Yesterday, June 18th 2024, I decided to finally make a big leap, one that I was contemplating for a very long time. I finally swapped from Windows to Linux.
But why? What distro did I end up going with? What's my history with Linux anyway? I want to make this blog post pretty much to talk about why I switched from Windows, how I even got introduced to Linux to begin with, and then discuss the personal hell I've walked through ever since I made the switch.
But why? What distro did I end up going with? What's my history with Linux anyway? I want to make this blog post pretty much to talk about why I switched from Windows, how I even got introduced to Linux to begin with, and then discuss the personal hell I've walked through ever since I made the switch.
My history with Linux
Truth be told, Linux is something I've had an interest in since 2013. Back when Steam first added support for Linux. Up until that point, I had never heard of Linux. I didn't know what it was, nor how to use it. My friend had invited me over to his house to try to help him set it up, so he could get the Tux item in Team Fortress 2, which was a promotional item distributed for about 2 weeks to players on Linux.
Back then, we managed to figure out how to dual-boot Windows 7 & Ubuntu together, and after an entire day's of effort - we managed to get Ubuntu, Steam & Team Fortress 2 installed. It felt like a herculean effort but we managed it & my friend still has the Tux item in TF2 to commemorate that. I didn't get it though, sadly. One of the biggest things I regret missing out on in TF2 during my time. And the fact Valve never made the item tradable despite promising to really, really irked me to no end, but whatever. It's been 11 years since then, I've made my peace with it.
But that day in 2013 lit a spark that never really faded away. I took a genuine interest in Linux. I was already skeptical of the direction Microsoft was headed towards with Windows even back then. Windows 8 failed to impress with its tablet-esque UI that just sorta ended up driving me away from it all. When Windows 10 was announced & then released in 2015, I tried it out day 1...and hated it. But I'm willing to keel over in the sense that I don't think my issues with Windows 10 were as bad as I mentioned them to be in my original video. I think it was more-so the fact that, unknowingly, my laptop at that time was just dying. You could even see it in some of my other videos too where the graphics chip in it was starting to beg for its life, an example I keep pointing to is this TF2 video I made back in 2015. Just look at the framerate absolutely tanking & the graphics glitching out on a constant basis. I thought it was just one of the many mods that I installed that caused the game to glitch out like that, but I'm way more willing to believe that it was because of the graphics chip being almost literally on fire.
Over the years after, while I continued to stick to Windows, as I have been using it my whole life, my interest in Linux never faded. I was always hesitant to make the switch because I was just afraid of how would I manage doing anything - video editing, gaming, livestreaming - all of that. These were factors that kept me away from ever jumping from Windows to Linux full-time.
The way I evaluated the Linux experience over the years was simple. I just tried it. When I upgraded my PC over the years, my old ones, especially my laptops (fun fact - I full-timed laptops from 2010 to 2016!) were just kinda there sitting around, not really doing much. So, since I wasn't using them anymore, I've used them as my testing beds for Linux.
Most distros I've tried over the years were Debian-based:
These were the three main distros I used to go with. Ubuntu is obvious - it's pretty much everyone's first distro of choice. Lubuntu though, I tried it on an old Pentium M laptop I had, which was the Windows XP laptop I used to use as my main PC from 2010 to 2014. Only reason I ever gave it a shot was because it was advertised as a very lightweight distro for older computers, and considering that Pentium M laptop only ever had 1GB of RAM & Intel 965 GMA graphics, I thought Lubuntu fit the bill on it nicely. And it was! Lubuntu ran pretty nicely on it back in late 2016 until the hard drive in the laptop finally died & refused to boot ever again. I ended up selling the laptop the next year for 5 euros, since it was old & in very, very poor condition.
I have a video of that laptop running Lubuntu on my YouTube channel, but that video was later made private. Mainly because I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, it was filmed on a phone camera & trust me, the laptop really was that disgusting. It's a video I'll never put back up for public view again, but you can at least have the title & thumbnail of it down below. That's about as much publicity I'm ever willing to give that video again.
Back then, we managed to figure out how to dual-boot Windows 7 & Ubuntu together, and after an entire day's of effort - we managed to get Ubuntu, Steam & Team Fortress 2 installed. It felt like a herculean effort but we managed it & my friend still has the Tux item in TF2 to commemorate that. I didn't get it though, sadly. One of the biggest things I regret missing out on in TF2 during my time. And the fact Valve never made the item tradable despite promising to really, really irked me to no end, but whatever. It's been 11 years since then, I've made my peace with it.
But that day in 2013 lit a spark that never really faded away. I took a genuine interest in Linux. I was already skeptical of the direction Microsoft was headed towards with Windows even back then. Windows 8 failed to impress with its tablet-esque UI that just sorta ended up driving me away from it all. When Windows 10 was announced & then released in 2015, I tried it out day 1...and hated it. But I'm willing to keel over in the sense that I don't think my issues with Windows 10 were as bad as I mentioned them to be in my original video. I think it was more-so the fact that, unknowingly, my laptop at that time was just dying. You could even see it in some of my other videos too where the graphics chip in it was starting to beg for its life, an example I keep pointing to is this TF2 video I made back in 2015. Just look at the framerate absolutely tanking & the graphics glitching out on a constant basis. I thought it was just one of the many mods that I installed that caused the game to glitch out like that, but I'm way more willing to believe that it was because of the graphics chip being almost literally on fire.
Over the years after, while I continued to stick to Windows, as I have been using it my whole life, my interest in Linux never faded. I was always hesitant to make the switch because I was just afraid of how would I manage doing anything - video editing, gaming, livestreaming - all of that. These were factors that kept me away from ever jumping from Windows to Linux full-time.
The way I evaluated the Linux experience over the years was simple. I just tried it. When I upgraded my PC over the years, my old ones, especially my laptops (fun fact - I full-timed laptops from 2010 to 2016!) were just kinda there sitting around, not really doing much. So, since I wasn't using them anymore, I've used them as my testing beds for Linux.
Most distros I've tried over the years were Debian-based:
- Ubuntu
- Lubuntu
- Linux Mint
These were the three main distros I used to go with. Ubuntu is obvious - it's pretty much everyone's first distro of choice. Lubuntu though, I tried it on an old Pentium M laptop I had, which was the Windows XP laptop I used to use as my main PC from 2010 to 2014. Only reason I ever gave it a shot was because it was advertised as a very lightweight distro for older computers, and considering that Pentium M laptop only ever had 1GB of RAM & Intel 965 GMA graphics, I thought Lubuntu fit the bill on it nicely. And it was! Lubuntu ran pretty nicely on it back in late 2016 until the hard drive in the laptop finally died & refused to boot ever again. I ended up selling the laptop the next year for 5 euros, since it was old & in very, very poor condition.
I have a video of that laptop running Lubuntu on my YouTube channel, but that video was later made private. Mainly because I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, it was filmed on a phone camera & trust me, the laptop really was that disgusting. It's a video I'll never put back up for public view again, but you can at least have the title & thumbnail of it down below. That's about as much publicity I'm ever willing to give that video again.
Yeesh, that description really is....something. Remember back when I used Twitter? I'd say those were the "good old days" or something but I'd definitely be lying.
The point is, I'm no stranger to Linux. I've known about it since early 2013 and have been keeping tabs on it every now and then.
My most recent experiences with Linux were, surprisingly enough, with Linux Mint. It's a distro I've used consistently on my old college laptop that my brother gave me back in 2018 as a present for managing to enroll into college, constantly flip-flopping between Windows 10 & Linux Mint, mainly because Windows 10 on that laptop ran horribly. AMD's driver support for their R5 330 Graphics chipsets are...bad. Just straight up bad & unusable.
Funnily enough, I never dual-booted Windows and Linux on it. I always had one or the other on it. I did have a brief stint using Manjaro Linux on that laptop though, was generally not too happy with how Manjaro worked on the laptop though, but it was cool to try an Arch-based distribution for once, rather than always sticking to Debian.
Just a couple of months ago, I bought a cheap Intel NUC from my workplace during an auction. I managed to snag an old Intel NUC for about 30 Euros. It came with Windows 10, but having only 4 GB of RAM on it, you can just imagine how..."well" Windows runs on it (hint: not great). So I installed ol' reliable Linux Mint on it, and have been using it ever since! Mint did give me some trouble initially, with it not recognizing the external mouse & keyboard combo I plugged into it and constant issues with Wifi where it would kill the Wifi driver outright as a power-saving measure, forcing me to restart the whole computer outright. But I did manage to resolve all of those issues with enough tinkering & messing about, as well as using a variety of tools. Now it's a pretty nifty media consumption device that sees regular use by me, mostly during the night time when I'm trying to fall asleep & I just put on a podcast on.
My experience with Linux Mint was so good that I was considering putting it on my main PC as well, which we now pivot to the next question...
The point is, I'm no stranger to Linux. I've known about it since early 2013 and have been keeping tabs on it every now and then.
My most recent experiences with Linux were, surprisingly enough, with Linux Mint. It's a distro I've used consistently on my old college laptop that my brother gave me back in 2018 as a present for managing to enroll into college, constantly flip-flopping between Windows 10 & Linux Mint, mainly because Windows 10 on that laptop ran horribly. AMD's driver support for their R5 330 Graphics chipsets are...bad. Just straight up bad & unusable.
Funnily enough, I never dual-booted Windows and Linux on it. I always had one or the other on it. I did have a brief stint using Manjaro Linux on that laptop though, was generally not too happy with how Manjaro worked on the laptop though, but it was cool to try an Arch-based distribution for once, rather than always sticking to Debian.
Just a couple of months ago, I bought a cheap Intel NUC from my workplace during an auction. I managed to snag an old Intel NUC for about 30 Euros. It came with Windows 10, but having only 4 GB of RAM on it, you can just imagine how..."well" Windows runs on it (hint: not great). So I installed ol' reliable Linux Mint on it, and have been using it ever since! Mint did give me some trouble initially, with it not recognizing the external mouse & keyboard combo I plugged into it and constant issues with Wifi where it would kill the Wifi driver outright as a power-saving measure, forcing me to restart the whole computer outright. But I did manage to resolve all of those issues with enough tinkering & messing about, as well as using a variety of tools. Now it's a pretty nifty media consumption device that sees regular use by me, mostly during the night time when I'm trying to fall asleep & I just put on a podcast on.
My experience with Linux Mint was so good that I was considering putting it on my main PC as well, which we now pivot to the next question...
Why switch from Windows?
My reasons for switching out of Windows are pretty simple, albeit might be seen as petty by some. I'm just not happy with the direction Microsoft is headed towards with Windows. Again. Same thing I said about Windows 8, now the same thing is being said by me about Windows 11.
But this time, it's more than just because they are trying to turn Windows into a tablet OS or whatever. It's not because of that.
First reason - I'm not a fan of the fact that Microsoft is killing off older hardware with Windows 11's system requirements. This move by Microsoft is the reason why I even got a new PC in 2022 at all, actually. Because the threat of not being able to use Windows anymore past Windows 10 really fucking sucked. And it still sucks, even now.
My old i7-4790k PC can still kick ass. It can still do things. I know this, because I still used it up until recently. Everything I threw at it, it handled everything flawlessly. Be it video encoding, gaming, video editing, even being a damn server - it can hold its own still. Yet Microsoft deems it "too old" for Windows 11, all because of TPM 2.0 not being supported on it.
Listen, I know that there are still ways of getting Windows 11 installed on "unsupported hardware" but that's not my point. My point is that Microsoft is pretty much just forcing people to ditch their perfectly working hardware arbitrarily. The TPM requirement for Windows 11 is very arbitrary and what sucks is that Microsoft doesn't give you an alternative outside of "get a new PC loser".
Second reason - artificial intelligence. I've made a blog post about it here and even reiterate constantly that nothing on this website is AI generated. With all of that, you can probably guess that I'm just not a big fan of AI. I personally think it's a very dangerous tool that has been used, so far, for more harm than it has been used for good.
AI-generated art is an example I love to bring up. What does "making" AI-generated "art" do? It leaves actual artists without a job. AI-generated news articles only serve to destroy trust within the news system because no one is fucking proof-reading or fact-checking anything anymore. Now we have AI-generated voice models, which have already been used for criminal activity to impersonate other people, and even AI-generated videos are now starting to be a thing.
Just...no. I don't like this whole AI shtick, and I really wish they did what NFTs did and just fucked off back into irrelevance but that doesn't seem to be the way the industry is headed. Everything is just becoming more focused on AI.
And Microsoft now incorporating AI into Windows itself is where I draw the line. Especially with that whole presentation where they basically introduced the AI version of built-in Windows spyware called Recall that takes screenshots of your whole PC screen, so their Copilot AI can give you "suggestions" on what you should do next. I think the funniest part to me about this presentation was when they kept reiterating that "none of the screenshots get sent to any server, only ever stored on your PC", like they were desperately trying to calm people down about it being a security risk. And then, turns out - it's a security risk anyway.
Windows 11 24H2 looks to be like it's just going to be a shitshow. And these two reasons were enough to be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. These two reasons are why I finally decided to make the big leap from Windows to Linux.
But this time, it's more than just because they are trying to turn Windows into a tablet OS or whatever. It's not because of that.
First reason - I'm not a fan of the fact that Microsoft is killing off older hardware with Windows 11's system requirements. This move by Microsoft is the reason why I even got a new PC in 2022 at all, actually. Because the threat of not being able to use Windows anymore past Windows 10 really fucking sucked. And it still sucks, even now.
My old i7-4790k PC can still kick ass. It can still do things. I know this, because I still used it up until recently. Everything I threw at it, it handled everything flawlessly. Be it video encoding, gaming, video editing, even being a damn server - it can hold its own still. Yet Microsoft deems it "too old" for Windows 11, all because of TPM 2.0 not being supported on it.
Listen, I know that there are still ways of getting Windows 11 installed on "unsupported hardware" but that's not my point. My point is that Microsoft is pretty much just forcing people to ditch their perfectly working hardware arbitrarily. The TPM requirement for Windows 11 is very arbitrary and what sucks is that Microsoft doesn't give you an alternative outside of "get a new PC loser".
Second reason - artificial intelligence. I've made a blog post about it here and even reiterate constantly that nothing on this website is AI generated. With all of that, you can probably guess that I'm just not a big fan of AI. I personally think it's a very dangerous tool that has been used, so far, for more harm than it has been used for good.
AI-generated art is an example I love to bring up. What does "making" AI-generated "art" do? It leaves actual artists without a job. AI-generated news articles only serve to destroy trust within the news system because no one is fucking proof-reading or fact-checking anything anymore. Now we have AI-generated voice models, which have already been used for criminal activity to impersonate other people, and even AI-generated videos are now starting to be a thing.
Just...no. I don't like this whole AI shtick, and I really wish they did what NFTs did and just fucked off back into irrelevance but that doesn't seem to be the way the industry is headed. Everything is just becoming more focused on AI.
And Microsoft now incorporating AI into Windows itself is where I draw the line. Especially with that whole presentation where they basically introduced the AI version of built-in Windows spyware called Recall that takes screenshots of your whole PC screen, so their Copilot AI can give you "suggestions" on what you should do next. I think the funniest part to me about this presentation was when they kept reiterating that "none of the screenshots get sent to any server, only ever stored on your PC", like they were desperately trying to calm people down about it being a security risk. And then, turns out - it's a security risk anyway.
Windows 11 24H2 looks to be like it's just going to be a shitshow. And these two reasons were enough to be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. These two reasons are why I finally decided to make the big leap from Windows to Linux.
What distro did I go with? What's my future with Linux?
So, after consulting about with one of my friends who is far more knowledgeable on Linux than I am, what distribution of Linux did I end up going with? Was it Linux Mint like I had planned initially? Maybe Manjaro, so I could be closer to the "cool kids" who use Arch instead?
Nope, neither. I went with Fedora Linux, as recommended to me by one of my Linux-enthusiast friends, as it's supposedly one of the easier Linux distributions to work with, especially for Linux beginners such as myself. Reminder - even if I've dabbled with Linux in the past, I was never proficient with it, only ever doing the basics with it.
Why didn't I go with Linux Mint like I planned? My friend advised me against it, as apparently Linux Mint uses an old kernel. 5.15 LTS as of right now, meanwhile Fedora Linux runs on 6.9, which is far newer and has better support for newer hardware. I was told that this isn't strictly a bad thing, especially for older hardware, and that Linux Mint shouldn't be discounted as a choice because of this. And I agree! Linux Mint is still a great distro that would also probably be the one that I recommend to those looking to take their first steps into the Linux world. But for my purposes, it wasn't going to cut it, sadly.
How has the Linux experience been so far? A little bit...hell-ish, not gonna lie.
A lot of that has to do with my lack of experience in using Linux as a whole beyond the surface level. If you recall, I've been a Windows user my whole life. I'm 25 as I'm writing this, and I started using a computer when I was 3 years old, with Windows 98 being my first ever operating system. It's been well over 2 decades since I've been on Windows for.
Nope, neither. I went with Fedora Linux, as recommended to me by one of my Linux-enthusiast friends, as it's supposedly one of the easier Linux distributions to work with, especially for Linux beginners such as myself. Reminder - even if I've dabbled with Linux in the past, I was never proficient with it, only ever doing the basics with it.
Why didn't I go with Linux Mint like I planned? My friend advised me against it, as apparently Linux Mint uses an old kernel. 5.15 LTS as of right now, meanwhile Fedora Linux runs on 6.9, which is far newer and has better support for newer hardware. I was told that this isn't strictly a bad thing, especially for older hardware, and that Linux Mint shouldn't be discounted as a choice because of this. And I agree! Linux Mint is still a great distro that would also probably be the one that I recommend to those looking to take their first steps into the Linux world. But for my purposes, it wasn't going to cut it, sadly.
How has the Linux experience been so far? A little bit...hell-ish, not gonna lie.
A lot of that has to do with my lack of experience in using Linux as a whole beyond the surface level. If you recall, I've been a Windows user my whole life. I'm 25 as I'm writing this, and I started using a computer when I was 3 years old, with Windows 98 being my first ever operating system. It's been well over 2 decades since I've been on Windows for.
My woes with GNOME & KDE Plasma
The first day I installed Fedora, I told my friend that I didn't really like the UI of it, more resembling macOS than anything I'm used to. So they tried to help me install KDE Plasma, which is a GUI that's a lot more like Windows. Installing KDE wasn't that difficult, a few lines in the Konsole (Terminal) and KDE was installed and I was able to switch to it on login.
Problem, though. I couldn't select it when first booting up my PC. It would just default to GNOME instead and didn't let me switch until I log into Fedora under GNOME, then log out & switch to KDE. So my friend looked around for a script that would, theoretically, just remove GNOME from my PC & leave KDE, and make my computer boot into the KDE Plasma GUI every time.
I ran the script and......deleted both GNOME & KDE. No, seriously, I was stuck with just the terminal upon reboot. My friend gave me a few commands to run to check what GUIs I have installed, ran them, and that's when we found out that the script they found force-uninstalls any desktop GUI in the system. So that was a little bit of a colossal fuck-up, not reading what commands do. But, we were able to reinstall KDE Plasma afterwards & my Fedora was, once again, usable.
The funny thing about that script, though, is that it didn't just uninstall GNOME & KDE Plasma. It also uninstalled a whole bunch of apps. Firefox was gone. Steam was gone. All my media players were gone. So were my image viewers. It even uninstalled my graphics drivers, which I'll talk about a little bit later. So I had to spend a couple of hours reinstalling pretty much my whole system, thankfully none of the user data was touched so it was less of a hassle than I thought.
Problem, though. I couldn't select it when first booting up my PC. It would just default to GNOME instead and didn't let me switch until I log into Fedora under GNOME, then log out & switch to KDE. So my friend looked around for a script that would, theoretically, just remove GNOME from my PC & leave KDE, and make my computer boot into the KDE Plasma GUI every time.
I ran the script and......deleted both GNOME & KDE. No, seriously, I was stuck with just the terminal upon reboot. My friend gave me a few commands to run to check what GUIs I have installed, ran them, and that's when we found out that the script they found force-uninstalls any desktop GUI in the system. So that was a little bit of a colossal fuck-up, not reading what commands do. But, we were able to reinstall KDE Plasma afterwards & my Fedora was, once again, usable.
The funny thing about that script, though, is that it didn't just uninstall GNOME & KDE Plasma. It also uninstalled a whole bunch of apps. Firefox was gone. Steam was gone. All my media players were gone. So were my image viewers. It even uninstalled my graphics drivers, which I'll talk about a little bit later. So I had to spend a couple of hours reinstalling pretty much my whole system, thankfully none of the user data was touched so it was less of a hassle than I thought.
osu!(lazer) & Vulkan
After that kerfuffle happened, I started downloading some games. Things like osu!(lazer), which now has a native Linux port, Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2, as well as some Windows-only games to give Proton a shot. The games of choice for that were Sonic Origins, 100% Orange Juice, Apex Legends & NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD.
First, when I tried osu!, I noticed that it ran...somewhat sluggishly. That's when I googled around and discovered that there was a thing called Nouveau, which is an open-source Nvidia driver that's built-in to the Linux kernel that gets loaded as a fallback if it has nothing else to use. So I looked around on how to install the proper Nvidia drivers, got that sorted and...well, osu! is now utterly unplayable. The framerate has improved significantly but it flickers constantly. Not only that, the flickering caused by it also causes other programs in my system, such as Firefox & Discord to be basically unusable unless I disable hardware acceleration, which is just...huh? How did osu! manage to screw everything up so spectacularly?
I wanted to try seeing if osu! would run better on Vulkan over OpenGL, except for the fact that Vulkan literally fails to initialize on my PC, for some reason.
First, when I tried osu!, I noticed that it ran...somewhat sluggishly. That's when I googled around and discovered that there was a thing called Nouveau, which is an open-source Nvidia driver that's built-in to the Linux kernel that gets loaded as a fallback if it has nothing else to use. So I looked around on how to install the proper Nvidia drivers, got that sorted and...well, osu! is now utterly unplayable. The framerate has improved significantly but it flickers constantly. Not only that, the flickering caused by it also causes other programs in my system, such as Firefox & Discord to be basically unusable unless I disable hardware acceleration, which is just...huh? How did osu! manage to screw everything up so spectacularly?
I wanted to try seeing if osu! would run better on Vulkan over OpenGL, except for the fact that Vulkan literally fails to initialize on my PC, for some reason.
I asked around a few Discord servers and was told to try to do a symbolic link of the 32-bit version of Vulkan or...something like that, I genuinely do not know what this GitHub comment on the osu repo is talking about, I just blindly followed the commands, got a "success" from my system, tried Vulkan again and...got the same error. So it did nothing to resolve my woes.
Currently I'm stuck on what to do about the flickering of osu!(lazer) on my Linux system. Technically it's not unplayable, the frame rate is very good & there are zero input issues, it's just not very pleasant to look at, y'know? Having random elements of the game just flash about as you play? Regarding the Vulkan thing, I did try to look for commands that would essentially try to reinstall all the necessary dependencies for it but no dice. Vulkan still refused to be used on osu!(lazer).
Currently I'm stuck on what to do about the flickering of osu!(lazer) on my Linux system. Technically it's not unplayable, the frame rate is very good & there are zero input issues, it's just not very pleasant to look at, y'know? Having random elements of the game just flash about as you play? Regarding the Vulkan thing, I did try to look for commands that would essentially try to reinstall all the necessary dependencies for it but no dice. Vulkan still refused to be used on osu!(lazer).
Linux and NTFS do not mix
Counter-Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2 (#FixTF2 btw) I have nothing to comment on. Because these games are native on Linux, I haven't had any issues with them at all. Counter-Strike 2 stutters like crazy, but I'm assuming that's just because it's compiling shaders in the background. I'm also not very interested in playing CS2 at the current time anyway so it's not a huge loss for me either way.
Now, Windows-only games...I should mention that I currently, as of writing this, still have 2 NTFS drives mounted onto Fedora. The reason for this? Those are separate drives that I used to use for additional storage in Windows. One is a 640GB hard drive that I pulled out of my original laptop that died in 2015 and continue to use to this very day, the other is a 500GB SSD that I just use for storing games & downloads of all kind.
Why didn't I reformat the drives to EXT4 so they play nicer on Linux? Because they still have data that I would like to not lose. However, losing data is part of the Linux experience I am told. So while I haven't done it yet, I am planning on moving any data I deem important onto an external 2TB hard drive that I have & keep it there, then reformat both drives to EXT4 so I can actually properly use them on Linux as additional storage drives like I intended.
Why do I bring up this NTFS mumbo-jumbo? Because it's been the bane of my existence so far when using Fedora. Every Windows game I've installed - Sonic Origins, 100% Orange Juice, Apex Legends - all of these were initially installed on one of the NTFS drives that I have. They. Just. Would. Not. Launch. AT ALL! So many frustrated hours spent googling, asking around to see if anyone has had the same issue, with no dice. No one knew what my issues were. The most frustrating part as well was that no error logs were being generated anywhere. So there was quite literally nothing to go off of in terms of fixing this!
That was when I decided to try installing NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD onto my EXT4 drive, which is where Fedora is also installed on. I hit "Play" and...it just booted right up. No fuss. Sound works, framerate's perfect, everything works. I then sanity-checked myself again by trying to launch 100% Orange Juice, which is still installed on one of my NTFS drives - no dice, it still doesn't work. I try moving the install folder from the NTFS drive onto my EXT4 drive but that doesn't work. So I uninstalled it completely and reinstalled it onto my EXT4 drive, launched it, and the damn game works with no issues now...
I repeated the same step with Sonic Origins as well, and...it worked. At first I thought it was because I was using Nouveau initially but it didn't work even after I had switched to the Nvidia drivers. Then I thought it was because of Denuvo. You know, the horrible and unnecessary DRM that SEGA tacks onto their games these days? But turns out the issue this whole time was NTFS.
The same thing was even true for Apex Legends. But Apex was a little bit of a more interesting story than the rest. This story begins with the fact that my friend & I both noticed that my two internal SATA drives were being shown as "Removable Media" on Dolphin. My friend then suggested I edit the fstab file & put in entries for both of my drives so that they end up being mounted permanently & I wouldn't need to manually mount them every single boot. The way we mounted my drives was by first figuring out their identifiers, a.k.a. /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1, which are the identifiers for my HDD & SSD respectively. After that, we edited the fstab file by adding these lines into them:
The same symptoms as with the other games - I hit "Play", it would show me as playing the game for a brief moment, before the process in the background terminates and the "Play" button would become active again. I then scooted over to the ProtonDB page for Apex Legends. Saw launch options, tried them, didn't work. Saw that you can use a custom version of Proton called GE-Proton. Installed it - no dice still. I even wrote a frustrated report on the page, which you can still see being up, of me just not being able to run the game at all.
I was bashing my head against the wall, trying to find ANY way of getting Apex Legends to run. My friend then links me to this guide by Valve on mounting NTFS drives on Linux. I thought "what the heck, might as well" and edited my fstab file again, in accordance to Valve's guide, and re-mounted my drives anew.
Once I did that, Apex Legends finally got just a little bit further. Now, it just gets stuck on "Running install script (Easy Anti-Cheat Service (EOS))". I thought that because it's trying to install an anti-cheat dependency, which Linux is known to be not friendly with, it'll just take a while. So I left it be. In fact, I left it overnight! Accidentally, mind you, because I was in the middle of transferring about 210,000 files from my backed up osu! install on Windows onto my Linux install...yeah.
But even when it was left for 6 hours, Apex never got past the Easy Anti-Cheat Service install script. No matter what I did, no matter what I tried, it wouldn't budge.
I threw out a hail-marry into the Apex Legends Steam discussions, and tried to ask for help on Mastodon as well, when a user in the Steam forums suggested that it was because of NTFS. I tried to do what they suggested and reinstalled Apex on my EXT4 drive. And you won't believe it - it actually worked. Apex Legends FINALLY started up.
Now, Windows-only games...I should mention that I currently, as of writing this, still have 2 NTFS drives mounted onto Fedora. The reason for this? Those are separate drives that I used to use for additional storage in Windows. One is a 640GB hard drive that I pulled out of my original laptop that died in 2015 and continue to use to this very day, the other is a 500GB SSD that I just use for storing games & downloads of all kind.
Why didn't I reformat the drives to EXT4 so they play nicer on Linux? Because they still have data that I would like to not lose. However, losing data is part of the Linux experience I am told. So while I haven't done it yet, I am planning on moving any data I deem important onto an external 2TB hard drive that I have & keep it there, then reformat both drives to EXT4 so I can actually properly use them on Linux as additional storage drives like I intended.
Why do I bring up this NTFS mumbo-jumbo? Because it's been the bane of my existence so far when using Fedora. Every Windows game I've installed - Sonic Origins, 100% Orange Juice, Apex Legends - all of these were initially installed on one of the NTFS drives that I have. They. Just. Would. Not. Launch. AT ALL! So many frustrated hours spent googling, asking around to see if anyone has had the same issue, with no dice. No one knew what my issues were. The most frustrating part as well was that no error logs were being generated anywhere. So there was quite literally nothing to go off of in terms of fixing this!
That was when I decided to try installing NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD onto my EXT4 drive, which is where Fedora is also installed on. I hit "Play" and...it just booted right up. No fuss. Sound works, framerate's perfect, everything works. I then sanity-checked myself again by trying to launch 100% Orange Juice, which is still installed on one of my NTFS drives - no dice, it still doesn't work. I try moving the install folder from the NTFS drive onto my EXT4 drive but that doesn't work. So I uninstalled it completely and reinstalled it onto my EXT4 drive, launched it, and the damn game works with no issues now...
I repeated the same step with Sonic Origins as well, and...it worked. At first I thought it was because I was using Nouveau initially but it didn't work even after I had switched to the Nvidia drivers. Then I thought it was because of Denuvo. You know, the horrible and unnecessary DRM that SEGA tacks onto their games these days? But turns out the issue this whole time was NTFS.
The same thing was even true for Apex Legends. But Apex was a little bit of a more interesting story than the rest. This story begins with the fact that my friend & I both noticed that my two internal SATA drives were being shown as "Removable Media" on Dolphin. My friend then suggested I edit the fstab file & put in entries for both of my drives so that they end up being mounted permanently & I wouldn't need to manually mount them every single boot. The way we mounted my drives was by first figuring out their identifiers, a.k.a. /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1, which are the identifiers for my HDD & SSD respectively. After that, we edited the fstab file by adding these lines into them:
- /dev/sda1 /mnt/toshiba ntfs defaults 0 0
- /dev/sdb1 /mnt/gamessd ntfs defaults 0 0
The same symptoms as with the other games - I hit "Play", it would show me as playing the game for a brief moment, before the process in the background terminates and the "Play" button would become active again. I then scooted over to the ProtonDB page for Apex Legends. Saw launch options, tried them, didn't work. Saw that you can use a custom version of Proton called GE-Proton. Installed it - no dice still. I even wrote a frustrated report on the page, which you can still see being up, of me just not being able to run the game at all.
I was bashing my head against the wall, trying to find ANY way of getting Apex Legends to run. My friend then links me to this guide by Valve on mounting NTFS drives on Linux. I thought "what the heck, might as well" and edited my fstab file again, in accordance to Valve's guide, and re-mounted my drives anew.
Once I did that, Apex Legends finally got just a little bit further. Now, it just gets stuck on "Running install script (Easy Anti-Cheat Service (EOS))". I thought that because it's trying to install an anti-cheat dependency, which Linux is known to be not friendly with, it'll just take a while. So I left it be. In fact, I left it overnight! Accidentally, mind you, because I was in the middle of transferring about 210,000 files from my backed up osu! install on Windows onto my Linux install...yeah.
But even when it was left for 6 hours, Apex never got past the Easy Anti-Cheat Service install script. No matter what I did, no matter what I tried, it wouldn't budge.
I threw out a hail-marry into the Apex Legends Steam discussions, and tried to ask for help on Mastodon as well, when a user in the Steam forums suggested that it was because of NTFS. I tried to do what they suggested and reinstalled Apex on my EXT4 drive. And you won't believe it - it actually worked. Apex Legends FINALLY started up.
I've never felt more satisfaction than this moment before. Apex Legends actually booted up on Fedora Linux successfully. I even played a quick solos match, and despite eating complete shit 'cause I'm bad at the game, it ran beautifully. I didn't even run into issues others have reported, such as character models showing up as white or weapon charms not loading. Everything just...worked. Granted, I did have to spend about 4 hours of that time waiting for shaders to compile, but it ran. And I was able to play Apex on Linux!
Other minor gripes with Fedora so far
I'll keep this one brief but I'm also trying to look into these issues as well. If you can help, please reach out, I need help...
- The clipboard
- Firefox
- Dolphin
The future
I am not giving up on Fedora because of these issues that I've run into though. Nor am I giving up on Linux either because of these. Why? Because funnily enough, this was a lot of fun.
Breaking out of my comfort zone has given me a genuine enjoyment in using my PC again. I was stuck in this endless loop of being utterly bored for the past few months, not being able to really engage myself in anything. Gaming was boring. Social media is boring. Everything was just boring.
But installing Linux? Genuinely been a lot of fun despite my troubles & frustrations with it. I'm eager to continue my journey through this unfamiliar landscape & learn more. Customize Fedora to my liking so that it becomes the perfect operating system for me.
We'll see how I feel about it in a month from now but so far - I'm liking it, despite the annoyances.
Should you switch to Linux? That's hard to say. If you truthfully don't give a shit about what Microsoft is doing, I don't see a reason for you to switch out of Windows. And why would you? On Windows, everything just works. You install a program - it runs. Resources are abundant for Windows too, be it drivers, guides, troubleshooting steps, etc. - all of it is simple and easy.
You should switch to Linux if you're really just into having a more hands-on approach towards everything. As you can probably read from my blog post here, it's been quite an adventure so far, and I'm only 2 days in!
I don't know how to wrap this blog post up, so I'll just say go sign the petition for #FixTF2.
Thanks for reading.
- huu
Breaking out of my comfort zone has given me a genuine enjoyment in using my PC again. I was stuck in this endless loop of being utterly bored for the past few months, not being able to really engage myself in anything. Gaming was boring. Social media is boring. Everything was just boring.
But installing Linux? Genuinely been a lot of fun despite my troubles & frustrations with it. I'm eager to continue my journey through this unfamiliar landscape & learn more. Customize Fedora to my liking so that it becomes the perfect operating system for me.
We'll see how I feel about it in a month from now but so far - I'm liking it, despite the annoyances.
Should you switch to Linux? That's hard to say. If you truthfully don't give a shit about what Microsoft is doing, I don't see a reason for you to switch out of Windows. And why would you? On Windows, everything just works. You install a program - it runs. Resources are abundant for Windows too, be it drivers, guides, troubleshooting steps, etc. - all of it is simple and easy.
You should switch to Linux if you're really just into having a more hands-on approach towards everything. As you can probably read from my blog post here, it's been quite an adventure so far, and I'm only 2 days in!
I don't know how to wrap this blog post up, so I'll just say go sign the petition for #FixTF2.
Thanks for reading.
- huu
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