I’m considering installing Linux on my laptop but I’m unsure if I should start with a virtual machine first. My main use cases are gaming and coding, so I want to make sure it’s the right fit.
What are the pros and cons of using Linux for someone like me? Would starting with VirtualBox be a good idea before going all in?
Background: I used linux for work in a vm for 6 years, (coding). Most of my life I have been using windows at home, since Win 3.11. For the last year and a half I have been full time linux user, Gaming and all. It is hard to tell what the pros and cons will be for you personally. My reccomendation:
- have some(a lot) spare time
- make sure you don’t need your laptop for anything critical while experimenting
- make sure you have a way back to a known working config e.g. windows installer on usb
- have your data backed up somewhere, not on the laptop.
- Just install a more polular distro and try it, go in deep google/ai chat yourself trough the issues
- then decide if you want to go back to windows
The question is mostly about what kind of gaming.
Most single player experiences are no longer a problem because of steam proton, but multiplayer anti cheat and other AAA DRM is sometimes a windows only thing.
Coding is just superior on linux. It’s the platform built by coders to make their own life easier for 30 years.
You should dual boot, try it out for a few games and see how the dev process translates and get your feet wet.
Setting up a VM is probably a lot more effort than just installing it.
You mean getting a dual boot is easier and less time consuming than setting up a VM?
IDK much about these. Probably I’ll binge linux vids on YT for a while to get more info. After reading this comment section, i feel like i should try it because coding is just better in linux and i usually play single player offline games so even gaming would be fine there
You’ll find a little RTFM (read the friendly manual) much more time/result effective than watching videos. Want to go backward and forward to find an exact piece of information? Get precisely what the original developer meant? Ask for help on a forum? RTFM. RTFM. RTFM.
It may seem slower initially. It’s a skill to develop. For me, it typically means 5 things (in order, where applicable).
tldr <command>. This you need to install. IIRC on Arch it’s tealdeer. This gives you common examples of the command. Common commands will have an entry, but it’s hit or miss for more obscure ones. It’s crowd sourced so contribute when you can!
-h or --help This gives you usage, subcommands, flags, and options. It is exhaustive for common commands, but less common ones will not always give you the usage for everything or you need to do <command> -h or --help <subcommand> And sometimes a command only has -h or --help. If one doesn’t work, try the other
man <command> If a command has a man page, it is tue “single source of truth” (quotes because that not what ssot actually is but it is a good descriptor) man pages are exhaustive. They have everything a program can do. If you want a deep dive for fun or need to find something very specific, it is almost always there. I suggest if you want to get good at Linux RTFM often
Arch Wiki. It’s the wikipedia of Arch. User maintained and to the point. Again, reading is a skill. Learning to use the Arch Wiki effectively takes time, but it is well worth it. It is most useful if you run Arch (I can’t think of a time it references a package manager other than pacman). Following the pages in the wiki is almost exclusively why I use Arch Linux, btw. And don’t let people scare you away from it. They are arrogant pricks. Most aren’t. If you don’t want to do a custom install of Arch, it’s as easy as using the arch install TUI. And if you have issues, because you run into problems use the wiki!
Web search. You probably have this one down, but a few suggestions. Don’t ask a question. (Unless you know you are specifically searching for that question) your query should only contain the words for what it is you are searching for. And make things singular not plural. Singular is inclusive of plural. The other way around isn’t true. When you want to search a particular site, include that in your query string. Last. Don’t use google. They want to show you ads, and I’ve recently seen they don’t care about quality (anymore or potentially ever) The first result, which is typically what people go to, is almost always the one with the most ads. I suggest Duck Duck Go (opinions will vary) for the specific reason you can use what they call bangs to search on a particular site and go directly to the first (non ad optimized…yet) search result as am example !w cats takes you directly to the cats page on wikipedia. !aw virtual box. Arch wiki virtual box.
I would suggest (and typically do) use those in order repeating websearch (I’ve probably done this for up to an hour at least a few times this week) before I do the next 2. Write a forum post. Now you are getting to the point that if you can’t find the answer, it probably doesn’t exist. Again their are strategies and in this case, ettiquette you need to follow. You’ll annoy or even piss people off if you don’t. READ THE RULES OF THE FORUM. When you explain the problem, not what you are doing to do to solve it. There might be another way to solve it. Then explain what you have tried in terms of what you have read and tried so far.
Then and only then watch a video.
If you code, its nearly always better on Linux. Except you code especially for Windows only.
For gaming I’ve had zero issues on bazzite, comes ready out of the box.
Its worth it to check https://www.protondb.com/ to see if the game you like works.
Personally for coding, I think Fedora Atomic is pretty up there because they make it easy to containerize everything. Universal blue has an atomic spin called Bluefin specifically designed for devs https://projectbluefin.io/
Coding is absolutely miserable on Windows compared to Linux. I’ve been developing almost exclusively in Linux for the past twenty years. Nothing beats the command line for getting shit done; a split screen between a terminal and Sublime Text is my go-to setup.
Sounds intriguing. Could you send some screenshots or point me in the direction where I can learn some tips and tricks, so to speak?
A screenshot would add nothing. Terminal on the left side, Sublime Text on the right. Learn how to use git and gdb from the command line.
If you are running windows non home edition enable the Hyper-V features and fire up a VM.
I was think about WSL but that may not work in this case.
Shit. What if you are running the home edition? I’ve been thinking about switching as well, but I don’t have a background in coding and I’d have to run a dedicated ssd with windows just for my work programs (design related) or migrate to FOSS completely.
If you are on home edition then VirtualBox should be ok.
Hm, appreciate it! I’ll look into it.
If you have a USB stick you could just boot up a live CD of the operating system.
So that WSL thing doesn’t work in Windows home edition you mean?
I don’t think wsl will work as it doesn’t provide a desktop experience. But as wsl is supported on home editions by the look of it.
I recommend dual booting, not a VM. It is easy enough to choose which OS to boot into if you need to go back to Windows, while being enough friction that you don’t immediately fallback to going into Windows every time you don’t know how to do something in Linux.
I don’t code, but from the gaming standpoint, things are pretty decent on Linux these days. I’ve been on Linux full time on my laptop for well over a year now, and 6+ months on my main desktop now and find very few reasons to boot into Windows. I think I booted into Windows last weekend for the first time in at least 2 months because I had to upgrade the FW on a device that only had a Windows tool. Otherwise I do have a windows VM on a server that I use relatively frequently, because the state of 3D CAD software on Linux is horrible.
One of my buds is a programmer and runs linux and windows on his machine. At this point he’s pretty adroit at fixing any issues on linux, but he has faced limitations before.
Regarding work, being on linux apparently was a big plus when he got hired, and works exclusively on linux due to its stability.
Regarding gaming, many games we play apparently run better on linux (inc. ArmA Reforger and some others, I forget), but some will just not run at all (anything with a kernel anticheat), and his mic sounds like utter shit on discord due to missing drivers or something.
I do remember there was a site where you could check how well a game ran on linux, but I forget. You might be able to check if the games you got run on steam deck, since they are linux based.
I do remember there was a site where you could check how well a game ran on linux
You probably remembering protondb.com. You can check how good your games run your games with proton (valve’s windows compatibel layer based on wine and dxvk). You can use proton with any games also outside of steam. For example with heroic launcher with epic and gog games.
Yeah this is the one.
I do remember there was a site where you could check how well a game ran on linux
Is this the one? WineHQ AppDB
Might’ve been, but I don’t remember it being so red. I’m on mobile right now though, and my PC browser loads everything in dark mode, maybe the colors were affected.
In any case, the site my buddy showed me ranked games according to performance just like that one so that one would still be useful.
There’s a 100% chance that his mic issues are not driver related, but instead are Discord’s fault. They are classically awful at providing feature parity for Linux.
Have him fiddle with the audio settings, it’s probably either the echo cancellation or noise reduction. As another commenter mentioned there are third party solutions for both.
For gaming as long as it’s doesn’t shipped with malware AC you can play it just fine, idk for coding I never written a single line of code ever since I switched to Linux 2 years ago but I heard from most professional coder said Linux is perfect for coding (maybe not if you code softwares for windows).
I installed linux mint to a secondary hard drive, then I installed steam onto that Linux install. I play wars two, so I added Guild Wars two as a non-steam game to steam.
I didn’t want to re-buy Guild wars two with steam because I’d lose all of my progress. Once I added it as a non-steam game I just right clicked on the game within steam and changed the compatibility to the newest proton. (I didn’t choose a hot fix version of proton) It runs just fine.
This is what I would suggest that you do , is install it to a secondary drive to see if that variation of Linux will work for you.
FYI for GW2 you can actually use the steam client even if your account is non-steam, you just need to use a launch option – see here https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/wvxqe3/logging_into_guild_wars_2_on_steam_with_an/
You can always do a dual boot. I’ve had a dual boot Linux Mint and Win 11 for maybe 18 months and I’m finally getting around to purging Windows out for good. The Mint installer sets it all up shockingly easily. I ended up so rarely using Windows that at this point I would rather have the space back.
Admittedly, I do very little coding or gaming, so YMMV, but I’m also basically trashing PS Elements and MS Office Home because I know GIMP and LibreOffice do the job anyway. It was that $250 that kept me holding on for this long.
