this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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My go-to answer is Mint. It works on a ton of hardware out-of-the-box, it's interface is very easy to learn for anyone used to Windows, it's got a massive userbase so it's easy to get answers to any questions you might have.
I'm going to assume you've used the terminal before. Since you're not afraid of some fiddling I recommend Fedora or CachyOS. The desktop and hardware work out of the box on newer hardware and Wayland has great support for multi monitor. Get flatpak. Stay away from Nvidia.
I don't do pirated games but since you're not updating the game you can use Bottles to install non Linux software or maybe Lutris.
I'm running arch (on AMD) and just installed Fedora on my partner's computer (with Nvidia RTX 4050) both using Heroic and Steam for games.
Just keep trying what works for you. Linux is improving more and more.
Oh no what have you done. Just looked it up and now I want to put cachyos on my steam deck. I did not need that.
The hot swappable scheduler is super neat
They also let you pick you user shell in the installer now so you don't have to get stuck with fish if you don't want to
What's a hot swappable (assuming cpu?) scheduler? I thought the scheduler could be changed on the fly on any linux system.
Edit: for posterity, schedulers are usually baked into the kernel. If you are familiar with them you might have heard the names "performance", "powersave", "ondemand" etc. This means that if you want to use some new scheduler algorithm you would normally have to compile the kernel to include it in the available options.
I don't know what cachyos' sched-ext exactly is but it allows you to install and use new scheduler implementations on the fly from the userland.
Welcome to the world of Linux 😂
With your level of competence, I would go Fedora. Little bit of CLI fiddling, but 99% just works. GNOME / KDE / Plasma are available preinstalled if you want a specific DE.
I been gaming on it with three screens for many years, absolutely no issues.
I second Fedora. The packages are way more up to date than Debian, and the default is filesystem is btrfs which is really neat if you want to get into it.
Would also recommend installing oh my bash so you can get a pretty terminal with some good pre-installed aliases and such.
Kubuntu. KDE is great and has a lot of QoL/productivity features that should exist in windows. I go from work to home and it's like a breath of fresh air.
KDE is very familiar coming from Windows.
Thanks everyone for the comments! Seems like Mint it is. I did some quick searching and it looks like the games I care about at this moment should be okay. Honestly it's just Grounded 2 (when I can afford to buy it, or if I decide to pirate it idk. I got a better job and it will feel good to buy things once I have more money) and Ostranauts right now.
I commented in another thread about the pain with the switch being all the backing up I'd have to do, but I'm realizing I really don't. Everything important is secure elsewhere. All my storage is games and such, all of which can be redownloaded and reinstalled. I'll just snag some save files and do the thing. Might try on Monday, my day off.
A few years back on a fresh install, I actually put my /home on it's own partition/hard drive. That way, in the future if I want to upgrade or switch distros, I am able to do so while keeping my user files intact without having to worry so much about backing up. But I also have Timeshift/R-sync set on a schedule and do occasionally back up my /home to an external hard drive too. Maybe keep this in mind if you ever get your files in order lol.
For installing games outside of steam, I highly recommend Heroic Games Launcher. Even for pirated repacks it works great. The GoG/Epic/Amazon store integrations plus automatic updates are just icing on the cake.
How does Heroic relate to pirated game repacks? I thought it was just a tool for running non Steam storefronts.
It lets you install stuff manually too, plus manage the Proton version you use to run it. So for instance if you have an old game on CD, you could install that with Heroic and launch it through there, letting Heroic keep your Proton version up to date. Same thing with pirated games.
If you’re going mint it’s worth it to try lmde first.
Anything in the Ubuntu family tree, Pop!_OS, Mint, etc would probably be fine. Mint is sort of a cousin of Ubuntu at this point. It still uses apt but has it's own software store. Most of the time you are fiddling with something, instructions for Ubuntu will work on Mint. I usually recommend Mint because it has a good out of the box experience like the @someone@hexbear.net said.
Regarding fitgirl repacks. I've tried with Armored Core 6 and Disco Elysian but couldn't get either to install correctly. I didn't poke around to hard though. You have vanilla WINE, Steam's Proton, the Glorious Eggroll fork of Proton and even Lutris to play around with when getting Windows games to run. I've had like a 98% success rate with Proton through Steam but that might be an issue if you are worried about DRM. Idk why anyone pirates lol. I do because I'm poor and hate capitalism.
I have been using Linux full time for a decade now and program as a hobby so as long as you aren't using, like, C# you should be fine. I use Codium which is the telemetry-free fork of VS Code and it's been a flawless experience. Eclipse and Java is clunky but it's like that on Windows too imo.
Debian and KDE
Don't bother with Arch, it's too finicky, don't bother with Ubuntu it's too corporate
Arch requires a commitment to troubleshooting, but i can count on one hand the times an upgrade broke my 10+ year installation - and even then it's because i ignored the update notes.
I agree it's not super beginner friendly, but if you want to tinker and get your system set up just the way you like it, there's no finer distro
The arch wiki is also some of the greatest software documentation in existence
I literally moved from Debian to Arch because Debian had more broken shit (because old software) that was harder to fix.
Archwiki is love. I recommend arch because if you follow the excellent installation instructions on the wiki you will know
- What the components of a linux are
- How those componets are configured..
- Why you configured them that way.
But if you just want to like use stuff and not understand a system or make any choices about it then fedora is probably fine.
Debian is great if the things you want to do have been a thoroughly solved problem for a few years already. Debian is a pain if you are trying to get something working which only recently became possible / practical. I love Debian, but I only use it on machines which don't have time for dedicated maintenance beyond apt update; apt upgrade.
On my desktop I run Gentoo (high maintenance, highly customizable). On my laptop I run Fedora (lower maintenance, but still a LOT more churn than Debian). On everything else, it's Debian (practically no maintenance. Software versions are locked in place for like two years at a time and these 'dist-upgrades' are the only situation where you need to dedicate any time to it).
I did the thing! I installed Mint. After looking at my files and backing up what I needed (not much), I just nuked everything.
I have to jump through some hoops with Steam support because I lost access to the phone with my Steam Guard long ago. Not the fault of this install obviously.
After some fiddling with Bottles to run patch executables, figuring out how to give it access to my other drives, and running the game in Lutris, I got Ostranauts running. Getting my save into the right location was some trial and error, but it loaded. Everything runs smoothly.
I'll try for Grounded 2 after I get paid, as I'll probably pay for that one and get it through Steam.
Thanks for the input everyone! Everything is so fast and snappy, and, aside from getting rid of a lot of files I don't use, all the extra space Windows uses is now all mine! muahaha!