it. (Survived by using the Meta + Spacebar search launcher and Ctrl + Alt + T to get into a terminal) So updates to fix issues come out somewhat quickly, but issues pop up too. I actually think it’s been pretty stable right now.