Hello!

I’m interested in moving my personal computer to running Linux but I’m not sure where to even begin. As background, I am a casual user and have a desktop with hardware from around 2014 running Windows. I am hoping to setup a NAS drive as a media server in the next year or so, offloading all of the files currently on the Windows desktop and have been interested in open source software such as Jellyfin. I also mostly game on an Xbox and Nintendo Switch, but have used the desktop in the past for gaming such as with an Oculus Rift Headset and some Steam games so not huge on getting games working on the computer. But, I do sometimes torrent using the computer so don’t want to lose that capability (especially with upkeep for the media server).

With all of that said, I didn’t know how to get started with choosing what Linux OS to use, setting it up, backing up my files to make sure I can use them with the new OS, etc. Making the switch seems to have great options for customization and “choosing a distro that works for you”, but I don’t know what would work for me or what will be user friendly for a beginner.

Any tips or pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

  • @pastermil
    2•9 months ago

    I guess it can be hit or miss with nvidia. One potential solution is to disable the Optimus and run the nvidia entirely.

    • Dandroid
      1•9 months ago

      I might end up doing that for her. That would kill battery though, right?

      I can probably make a bootable USB drive and try it on her laptop for a while and see how it works before I blow out Windows.

      • @pastermil
        2•9 months ago

        Depending on your need battery life might not be a concern.

        Yes, USB drive is a good way to try it out.

        • Dandroid
          1•9 months ago

          I just tried it actually. It was working fine until I installed the Nvidia drivers, and now I just get a black screen when it boots.

          I wanted to try openSuse Tumbleweed to have something a little more up to date than Ubuntu. But I’m bored of fiddling with this right now, so I’m going to come back to this later.

          • @pastermil
            2•9 months ago

            that means one of this things

            • the nvidia gpu wasn’t activated (i.e. only the integrated gpu) until the driver was installed
            • the open source nouveau driver actually works well on that system

            i did find the nvidia driver setup on opensuse tumbleweed quite a hassle for some reason, despite everything else working flawlessly.

            it would be good to know the hardware you’re using because it would tell the level of support you’d get. one of the reasons i picked my w530 is because its k2000 gpu is well supported by both open source & proprietary ones.

            • Dandroid
              1•9 months ago

              Idk, I got bored of debugging what was going on so I started over and just installed from scratch again. This time I didn’t fidget around with Bumblebee or anything. I checked and it had the nouveau driver installed by default, which was playing much nicer with my system than I remember it with my old laptop. Anyway, I replaced it with the Nvidia driver from command line. Last time I tried downloading the .run from their website and that nuked everything. Everything seems to be running fine. I played through the prologue of Skyrim, which has been my test for a while now. It’s definitely running on the GPU, because I was able to max out the framerate on ultra settings (not that hard, but my CPU couldn’t do that). I’m suspecting that everything is running on the GPU right now, but it’s late and I need to go to bed.

              I just ordered another SSD, because my laptop has a slot open. I’m just gonna dual boot for a while before I commit to it and wipe out Windows.

              Thanks for the encouragement. This laptop/distro combo seems to be performing very well compared to my experience in the past.

              • @pastermil
                2•9 months ago

                So far I found Linux Mint (and probably the rest of Ubuntu based) to be the nicest with my nVidia GPU thru their Additional Drivers menu.

                Anywho, I hope it works out for you and your wife!