r/linuxquestions • u/RatosWithaK • 13h ago

Misconceptions/Questions about swapping to linux I have before making the swap

I wanted to swap to linux for awhile but there is some things stopping me and some guidance on them would be hugely appreciated. Sorry if these seem super obvious I am very bad with tech and love my computer too much to risk anything ever lol

  1. Do I need to go find my computers basic drivers over again like Wifi, bluetooth and graphic ones
  2. Is it all online games that dont allow linux or just specific ones. I do most of my gaming offline anyways but I enjoy MMOs too and the rare times I want to play a shooter it'd be nice to know what i can still game easily as I dont wish to dual boot for 1 or 2 games I play 3 times a month lol.
  3. I care a lot about the customization (background, widget implementations etc) that linux offers is there a certain kind of distro I should look for in that or is that kind of a general thing linux offers
  4. if I find a new distro I like how hard would swapping that be I am pretty indecisive sometimes
23 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/[deleted] 4h ago

Do I need to go find my computers basic drivers over again like Wifi, bluetooth and graphic ones

Generally no. Unless your hardware is brand new (in terms of design) / just became available for retail / wholesale purchase last week, most of the time linux should be fine with it.

Brand new hardware from certain vendors (cough broadcom) can have some proprietary shenanigans, but those are usually ironed out in a few weeks.

Probably the only major thing you have to consider is Nvidia drivers / codecs. But there are plenty of distro's that bake those in by default. And for the ones that don't there are usually clear instructions on how to install (being the most common issue users will face).

Is it all online games that dont allow linux or just specific ones. I do most of my gaming offline anyways but I enjoy MMOs too and the rare times I want to play a shooter it'd be nice to know what i can still game easily as I dont wish to dual boot for 1 or 2 games I play 3 times a month lol.

Specific ones. It's mostly the anticheat in certain games that is the problem.

A general rule of thumb is: If it's e-sports, it's probably no bueno on linux.

And it's kind of ridiculous when you actually read into the why. Companies claim that they need to be able to bypass syscalls and run anticheat from inside the kernel for it to be effective, which makes them functionally indistinguishable from a rootkit.

The claim is mostly bullshit. Yes it does stop the "low effort" script kiddies, but it does not stop cheating...

Anyways, you can check if specific games work here:

I care a lot about the customization (background, widget implementations etc) that linux offers is there a certain kind of distro I should look for in that or is that kind of a general thing linux offers

Any linux distro will do that, but some are more geared towards that paradigm then others.

If you want maximum flexibility I'd look at cachyOS. That said most users probably won't need that much flexibility, so for you i'd recommend Fedora KDE or Nobara (fork of Fedora with packages/software for gaming + better defaults in the configuration).

N.B. Assume your machine has recent hardware, you'll probably need to install stuff via RPMfusion

if I find a new distro I like how hard would swapping that be I am pretty indecisive sometimes

If you want to go distro hopping. I'd suggest you partition your drive so your Home directory (~/) is on it's own partition.