As the title say’s, my Windows 10 install broke, but I’m still unsure whether or not to reinstall Windows 10 or install Linux.
Context:
A few months back, Windows 10 updates started to fail on my desktop. I had considered just reinstalling the OS but as my machine was working just fine I simply tolerated it.
Today, when my machine auto-updated it broke something. At first I thought the update worked. But soon I realized that the taskbar was acting odd. All the shortcuts I had placed on my taskbar were working as usual, but when I right clicked them nothing would happen. I clicked on the start menu and the search bar but nothing happened. Most of the widgets on the right side of the taskbar weren’t working such as Volume, Wi-Fi, Date & Time, and Notifications. I assumed it was just the taskbar that was broken but when I tried to use the windows key to open the settings menu, it didn’t work either, nor did it’s keyboard shortcut.
It seems the update had broken some apps that, though didn’t prevent Windows from starting, made navigating it a lot more difficult.
I’ve used Linux before. I had a Linux Mint, and EndeavourOS virtual machine installed on my computer. More recently, I installed EndeavourOS on an old laptop I had lying around, and have been using it daily for about a month now. Although I’ve had my difficulties, I’ve been loving my experience.
Though I’m still a Linux newbie I’ve been meaning to give Linux a real shot on my desktop for a couple weeks now, but as my machine was working just fine I didn’t really feel any necessity to make the switch.
But with my Windows install breaking, I feel like its time to give Linux a real shot.
My Questions:
I want to install Fedora on my desktop but I still have a few questions pertaining to Linux and my desktop specs.
I’m running a GTX 1660. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about running Linux with an NVIDIA GPU so I’d like a few things clarified.
- How would I install NVIDIA drivers?
- Does Wayland work with NVIDIA?
- A lot of distros are moving to Wayland. How would I ensure I stay on an Xorg session?
- I enjoy modding Bethesda games. Does Mod Organizer work fully on Linux?
- I’ve had difficulties running my steam games through proton on my laptop. Does proton work with Fedora?
- With said difficulties with proton, would installing Steam as a flatpak work or will it cause issues?
- Can you really not play any games with anti-cheat?
If you believe Fedora wouldn’t be the best distro for me I’m welcome to hear any suggestions, though I’m not enthusiastic about running anything Debian based nor installing vanilla Arch.
I’m sorry if I’m coming off as lazy for not doing my research. I’ve tried to research many of these questions before but found no concrete answers.
To all those who took the time to respond to my post.
Thank You!
I recently switched from Windows 10 to Fedora so I can share my experience. I’ve dabbled with Linux in the past but there’s always been immediate issues which have caused me to never stay that long. It’s too easy to just ditch and go back when everything on Windows just works out of the box. I was getting sick of all the privacy issues so decided to totally bail and go balls deep. I found it easier to push through all the problems by adopting a mentality that I was living with this now and I eventually started to enjoy fixing all the problems (it took a few weeks). Everything’s working now and solutions are out there, you just need to google and power through.
Installing Steam and Nvidia drivers is easy. You open the settings of the “App Store” and enable third party repositories. Once you’ve done that the Nvidia drivers and Steam will turn up in there and can be installed with the click of a button.
However, and maybe I’m just unlucky, but the dream of Linux gaming has been an absolute non-starter for me. I guess people on Radeons may have more luck but with my 2060S I haven’t really gotten anything to play acceptably. Even with Proton-GE and whatever other hacks people talk about everything has been unstable, slow, or both, and that’s if it starts at all. I’m sure it’s probably just the certain games I’m trying to play but I ended up partitioning my drive and installing Windows 10 again just for gaming.
Something else to try is Nobara, it’s a Linux distro built for ease of use and gaming. If I’d heard of it earlier I’d probably have tried it first but I’ve got Fedora nicely set up and I don’t think it includes anything I can’t simply install myself.
Have you tested if hardware acceleration even works at all? On my Fedora install, whenever I try the latest 545 driver, it just doesn’t work. glxinfo just returns an error, insufficient resources.
535 still works great for me though.