Move to Linux - Keep Windows - One drive

I have had Ubuntu on my laptop for a while now and I am looking to move over to Linux on my main PC

My main PC has a Samsung 960 Evo NVME drive with Windows 10
I am looking to make Linux my main OS and get rid of Windows and maybe run it inside a virtual machine within Ubuntu.

My system is:
AMD Ryzen 1600
Crosshair VI Hero
3200Mhz DDR4
AMD R9 290
Samsung 960 Evo
2TB HDD

What would be the easiest way to switch?

I have been used to .exe files for a while now and have seen that Samsung Magician doesn’t come in a Linux flavor so I am unsure how to get the correct drivers for the NVME - Also a benchmark utility in order for me to see that the drive is performing correctly.

The only game I am really looking to play is CSGO and I see that is natively compatible with Steam Linux - So it’s just the AMD CPU and GPU drivers that I need

I am looking to keep all my current windows files also - Mainly documents

Thanks,
James

NVMe are natively supported without external sotfware on linux (and really any unix environment these days)

Same goes for the AMD GPU drivers.

If you do want to do a passthrough VM, ubuntu probably isn’t ideal. This is the distribution of preferred distros among VFIO users:

image

The reason for this is that ubuntu changes many things about a more ‘standard’ linux environment in the name of convenience that, while improving the newcomer UX somewhat, will make doing low level things difficult later on.

We have a wiki here for guides on Gaming VMs:

If you want to keep your files, just mount your storage drive as-is.

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Thanks for the quick reply.

I only want to use a Windows VM for software I might need at a later date, not for games - Will that make a difference?

What would be the best way to keep my files and put them onto storage. Could I create a disk image of the boot drive and then just store that and then mount it again as the VM?

Or do you think I should just go through manually and copy everything I want to the storage drive?

if that software isn’t 3d accelerated, you won’t need a gpu passthrough VM.

yes, you could probably dd it to a qcow image, or just use VirtIO to pass it as a block device. there are guides for the latter in the wiki.

this is the simplest solution

THE Wiki?

I linked it my first reply. It’s a forum post editable by any experienced user here.

Sorry, so you did, my mistake.

Thank you

I was also interested in drive encryption - With the magician software it is just a toggle in the application.

What about Ubuntu?

it is a parameter that can be set at setup or at a later date using the terminal. ( possibly other places as well)

Lol where did you get that weird sample? No way is that anywhere near accurate.

The population that was tested does seem to be one way, but I don’t think that it is a biased sample.

Ubuntu - 10
Gentoo - 14
Fedora - ~12
Arch - 61
Other and debian and Centos - 16

Community plays a roll in the outcome of a sample . It’s like going to China and asking what they are, you would of course imagine a big chunk of the graph to be Chinese. We would have to see what the community that answered is. If it something like Level1 with a broad width of different Operating Systems and skill levels or another site with just experienced users. If it was something like Level1 and the results came back that, then we could image the idea that the survey is bogus. But I believe that that graph comes from tkoham’s website, I’m not positive tho, just a guess.

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You’re right, biased was a bad word to use (and could come off as insulting). Changed the post.

I just saw that it was for VFIO, which makes (a little) more sense. Still a crazy demographic.

1st place: Arch
2nd place: Gentoo

Lol. No way is that indicative as Linux users or Linux gamers as a whole. I guess those that are running GPU passthrough on Windows? I would have thought that it would be more Fedora or Ubuntu.

What do I know, though? :man_shrugging: I’m just a doctor.

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I also thought that Gentoo being second most used was weird. And that Fedora or Ubuntu would have been more popular.

My guy the only driversyou need to install on linux are nvidia’s and occasionally the odd printer or weird mouse from someone like 3dconnexion.

I love watching windows users come to linux and freak out for week that either they c’n’t find driver pages for linux or that everything works.

it is, based on a survey of every esstablished VFIO user group.

Not general linux users, people that set up passthrough VMs

the anonymized survey data is publicly available, feel free to sample the wider community yourself if you don’t believe it.

I can’t speak for the people who took the survey, it’s based on passthrough post readers, /r/vfio redditors, and several discord/irc/telegram communities.

AFAIK it’s the largest sample of people using VFIO ever collected

again, VFIO users, not general linux

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