Hi everyone, I’m planning on moving from w11 to kubuntu (lts release - 24.04). I’m a gamer at heart, a game designer by education, and wanting to get away from Windows. I could really use some top tips, best practices, and things to look out for. I have run Linux on a Chromebook, but never as my primary PC.
I’m preparing by copying tax info, critical documents, game prototypes, and D&D documents to a USB.
Then run Linus from a different USB on restart?
Thank you for your help, and any references to specific how-to’s 😅.
Backups, always do backups of your important stuff, this is not a thing exclusive to Linux, but something many people forget about.
I am definitely guilty of this… Good time to get better 🤣
don’t do kubuntu, it is a terrible place to start for beginners. I don’t think we should be recommending ubuntu at all, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
theres also the fact that ubuntu ships very out of date software… among other things regarding privacy concerns, snaps being terrible, just don’t.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix.
Oh wow, this is a lot to parse, thank you! To be honest, I choose kubuntu because my brother started on it, and got his wife on it too 😅. I’ll check out fedora before I get started and make a decision 😁
You… Are a solid dude. We need linux people like you that doesn’t fight other Linux users just because what distro someone else enjoys. But actually can explain why certain distros are good or bad in a logical manner. Even offering to assist. Fair play to you <3
Use the package manager! I have a friend that is an amazing programmer he knows computer software well. But he said Linux is a hassle to use because of updates. I was confused then I found out he would download the .tar.gz and install software manually.
Just get used to using the package manager instead of downloading from the websites like on windows. It takes a minute to get used to but life will be much easier.
So he was manually compiling all the software he used, even those related to his system like openssh?
Anything that wasn’t installed by default or wasn’t a dependancy. So Nvidia drivers he downloaded from the website, Discord, Spotify, Chrome.
Some of them had .RPM files so that helped
But he said Linux is a hassle to use because of updates … Just get used to using the package manager
Yeah, package managers are great… but also… for somethings… flatpaks from Flathub/Software Center are also great because those apps get automatically updated in the background, so you don’t even have to think about updating anything.
Yeah, package manager. So flat packs are another version of a package manager and a little more
what distro was he using?
Fedora
Sounds good, ty for the recommendation
Run a live version of kubuntu from a usb drive to confirm wifi/lan drivers work and you can access the internet.
Yes indeed! That’s the plan!
Just to be safe you may want to copy important files to a cloud storage AND usb drive before formatting the drive.
Also don’t overthink this and there is nothing wrong with Kubuntu, but Kinoite is going to be very similar and a little more resistant to n00b tinkering mistakes.
I have 20 years in the video game industry, plenty of PC experience, just less In Linux. I’m not too worried about making mistakes that cannot be fixed 😁
if i suggested encrypting said files before uploading them to cloud storage, would that be good advice or ramblings-of-the-homeless-man-on-the-corner-warning-of-the-black-helicopters
edit: at least maybe the tax data
Always wise to encrypt sensitive data.
Good call, I’ll probably keep tax info on a USB only 😅
You’re already using Obsidian, so my suggestion is… Take notes! Take notes on cool software you’ve discovered, take notes on your settings and configurations, take notes on any issues and bugs you’ve had to fix, take notes on how to use unfamiliar programs, take notes on Linux terminology. You have a huge personal knowledge base from years of using Windows. Linux is not hard to use, but it takes time to become second nature to you.
I use obsidian for d&d notes 😅. Could be useful otherwise though, and get me off of Google keep
I use Keep for checklists and disposable notes, and Joplin (similar to Obsidian, but open source) for my “forever” notes. I look for apps that give you the option of exporting notes in a common format (currently markdown), and I have notes that have followed me through several changes of note taking programs.
Be careful using a USB drive as a backup, they are for temporary storage and fail over time.
Good call, there was a cloud recommendation. I’ll probably follow that route
I did this same move two years ago. Make a list of critical must have functions. Get a second storage drive like your current one, swap out the old and install Kubuntu. Get those critical apps installed and tested. Create a virtual machine out of your old primary drive. Boot that inside Linux when needed.
Good call, I’ll have to look into proton for steam games I think? Or maybe a wine compatibility layer? (I don’t know what that means, but will check it out. Just from top Internet search)
Protondb is a really good source for that information. I do want to mention protonupqt though. Basically when you go on Protondb you might see that some people are using versions of proton that aren’t included with steam(like proton-GE, aka glorious eggroll). Protonupqt provides a tool that downloads some of those for you and even installs them in steam.
And for games that aren’t on steam using the heroic launcher (for epic, gog, and amazon(?) games) or lutris (everything else) is the way to go.
Ty for the recommendation, I have heard that the epic store doesn’t play nice on Linux
I’ve had good success either using steam (proton is basically seamless and mostly runs by itself in the background without me having to do anything), or lutris for non-steam games
Check compatibility for all your programs before you move. Most Linux programs work on Windows but not vice versa. If you’re not in a rush, try switching to programs that have a Linux equivalent before you move so that you’ll have less of a culture shock. If you need any killer apps that don’t have a Linux equivalent you’re going to have to make your peace with that ahead of time, otherwise you’re just going to end up switching back.
KDE is a good choice, and Kubuntu should serve you fine; if you end up going with Kubuntu, I would recommend sticking with it for at least half a year or so before considering switching to something else, as that will give you time to really understand what you like and don’t like about how Kubuntu and KDE work.
Sounds reasonable to me! Thank you!
My biggest use apps are steam, obsidian, gamemaker, ue, and discord.
Do yourself a favor and use either the flatpak of Discord or just use the website since its an Electron app anyway. The *.deb install will force you to endlessly download and manually install new *.deb files to keep using it. A true pain in the ass, there was even a meme about it here on Lemmy recently.
Good call, deffos
Ty for the links!
Also looks like both gamemaker and UE have native Linux versions, although gamemakers is still in beta.
Steam, wine and dosbox with them, you can effectively play any game worth playing. Beyond that I never needed to know.
Really? Try installing Battlenet or Hearthstone with Wine.
I do like to play hots or d2 from time to time 😅
Don’t have any games that require those. So never ran into that problem. But I can imagine there are potential games/apps people would want that can’t run on Linux. Windows VMs might be a solution but I don’t know as I never had to deal with that.
I’ve played a lot of Battle net games by installing battle net in lutris, then installing the game I want to play there. There’s a lot of scripts you can find for installing particular games. I can’t speak for whether HOTS works, but I played many many hours of WoW and Overwatch (before 2) that way. It’s annoying using a launcher to run a launcher to play your game, but it works.
Yeah, I think I need to investigate proton and wine? 😅
I guess the best distro for gamers is https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite
I’m no gamer but if I were, I’d go with that. Thus could be helpful as well https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/
Ty for the links, I’ll check them out!
I can second bazzite. It. Just. Works. But it is built differently from the distros that everyone has heard of like arch & Ubuntu, so it’s best to read up on how to install non-flatpak programs.
Keep in mind that steam can run Windows programs for you with it’s emulation layer. It’s not the only option, but it is convenient as an app launcher.
I had heard that steam makes it easy and convenient, and definitely sets it ahead of the epic store… Guess I might part ways with my fomo free game library for a tick 🤣
The most important thing: Tell us, the community, what your critical application needs are, and get suggestions for applications to use. So many people jump through fifty hoops because they Google search first and the first thing they try turns out to be deprecated, the second thing they try doesn’t work on their system, the third thing they try has everything they need minus the most important part, the fourth thing they try turns out to be proprietary and half-broken, and so on.
You will not find good solutions just by searching around, you honestly, truly, need fucking nerds in this community who live this shit daily to help you know what the genuine best available solutions are. Otherwise you will spend weeks pounding your head against the keyboard using the wrong solutions, not because of anything you did wrong but because there are often so many different implementations of the same thing that it’s nearly impossible to know which ones are the ones you need for your use case without directly asking some people.
Once you’ve been using it a few years, you’ll be familiar enough with working solutions to keep track of this kind of thing yourself, but trust me, it takes a while. So please do yourself a favor and make a thread asking which applications people suggest for the distribution you’ve chosen to use and what kind of framework to install them from (repository or flatpak). You will save yourself a lot of trouble.
Also, as for keeping your backed up data from Windows on a USB, I think best practice is to always keep that kind of info backed up on an external drive, no matter the OS you use, or whether you plan on switching, so if anything fails, the drive will always still be there and readable (unless the drive fails, of course).
IMO, trying out new software to see what you like best is one of the most fun parts of switching OS.
You just made a great sales pitch for Windows.
Lol, I’m so done with windows
Thank you for the recommendation, let’s see…
My critical apps are (and Linux solution?)
- obsidian - files are organized to be referenced cross platform
- steam - works
- talespire - requires proton (need to investigate how this works)
- discord - works using browser (will need to test for video chat), might move to revolt if things in discord get worse.
Talespire you shouldn’t have any issues with as long as you run it through Steam.
The main thing is that proton is enabled in Linux in Steam out of the box but only for some games. You will need to open your Steam settings and choose the Compatibility tab and choose to enable proton for all games (“Enable Steam Play for all other titles”). That should make it so that any game launched via Steam will run through the proton compatibility layer.
For non-Steam games check out Lutris.
As for Obsidian (not familiar, basing this on quick search), if its the “personal Wikipedia” note taking app they have multiple native Linux versions including a deb and a flatpak.
Discord, as I said elsewhere, use the website or the flatpak.
