That's like asking, "Hey, guys! Should I eat a hamburger?" -- you want to use linux because you find it useful, or because "everyone is doing it" and you want to feel included? If it's the former... then by all means, do it. The learning curve may be confusing at first (considering most windows users have a "duck syndrome" -- expecting linux to behave the same as windows), but it's totally worth it.
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Linux
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Yes
Yes switch to garuda Linux now!!
Sure you can, but gtx 1650 is not cutting it if you wanna play modern "AAA" games even on low settings 1080p unless you sacrifice resolution, as for everything else you should be fine
If you are going to try Linux from a USB drive as suggested by others here try and get a USB3 drive. Most of the cheap USB drives are USB2 which is really too slow to be of use.
Use something else instead of Brave
Personally I still use Brave because Firefox still doesn't have tab groups on mobile and it's more private than Chrome
Firefox did add tab groups to desktop, which is dumb because they already existed. They're called windows. And they've been stringing the community along regarding mobile tab groups for years.
Until Firefox get their heads out of their asses, they're a non-starter as far as I'm concerned
Just try and see how it goes - it's not like you can't go back
...or OP could buy another PC and use it solely to run Windows whilst s/he gets the hang of Linux on his/her main PC.
Grab a few usb sticks and put different images on them to try some different OS's. Get a feel for how easy they are to install / config / use.
Then put your favorite on your internal drive, and maybe keep a couple of specialized sticks for whatever: troubleshooting, browsing, streaming, gaming, office...
or use ventoy which allows to boot from as many images as the space on the usb allows
Seconding ventoy for installation media. It's awesome
Should perhaps add that you can generally run Linux distributions off of a USB stick for that first impression.
Just follow a tutorial for how to install Linux and when you see the actual installer on screen, you can just close the installer without installing and then click around in the UI.
It will be slow, because it's running off that slow USB connection, but otherwise this is pretty much the operating system as it is when fully installed.
Unfortunately, no.
Due to the year of the linux desktop, new user applications have been closed. The overwhelming positive response has just completely bypassed the available seats.
I’m sorry, but we’re full.
Hey OP, I did not read your post but the answer is "hell yes"
You should switch to Firefox with ublock origin.
Brave is a mess of a browser and a dumpster fire of an organization, even compared to Mozilla.
You can look up your games on ProtonDB and see which will and won't work. Pirated games are no different from retail compatibility-wise but there might be one or two extra steps
Not OP, but I'm not switching to Firefox until they get their heads out of their asses and add tab groups to mobile. The fact they've gone this long without the feature is shameful.
They did add tab groups to desktop, but that's stupid because there was already something that did the same thing: opening a new window
i suggest waterfox or librewolf instead of normal firefox because they are just better. Waterfox also has the bonus of having an android app and allowing to download all addons (but some will not properly work because phone)
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Yes.
I would also recommend against using Brave, but it's available on Linux if you want to use it.
Pirated games work just fine with Heroic, Lutris or Bottles.I personally like Heroic and I've not had many issues with steamrip releases (they don't need to be installed).
The switch or dual boot is up to you. I can lay out some general steps in case you want to have an overview. Please do not be scared off by it. Depending on the distro, most things work out of the box or with very little effort.
- familiarize
- look up some distros, I personally like to go Arch-based, but feel free to use whatever seems good and popular enough (please no Ubuntu)
- try virtual machine and then live ISO
- verify compatibility
- this one is a bit more work, basically try all functionality in the live ISO, or at least things like display, mouse, keyboard, touchpad, Wi-Fi, storage
- install
- you probably won't need to look into this super deep, default installers handle this pretty well
- formatting and partitioning (look into ArchWiki guide, you probably don't need swap partition)
- if you are going to be reinstalling look into using efibootmgr to possibly clear up old and fix existing boot entries (i had to enable boot flag after setting up dualboot, because macOS installer overwrote the previous settings, thanks Apple :-) )
- configure missing/not working OS stuff
- look for missing drivers and system management software for either your specific hardware or some more general ones
- best sources are wikis like ArchWiki (even if you don't use Arch), forums and some software search sites like AlternativeTo
- in some cases the software does not meet the requirements for a wiki page to be up (Xlibre being notable example - feel free to look up the whole story)
- you may have to put some time into getting GPU fully working, since nvidia has several driver options depending on the GPU
- I personally had to fix USB autosuspend config, only look into it if devices plugged in after boot are not being detected
- use
- installs and updates are done using package manager (windows has winget, btw)
- for windows games use Wine or rather some of its forks
- most people here already shared their recommendations for this part
edited
It's like getting children. You only know afterwards how it really feels and even if it's a hassle sometimes you wouldn't ever change back.
so im thinking about getting something debian based bec its easy is that a good path of distros?
If you like gaming and aren't fussed about the other stuff, Bazzite and CatchyOS are gaming tailored distros that are probably worth a look.
Mint or ubuntu are classics, you won't make a mistake choosing either.
If you're going easy but need something more up to date, Fedora based is a good middle ground. Nobara more gaming oriented.
debian is not that up to date, so it might cause problems for gaming
neither are ubuntu-based debian-based distros (mint, pop_os)
debian cycle is 2 years, ubuntu cycle is 6 months
opensuse tumbleweed is similar to debian but is very up to date (and less unstable than other rolling release distros), it updates packages in the repo every 6 hours i think
If you have to ask then no.
yeah you should
you should definitely try it out and see if you like it; try various distros and desktops
the distros id recommend are fedora (simply good), opensuse tubleweed (versatile and unobtrusive), cachyos (designed for gaming), bazzite (fedora-based steamOS clone, designed for gaming), or mint (very easy), and the de id recommend is kde plasma
can keep windows on a separate drive to boot for the games that dont work (and in case u want to switch back)
but if ur pirating, those wont be kernel anticheat games, which are the main offenders
And ntfs does not work with proton so if you keep your Windows games that don't work on a separate drive, they won't work on linux. Make sure all of your games played on the Linux install are downloaded separately onto a Linux file system like ext4
NTFS works with proton as long as you set up your /etc/fstab properly to make sure it's mounted as writeable, but I believe you also need proprietary drivers.. I can't remember now, but up until a couple weeks ago I had my storage drive with all my games mounted in Fedora and it was NTFS from my previous win11 install.
NTFS has gotten better on Linux but it's still not there. It is still highly prone to corruption, especially for a task like proton requiring constant read, write. You might get by for a little bit, but it is highly prone to failure
Source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows
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Give it a go, playing your pirated games is more effort to setup a wine container for them but if you don't like it then you can go back.
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It sounds like you would enjoy Linux though you should at least know that running your games will need additional hoops comparing to Windows since they're Windows games, nothing something wild and will be mostly about changing the default WINE to Proton if you use Lutris or Heroic for them. However sometimes you will probably need to troubleshoot for some game time to time, but you'll get used to that once you learn the idea.
Linux Mint is likely the safest choice here. Zorin is also fine for newbies.
Also note that, a lot of things will be different than Windows, though you can always search for an equivalent for something you used. At least the structure is much more beautiful on Linux, unlike Windows' chaotic nature.
should i switch to linux?
So, as this is a Linux community, do you expect anything but an astounding "Yes!"?
Going through the rest of your post, you'd have to be cautious with the Nvidia GPU. It can go anywhere from working almost seamlessly without any tinkering to causing nigh-unsolvable problems you (regretfully) might have to work around.
But, aside from that, you should be pretty much good to go.
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if it meets your software needs and hardware compatibility, go for it
Just try it out for a bit. If you don't like it, switch back. That's it. It's not one of lifes major decisions.
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Go for it. Give it a fair time, its a new system, some things may feel weird, but If you are willing to learn you will soon find it to be fine. Personally I would recommend some basic distro like fedora or linux mint. I would stay away from immutable systems like bazzite because I feel like with these systems people are limiting themselves too much (especially if you want to run a bunch of pirated content and stuff). The best course of action, try a few distros with live cd (i mean flash drive) to see what catches your eyes and if basic things work and only after that install your first system.
thanks for advice. i will try live mint
From what I read across this thread, you don't seem to have any real incentive to switch to linux. But you can always install it and see how it goes. You can later go back to windows if you want.
Playing pirated games is going to require some thinkering. If you buy them on Steam is a much better experience.
Anyways, you should try Heroic Games launcher, there are other options but it's the best one to me
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