My journey to successfully game under Linux (and overcome Microsoft's Stranglehold)

[Indus]

BTW @biostud.. a few notes..

Don't underestimate Fedora's immutable distros. They basically become debian at that point as they don't change or can revert to original setup with a simple reboot.

I specifically chose Ultramarine because of networking otherwise Bazzite (immutable Fedora with NVIDIA drivers) worked great for gaming for me.

So if the problems with backups continue.. don't write off Fedora all together.. maybe you just need an immutable version.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Long list of updates today showing up but I'm not executing them yet.. If it's working, don't fix it!

If your OS SSD is separate and small (upto 256GB), you can clone it, test the updates and if they suck, back to the original SSD.

 

[Indus]

If your OS SSD is separate and small (upto 256GB), you can clone it, test the updates and if they suck, back to the original SSD.

2 TB.

I tried to make individual partitions this time but either it didn't work or it just made a huge partition.

Either way it did install.. I gave it:

1 GB /boot/efi FAT
1 GB /boot EXT2

And I tried 100GB /root with 1.7 TB /var but somehow it combined them. (I also had tried to go with EXT4 but i overrode me and went with BTRFS). But it works so I'm not keen on doing another reformat.

I'm curious what software do you use to clone it within Ultramarine? Since if worse comes to worse.. maybe a clone idea isn't the worst!

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm curious what software do you use to clone it within Ultramarine? Since if worse comes to worse.. maybe a clone idea isn't the worst!

Not from within but boot from CloneZilla. It's excellent.

Though I've only tried exact sector copy. Don't know if it will recognize all file systems etc.

 

[Indus]

Not from within but boot from CloneZilla. It's excellent.

Though I've only tried exact sector copy. Don't know if it will recognize all file systems etc.

So how do you do it? Clonezilla and Ventoy together?

 

[biostud]

So how do you do it? Clonezilla and Ventoy together?

I just cloned my Mint partition from my windows install.

 

[Indus]

I just cloned my Mint partition from my windows install.

Interesting.

Maybe it is worth keeping Windows around after all for fall back methods!

I do have a 2 TB HDD from 2010 or something.. might be worth to use it like that.

 

[igor_kavinski]

So how do you do it? Clonezilla and Ventoy together?

Yeah. Should work fine. When I last used it years ago, I was pleased with how uneventful it went. Much simpler than the bloated and slow boot environment of Macrium or Acronis.

 

[biostud]

Interesting.

Maybe it is worth keeping Windows around after all for fall back methods!

I do have a 2 TB HDD from 2010 or something.. might be worth to use it like that.

I currently have a triple boot setup. It is also nice to have a fallback Linux, when you mess up your fstab so you can't boot. ( or so I've heard )

 

[manly]

Not from within but boot from CloneZilla. It's excellent.

Though I've only tried exact sector copy. Don't know if it will recognize all file systems etc.

I'm pretty sure it handles Linux-native filesystems quite well. It can shrink NTFS, at least via an "experimental" flag that I've never used.

Now the text-based UI is something "only a mother could love." There's also RescueZilla if you gotta have a real GUI.

Last time I used Macrium free a couple years ago, it could not automatically grow one of the partitions (rescue or ext4, can't remember now).

 

[biostud]

Interesting.

Maybe it is worth keeping Windows around after all for fall back methods!

I do have a 2 TB HDD from 2010 or something.. might be worth to use it like that.

I also keep mine for some photo work. But yeah, I am not a fanatic so having extra options is in my opinion not a bad thing. I want to see how much I can get done without the need of Microsoft, but if I use them now and then it is not a major problem.

I have enough storage to keep an active Windows partition in my system.

 

[biostud]

Yeah I did that..

made a list of what programs I need.
what commands I put in terminal
made a fonts folder
copied over my saved games/ add ons folder

But apparently I should copy my whole steam library folder?? I haven't quite figured that one out. And I'd need to do the same for Lutris as not all of my games are Steam.

But I honestly haven't used Windows in about 6 weeks now other than to test my video card isn't broken.

If anything I'm liking linux more and more.. what most impresses me is you know how windows can feel laggy if you leave it running for a few days.. well no such lag there with Ultramarine.. but I knew that from my wife's debian too.. she leaves the computer on for months at a time.

Both of us are not updating to latest and greatest as I feel that breaks the system.. or at least it did for me when I updated and then GPU driver stopped working.

That's why I have a separate partition for games/data, although I haven't really figured out how to get steam to use previously downloaded data.

But I don't have that many games, so with 1000/1000 it's not a big deal.

 

[igor_kavinski]

although I haven't really figured out how to get steam to use previously downloaded data.

You can use NTFS symlink. Never tried it.

What I've read is that the Steam username accessing the symlink should not change so multiple Steam accounts may not be able to access the same symlink.

It's another one of those, you won't get it until you go through the pain of trial and error.