I’ve been wanting to take the leap, too. I’ve got Linux installed on my gaming laptop and I’ve been trying games one by one to see if they work. Next step is dual booting on my desktop and only switching to Windows when I absolutely can’t make something work. My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux. I really don’t want to have to reinstall all of them.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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Linux can read and write to NTFS drives just fine. Just make sure you're using the newer native (in-kernel) driver, ntfs3. The older user-mode driver, ntfs-3g, still works but has much worse performance, which I guess should be a concern if you're going to run games off of it (ntfs-3g is fine for casual use)
Also, make sure you have backups. I don't care how stable NTFS drivers are I don't fucking trust them for daily use, especially writes.
I recommend copying files off of NTFS and onto ext4 if you're able. If you can't, try to keep operations to read only.
I've lost too many drives due to stupid issues (sometimes me making an error, sometimes the driver not working properly).
Backup:
- 3 different locations
- 2 different media formats
- 1 offsite
You can read NTFS drives; I still have shared drives from my Windows install despite barely using Windows at all.
You can generally import steam libraries, and then steam can do the proton work.
And you can sometimes run other programmes in Linux from the windows install - i.e. it can have it's own Wine prefix in Linux and use the installed files on the NTFS. But this doesn't always work - if the programme's or game's installer makes significant system changes or installs other software then they won't exist in the Wine prefix and the game may not work. It's better to install windows games fresh so everything is installed into the wine prefix.
And Lutris is well set up with scripts for installing a wide range of games from their installers; it will avoid problems reinstalling games fresh.
My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux.
I'd check https://www.protondb.com/ and if they your favorite ones are native/gold/platinum then... move on. I'd initially NOT erase my drives and, assuming you have either patience and/or a fast connection, just let it re-download and install overnight, then enjoy. If need be bring the saves back (but again via Steam, should just work) and only once that's done, erase the Windows partitions. This is a no risk process. Honestly some games will not work but IMHO this isn't the question. The question rather is... will you have more playable games than time left, if so, then considering moving even without 100% coverage.
ntfs drives do work in linux, but there may be some issues sometimes. i switched alnost 2 years ago and i have distrohopped a bit. fedora and nobara had intermittent issues with the ntfs drive, it suddenly became unmountable and it takes some fighting to get it back. in mint, the drive constantly corrupts files and entire folders, and the only way to delete those is to boot into windows and delete them there.
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All I have to say is: welcome, good luck and have fun.
My advice having made the move (but with a fair bit of linux tinkering before hand):
- Don't rush to delete Windows; you're doing the right thing keeping it about while you adjust to a new OS and in case there are some things you just can't do in Linux
- If you want to understand your OS and enjoy tinkering / learning, think about using a virtual machine to play with a linux system to get used to it. As you're on Fedora, you can install KVM and Virt-Manager, make a virtual machine and inside it install another Linux OS which you can practice with. It can even be Fedora - and this can let you make changes in a disposable environment before you do them for real in your whole OS or just to see "what happens if". I've even built an Arch system within a VM just so I can understand more of how linux works
- Back up your home folder before making really big changes - this is where everything that belongs to you is kept, and even contains all your personal config files. Back up and restoring the Home folder can make things much faster to fix if you accidentally mess things up
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I did this a few months ago. I haven't found replacements for everything, but I've found that it's really come down to my not actually using those things very much in the first place, so I haven't had to do the work.
When I look, I find something that works. What are you still looking for?
I find the array of installation options a little overwhelming or intimidating sometimes. If I can just do the equivalent of apt-get, that's, of course, easy enough. But sometimes things are just realeased as tar balls, and I have to go and look up WTF I'm supposed to do each time. Nothing comes up often enough for me to internalize it.
I do find myself chafing against just the fundamental differences of the *nix environment from the DOS-based heritage of Windows. And I find it difficult to get help with certain things sometimes because the installed user/developer base isn't super interested in supporting different modes of interaction ("just use the terminal, it's so much faster [for me]" is a common refrain that makes me want to get stabby). But 99% of the time, it's been smooth sailing.
At this stage, if you have drivers for everything, and there's nothing mission critical that's still tied to Windows, the best advice I can give you is to copy your important files over from your Windows partition, and then dump it. If you have a 2nd computer, leave that one running Windows for now. The duel booting can make it tempting to just reboot into Windows "just for this one thing", and stay there until you next have to restart.
Bash is always there, and bash scripts and snippets are precise. Describing gui manipulations when the GUI keeps changing is also quite hard... what if the person you are interacting with has a 2-yo system and you have the bleeding edge? Even knowing which menu the settings are in can be frustrating for the helper.
Windows users (e.g. me at work) get grumpy when Microsoft starts changing the menu structure after keeping it consistent for 20 years and start thinking of powershell scripts to create consistency between our engineering workstations.
Advice is to build relationships with others who also use Linux. Find a chat room that you can stay in and stick with for a couple of years. It will be invaluable. Don't try to do this purely from documentation, stack overflow, blog posts, and searching forums. Real live people is the way to go.
A lot of distros have their own Discord communities these days. It's pretty easy to find people who can help in real time.
good on you! I just recently did the same thing as you (cos of some work apps that only work with windows right now)
small question, did you go with silverblue or workstation?
I went with silverblue and it's a bit annoying looking up guides/forums posts because they all use dnf 😭
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i really wanted to set up passthrough GPU on my desktop so I could run little windows vms with full 3D acceleration and I got so close but ultimately failed. I really want to try again though because it would be so nice to be able to just blow away vms after I'm done with the game i wanted to play