Bro
Same thing happened to me day before yesterday and the day before that.
I sat for 6 hours on Friday and 6 hours on Saturday trying to find out the solution for secure boot problem and both my wifey and mother started yelling at me that I didn’t switch this much time in front of the PC nowadays and now why I sat.
Since 5 years my gaming drastically reduced to 2-3 hours per day sometimes only during weekends.
Because I only browse the forums and instagram on my mobile only these days.
So back pain and shoulder pain came. So I got frustrated and installed win11 again and left it.
The memory training of DDR5 during boot is long and sometimes the windows are taking much time than was in AM4. And there won’t be any AI spy wares in Linux right?
Corruption of GPU drivers by windows updates won’t be there in Linux right.
Even though I uninstall those drivers from Windows updates they are getting reinstalled and breaking the GPU drivers.
In some games there are crashes due to this and MS not giving updates for some others.
I don’t think any of those are dealbreakers compared to the things that won’t work properly or at all in linux. A program/game not working is a much bigger deal than a graphics driver getting corrupt once in a while.
Isn’t memory training part of POST and have nothing to do with the OS? How is it going to be faster with Linux? Moreover, doesn’t it happen only when you install a new memory for the first time?
Memory training is before OS boot. Using linux wont change anything.
Usually there is a bios setting to remember stuff ( memory context restore maybe) which can reduce boot times, but occasionally it will still take more time.
Yes no spwyware AI crapware on linux.
Na, and ideally everything on AMD should work out of box. No need to install drivers as it comes with linux kernel.
With time, open source drivers should improve too and might get faster than AMD proprietary ones on windows. For older gen amd gpus i have heard that its already similar or better.
Best to have both options and play what works best for you. Some games may have issues on linux too, but due to steam deck its very good these days.
Use Win 10 LTSC if you can, not much bloat in it. There is win 11 LTSC too but i havent used it yet. Neither is perfectly legal, but its the best version of windows without/with less shitware.
You can disable driver updates for devices, so disable it for your gpu. I always do that now. Else yes windows can fk it up and has done it for me few times - both nvidia and amd. See links below
Which among you posted is best.
That also allows secure boot as well because my secure boot won’t get re-enabled if disabled.
I have to try multiple times. That’s why. Thanks.
I have lived with arch for most of my life, and recently moved to opensuse slowroll because I’m getting older. Do NOT use arch unless you plan to learn linux + cmdline + spend siginificant amount of time tinkering with OS. Garuda (or Cachy) are also arch-based, so avoid them.
You have an amd gpu (you should have mentioned specific hardware TBH), most distros would work fine. Your choices come down to two flavors (just watch multiple reviews for these distros on youtube):
stable traditional distros: They just release a version(eg: mxlinux 22) and support it for 2-5 years, and you can upgrade to the new versions in future like mxlinux 23 if you want. I chose mxlinux because it has lots of gui utilities for common tasks and it’s very lightweight with no bullshit. Software versions can take anywhere between months to even years to get into debian repositories (repository = app store like playstore, but for that particular OS). In return, you get very few updates and a pretty stable experience as there’s very few major over the years.
Immutable distros: bazzite is really really popular. It uses an os design similar to android: a “core” OS that cannot be modified by user and is upgraded all at once. This ensures that the OS is always well-tested and working. You install software from an external respository (store) called flathub and the apps are directly released by app devs (unlike distro maintainers in normal repositories). But OS updates are regular, so make sure you can afford a few GB of bandwidth for OS updates every month.
One benefit with bazzite is that it is focused on gaming specifically (even comes installed with steam IIRC) and it’s cutting-edge → you always get improvements within days/weeks of new software versions releasing. Immutable distros like bazzite make some things harder/complex like configuring the core OS or developing software, but as you don’t plan on doing those things, it is really perfect for you.
Whatever you do, watch some youtube guides (every distro will have lots of reviews) and experimentally try them out by installing on a virtual machine.
yes. I might be repeating myself, but try going through installation in a virtual machine (or a spare laptop/PC where you wouldn’t mind losing data) first. Partition layout can be hard to get right the first time and you don’t wanna mess up the disk.
start by playing with linux in vm
start figuring out your partition layout (especially if you want to dual boot)
Then, install linux on your real machine.
Essentially, this is how you want the partitions to look:
/ (root - usually btrfs or ext4 format) - stores the OS images like C:/ (both the current and the previous, just in-case current has any issues, you can just select to boot from previous image as backup).
/home (usually ext4) - stores user data (C:/Users). Stores your user-config files (firefox data, downloads, documents, screenshots in pictures etc..).
/data or /games ( ntfs if sharing this partition between linux/windows or ext4 for linux) - a partition where you store games or other data (eg: movies) and optionally, share with windows if dual-booting.
Ask gemini/chatgpt any questions for optimal layout (just give it the disks + their sizes). And make sure to confirm with other users here that it looks good. This is pretty much the only decision that you need to take seriously, as the rest of the process is pretty straight-forward.
I personally use suse-slowroll on my PC, but I also installed mxlinus on my external hard disk. If my OS is ever fucked (with my nvidia hardware, it’s just a matter of time), I can still just connect my external hdd and backup-data or fix-system or just use it to do any task like browse web in emergencies directly. I can of-course take it with me too, where I need my linux, but it’s primary purpose is a good stable backup OS.