In my years of being in the IT industry, I have dabbled in the arts of Linux here and there. The occasional Linux based install to see what the wold of Linux computing looked like for a brief time. Perhaps a project where it made sense to use Linux for a various purpose. The curiosity was always there for me, although I rarely perused its use much beyond just tinkering and toying.
As a gamer, my main domain of computing lay strictly in the realms of Microsoft Windows for some time. Gaming in Linux has always been somewhat of a possibility, even in the earlier days with Wine and other compatibility layers. However, it wasn’t without some serious work in prior years. Gaming has always been my medication so to speak. A method to meditate, relieve stress, relax, my zen if you will. Effectively, I mean, when it was time to game, I wanted to game, not spend hours fixing games I had running prior that broke due to an update on the game, or an update to Linux, and update or change to Wine, etc… You get the idea.
September 9th 2024, I started a journey in Linux that I didn’t really think would come as far as it has today. Albeit, not without some slight road blocks here and there.
I was doing some research and got the idea to dual boot Linux on my desktop. I use Linux on a personal laptop I use for work purposes when I am away from the office and/or home. These days that is relatively rare, but other than using it for the occasional remote connection and to some odds and ends here and there. I wanted to see what had changed in the Linux realm on other sides of the spectrum.
Once I had the dual boot in place, I started testing things in Linux. I work from a virtual machine, so all I needed to do was establish a method to connect from Linux on my desktop. I found that solution easily enough in the version of Linux I was running on my laptop prior, and since I loaded the same version on my desktop I got that in place relatively quickly. I don’t recall how I came across it now, but I was using Linux Mint on my laptop and had been for some time. That was the OS I choose to start this journey on my desktop. I was a couple days into the test, and not having to use Windows at all for most of my needs. The real surprise to me was that I didn’t even have to use it for gaming at the time.
Fairly early on in the test, I decided to ditch Windows 11 and use all my SSDs for my Linux install. I did so in quite a bit of haste in truth. All my work needs were met by Linux, and gaming was the only other thing that held me back in the past. At the time that I started this journey, I knew there were games I could not play because of Anti-Cheat, but I didn’t play any of those games any way. I was ready to take the plunge. That initial test made it about 2 weeks and 4 days in before I went crawling back to Windows. September 28th – around October 11th, I was back in Windows 11 for a brief spell.
Around October 11th, and in my typical hasty fashion, I decided I abandoned the attempt to run Linux as a daily driver too quickly. At that time, I left a 500 GB SSD with a minimal install of Windows and room for a few games open. That way I could run Linux, and in the event that a game did crop up I couldn’t get running, or anti-cheat wouldn’t allow me to run, I would have a fail safe.
I’ve been on Linux since and eventually I ditched my Windows install again. Now, I should mention one should take great care when you just blow away an install on another ssd (or hard disk drive) in Linux. It just so happened I didn’t notice my grub boot loader for my Linux Mint install was on that Windows SSD. And with that, I got the grand (and horrifying) experience of learning how to repair a grub boot loader for Linux. I did have some success in the repair, and had my desktop back in operation after it was all said and done. However, while it was a learning experience, it isn’t really one most people would ‘enjoy’ being granted the opportunity.
As it often does, however, my curiosity eventually got the better of me. I was using VirtualBox to install various other Linux Distros, and researching some of the newer technologies available. When I started the journey into Linux, Wayland was quite the problem child for gamers. As time progressed, it seemed to be gaining some mention and ground for performance boosts in games and applications. Was it possible, I was missing out by using Linux Mint with a Cinnamon Desktop? At the time of this post even, it is still locked on using X11. I decided I must see what else the world has to offer!
From here the story goes into the Linux Distributions I’ve tried thus far and my personal opinion on them at this time at least. Obviously, I’ve tested more than the distros listed below, but thus far these are the only distros I’ve tried to run as my daily driver. I didn’t go into every little detail on the over all number of installs, the mistakes I made along the way, and the ribbing I’ve received from my gaming buddies along this journey of adventure, curiosity, and wonder. I’ll just leave it at, with Linux you can do ‘anything’ you want to do. Sometimes, you what you want, and the method you are taking to implement it, might not work the way you thought it would. “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Linux Mint is a fantastic operating system! I’d highly recommend it to anyone coming from Windows into the Linux world. While it has been labeled a beginner operating system, I’d like to state that there is really no such thing. Only Linux Distributions that might serve beginners better than others.
Everything I attempted in Linux Mint worked. I found a solution to every game I attempted to play, so long as the developers or publishers didn’t just out right stop you from playing it with Anti-Cheat. Lutris and Steam make gaming in Linux fairly simple for anyone with the desire to follow some instructions, and put in a little bit of work.
Of the Linux Mint installs I performed, Cinnamon is by far one of my favorites (asides from KDE, but I’ll get to that later). It has quite a few graphical applications to help users perform things in Linux with ease in comparison to other distros. Of course, you can always fall back to the terminal to accomplish things you find troublesome in Linux Mint which is also a nice plus.
Of all the various Linux distros I’ve tried to date, Linux Mint is still one of my favorites. I’d likely be using it to this very date, if not for the fact that it doesn’t implement the use of Wayland at the time of this post. The devs involved in the Linux Mint project say it is coming, albeit, they believe it is still a bit to early of a technology for the Linux Mint user base at this time (At least that was the general theory I gathered from the bit I dug around and researched into it.).
So in case you haven’t picked it up by now, my journey didn’t stop with Linux Mint. I won’t say I won’t ever give Linux Mint another spin, but I wanted a bit more than it could offer me at this time, and so I moved on to test other things in the Linux world for the now.
The true desire for the next test (and Linux Distribution) came from loading Debian on my laptop. I went with Debian 12 Bookwork, with the Cinnamon Desktop Environment. I was blow away by the performance differences. It really made me ponder the possibilities it might offer me on my desktop. I won’t say, it didn’t come without a bit of worry. I don’t game on my laptop after all. I knew Debian would likely suit my work needs, but could it suit the gaming side of things?
The answer to the question of gaming is, yes. It certainly can. I backed up my data, and started an install of Debian on my desktop. Ironically my initial impression was great! That said, it wasn’t without some annoying hiccups for me. I suspected that some of the older packages with Debian introduced issues with other applications that were driving me bonkers. Debian is certainly a popular distribution with numerous distros based on it, including Linux Mint and Ubuntu. That said, Linux Mint and Ubuntu both offer more updated packages, kernels, etc… with their stable versions.
In an attempt to combat some of the issues I was encountering with Debian, I once again tested the possibility of options in VirtualBox on Debian installs in hopes of finding a balance for me between stability and the options to run newer applications, packages, kernels, drivers, and the lot. There are other branches of Debian you can run for example, like Testing and Unstable. Ultimately, the fact that I also use my desktop to work, the possibility of that just didn’t really sit well with my current needs of computing in Linux.
Now, I know I still had options to continue my attempts to run Debian. Asides from the Testing and Unstable branches, there are flatpaks and backports, and perhaps a slew of other options I didn’t even come across. The problem with that for me was simply this. If you choose to run an OS for stability, then tinker around with it enough, at some point, it’s not really running ‘Stable’ any more. I mean not really. That’s not to say, I don’t like Debian, or that I won’t run it again. Only that for the time being at least, I found it wasn’t quite the right fit for me.
This left me in quite a pickle for my current situation. I wanted a Linux Distro that offered me options, stability, and at least the possibility of newer technologies. At that time, I made this decision; I would search for the possibility that a distro was out there that might suit my current needs. I would give that distro an attempt. If it fails for whatever reason, than I’m going back to Linux Mint.
I started some research, I mean lets face it. The number of Linux distros out there are almost daunting. What I wanted was a balance between stability and packages that were not as old as the default choices in Debian. At this time, I’m not interested in Arch, because I don’t have the expertise to maintain something like that. This alongside the fact that I don’t really have the desire (at this time at least, to build Linux from the ground up). It also goes without saying that I want time to actually use my PC for what I want to use it for, work and gaming.
While I was still on Debian, I loaded Unbuntu in VirtualBox. I knew there were methods in Ubuntu for me to change the desktop Environment if I wanted to use something else. By this point, I had grown to like KDE as a desktop environment, and I figured I was probably going to use it. At the time, I forgot that Ubuntu had various flavors, and so my initial test was on Gnome. I later downloaded Kubuntu and gave it a spin. It looked like it could work, but while I was comparing the kernel, drivers, KDE, and some of the other base operating system technologies. I found it wasn’t really what appeared to be that far off from Debian. This gave me the uneasy feeling that some of those hiccups I ran into in Debian would also be present in Kubuntu.
My possible solution hit me while I was watching some YouTube videos concerning Linux. I seen one DJ Ware‘s videos and he noted in the video that he was running Fedora. For whatever reason, the possibility of running that just never crossed my mind. Most of the tier videos I watched talked pretty bad about Red Hat and Fedora in general. If I had to give a reason, I would likely credit that. I decided it was certainly worth a shot, and I was still on the lookout for the blend of a Linux distro I wanted.
I downloaded the default Fedora 41 Workstation but did research and knew that would be Gnome, so I found the Fedora ‘Spin’ for Fedora 41 KDE and downloaded it as well. I spun up a VM of Fedora 41 KDE in VirtualBox and started walking through the operating system. In this case, even though I was certainly loving the look, feel, and performance in the VM, I didn’t rush off into the possibility of a new install on my desktop. I took some time, researched what some the minute differences between Debian based distros and Fedora would be. Thus far the majority of those differences have been the package manager. Well that and the fact that it runs on much newer drivers, Linux Kernel, and software packages.
It didn’t take long for me to come to the conclusion that it just might be the distro ‘I’ was looking for. I backed up my data on my desktop, and once again I was in the process of loading up another Linux distro to test. Fortunately for me, I noted Fedora defaults to btrfs. During the install I set my partitions to use EXT4, as I’m not quite ready to try btrfs, although I did use it in the VM I spun up, which is where I noticed it before.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m still early on in this install. I mean Tuesday being the first day I had it complete and a few applications and configurations set to test with later that evening. Unlike, Linux Mint, I haven’t been through any ‘major’ upgrades such as going from an earlier version to the latest version. If my timing and understanding is correct, I won’t have to deal with that for quite a bit longer even.
All that said, thus far it has been an amazing experience for me. I’m able to run KDE with Wayland. After installing the xsession for KDE, I can revert to X11 if I need too. I have really updated drivers, a much newer Linux Kernel, newer software packages! I love the look and feel of Fedora. There are always some slight differences you have to over come when moving to a difference distribution of Linux. The majority I’ve encountered so far haven’t been too much out of the way from what I was used too.
I’ve been enjoying Fedora so much in fact, that I also moved my laptop over too it. I still have some configuration to do on it to get it back up to speed on what I need, but I haven’t noticed any dramatic performance hits so far at least.
Again, still a bit early in the testing phase for me. I haven’t had to make use of our voice chat using Wayland and there are still quite a few games I haven’t played yet. I can say the current game Qvaid and I are playing runs extremely well even without Proton enabled in Steam. This was even in the Antique Plateau where both Linux Mint and Debian had some performance hits on occasion. I’m hopeful some of my favorite games still run as good as they did on Debian, which I must say was quite a bit of an improvement than even in Linux Mint. Given I haven’t had any issues so far with anything else, I dare say if it does perform well (whether it be in Wayland or I have to login with X11), Fedora just might be the distro that finally puts an end to the curiosity I had for other distros, and the inevitable distro hopping!
