this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Alright fine I admit it, I want to learn Linux (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm just so sick of Microsoft and Google. But there's two things holding me back:

  1. I wanna play Steam games on my PC

  2. I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard

Is there any hope for me?

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[–] 18107@aussie.zone 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.

As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.

AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game's compatibility.
You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.

If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they're like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.

Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don't access your computer's hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.

If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it's installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move "unmovable" Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.

Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it's disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 3 points 6 days ago

For dual booting I strongly recommend having Windows and Linux on separate drives altogether.

[–] Thebigguy@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Honestly there is nothing to learn, unless you pick arch which is annoying to install, otherwise everything is pretty simple and for the most part just works.

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 2 points 6 days ago

Even Arch has an interactive installer now, and Endeavour is meant to be Arch with a bulletproof installer as well.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Absolutely. I likewise moved to Linux more out of frustration with Windows than any of my own tech ability. It needn't be a concerted effort either. I had it on a separate SSD (for a more stable dual-boot) and dabbled for a couple of years until I found myself gradually booting into Linux instead of Windows more and more.

[–] KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 3 points 6 days ago

I started using Zorin OS just to get out of Windows. Ngl I work in IT and the last thing I wanna do when I'm off work is to go home and do more tech-related stuff, so I just picked it for ease of use. Happy with it though!

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

Yep, if you have the means, I recommend having two SSDs until you feel confident using one of them full-time. The only downside is that if your computer is so small/cheap/old like mine was all those years ago and doesn't have enough cables to keep both drives plugged in, switching between them can be annoying for a while.

[–] TheGreyGhost@lemmy.ml 6 points 6 days ago

Proton Linux is one of the best gaming centric operating systems out there so give that a try maybe

[–] howler@lemmy.zip 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You have received tons of useful responses, so I will not add more, except to tell you that the change is extremely worth it, easier than it seems and extremely entertaining.

I personally use Kubuntu (I love the KDE environment) and sometimes play Steam games by using Proton.

Good luck on your Linux journey!

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

thanks! right now the primary obstacle is arranging adequate backup before maling my first attempt.

I have a laptop with Win 11 for troubleshooting so I'm not worried about that. and I have most of my stuff on externals, so there's not much to backup. I just gotta figure out a good way to back up my C drive and a plan for reverting if necessary!

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For the backup, you might want to try out Clonezilla or Rescuezilla (for a GUI option).

[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

oh yea? I'm wondering if the program I already have will work. ever heard of a program called Macrium reflect? I installed it and never used it lol. adventure time

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

I've only heard recommendations for Macrium Reflect, but I've never used it myself. Never heard anything bad about it either, should be good if it's what you are most comfortable with.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I have 15 years of experience and do free infinite troubleshooting on matrix, feel free to add me. I recommend you go with aurora, because it is immutable, kde based, and well documented.

immutable means the base system is read only and updates are applied ontop of it, meaning you can easily roll back an update that went bad, and the apps are separate from the core operating system and thus can never break them (unless you try really hard).

kde is a desktop environment, it is most similar to windows and the rate of development dwarfs almost everything else, please whatever you do for your first system use kde.

aurora is a slightly modified fedora and fedora is one of the most commonly used options, the reason not to use base fedora is that aurora includes some QoL features, for example because of issues with patents twitch doesn't work on fedora but does on aurora.

[–] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I started on Mint and liked it so much that I never distro-hopped. Every now and then I think about trying an immutable distro. But then I remember how much learning I had switching from Windows to Mint and I get scared of losing so much time to learn about Aurora. What would your say to me?

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That the worst linux distro would be vastly better than windows (not that mint is the worst, that'd be manjaro)

honestly it isn't much to learn but the returns are very diminished if you're already on a linux distro, I mostly make this recommendation if you're just starting out, if you're perfectly happy there isn't much need to switch, but more up to date software, kde over cinnamon, and immutability are huge advantages for many people.

like, just for an idea of why kde is better for beginners, the kde text editor alone gets more code changes than all of cinnamon combined per month, and by a lot. Kde is always rapidly improving.

basically on aurora you just use discover for all software and updates and don't even need the cli, it's pretty easy to learn honestly, and if something goes wrong that a simple google can't fix feel free to message me I do free infinite linux troubleshooting.

here's a copypasted post I made on mint and beginners "A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.

I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.

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.

Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.

I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix."

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Not who you asked, jumping in until they reply: Windows and most GNU/Linux distros are much further apart than most GNU/Linux distros are to each other. Unless you're doing a lot of manual meddling or using hacky tools, the biggest change between Mint (Ubuntu/Debian-based) and a Fedora-based distro, in my experience, was that apt is replaced by dnf, so if you install apps from the command line instead of a prettier software manager (I did lots of programming so this was normal for me) then the names of programs and libraries were a bit different. I'd also make a list of things you've installed (VPN software, chat apps, etc.) and look them up in the Fedora packages site or their own website and make sure they're all available. I would assume they would be, Fedora is popular enough.

The desktop environment (Cinnamon vs. KDE) will be an initial change, but they're both familiar enough with a program menu, task bar, like how Mint lets you carry over some of that same basic surface-level intuition that Windows taught.

[–] doorstepLemming@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

As others have mentioned, use Mint. Since you game, some games won’t run on Linux because of their anticheat, and to that I decided to use a dual boot system. I gave 500gb to windows, the rest to Linux. Anything that won’t run on Linux (some early access games, COD, Tarkov) goes on the windows partition. 500gb doesn’t seem like much when COD takes about 1/2 of that, but everything else I’ve played runs fine on Linux.

I also like the smaller partition because it makes me be choose what I leave installed, and if I’m not playing, I just uninstall whatever game needs to go

[–] ordinarylove@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 6 days ago

you are going to be fine! linux has better compat than windows now unless you use a ton of proprietary, locked software. your average linux distro can do steam gaming pretty well, and there are distros like bazzite and garuda and popos that do some or all of the configuration for you (based on your hardware and usage).

[–] DrunkAnRoot@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago

best way to learn is to dive in start with mint'pop,bazzite,fedora kintonite, or anduin as a good starting distro and just start expiermenting

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 days ago

This is the book that got me on the train. I have so many tech books but they all started with this. I'm a terminal afficianado now; this got me started. Anyway, good luck and I hope you have a good time.

https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Unix-Paul-Love/dp/0764579940

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