I’ve been almost-ready to ditch Windows for years. Now’s the time.
My new neighbor is an old-school nerd. He hosts install parties at our local leftist third space.
He’s going to help me switch to… not sure yet. Probably Mint. I can’t wait. It feels as good as never giving a cent to Amazon, Uber, and streaming services.
Yay.
I’m about there as well. I’m worried tho, cause I do some Sim Racing and some games don’t support Linux, and I’m worried the equipment won’t work. I know dual boot is always an option, but at a certain point, I fear I’ll just default to Windows because it’s what I know.
Mint is very comfortable for a windows user! If you’re on even slightly older hardware I really doubt you’ll find Windows more comfortable.
It’s all fairly new; within the last year. 9800x3d, 9070xt, and then the peripherals are all I’d say also new. So that also plays a part. I’m sure I will be fine, it’s just the unknown of it all, and Linux has a (imo deserved) stigma in its online support. I think the big worry is I feel like I have to learn it all, then change, instead of learning as I go. Just a lot at once, but I think it’s about time to learn.
Yeah getting hardware to work may require a bit of fiddling. There are some stellar resources, and some extremely helpful people. Most stuff really does “just work” but when it doesn’t you don’t have to learn everything, just how to fix that issue!
I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how painless it is. Obviously if you havae special hardware it may be hard to find drivers or whatever…hell if I know! but I had similar apprehension to you and it’s been a breeze!
Someone else responded that does some sim racing. It has limits, but it seems it’s game specific and largely by dev choice. More confidence than I expected, but I have liked at literally nothing for the process yet. Free weekend though, so hopefully 48 hours is enough lol
Having never even looked at Linux before I had it up and running on my old MacBook in less than an hour! Maybe another two of playing with settings (mostly for fun), and now it’s just my computer! I’m sure it’ll take extra time to get the things you want to work to go if they’re unusual, or maybe as you point out you may need to keep a windows partition for that.
Whew this was pretty accurate! I was gonna wait for the weekend, but I was feeling some type of way last night and just said “fuck it” and it was up and running within like 20 min. I’ve done basically nothing else tho; I had display issues (an HDMI switch I have was defaulting 1 screen to 4k (it’s a 1440 screen) and 60hz (it can do 240 I think?). So I tried to force resolution on it, which worked, but frame rate wouldn’t go. So I just bypassed the switch entirely, but now the 3rd monitor is always on, even when it’s off. So I need to find a way to kill the input when the screen is off.
I only ever use 2 screens, Screen 1 and 2 for regular use/gaming, or screen 2 and 3 for sim racing (screen 2 is just the discord/whatever screen). But with screen 3 always being active, the cursor and windows get lost over there, so that’s problem 1, sorting that out.
Problem 2 is probably more easily rectified, but I’m stubborn. Do I have to mount every partition before I use it, and does it have to show on the desktop? I have a 2tb and a 4tb SSD, and I was just going to split them evenly; 1tb for Win10 and Mint, and then 2tb each for storage. If it comes down to it, I’ll just run Linux on the 4tb cause I assume it will do most of what I need, then 2tb for Win10 for the special use cases. I just had a plan and I can’t get it to work now lol. Guess that’s what the weekend is for!
Peripherals all did mostly work; didn’t test the wheel or anything, but controller and Azeron controller worked natively, Bluetooth all seemed fine. No USB issues. Really smooth process all tings considered, outside of my personal setup issues.
You’re a hero man! Way to go. You’re a Linux person now ;) I don’t have any save advice because I’m where you were plus two weeks (and with simpler hardware, so you’re probably more advanced than me already)
Anyway that’s awesome! Way to go!
Hah thanks! I’m gonna slowly swap stuff over. Dual boot seems the way, and I’ll always have that fallback available if needed. Feel like I need to get on 5er or something and how A Linux guy for a few hours just to talk to em…lol
Just got into sim racing as a longtime Linux user. iRacing doesn’t work because they’re lazy about enabling anticheat, but ac, beamng, and others work great. What hardware do you have in your rig? FFB “just worked” with my pxn vd6, and I had to write up some udev rules to get my simsonn load cell pedals running, but it’s been smooth so far. There is a matrix chat you can join from simracingonlinux dot com that has excellent information and folks to help.
Yeah iRacing was my worry. I haven’t played it at all yet cause it’s just so much to get started, but that’s a goal, so it’s kinda at the forefront of my thoughts. I have a Moza R5 with just the stock pedals, but I have been eyeing some Simsonn pedals something fierce. How do you like them?
And awesome, I’ll look into that! I’m sure I’m gonna have questions, but from what I’ve seen, the Moza stuff is pretty plug and play. I have a bunch of random peripherals I need to look into tho
I really like the simsonn plus x pedals I picked up. The brake pedal has way better feel and modulation, and they’re adjustable about a billion ways to Sunday. I haven’t adjusted anything yet because I’m working on a frame to invert them out of 2020 extrusion.
The r5 should work perfectly out of the box, and install boxflat to do any tweaking you may need. Hopefully you take the plunge and things work well for you.