The Mission
A little over a month ago, I decided to try an experiment and see if I could “live” in Linux full time. I have been using Linux for all of my work applications (except for Office, for which I just use the online version) for about a year. I boot back to Windows to game.
I decided that if I managed to stay in Linux for a month without having to go back into Windows 10, I would delete it, and recover the SSD for a fresh Linux installation.
This means that all of my needs would have to be met, including getting my game on, audio editing and streaming, and just all around every day computer usage.
The Why
Due to the current “environment” and my patented Gen-X distrust of everything, I want away from closed source operating systems such as Windows and OS X. I don’t trust Microsoft or Apple and haven’t for years. I also don’t trust Big Brother.
And now is honestly a great time to switch and Windows 11 begins to Beta.
So begone, Windows.
Obstacles
Some of the obstacles that I have encountered in the past have been some of the following.
1. Crap updates in Linux breaking the system.
2. Lousy video driver support.
3. No support for a lot of wifi hardware without having to use Windows drivers, which I do not wish to do.
To prep for the hardware issues, I swapped out my Nvidia card for an AMD Radeon care which just uses the opensource drivers provided with X, and I purchased and installed an Intel wireless card with wifi and Bluetooth. Hardware compatibility solved. (Nvidia support is far better now that it ever has been, but, I want to not use proprietary drivers if possible. (It is. As LONG as you are willing to build you machine optimized for Linux. BTW, my notebook has an Nvidia optimus setup and it works like a champ. But for the desktop, I wanted something different.)
Gaming support has been hit or miss over the last year. However, two things (more than two really) have changed greatly.
First, Steam has REALLY pushed for Linux compatibility with Proton and Vulkan. Proton is a way for games to run in Linux, and Vulkan is a Direct3d renderer. Valve has just come out with the Steam Deck, a handheld/portable computer that runs a version of Arch Linux that plays most Steam games natively.
Secondly, Lutris has become mature enough that stuff that doesn’t work in Steam under Proton runs just fine. For example, World of Warcraft by Blizzard runs stunningly well under Lutris. Since one of the main games that I DO play is WoW, this is good.
Another issue plaguing Linux for the Desktop is that in order to get the latest features you generally need to use a rolling release, which is a release that is in constant upgrade. Garuda (Arch based and optimized for performance) has become very stable, and Pop-OS! from System 76 is a “normal” release.
For a good gaming experience on Linux, you need to have decent hardware. An older system will run older games just fine, but don’t expect Cyberpunk 2077 to work with any kind of success.
Implementation
For the last month I have been using Pop-Os! on a separate SSD from Windows 10 for everything. The only thing I dislike about Pop is that it is a Gnome 3 derivative called Cosmic. Gnome 3 has some good features but I have been using KDE my whole 20 plus years in Linux.
But it was great for stability and proof of concept. It worked. Games all ran. It just worked. And that was the proof I needed.
So I backed up my Windows data (again to be safe) and unplugged the Pop-OS ssd (for safety) and decided to install Garuda Soaring Eagle. It uses built in timeshift snapshots using btrfs, so even if something goes wrong you can step back in time and fix it, or wait out the update that trashed it.
Now my Linux /home partition was, for Pop at least, on two 3 TB drives using btrfs to be one logical volume. Garuda saw them just fine, as well as all of my hardware in the live environment, so I installed it pretty much using the default options on the 1 TB ssd that used to be Windows 10. I encrypted it with LUKS, and moved my documents directory to it. Everything else I symlinked from the btrs volume to the proper place. No need to have videos or music taking up space on the SSD if they can live comfortable on a mechanical, right?
Garuda pre-installs Steam and Lutris and all the needed dependencies as well as a huge amount of software for pretty much everything. Most of which I approve of, although I like Clementine for audio and VLC for video.
Success
As of this publish, the project has been a huge success, Windows 10 is gone, and will only be running in Virtualbox from now on. Or maybe QEMU, I don’t know which I am going to like better. This is for “just in case” i need to run something in Windows.
Anyway, more on this subject as it develops!
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