Approaching the end of window 10 and have no plans on upgrading to 11.
I am trying to find alternatives to applications I regularly use before jumping ship (it is mostly a gaming focused pc) any suggestions?
There’s oculus software for my vr but don’t know what I’m going to do with that
Small update: probably going to do Linux mint as that appears to be the most beginner friendly
Update two: that’s a lot of comments, and Thanks for all the info
If a tool (or distro) works well for you, it’s a good option. Everyone has different opinions on the “best” distro, but since it’s very subjective, there is no single “best” distro. There’s only 2 distros I recommend against, that’s Ubuntu (and close spin-offs) and Manjaro, because they have major objective downsides compared to equivalents like Mint or Endeavour. The distros I generally recommend to new users are Mint and Fedora, but feel free to look around, you’re not forced to pick a specific one.
You noted you were likely going to choose Linux Mint, great! It’s a “stable” distro, as in, it doesn’t change much with small updates. Instead, new release versions (23, 24, 25, etc) come with new changes. Linux Mint comes with an App Store that can install from Flathub, which should be the first place to check for installing new applications.
As for VR, it depends heavily on which exact headset you have, and is not always a great experience on Linux right now (speaking from experience with an Index). The LVRA wiki is a great starting place: https://lvra.gitlab.io/. If you’re on a Quest, WiVRN and ALVR exist, though they both have their own downsides. If you’re on a PCVR headset from Oculus, your options are more limited. You might also want to consider a different distro, as VR development is moving very fast. Many VR users choose to go with a “harder” rolling release distribution, like EndeavourOS, to receive feature updates quicker.
Also of note, if you have the storage space, you can choose to “dual boot” (even with just one drive). This will give you a menu to choose between Windows and Linux when starting your computer, and will give you time to move stuff over. I generally recommend this, as it provides an option to immediately do a task you know how to do on Windows, when it’s absolutely required to do the task asap.
onlyoffice is also a pretty good option for ms office compatibility
Btw, ungoogled-chromium needs a extension for extension market access. There’s also just Chromium or Brave, Edge or whatever floats your boat.
Can I run any game on Linux steam if it is bought there?
You can always check proton.db (it keeps a track of how well steam games run on Linux).
So I should do this with at least ny favorite games before wiping my drive and installing a Linux distro?
Bazzite, a gaming-focused Linux distribution, is designed to work really well with Steam. One drawback is that if you have a game installed in Windows on a Windows drive, you can’t use it from Linux steam. But, there is a way to have games accessible to both operating systems. I haven’t done this, yet, but I’m probably going to try it this week.
It involves installing a Windows driver that supports BTRFS partitions.
Here’s the video guide I found.
An alternative is to bind mount the appcompat folder from your linux steam into the steam library on your windows drive.
I really hope Bazzite manages to smooth out the last few snags and use cases for dual-boot so that I can recommend it to more non-techy people without needing to explain stuff like this or the unintuitive process of importing installed windows games into Lutris.
Probably, yes. Dual-booting may also be an option for the one or two games that don’t work.
1 gotcha for gaming on steam is anticheat enabled games. If you play competitive games where third party anti cheat is required often you will not be able to play them even if they say they support Linux on steam.
Not every game works, but as another user pointed out, ProtonDB is a good resource. If you buy a new game on Steam, and it doesn’t work, you can refund it within the first 2 weeks (and below 2 hours playtime) for any reason. That includes “Ths game does not work on my operating system”.
Legacy iOS Kit works for some things too
Ye use amd adrenaline to control overclocking and settings for my GPU and games. I’ve seen recommendations for LACT or CoreCtrl
I use LACT. It’s very easy to use and works well.