Ok so I currently have windows 10 on my pc, and i really wanna switch to linux but i'm afraid of the lack of program support. There are some games coming in the future that I must play, but i'm afraid that the linux community will be screwed (Fallout 4). I've heard that you can dual boot operating systems, but on the other hand i've heard that dual booting isn't reccomended. I'd like to hear your guys opinion on what i can do, thanks LS forums!
Not sure where you've heard that from. Nothing wrong with dual booting.
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Really? I've read on the LTT and other forums that dual booting is "dangerous". I guess i should trust you guys over the LTT guys tho :P.
Yeah, you just have to be careful. Some unique errors can happen while dual bootin', but bugs happen with vanilla setups too. All part of the Linux experience.
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I'm ok with having obstacles in the way, as it will hopefully help me learn more, I just don't want to completely fuck my PC...
Nope.
Not really.
dual booting isn't dangerous. Im not really sure what that even means in this context. Whats the wrost that could happen?
- The installation of the bootloader didn't autodetect Windows so you dont have an entry for it. (easily fixed)
- During the installation, you stupidly delete the windows partition. (easily fixed, you reinstall windows). Its also very unlikely to happen these days, most installers have good partitioning that will automatically shrink your windows partition you. Or you can do it manually before hand so your only dealing with free space.
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Dunno what to say about that man. There is risk in everything you do with Linux. Done mean to deter you. Just take the right precautions, like backup and having restore media handy.
Could you link me to some good tutorials on dual booting? I'm very new to linux :P
Yeah you are right, I've just had a few problems trying to get my boot loader to load grub. But I might be an edge case.
There isn't really a good tutorial that i know of on dualbooting because its changed recently with EFI, theres a few different ways to do it, and most distros set it up automatically. You could have a look at systemd-boot https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-boot as an example.
Generally the bootloader will hold entries on what OS' are where and what to boot. Most of the time you dont need to touch it, though you can edit it to do different things. On the rare ocassions it doesnt quite pick something up or breaks its easily fixed. you can even make windows bootloader. When i had windows and Fedora on my laptop (this week) i didnt do anything with he boot-loader except disable secure boot on the laptop. It detected windows for me and gave the the option to boot either windows or fedora.
I know a video that Wendell is working on will cover a possible solution to all our linux gaming problems. I know I'm excited for it.
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I did the switch several months ago. Outside of games I will never look back. It was hard I guess to go outside my comfort circle and learn how to do stuff the linux way. Once I learned MANY things are so much easier. RSYNC is a perfect example.
Games at first I was over the moon. I was in Ubuntu Gnome 14.xx can't remember. I installed playonlinux and just about all my windows steam games worked great. I upgraded to Ubuntu 15.04 and broke a lot of things. Even getting steam to install with fonts being displayed to other weird things.
In the end I went fuck it and bought a cheap 256G SSD which has windows 10 on it for steam and windows only games. Works fine and I dont game as much as I use to. I have games I love like Civ V on linux steam moded and it plays fine and a select few other games on playonlinux. When I need to I dual boot I do. It's been over a month since I last did that.
As a poster above me said Wendell is releasing a video on pass through GFX cards to a VM. This is my next challenge but again I am scared to get out of my comfort zone. I will do it and you should try if you can backup your current PC to say an external USB drive.
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All I got to say OP is you have a right to be afraid as this Linux OS is not this friendly environment that everyone can learn to use. Be prepared for the fact that yes installing Linux on your computer could go really wrong. I remember when I bought a beginner's guide to it and it came with software and paid some really good money for it and well the experience I had with it was awful and the worst part was it was a complete pain to get the OS off the hard drive to be able to use it with Windows again. Anyway OP I hope your experience goes better than mine did. Good luck.
Looong time Linux user. Ubuntu is typically the introduction Linux. There is a learning curve, it's not too big of one. It is learning how to do, what you already know, but differently. How to open a work document. how to open a web browser etc... Another way to look at it is that Windows 10, will change how you would normally do or search for things, but they are there...somewhere. Same thing with Linux, they are there, just may be a learning curve to find them. Youtube is a big help with how to use a certain distro, or anything else, really.
While Windows is an Operating system, Linux is an Operating system, that also has different, what I like to call, flavors. Mint, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, etc. They are all Linux. Android uses a kernel like Linux does. Each, "flavor", has support of that distro. try searching for "Distrowatch" for reviews of distributions.
Regarding Dual booting. A trick I have used to alleviate some of the headache with Windows and Linux not getting along. Is to use two hard drives. One for Linux. One for Windows. Put the Linux as the Primary or number one hard drive. Install Linux, or if already installed, update the Grub. The Grub will detect the Windows and at boot up will ask, which OS do you want to load.
If the Windows is the Primary Hard drive or number one, it really does not like to invite anyone else to the party. It may either ignore that there is another OS or make you install software to "allow" another OS to be able to be loaded at bootup.
If working with only one hard drive and have partitioned. Put Linux on the first partition, and the Windows on the 2nd partition. Should work in theory, I could be wrong. But working with 2 hard drives and Linux first then Windows, does work.
Linux is....FREE. It does have web browsers like Firefox and Chrome. No learning curve there. It does have a FREE version, that is just a usable as Office Suite (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint) called LibreOffice. Small learning curve.
FREE program like PhotoShop called GIMP. FREE...well you get the picture.
Now Linux is not perfect. But then, neither is Microsoft. Think that the game you want to play, can only be played in a Microsoft Windows OS? There are ways to make in play in Linux. Or just use Windows to play games and use Linux for everything else. (what I do, by the way)
Linux is used by Governments. By Big Business. By Countries.
Linux gives you....choices. Want the desktop to look a certain way? Gnome, or KDE and others. Want some special effects when open or close a window. No problem. Choices, you have choices. Do it your way. It will only cost you, some of your time to learn, not your money. Might even learn something new along the way.. (hate when that happens :)
And one more thing. Linux Distros, "flavors" can be tested on a burnt disc or thumb drive, before even installing them. Test drive the distro, so to speak.
Hope this info / rant, helps.
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We could go for weeks offering tips and advice but I'd suggest getting your feet wet by taking it 1 step at a time, no need to dive right in, abandoning the familiar (though you can learn a lot very quickly by doing so). The first step to any major changes to your hard disk(s) would be to back up your data. May I ask what your hard drive configuration is? I would typically recommend having a spare hard drive to load Linux onto since this will give you a lot of flexibility in terms of dual booting or picking one OS over another without even touching the grub bootloader. Once you have your drive space figured out, you can pick a distribution to try and we can help you move through the installation process of setting up Linux alongside windows, which is not very complicated these days.
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I am in the same position, I been meaning / wanting to move for years however I find Ubuntu / Linux always comes with some problems.
I dual boot, 1 SSD for Windows 10 and 1 SSD for Ubuntu.
I tried LTS 14.xx and it didn't like my hardware at all or dual screens for that matter and with lots of confusing terminal (dos/cli/shell) fuss later I got the 2nd screen to work however it would never save the screen resolutions, positions or background wallpaper (I've had this problem quite a few times with various versions ubuntu).
So I decided to try 15.04 and it works much better on install, dual screens were working, some hardware scan error on boot message, sometimes have to boot twice as it would lock into a blank screen on first boot, fixed this with installing the latest (old) nvidia driver from the software updates program on ubuntu not the website! I tried installing the latest drivers from the website ended up in terminal again typing lots of shit I don't understand and had to re-install. But once I got the nvidia drivers (for my gtx980) it was all fine, even remembered screen resolutions and background wallpaper (even though it loads the old one for the login screen).
Next issue, sound, I couldn't get any sound out of my machine at all, except from built in speakers in 1 of my monitors via the nvidia drivers, which are just plain shit compared to my speaker system. Issue was it would think there are headphones plugged in and mute, where as realtek software on windows has the ability to split sound and thus headphone and lineout are outputting audio at the same time, where as the closest I got in ubuntu was the audio flickering on and off by itelf between headphones and lineout mode I'm guessing (could be a hardware issue on my case headphone socket being damaged however). But I then moved to a Tascam US-322 external usb sound card, no hope for this on ubuntu / linux, not even got a reply out of the ubuntu forums, so I have to use the monitor speakers. Note, this is the first time I've had sound issues with ubuntu/linux.
Now when I'm in ubuntu the desktop seems to take up a lot of GPU or CPU as I can hear my fans throttling up to keep things cool when using a few browsers etc.
In my experience linux / ubuntu always has a graphics issues and it really needs to get out of the war games era with all this terminal bs.
What Ubuntu / Linux needs, badly is Adobe's Creative Suite to be available for it not via wine or virtual box, I think only then will manufacturers start to support and build the software we have for windows for linux.
So if you need windows software get a virtual machine installed or dual boot. Note, install windows first, linux second, windows wont play nice with ubuntu's boot loader and it will remove it or give it it's own HD/SSD.
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Thanks for the advice man! I already use gimp regularly anyways, so that won't be much of a change. If you don't mind I have one more question. What distro should I pick? I've heard Ubuntu is very simple and easy to pick up, ya know for beginners, such as myself. On the other side of the coin I've heard that openSuse also isn't that difficult to start on, depending on what desktop manager you use (playing around with virtual machines I've come to like gnome). I also heard that openSuse is very easy to customize. The only thing I am scared of is hardware support, I haven't read up on the topic of openSuse's hardware support, but if you're familiar with the topic it'd be great if you could let me know!
Here are both of my systems specs.
i7 4790k
8gb ram
GTX 760 (MSI twin frozr)
MSI PC Mate mobo
and for my other system
i7 3770k
16gb ram
2 x gtx 970 (Windforce 3)
AsRock z77 Extreme 4 Mobo
Thanks!
It's extremely dangerous. It can make your system unbootable and then you will have to reinstall over an already clean install oh my what a hassle it's going to be! GPTs and GRUBS and BEARS oh my!!
Nah, the worst thing that might happen would be that you'll waste time installing stuff. In my experience installing windows first then linux with GRUB works.
If you are truly worried about issues arising from dual booting, I suggest you yank the windows drive and replace it with an empty drive and install linux there. That way your windows install remains untouched.
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As long as you have regular backups of all your important files, don't be afraid to try anything. It's all a learning experience. Dual boot, buy a second drive or even just boot from a live distro to check out what all the fuss is about. Just trying something new with pique your interest enough to take that extra step. Good luck, have fun!
Nothing is static!
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