I have a home built PC that I want to get off Windows 11.

Specs:

  • Ryzen 3700X, upgrading to a 5800X3D soon
  • RTX 2080 Super
  • 500GB NVME for OS, 2TB SATA SSD for files, programs, etc.
  • 1440p Ultrawide monitor
  • an 8bitdo Ultimate controller

Usage:

  • I usually play indie games, emulators, and occasional AAA games. Most of my library is on Steam, with some games on GOG, e.g. Cyberpunk.
  • I have an original Steam Link in my living room, and I use it to play games from my PC on the couch. Does Steam on Linux even support this?
  • I also write game mods, so I need a distro that is a good fit for software development (C++, Python, and Lisp).
  • Random miscellany: I use mullvad VPN, stream movies from a friend’s plex server, and use an SFTP client to back up photos and videos from my phone.

I’ve been an on/off Linux user in the past, so I know my way around basic/intermediate terminal usage and configuration. Buuuut every previous attempt to move to Linux ended in disaster, so I have little patience for asterisks, strings attached, etc. If you’re offering a distro I’ve never heard of before, you’re probably gonna be hard pressed to convince me.

Thanks for the help!

  • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earthOP
    1·
    10 hours ago

    You dont have to choose. You can keep a tiny Windows partition, and/or a shared NTFS partition that both linux and Windows can access.

    How is support for NTFS these days? Any degradation in performance or stability if I run games off a separate NTFS drive?

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      10 hours ago

      I haven’t benchmarked NTFS vs Linux partitions in games, but it’s fine. No stability issues. You can absolutely install GoG games there, and run the same files in Linux or Windows.

      I have run benchmarks for more extreme workloads (like writing tens of thousands of image files for a dataset), and Linux F2FS and XFS tends to handle it waaay better than NTFS. But this isn’t really applicable to gaming.

      The issue, as always, is the classic Linux thing if “you have to configure it right.”

      It’s best to edit the NTFS drive’s mounting options, in /etc/fstab, and put it in a special “compatibility” mode to work better with Windows. I am away from my PC, but I can find the documentation later if you wish.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          7 hours ago

          Another plus of CachyOS: the Arch wiki, suppemented by their own.

          https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NTFS#Prevent_creation_of_names_not_allowed_by_Windows

          (linked from there): https://man.archlinux.org/man/mount.8

          https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/automount_with_fstab/

          Here’s how my /etc/fstab file (which controls how drive partitions are mounted at boot) looks:

          UUID=30F6DF29F6DEEDDA /home/alpha/Windows  ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,ro,iocharset=utf8 0 0
UUID=1496470F9646F132 /home/alpha/Storage  ntfs3 defaults,lazytime,sys_immutable,uid=1000,gid=1000,exec,windows_names,discard,rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0

          • lazytime and discard are performance things for SSDs.

          • sys_immutable marks files with the “system file” attribute in Windows (like stuff in the Windows folder) as unchangable on linux, as you don’t want to mess with these.

          • uuid/gid explicity sets the owner as me, as Windows does not handle granular file ownership like linux does, hence its best to default to a user explicitly.

          • iocharset=utf8 and exec are probably redundant, but makes sure it doesn’t use an ancient linux defaut.

          • I will quote the windows_names description from the link above:

          Prevents the creation of files and directories with a name not allowed by Windows, either because it contains some not allowed character (which are the characters “ * / : < > ? \ | and those whose code is less than 0x20), because the name (with or without extension) is a reserved file name (CON, AUX, NUL, PRN, LPT1-9, COM1-9) or because the last character is a space or a dot. Existing such files can still be read and renamed.

          Note I have the Windows partition set as ro. Read-only. So linux can read files of the windows partition, but can’t write or change anything, just in case.

          /Storage is my SATA drive, which I have set as rw so linux can write files too.

          And FYI, I have my linux partition (and a secondary NVMe drive) set as f2fs. I’ve been happy with that filesystem for a long time:

          UUID=787e85c8-5a65-4265-ad91-de756ac2a8d3 / f2fs defaults,gc_merge,lazytime 0 1

          A lot of issues you see surrounding NTFS (like games not working or reported corruption) are because people and distros don’t set these options.

          But CachyOS may default to some of this by now. I set this up explicitly a long time ago.

    • stuner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      In my experience it works with some games but doesn’t with others. And if it breaks, the game just stops without any error message/information (you can get some info on the terminal). I would avoid it if at all possible. NTFS support is also overall still rather poor (e.g. my Mint install recently stopped working with NTFS drive until I ran chkdsk on Windows).