Switched over to Linux last year. I gave Windows 11 a fair chance and it was a horrible experience. Installed Linux instead and now I basically never use Windows.

The distro itself doesn’t particularly matter. Unless you’re picking a niche distro or one designed for experts, all of them will have a good level of polish. What does matter is the desktop environment, which is the look and feel of the OS.

Many distros offer various desktop environments, and it can be a good idea to take a look at different desktop environments and see which one you like. I personally enjoy KDE Plasma, since I feel like it resembles Windows 10 the most. A bunch of popular distros like Bazzite and Fedora offer KDE Plasma variants. Alternatively, many people also like Cinnamon, though I personally think it looks somewhat outdated. Cinnamon is primarily offered by Linux Mint.

With the right desktop environment, Linux isn’t actually particularly technical. There’s definitely been a push recently to try to make things more user friendly. From time to time, you might still have to open terminal to do more advanced things, but I find that you can generally get by.

However, the way you do things in Linux is pretty different than in Windows, and it definitely takes a bit of getting used to and building up a new set of muscle memory. You will get frustrated that something isn’t where you think it is. My advice is that you should dual boot and keep a copy of Windows, so that you can switch back to Windows when you just need to get stuff done.

As for gaming, basically everything just works out of the box. I don’t even bother to check for Linux compatibility. Make sure to enable compatibility in the Steam settings and you should be good to go. The only time when games don’t work is if a game uses an anticheat that specifically blocks Linux - if you plan to play online games, it might be worth checking if the anticheat that it uses allows Linux or not. I haven’t tried modding so I can’t comment too much about that

1. See other recommendations for gaming-specific distros as I’m not familiar with them… Overall, most “beginner-friendly” distros (Fedora, Mint, …) that are not named Ubuntu are good. Ubuntu is not bad per-se: they just have their own ways of doing certain things that are counter-intuitive. Also don’t follow the memes and use Arch Linux or something (Arch is good, but not-beginner-friendly)

2. Some multi-player games have anti-cheats that straight-up won’t work on linux, so if you play any large online-based games it might help to check their linux support first. Otherwise, there are unique examples like Skyrim that are very hard to mod on linux, but most mainstream games should work either out-of-the-box or with very minor tinkering. Unless if you’re into some weird esoteric retro games like me… if so then good luck learning WINE lol

3. As long as you follow 1 you should be fine. In my opinion most beginner linux distros are more intuitive than Windows so…

4. I’m not sure if it is a good idea to dual boot unless you are reasonably familiar with computers… as dual booting can be finicky and sometimes Windows can just eat the linux partition. But I think it is doable? Again I don’t recommend dual-booting so…

5. IMO the biggest decision most beginners have to make is between Gnome/KDE (two of the most popular desktop environments), not between distros. Try to see which one clicks with you more! Also make sure to back up data before switching. Good luck!

If you’re going to dual boot, the latest version of Fedora makes that really easy to set up. Linux Mint is also a really good choice. For the love of god, avoid Ubuntu like the plague. It is not user friendly anymore. If you ever have to look up a guide on how to set up Flatpak, you’re in the wrong distro. Flatpaks should be front and center in the software center.

Btw, you don’t download installers from the internet like you do with Windows. You install software from the software app. On Gnome, it’s called Software, and on KDE, it’s called Discover. Fedora offers both Gnome and KDE. Since you’re new to Linux, I’d recommend KDE. It’s similar to the Windows layout.

Then Mint uses Cinnamon. It’s similar to a Windows layout. I don’t know what the software app is called. Cinnamon is really user friendly and familiar. You’d like it.

Then there’s Bazzite. Bazzite is great if you only want to game. Like, if you’re setting up a console-like PC for your living room. But, it does have some issues. The biggest one is that it’s immutable. That’s great (and actually beneficial) if you don’t need to change anything about the system, which you probably don’t anyway, but it gets annoying if you ever need to do anything more advanced. It also can only install containerized apps, so like Flatpak. (It can technically install packages, but they get wiped on the next update.) If you’re really 100% sure that you’re only ever going to game and do very basic things like browsing, basic photo editing, media, etc, then Bazzite would work for you. Remember to run the updater from Desktop Mode once in a while.

Since Linux is free and easy to installed, you can try out all and see which one you like. If you’re dual booting, that might be a bad idea, so instead, try them out using VirtualBox in Windows. In a VirtualBox, your games won’t run, btw, because they don’t have access to your graphics card.

If your games aren’t running well, you may need to install the Nvidia drivers from the software app. Just search for Nvidia driver, and you’ll find it. After an install and a reboot, your games should run fine.

Backup everything on your PC before you continue, in case anything goes wrong. As another user recommended, installing Linux to a separate drive is a lot easier and less problematic than trying to resize your Windows partition and use the same drive.

Final notes, some things to know about Linux:

• Windows games run through Proton. Proton is based on Wine. It’s a translation layer that takes system and API calls from the game and translates them from Windows calls to Linux calls. It has very little performance impact, if any at all.
• No drive letters: you have a root file system mounted at /, and other drives get mounted to paths inside that. This is how normal computers have worked since the 60s. Windows has drive letters because it is based on DOS, which was weird. Also, it uses a slash to separate paths instead of a backslash. Again, backslash is a weird DOS thing.
• The terminal really isn’t scary. It’s just a way to run apps that generally don’t have a GUI, but instead take text as input and give text as output.
• You probably won’t need to use the terminal.
• If anyone ever tells you to run a command that starts with “dd” or “rm”, be super wary. Those commands can destroy your system. Same with “sudo”. That command runs things as “root”, which is the administrator account.
• ”Linux” generally refers to a bunch of different operating systems with varying experiences and difficulty levels, but technically, “Linux” is just a kernel. Some people get all pedantic about it. Ignore them.
• Linux offers different file systems. Btrfs is awesome, ext4 is rock solid, zfs is also awesome but more complicated. Linux can read and write to NTFS (Windows) partitions as long as Bitlocker is disabled.
• Full disk encryption is super easy on everything except Bazzite.
• A dot (“.”) in front of a file name in Linux makes the file hidden. So “myfile” is not hidden, and “.myfile” is hidden.
• If you change systems, everything installed as a Flatpak stores its stuff in the “.var” folder in your home directory. If you copy that folder over to your new system, all your Flatpak apps will have everything set up already for you. For that reason, you can uninstall the browser that comes with your OS and install a browser through Flatpak if you want it to be super easy to migrate.
• Linux updates are super easy compared to Windows. Just use the software app, it will update everything on your system (except games).
• Linux is fun.
• Linux is life.
• Linux is love.

You want to game and you want it to be easy. Just install Bazzite, ignore people suggesting Mint. Mint is the best traditional distro ever made, but it has major flaws and it gets difficult if you try to game in it. Containerized immutable OS are way better for novices and the average user. People want to use their computer, not manage a computer they never use. A lot of us Linux fanatics we tend to forget that fact.

You have plenty of technical knowledge to get it installed. And that’s about it for what is required.

Don’t dual boot Windows, it gets too hands on and too technical fast. Instead, have Windows on a entirely separate second drive. Boot to the desired drive accordingly. Linux plays nice and can work with windows perfectly, but windows actively hates linux and will fuck up any drive it shares with it. So it is best windows is absolutely oblivious as to the existence of Linux in the machine. For that you’ll need to disable secureboot and probably disk encryption as well. As I said, it’s a technical challenge. Not worth it in my personal opinion.

Be mindful about the games you play, often if it doesn’t run on Linux is not because of any technical limitation on Linux side. It’s because of the political will to hurt Linux. This is why virtually all indie games run fine on Linux, it’s AAA slop that is designed to stop working if it detects it’s running on Linux.

1. I personally recommend Mint as the out-of-the-box experience is very familiar to a Windows user and the OS comes with everything one would expect a desktop OS to have pre-installed. That said, don’t stress too hard over the distro. This isn’t like Windows vs MacOS where everything is completely different. No, basically all your knowledge of one distro is transferable to another distro if you decide to change it up in the future.

2. At this point, I just assume a game works in Linux unless proven otherwise. Hit install in Steam and then hit play, no extra effort required. There are some that won’t, mostly games that use kernel-level anti-cheats and specifically disable the game if running in Linux. There are only a few dozen games total that fit this description. ProtonDb is a great resource for confirming if a game works or what tweaks might be desired. Anything rated Gold or higher you can assume will just work without you having to mess with it.

3. Linux is less of a resource hog than Windows, so if your computer is strong enough for Windows, it will work great on Linux too.

4. If you wish to dual boot, using two different drives is generally the way to go. Doing two different partitions works, but Windows really, really hates other OSes being installed along side it, even other Windows installs. Gaming is my primary pastime and I haven’t booted into my Windows drive in months. From my experience for the average person, a dual boot is only something you will want temporarily as you get used to the unfamiliar OS.

5. Good luck on your swap. I’m damn happy I did it and hope you will be too!

If the games you’re looking to play are competitive multiplayer games, those usually actively fight Linux users. Games like Valorant, Apex Legends, and Fortnite are all broken on Linux due to their invasive anti-cheat software. There are exceptions to this, of course. The devs of Marvel Rivals, for example, have said that they don’t have a problem with players on Linux.

For.anything else, odds are it will work fine. You can always check protondb.com to see if, and how well, your games work under Linux.

I’ve been Linux-only for a few years now, and I haven’t had issues playing anything yet, besides maybe some minor tweaks.

Mods can be more complicated, but I don’t have much experience with that. I do believe Nexus Mods are working of a project to simplify game mods under Linux, so hopefully that works out well.

First step is to check protondb if your favorite games are somewhat reasonably easy to get working.

Most work fine. There are some that are outright broken.

I made the jump about a year ago at this point and have been happy with the choice. That said, there is a learning curve and everything isn’t sunshine and roses. I’d still rate it as fully worth it.

I think I need to pick a “distro”, right? Based on the above, which distro may work best for me?

Yes, though this is less of a “gotcha” than it might seem. Different distros will have advantages and disadvantages for different things. However, most distros are going to do most things at a reasonable level. It sounds like you are prioritizing ease of use and gaming; so, you may want to go for one of the more gaming focused distros such as PopOS or SteamOS. But, I would echo what @redlemace said, “take a live-distro, put it on an USB stick and boot from that. Yes, it’s sometimes slow/sluggish but it works and you can get an impression of the distro”. I ran my chosen distro from a USB stick for a bit over a month before committing.

what am I most likely to NOT be able to do, if anything?

Very little. However, you will need to relearn how to do some things. And you’ll probably have to get comfortable with using the terminal for some stuff. This can be a bit jarring for someone who grew up with Windows, as there are some things which just don’t have a GUI to configure. And some applications will need to be replaced. For example, you’re probably not going to be able to use Microsoft Office, but Libre Office is a good replacement. Photoshop will get replaces with Gimp, and so on.

Lastly, there are some games which just don’t work on Linux. A lot of that is around Anti-cheat software. For example, I wasn’t able to join my work team in playing Call of Duty 6. The EA Anti-Cheat is a complete “fuck you” to Linux users. So, check out ProtonDB for games you care about. Most games run just fine; but, there is the odd hole. Anymore, I’m more surprised that a game doesn’t work on Linux than when it does.

I have heard modding in particular can be challenging with Linux.

I’ve not run into this; however, I don’t use any of the mod managers (e.g. Vortex) and so I’m used to moving files around manually. I’ve also not run Skyrim on my Linux setup, and that does seem to require a bit of work to get going. So, this may be an issue, depending on the game. This is yet another reason to give the whole “install on a USB stick” recommendation a go. Spin up Linux, give modding Skyrim a shot. If it’s too heavy a lift, then maybe don’t do it. As much as I think Linux has been a good idea, it may not be right for everyone.

Are there some smaller indy games that don’t have Linux support (thinking back to the early mac days)?

Funny enough, I find the smaller indie stuff usually has better Linux support, but YMMV. For example, my son introduced me to Dome Keeper. It’s a small game, but it just worked and is one of my favorite casual games. Though again, checking ProtonDB is a good thing to do.

I would rate my computer technical ability at like… A 4/10. I haven’t done anything too crazy but can Google most issues and willing to learn. Is this realistically enough to get me up and running with Linux?

I’d think so. There’s lots of good info out there now to help you get up and running. Though this links back to the question about distros. If you don’t want to have to get super technical, pick a distro which is more aimed towards “just working”. And again, the USB “try before you buy” idea is really, really useful.

if the final answer here involves running a windows partition, is it possible to safely still use a windows 10 partition, even after the end of support?

Depending on how you plan to use it, the risk may be reasonable enough. For example, let’s say you have one or two games which just don’t run on Linux and you keep a Windows 10 partition around to run those games. You boot to Windows, play those games and then jump back to Linux for your normal computer use (web browsing, email, etc.). Then ya, that’s probably fine. The real risks start to show up when you use Windows for stuff which exposes it to the internet. If you are downloading and running random applications on it, you’re gonna have a bad time. Over time, even basic web browsing may start to be a risk, as vulnerabilities could be found which allow a malicious web page to run code. You also want to be sure you don’t have the device completely exposed to the internet (this is bad, even with an up to date Windows). Though, most home routers already prevent this; so, this is unlikely to be an issue. Just don’t hook your Windows 10 partition up to public WiFi (e.g. coffee shop, library or conference).

Just having the partition isn’t a risk. So long as Windows isn’t running, it isn’t available for attackers to attack. It’s just data on a disk. It’s only when it’s running and exposed to attackers that it becomes a problem. And you can control that and manage the risk.

anything else I might run into that I’m not expecting? Words of encouragement?

Be patient with it and it can be a worthwhile change. Also, don’t be afraid to come back and ask questions. There’s lot of folks here who can help you along. Getting away from Windows feels good and it’s great to actually own your system, rather than renting it from Microsoft. Best of luck.

OK so you want something simple that just works and will give you minimal headaches.

I see from ur comments ur running nvidia which is a pain to get drivers working for on some distros but some have a graphical installer to get then going.

I would defiantly recommend mint as its based on one of the most common disros giving u extremely transferable knowlege and very simmillar to windows.

As people have said check protondb u will only really have issues with anti cheat games. Indie games I find often have better Linux support but check protondb.

If u wanna duel boot so u can still use windows then I reccommend a separate drive. Windows on a separate partition but the same drive is unhappy and its known that windows will sometimes purposely blow up Linux cos Microsoft hates you.

If you are going to duelboot then for security u will want windows 11 but its shit so I recommend tiny11 or cristitis’s debloater to uninstall all the crap.

I generally recommend linux mint for beginners, mostly because it’s pretty great at working out of the box, and it pretty general purpose.

Also, it’s reasonably user friendly and easy to use.

Here’s what I did. I got an external USB drive and I installed Linux mint on it. That way the windows drive inside the computer was left alone. Worst case scenario I just reboot the computer go back to windows. I was I was up and running.

Once I had Linux Installed on the external drive, I then installed steam on the external drive.

I play Guild wars 2. I did not buy the game through steam. I bought it directly from the maker of the game. So what I did was, I went Guild wars two website. Downloaded the executable, which is obviously Windows executable to my Linux computer. And told Steam to run it as a non-steam game. I just had to make sure I went into the settings for steam and turn the compatibility for the game on. Once the game was installed into Linux . I then just ran the game under steam in Linux no big deal. Works flawlessly.

I had to copy all of my music MP3 files over to Linux, That’s not hard to do.

Linux meant as others have said is very friendly for new users. It’s basically plug-in play. I have a printer made by brother that worked out ofthe box. The only thing I’ve never been able to get to work on that printer is on the physical printer itself there is a button called scan. It doesn’t work under Linux for me. I even went through the brother company to get tech-support. They said the drivers are installed and everything is set up correctly, but the button still doesn’t work. They say it’s something to do with my firewall, but I’ve pretty much given up on that.

I ran it that way for better part of seven months. Seven months being from when I first install Lennox to the external drive to now. Over the weekend I actually formatted the drive on the inside the computer and just installed Linux there.

You see the problem running on an external drive is it runs slow as hell. I mean to bring up a web browser. Can take you a minute and half. But I did it that way just so I could test Linux without destroying the windows install in case I did something wrong. But everything works fine. I can do what I want so there is no point in running on the slower system.

Linux mint has a package manager, Think of it like add remove programs. Only this package Manager has a ton of programs that you can add to the system. It goes out to the Internet and find these programsand then categorize them under games, music graphics, etc. And all you have to do is just click on the program then click install and it just takes care of it.

Strongly recommend trying mint as your first step into Linux.

There are a few distros that make gaming on Linux a bit simpler to setup. Bazzite is one, but there are others. You should read up on WINE, Vulkan, Lutris and maybe STEAM/Steam-tricks. There is a list somewhere of game titles and peoples success with gaming on Linux. Some of the ones that expect Windows Anticheat hooks aren’t going to work. If you aren’t wanting to fiddle till your system is setup to game nicely, there is a W10 LTSC version that will still be supported for some time.

If you really won’t do much other than gaming, check Bazzite and Nobara out. You can turn your PC into a gaming console with Bazzite btw.

And check the ProtonDB to see if your game will even run on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/explore

Long time ago I left Windows and went to linux. Yes, there is a learning curve, but once past that (digital)life became so much faster/better. I even changed my wife’s pc to linux. She knows nothing about pc’s and only said 'it looks different now" but she has much less issues on linux (elementary OS) then she had with micro$oft.

So, as I read it, you feel like you have some time left to decide. I suggest to take a live-distro, put it on an USB stick and boot from that. Yes, it’s sometimes slow/sluggish but it works and you can get an impression of the distro. Take an other one, try that too, and one more and… Ah well, just play with a couple and see which one you like best.

Once you have chosen (remember, it’s not a life-time decision (!), switching distro’s is relatively easy) install it by making your PC dual boot. That way you can have windows as a sort of back-up in case you need it.

hint: take a look at https://distrowatch.com/

1. yes you do. A good distro I recommend newbies is Linux Mint, because it’s visually similar to windows. Another great option for beginners is Pop!OS, because the developers take more care to automate things that you might encounter when first starting to use Linux. Overall, it doesn’t really matter that much what distribution you choose in terms of what software is available, it all comes down to design choices that change how hard things are to do (but reward you with more customization, of course)

2. you will not be able to play some games that have an anticheat that forbids linux. The main culprit is EasyAntiCheat (while it does support linux, enabling that support is a choice by the game’s developer). The main games I have noticed can’t work are Fortnite (EAC), Hunt: showdown (EAC), league of legends & Valorant (Vanguard), R6 Siege (EAC) and PUBG (EAC). You can use protondb to learn what games in your steam library are known to simply not work.

Don’t expect games that you own on the windows store to work at all (this includes Xbox game pass). Most of them are available on steam, but that requires buying them again.

Most of the other stuff works, generally. Valve’s Proton supports a very large part of most games today, and unless the game you want to launch is very old or specifically doesn’t want you to use Linux, chances are the game will work first try, especially indies. Protondb is a great help to see what parameters one needs to use to make it work if it doesn’t first try. Make sure to “enable proton compatibility for all games” in steam’s main options, otherwise it won’t let you download game.

For tools that aren’t on steam but target steam games (for example mod managers), you should use protontricks (it’s most likely in your distro’s package manager, you don’t need to download it from GitHub) to launch the tool’s exe inside of the proton context of that game (steam maintains a separate pseudo-windows install (a “wine prefix”) for each game that uses proton). From there, the tool will behave as if you launched it on windows.

For tools that stand alone, you can add them to steam as a non-steam game and in it’s properties, force it to use proton, which allows you to launch e.g. cracked games. I also recommend using Bottles to manage your third-party launchers.

3. most likely you’ll be fine. You’re unlikely to encounter any issues that haven’t been encountered by anyone before, so don’t hesitate to Google and to ask for help on various forums. You don’t need to know how to program to use Linux, though it does unlock some pretty nice things (it also does on windows for that matter)

4. windows 10 LTSC will continue being available for a few years. If you need a windows partition (imo you only do need it if you want to play games that have restrictive anticheat), I suggest installing it on a separate disk altogether, because windows tends to not play nice with other partitions on the same disk, and will create headaches you could have avoided.

5. welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy your time away from ads in the start menu.