So I am hoping to finally get around to installing Linux for the first time. Ideally I would like to eventually replace my win10 installation with it, but for now I plan on dual booting until I am comfortable enough on Linux. This leads me to a couple questions:

  • which one is best suited for gaming? I do a couple other things as well but I would expect that any OS could deal with those. I know vaguely about proton / the steam deck improvements that trickled down, but don’t know if and how that affects different Linux versions.

  • I read some days ago that ubuntu is being used by Microsoft, does that mean it is more compatible with their other applications?

  • I also read that amd is better suited to linux because nvidia refuses to support it, which would be a happy coincidence for me because I just recently built a fully amd computer, is that actually true?

  • And lastly, provided there is even a definitive answer to my first question, where should I look to get started? I have never dealt with Linux before but would consider myself reasonably tech / computer savvy.

Thank you

  • krakenfury@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I would encourage you to do some experimenting in virtual machines before making a move on your hardware. I’m not familiar with Windows tools in this regard, but something like VirtualBox allows you to go through the installation process and test out configuration options without risking breaking your bootloader, etc.

    I don’t have a certain answer to your first question, but I’ve had great gaming experiences on both Arch and Debian. One of the biggest advantages to Arch is the wiki, which you will probably find yourself using no matter which distro you end up on, as it has good documentation for a lot of different applications.

    Ubuntu is a fine choice if a distro, but I wouldn’t assume that there is greater application compatibility with Windows. Portability has way more to with the application than with the OS, so if there are certain applications you cannot do without, you need to start researching their Linux compatibility. There is also a compatibility layer you may have heard about already called Wine, so look into that, too.

    AMD has better open source driver support with it’s hardware than Nvidia. I don’t know so the details on this, but if you have an AMD GPU, that is generally more desirable at this time.

    I would encourage you to try out all the most popular distros in VirtualBox, and go from there.