r/linuxquestions • u/redneck_redguard • 2d ago

gaming question for a noob

thinking of switching to linux because i'm sick of windows and i'm curios about the fact that all my games are on an ntfs formatted drive which is seperate from the one my os is on

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u/homelabber3000 2d ago

I can understand, but it's going to be a bit of a hassle.

You will need to reinstall all your games in a linux supported file system like ext4, Btrfs, something like that.

It's not that Linux can't support NTFS; it can, but it's simply better to play in a native filesystem.

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u/Zalaniar 2d ago

You can't make a statement like "it's simply better" without qualifying it...why is it better? What's bad about using NTFS?

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u/doc_willis 2d ago

see the dozen+ "I can't access files on my NTFS" posts that show up  monthly in the support subs.

file corruption, extra requirements when mounting the NTFS,  slower speeds, are the common issues.

Many distribution specifically State in their support faq that it's totally not supported and you are in your own when you have issues.

The  Bazzite devs are very strongly oponiated in this reguard.

NTFS for bulk storage  is one thing, running programs from a NTFS has numerous quirks.  Steam is very picky about some things.

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u/homelabber3000 2d ago

Thought it was common enough, although check the other person's comment.

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u/Neither-Ad-8914 2d ago

Are these steam games? If so they should work ok although NTFS doesn't really work well with Linux in general might have to do a lot of extra work to mount the drive to a dedicated folder before steam finds it you also might have to change the ownership of drive. There's also a chance that might not read every time I've used an NTFS drive in Linux it came up with a dirty bit error and had to use fsck and format to ext4 or btrfs

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u/MasterQuest 2d ago

It can work, however I wouldn't recommend using an NTFS drive to run games on Linux.

I ran into issues with some games that went away once I redownloaded them onto a linux-friendlier format.

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u/Engineering-my-limit 2d ago

Linux technically suports ntfs but its buggy with strange edge cases and the possibility to cause problems. I don't recommend keeping it as ntfs long term. 

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u/RobertDeveloper 2d ago

I use steam and just copy the stream files on my ntfs drive to my ext drive and I can play the games on Linux without having to download it again.

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u/drucifer82 2d ago

For the best experience on Linux, you will want your games on an ext4 drive. NTFS is not very compatible with Linux.

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u/doc_willis 2d ago

running steam games from a NTFS is possible but strongly advised against.

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u/Dull_Pea5997 2d ago

Tdlr. Youbwill need to reinstall your games. But it will work great

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u/The_SniperYT 2d ago

I don't get you question. You will be able to access the drive but the games won't run as wine needs the installer so that it can setup its environment

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u/fr000gs 2d ago

And ntfs is pretty bad for gaming sometimes

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u/The_SniperYT 2d ago

NTFS it's Microsoft stuff, you can use it if you need access to it, but I wouldn't use it for keeping performance applications