Struggling to settle on a OS

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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I’m really struggling to decide what to call home whether that be Windows or Linux, I’ve made it clear to myself at least I do not want to dual boot and just to operate and maintain the one operating system. On a positive for either OS, I’m running a full AMD system and my distro of choice has been Fedora 44 KDE out of all those I have tried, it seems a good steady middle ground.

Now for the use case, mainly gaming, maintain a large media/photo collection but also to learn, customise, make my own and take some control back. Which for most of that Linux seems the clear answer. I feel quite strongly against the MS telemetry, forcing products on me and adding features that are of no interest for me on the normal consumer for that matter. To be clear, I do find Windows reliable, snappy and not the usual feedback I find in other forums, but their ethics comes into question.

I generally install Linux get everything set up and it all just works, few tweaks here and there but on the whole its a fairly pain free experience. But I am giving up Battlefield and Apex were my two main games, I say main I haven’t touched BF in months and Apex I do enjoy, however I guess I have a large steam collection to make up for that. I found in 90% of my games that if I had my eyes closed I couldn’t tell the difference.

However part of me gets to the point where I’m like should I go back for this game, or ‘What If’ something comes out I want to play, am I just putting barriers up? Then again I go back to Windows and the whole ‘decline’, ‘decline’, ‘debloat’ and you are still tracking and marketing me, forcing Copilot along with a load of restore to these points really bothers me.

Has anyone else been in this situation? I see so many 1 year on linux people coming out and saying, I don’t think I could go back and that really inspires me. Maybe I just cave too easy and jump back and forth, and haven’t really given it a fair chance, or am I forcing the change on myself. Feeling a bit of burnout and I know this choice shouldn’t be this difficult, so just looking for advice. Thank you

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Install linux and try to make it work.

Windows is cancer.

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Then just dual boot and leave Windows on a separate 512GB drive with only the specific games like Battlefield and Apex installed on it. Use linux for everything else except when you want to play those games specifically. There is nothing to maintain really, Windows wont randomly get a virus from not being updated because it wont even be running. Everything will be done in linux, and Windows will boot fine when you stop the boot process and select Windows instead.

It is starting to look like in 1-2 years that Epic and Microsoft will both fully support Linux multiplayer gaming with anti cheat, as both companies have either started developing or hiring people for developing linux specific game compatibility. That doesnt help you a ton with your EA games you like, but maybe with Epic and MS both jumping on board there will be enough pressure for Saudi Arabia to spend the money on linux compatibility.

But with shit like this happening on a near monthly basis now:

Do you really want to spend time on such a broken OS anyway?

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On the update front, I’ve always been lucky or fortunate nothing has broke my system like I see many people complain about. And its great news about the dev’s being hired and the GOG hiring as well.

My experience so far has been fairly good, I just need to stop myself getting in that state of going back and forth between OS’s and stick at it. Maybe I have found my thing and that is the satisfaction of starting with a fresh clean desktop.

There are some elements of Linux that bother me for example in Windows I know where everything is within the filesystem. Where as in Linux I install something, and see a load of dependencies being installing, then these ‘might’ also be needed for other applications. How do you keep the system clean and tidy, what happens when a new release comes out like Fedora 45, is the upgrades normally seamless, or is it better to do a fresh install.

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I’m having a good experience with Pop!_OS
Setup took only about an hour to get logged into all my stuff, but Gaming is flawless.

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Your package manager should take care of that, as in when you uninstall a program it checks the programs dependencies to see if some other program needs them.
The alternative is to use snaps,flatpaks , or appimages for desired programs as they include their dependencies with the program and dont rely on external libraries or whatever.
You can use something like topgrade to keep things updated.

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Hopefully this is helpful, but I recently killed off my Windows boot, and for the most part I don’t really miss any of the apps that I used on there cause I found Linux alternatives a while back. It was just more going through the hassle of migrating everything. I can’t help you in terms of gaming because I don’t play video games. But in terms of like upgrading to fedora 45 in October right think that’s the release date it’s gonna be seamless. It’s gonna give you a little pop-up on your screen. Do you wanna upgrade to fedora 45 and everything should be fine (knock on wood ). I would recommend setting up BTRFS snapshots if you’re going full linux cause no matter the operating system shit happens.

I don’t know if this would work for your gaming thing you could do a VM and just pass your GPU through and play Apex and battlefield like that. If the anti-cheat does not prevent that .

Hopefully this helps.

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I was close to a full switch for years. There was always something small that kept it from happening. Sometimes it was a game or a piece of software. At some point i got over that hump and it’s been getting better ever since. It was not easy and it’s not perfect. A few years pass by and I don’t want to go back to Windows. I would rather just not use a computer anymore than to use Windows. I have to use it as work and I hate it. It just feels dated to me.

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Where as in Linux I install something, and see a load of dependencies being installing, then these ‘might’ also be needed for other applications. How do you keep the system clean and tidy

What you are seeing is clean and tidy. These depedencies are being handled through your package manager.

In contrast, it is on Windows that software installation ‘wizards’ will dump components and redundant libraries all over your system never to be seen (or removed) again.

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Sounds like Window’s isn’t an option.

Linux sucks in many ways, but it’ll be suck you can own and control.

I’m sure Apex is a cool game, there’s been a lot of cool games. And there will be many more. We don’t have to play them all. Some things are more important.

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I do not game as often as I would like, and I have not been a windows user for many years outside of work. The reason is simple:

I am an Apple user.

Now, being in the world we live in now, I am no longer interested in convenience as being my number one driver. I took a workstation that used to be my proxmox server and installed PopOS! and it’s been… ok? Things work, but I also run into stuff like both monitors having speakers, but only one appears in the menu, and it’s not the monitor in front of me, but the one to the side. Not a massive issue, but it was a troubleshooting step I was not used to existing.

All this said, i’m grabbing another NVME drive tomorrow or saturday so I can play Wardogs. I’m not going to let the principle of having to leave everything that is “bad” all at once. I already bought my iphone and macbook etc, so I’m in no rush to go buy the planned replacements that now align with my new values. Just as I’m ok with the trade off of going back to windows to play a game I want to play.

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Choose your suffering MAN!!

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I started in like ‘08 with dual booting then eventually dropped windows, don’t remember when. It’s only gotten easier these days. but i only play one game.

BTW - where did the blur option go?

Debian-gnome 13 is solid

dual boot. Make your linux your email web browsing etc, then clean sweep install windows (if possible in this era) and only play a few titles on it, but live in linux.

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Thanks, I can see the privacy rabbit hole and the burnout that comes after when you find out you can’t physically keep up so doing bits here and there make sense.

I do think those who like to play a game, some devs will take notice of Linux like they have done and enable the big roadblock of anti-cheat a bit like the hiring of Linux devs at big studio’s.

I wiped my Fedora install last night put windows back on played two games and straight away it was like this is not home anymore, and back I am on Fedora. Honestly I have such a vast Steam collection it would take me more time than I have to get through everything.

One BIG thing which I guess surprises me, is how nice and supportive the Linux community is, you obviously hear all these elitist comments, but so far everyone has gone over and above to help and assist.

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Yes. Why not use all of 'em?

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I think you’re overthinking the choice a little. From what you’ve described, Linux already seems to fit how you want to use your computer—gaming aside. If Fedora KDE gives you a comfortable, customizable system without the telemetry and forced features that bother you, that’s a pretty strong reason to stick with it.

The bigger question is whether Battlefield and Apex are worth compromising on everything else you prefer. If you only occasionally play them, I’d probably stay with Linux and accept that a few games won’t work. You can always keep an eye on compatibility rather than switching back every time one title becomes tempting.

Give yourself a fixed period, maybe 3–6 months where you commit to Fedora and stop comparing it with Windows every week. Use that time to learn, customise, and build your workflow around it. After that, evaluate based on your actual experience rather than the fear of “what if I want to play something later?”

You are not forcing yourself to use Linux if you genuinely prefer the experience. The fact that you keep returning to it probably tells you something.

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I’m a noob, but my little simplified explanation is that the package manager takes care of that. A user shouldn’t worry. Especially if you install from the official repo only. Flatpaks or snaps don’t even have that issue.

On mutable OS (like traditional Linux, or Windows) you will have gruft over time and the clean-up after de-installing or updates isn’t perfect. In W11, you may have noticed that it uses more and more space over time, even if you do a good job not installing all crap. De-install a software, and after that you find, there still are remnants in “ Appdata” folder etc. Same can happen in Linux.

If you want worry-free OS, use an Atomic version of Fedora, like aurora (KDE). You do nothing for updating, ever. that also avoids all the gruft.

Updates on Fedora (that you initiate manually) usually are seamless, however, if you do them too soon, there may be bugs, or some issues. this is true for all OS (Mint, Ubuntu)… version releases usually are fine, but the word ususally carries a lot of weight here. I only had one Fedora going from 43 to 44 and it lost my auto-mounting ability. My three Aurora PCs upgraded to 44 uneventfully and automatically.

Some older distros (Mint etc.) didn’t use to support in-place upgrades officially. I think now they do, but may have more issues. A fresh install every 6 months, or 2 years, really wouldn’t be reasonable at all. IF a distro doesn’t support easy upgrades, use a different one. A user has to have Stockholm syndrome if they use an OS they need to re-install all the time.

On Fedora, each version, that comes every 6 months, has 13 months support. So you can stay a version behind to make sure you only get super mature version. Fedora does udpate Kernels, and DE etc. during the life of the version. So even an “n-1” installation should be modern enough. IMHO, Fedora has the best balance between maturity and fresh-ness. Debian is too old for modern dekstop and more for servers, Arch is for tinkerers. Fedora is for modern USERS.

On Aurora (Fedora based) the upgrade is automatic and should be much less troublesome since you get a whole new image. In fact, it happens automatically and you may not even notice if you don’ t look up version. Like a Chromebook.

On your dual boot, keep it on separate SSD and disable hibernation and fast startup in W11. Just stay in Linux and don’t go in BIOS to use W11. Do that for a month. On a desktop having a backup W11 isn’t a bad idea. Depending on your use case, you may need it in 3 months. If you use KDE, they look the same anyway, you will forget you are in Linux if you just use your apps.

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I’m quite inspired by the 1 year on linux thread, so maybe that should be my aim. Appreciate the reply :slight_smile:

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Your aim should be to try Linux, and after that decide which OS works best for YOU :slight_smile:

I attached a Linux guide that may help to get yous tarted. But i also attached a W11 setup guide to make W11 as good as possible.

Both can work fine, IMHO. Both have ups and downs and application availability really is what matters.

The Simple Linux Guide.pdf (1.2 MB)

W11 Setup.pdf (28.4 KB)

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I just have a Windows PC that’s literally just for playing games with kernel level anti-cheat. It’s my old AM4 system that’s still kicking. It’s not as fast, but it’s fine for the competitive games I play from time to time - I didn’t turn it on at all in August for a example. Only annoying thing is that because I only start it now and then, it feels like it’s always updating. I’m not logged into anything on that machine except Steam and it’s isolated on the network.

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So it sounds like you ended up sticking with Fedora in the end?

It’s a good option and I’m thinking of switching to it myself as it’s a good all-rounder.

If you want something that makes things easy out of the box and much harder to mess up then there is the ‘immutable’ Bazzite (very popular with gamers lately). The only thing with immutable distros is they can be a bit harder to customize as far as I’m aware. Though it’s a deeper level of customization that I’m talking about, editing important system configuration files and such, something that most users probably won’t need to do, though it’s not exactly uncommon if you’re doing gaming or using creative software. But if it’s just gaming then Bazzite should be nice out of the box without the need for too much messing.

There’s also Nobara (not immutable) which I use. It’s really good out of the box for gaming & creative software so I’ve barely had to mess with it at all which is nice. I’ve had a really good time with it and have been on it for years now with no major issues. But with that said, I’m recently starting to wonder if security is a little compromised on this system for the sake of making things as smooth as possible for casual users that simply just want to play games..

Something to keep in mind is that a lot of Linux distros, for the most part, are more or less the same in a lot of respects, aside from the very specialized, very non-general-use ones of course. Most of them can be made to look & behave just like the other ones with all the same things installed. So it’s mostly just the out of the box convenience you’re picking them for & the kind of support/community they have - which is a good enough reason to choose one over the other. The less customizing you need to do after a fresh install the better!

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