My journey to successfully game under Linux (and overcome Microsoft's Stranglehold) - 2 options - LMDE (Debian) & Bazzite (Fedora)

[Indus]

I would like to thank @igor_kavinski for helping me out while I was on vacation from this place and had the time to figure out a way to finally make it work.

Option 1:

I've known the simple and easy way for a few years now: LMDE (it just works)
You don't even have to reformat hard drive to GPT & set bios to UEFI.. it works fine with MBR

So if you just use your computer for:
1. surfing web,
2. watching videos/ movies,
3. using some hard drives to store all your pics
4. send them to your family/ friends on facebook..
5. use emails/ print things

My wife isn't a tech know how on computers and she has used it for 4 years now. LMDE works great.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Option 2:

Now a bit more complex way for making your games work in linux while bringing over your old games/ data/ movies etc..

Proof it works:


For this you will need to buy:
1. a new USB stick
2. two new hard drives: 1 NVME M.2 for booting and 1 SATA drive for mass storage.

You will also need access to 3 software items:
1. Ventoy
2. https://www.resize-c.com/
3. https://www.paragon-software.com/free/pm-express/

First thing you need to do in windows after adding the new hard drive.. format the new large storage hard drive in EX-FAT storage with a GPT partition table.

Ex-fat is visible to both linux and windows compared to NTFS which is windows only.

Then start moving your hard drive data/ games over to new one 1 drive at a time. After that's all done.. change the drive letter of the new drive to the old drive letter so all your programs/ registries stay in familiar locations and reformat the old drive again with Ex-fat and GPT table. Then move over the next one and repeat.

For me it went like this:
8TB G drive data -> onto 12 TB drive, renamed new one G drive
6TB F drive data -> onto 8TB drive, renamed new one F drive
3TB E drive data -> onto 6TB drive, renamed new one E drive
Have a new spare drive (3TB).

Now see if your old boot drive is MBR or GPT. If it's GPT it will save you a ton of headache. If not.. this is an excerpt from my convo with @igor_kavinski



So what you want to do if you have a MBR C:\ drive.. clone it onto the spare drive,
change settings in bios to boot off the spare drive as windows won't allow changes to main drive (while it's being used as the boot drive)
then convert the original boot drive from MBR to GPT
Reboot, go into bios settings again.. change everything to UEFI instead of CSM/Legacy
And set the original drive to boot off again.
Then back in Windows reformat the spare drive to exfat and gpt.
At this point all your drives should be UEFI compliant GPT. (only your boot drive stays NTFS)

Now use Ventoy and select a linux distro you like and put it on the USB drive.
And you go into bios and TURN OFF SECURE BOOT,
Then you set the USB drive as your first option in boot sequence.

Then install that linux distro onto the 2nd new NVME drive and set it's boot loader on the 2nd drive. (If you install the linux partition on the same hard drive as your windows boot drive, linux with OVERWRITE the boot loader on the Windows boot drive which you want to keep intact)

This way.. your original windows drive is still seeing everything configured as it was originally and the 2nd drive is just an addition to the system.

After the new system is loaded.. go back into bios and set the new NVME drive with the linux partition as the first in sequence bootable drive and you should see a bootloader where you have options like this:



Then you're set and able to install all your programs and look at your data and you have a perfectly working dual boot system of windows and linux.

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Now for some observations:

I tried Cachy OS - had a few bugs I couldn't fix

I tried Nobara GNOME - I liked it but it had one bug that drove me crazy.. every time I would log in, it would put me 4 hours into the future and reset system time. Also I couldn't make GNOME desktops work for me due to their scaling. It's either 100% or 200% or 300%. I prefer Cinnamon or KDE's customability and set mine to 125%.

After a few days I gave up on that and downloaded Bazzite.

And for me Bazzite is like LMDE.. it just works.

But apparently as I learned.. I could have stayed in LMDE and people are playing the same games as me in LMDE. So any distro will work

Chrome and Firefox work beautifully well and sync.
VLC works fine for linux and can play your movies.
And if most of your games are under Steam.. they will play in linux



If you have some games that're not steam.. you can use lutris to use WINE to play them.. simply copy the entire folder over to an exfat drive from windows, then use the settings in this video:

I did find out a few annoying things along the way:
- To make a windows partition in MBR now is bad (just use GPT)
- To format in NTFS now is bad (just use ex-fat)
- Opera browser sync feature does not work and you will lose all your bookmarks/ dials
- Surfshark app in linux is not as detailed as in windows.. it will work but it doesn't allow for exceptions on sites or programs.. its all or nothing (so it needs some work)

And I haven't figured out everything yet, but after a week I'm like 95% of the way there to ditching Microsoft Windows.

Most notably I haven't figured out how to make firefox's video downloader work in linux and work to save videos which is really useful sometimes as the original video sometimes gets taken down which is annoying when you used it for a DIY hack or something.

And another thing I haven't figured out is how to setup my computer as a HTPC so that other computers can see the movie files on my hard drive..

But if and when I get it working, I will update this original post.

Once again major thanks to @igor_kavinski for helping me overcome some major roadblocks in my project and @Perknose for giving me some time off to get some major work done apparently!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Once again major thanks to @igor_kavinski for helping me overcome some major roadblocks in my project and @Perknose for giving me some time off to get some major work done apparently!

Now that's certainly a pretty positive spin on getting vacationed

I couldn't get ANYTHING done in my vacation. Was constantly thinking why the world was created to vex me

(YES YES I KNOW DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR )

 

[Indus]

Now that's certainly a pretty positive spin on getting vacationed

I couldn't get ANYTHING done in my vacation. Was constantly thinking why the world was created to vex me

(YES YES I KNOW DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR )

Still not fully done.. I'm trying to get the downloader to work.

Sometimes you just find a great video that works great as a fix but when it's time to do it again, go into liked videos and you can't find it.

So gotta be able to save the list of instructions down.. save yourself a major headache later!

Oh and HTPC would be a god send.. but I do notice more and more I don't even realize I'm not in windows anymore.. KDE feels so natural!

 

[Zepp]

for video downloads I've been using a simple gui app for yt-dlp simply called Video Downloader, which you can find in your app store or flathub. I had some dependency issue with the RPM install but flatpak version works great.

 

[Indus]

for video downloads I've been using a simple gui app for yt-dlp simply called Video Downloader, which you can find in your app store or flathub. I had some dependency issue with the RPM install but flatpak version works great.

View attachment 127370

Thank you! I'll go investigate that.

BTW what's your experience with samba? Is there a more graphical/ user friendly app that allows me to setup a file server for HTPC files? mp4's, mkv etc..

Would really be nice if windows computers could see it on the same network!

 

[Zepp]

Thank you! I'll go investigate that.

BTW what's your experience with samba? Is there a more graphical/ user friendly app that allows me to setup a file server for HTPC files? mp4's, mkv etc..

Would really be nice if windows computers could see it on the same network!

I'm afraid I dont have any experience with file sharing between different PCs like you are trying to do. My HTPC just streams the web.

But I did recently find a great site for streaming movies/TV for free https://pstream.mov/ if you are interested at all in that.

and this resource for finding other streaming sites https://fmhy.net/videopiracyguide#streaming-sites

 

[Indus]

BTW some of the videos on video downloader didn't download correctly.. it said it would download but then stopped after a sec. But I got the firefox add on to work correctly by just making the default download folder in a different location so linux and windows both download to the same folder and I don't miss anything.

And I haven't logged into Windows now for about 3 days now.. the only thing I don't have working is the HTPC setup where my movie folder is visible to other pc's.

Also I already mentioned Opera doesn't sync so I ended up replacing it with Chromium. I was told to get rid of Opera earlier as it had been sold from a Norweigen company to a PRC government one.

 

[Zepp]

Also I already mentioned Opera doesn't sync so I ended up replacing it with Chromium. I was told to get rid of Opera earlier as it had been sold from a Norweigen company to a PRC government one.

for what it's worth, Opera is still owned and operated by the Norwegian company that started it. A Chinese company is a major investor, but Opera is still beholden to European privacy laws. I used to see this discussion come up often in some subreddits I follow. I like a lot about Opera browser especially the new Opera Air, but it is not available yet on linux.(Air that is)

If you havent you should definitely check out Vivaldi browser. It was started by ex-Opera devs. I dont know how well sync works because I do not use sync outside of work. Microsoft Edge browser syncs on linux though heh

I prefer Brave browser over all. It's built in ad blocker is amazing, one less extension to rely on, especially since mv2 ublock origin wont be able to continue forever.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I prefer Brave browser over all. It's built in ad blocker is amazing, one less extension to rely on, especially since mv2 ublock origin wont be able to continue forever.

I used to too until it crapped out on Win8.1 spectacularly. If I open gmail or youtube on it with my account logged in, it crashes. No idea what happened. Seems a complete re-install may fix the issue but no guarantee it won't happen again so switched the gmail/youtube duties over to Opera. I lost a ton of incognito tabs in Brave so not trusting it again.

 

[BurnItDwn]

As far as file sharing / visibility between other pcs, Linux file sharing via Samba has been quite good going back at least 25 years.

I'm not 100% sure of the path on Redhat based distros, but I think /etc/samba/smb.conf is likely where you will need to set up your samba shares after you install whatever packages you need to install. (Im on catchy, not bazzite)

something like this will share your home directory

[sambasharename]
browseable = yes
read only = no
create mask = 0700
directory mask = 0700
valid users = whitelist of user names, or @group
path = /mnt/to/directory


then you mount it from your other pc however you want ..
in linux ..
manually mount:

sudo mount -t cifs //???.???.???.???/sambasharename /path/to/mount/your/share -o credentials=/home/user/.vault/.smbcredentials

the credentials file can contain the credentials with a 600 permission in a directory with 600 permissions. There are other more secure ways to do this, but its the easiest way to set it up, and works ok behind firewalls/on a private network. (probably not best for long term use)

actual contents a creentials file (you can call it anything you like, but i used .smbcredentials for my example)
username=?????
password=?????


If you wanted to add a linux share to a windows pc, you would just go to the ip address in the file explorer and right click to map as a network drive.

If you wanted linux to automount your samba share ... you would add it to your fstab, this is what I have done, not going to share here as I dont want you to screw up your install if you accidently make a mistake.

 

[Indus]

BTW I find one thing annoying under Fedora/ Bazzite.

Everytime I relog, I need to give my password to re-mount my hard drives.

I know it's a security thing but is there a way around it??

They show up like this..


And after password entered:



Access is granted. I think Samba would probably have problems sharing stuff it doesn't have access too.

 

[BurnItDwn]

BTW I find one thing annoying under Fedora/ Bazzite.

Everytime I relog, I need to give my password to re-mount my hard drives.

I know it's a security thing but is there a way around it??

They show up like this..
View attachment 127465

And after password entered:

View attachment 127466

Access is granted. I think Samba would probably have problems sharing stuff it doesn't have access too.

I'm guessing you might be using encryption? I've got no experience with that at all here, sorry. I'm using all unencrypted filesystems here.

 

[Indus]

I'm guessing you might be using encryption? I've got no experience with that at all here, sorry. I'm using all unencrypted filesystems here.

unecrypted but I do have a login pw

 

[BurnItDwn]

unecrypted but I do have a login pw

Sorry, im not sure how it works on your system. If the drives are mounted, and you just need to login to get permission then, i assume samba would see them. Otherwise, if your login includes the mount script to mount them, then you would only be able to share them when you login, or, you would need to use some other process to automount the drives.

I just use fstab for my internal hdds and ssds, and have everything mount on boot like a caveman

 

[Indus]

Figured it out.. it's a KDE setting..

Gotta turn that off for each of the drives.

 

[Indus]

So much for my idea to share a folder from within windows install and use it on Linux.. nope.. have to use BTFRS. Apparently exfat is readable but doesn't play well with Steam gaming or linux gaming.

This is where that 2 TB NVME SSD I bought came in really handy. But at least since it's readable I can copy over the old settings and stuff and don't have to configure everything all over again.

I've only had problems with 1 game so far.. Battlefront 2.. it doesn't play nicely and I think it's because it's both Steam and an EA game.. the EA loader messes with proton somehow since the loader isn't a game but it requires you to be logged into EA account too and then the game loads. I found that annoying in windows as well that one game needed 2 exe files.

But other than that.. all my other games are working.. well main ones anyways. I haven't quite gotten to what I haven't played in ages!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Don't blindly trust BTRFS. It's probably the most bug-ridden Linux filesystem in existence.

 

[Indus]

Don't blindly trust BTRFS. It's probably the most bug-ridden Linux filesystem in existence.

Why wouldn't Bazzite/ Fedora just install on Ext4 then? I tried to do it but was unable.

Should I go back to Debian with LMDE??

 

[igor_kavinski]

Just make sure not to keep anything too critical on BTRFS. That's all. It works, maybe like 99% of the time. A future BTRFS update could wipe out all data. Or maybe some data.

I think for games and entertainment stuff, it's fine.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Have you used BTRFS recently? And what's your opinion?

I only “use” BTRFS as the root (and home) filesystem on my Garuda (Arch-based) desktop. On more than one occasion, I had to resort to doing a “rollback” after borking things by playing around with packages and updates (which was my own fault). The rollback, like with a ZFS snapshot, was...

forums.truenas.com

I did recently when testing TrueNAS and another NAS solution to decide which way to jump. My experience with btrfs was not a happy one, though I am unclear whether it was the NAS middleware or the btrfs that was the key issue or the combo of the two, but ultimately I lost all data in such a way that even snapshots were lunched & totally unrecoverable. The decision after that was an easy one for me.

And that user's experience was just in June 2024.

 

[WelshBloke]

So much for my idea to share a folder from within windows install and use it on Linux.. nope.. have to use BTFRS. Apparently exfat is readable but doesn't play well with Steam gaming or linux gaming.

This is where that 2 TB NVME SSD I bought came in really handy. But at least since it's readable I can copy over the old settings and stuff and don't have to configure everything all over again.

I've only had problems with 1 game so far.. Battlefront 2.. it doesn't play nicely and I think it's because it's both Steam and an EA game.. the EA loader messes with proton somehow since the loader isn't a game but it requires you to be logged into EA account too and then the game loads. I found that annoying in windows as well that one game needed 2 exe files.

But other than that.. all my other games are working.. well main ones anyways. I haven't quite gotten to what I haven't played in ages!

I'll try battlefront when I get some time but I've not had much of a problem getting other games with launchers to run. Sometimes you have to force a compatibility setting in Steam (it just picks which one it thinks will work and normally makes the best choice but you can fiddle around with others). I was surprised that even GTA5 worked (but not the online bit).

I'd definitely stick with the standard ext4 file system. I didn't have any luck trying to reuse NTFS disks or exfat ones for steam.

 

[Indus]

I'll try battlefront when I get some time but I've not had much of a problem getting other games with launchers to run. Sometimes you have to force a compatibility setting in Steam (it just picks which one it thinks will work and normally makes the best choice but you can fiddle around with others). I was surprised that even GTA5 worked (but not the online bit).

I'd definitely stick with the standard ext4 file system. I didn't have any luck trying to reuse NTFS disks or exfat ones for steam.

It works the first time but not subsequent times.

https://www.protondb.com/app/1237950

 

[WelshBloke]

It works the first time but not subsequent times.

https://www.protondb.com/app/1237950

I mean that EA launcher is a pita in windows as well!

 

[Indus]

I mean that EA launcher is a pita in windows as well!

Yeah that's why I'm not blaming Linux at all since I hate it in Windows as well. I just like shooters in Star Wars.

BTW I am maybe hitting a limitation of bazzite.. since it's immutable version of Fedora

I can't seem to get samba working..



definitely feels like I'm banging my head against a wall with this as most forums just say use localsend.

But what I want is to have a gaming linux computer that can be used as a download/ movie server so family can use their pc to watch mp4's I'm hosting.

It works in windows.. there must be a way in bazzite.. I just have to find it.

 

[Zepp]

I think you need to use "sudo rpm-ostree install samba" instead of "dnf install"

I googled "how to install Samba on ostree distro" and the AI answer looked surprisingly comprehensive

you also might post a help question on one of the related subreddits like r/HTPC or r/Datahoarder