Products > Computers
Moving to linux for a windows user and GPU passtrough
Berni:
My trusty ol 4th Gen i7 is getting a bit dated so i am eying an upgrade.
I am still running on Windows 7 because i like it, but even that is getting dated. Trying to put it on a 2023 machine would likely be driver hell and support is disappearing fast. So i do need an OS upgrade.
I been using Windows 10 at work for most of its lifecycle. It was crap at the start, it is an okay OS now (Using it on my laptop). But we have Win 11 on the horizon, so Win 10 is likely not long for this world. But i once again hate where the new version of windows is going. Maybe it is time to finally step out of the Microsoft bubble.
So of course the obvious alternative is Linux. I been messing around with embeded linux before, I have a NAS running linux (Unraid), i run Ubuntu on VMs on it. I know enough about Linux to be dangerous. However it always felt more fiddly to get things working on it, unlike Windows where things 'just work'
What is a good path for a windows power user to move to Linux for a desktop OS? I am not after fully embracing open source, a lot of times commercial software just works better. I just want to decouple myself from Windows as the main OS.
I will certainly keep Windows around as a VM, and i still want to have DirectX 12, Cuda etc.. I do ocasonaly play games too and i want them to simply work out of the box. So i also want to try doing GPU passtrough for a Nvidia GPU. I know this is not technically supported for consumer RTX cards, but i see people doing it. I am fine with some decent amount of Linux dicking around to get it working, but how reliable is it once set up? Does everything 'just work' once it is set up?
beanflying:
Linux Mint for me was a nice 'safe' first Linux Distro to move too. I did some looking first and the process as both a dual boot on one system and sole boot on another was easy to do. Seems to have decent GPU support but for my installs not really something I looked into that much. Overall Ubuntu based stuff is suiting my brain on the SBC's I am playing with so Mint fits in fairly well without making my Windoze head explode between them.
For software reasons most of my boxes are still on Windoze10 and dabbling with 11 on one for testing but they will all move late this year at this stage.
Nominal Animal:
Apologies for the long post that follows.
Be prepared for the frustration, Berni. Linux is a very powerful tool (that I personally much prefer over Windows), but it is a poor substitute for Windows.
Like a poet learning a new language with completely different linguistic rules, you will end up having to un-learn some things you currently take for granted, and already being used to Windows, and making it what you want, Linux being different will frustrate and annoy you. It is easier for a newbie to learn Linux, than it is for a Windows power user to switch to Linux, because of this 'having to unlearn some things' step.
This has nothing to do with Linux and Windows per se, it is just a fact of life when changing tools. If you have already done such a transition in computing or some other context, you will find consecutive ones easier. For example, those who have used Mac and Windows, tend to find it easier to add/switch to Linux too, compared to those who have relied on a single OS.
Because I don't need top of the line graphics cards, I've used open source Intel and AMD drivers for the last decade and a half, and don't have any guidance regarding Nvidia drivers. I would suggest that you add extra storage, so that you can dual boot to Windows, if/when required. The VM approach is obviously better (especially due to snapshot ability and near-instant bootup and shutdown), but knowing the dual boot option is available may limit the amount of frustration, and let you concentrate on finding what works for you best.
As to Linux Mint that beanflying suggested, I agree. I think it is a very good desktop Linux distribution, and also recommend it for anyone wanting to use Linux on the desktop. (If you don't mind being 2-4 years behind the peak development in some sense, then plain Debian is another option.)
None of the general-use desktops I know of have an optimized user experience, similar to how Microsoft and Apple spend effort in polishing the user experience, so the initial roughness will be there regardless, and you will have to do some customization to get everything out of the OS as a tool.
If at all possible for desktop use, prepare to experiment a bit with different desktops (Cinnamon, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, perhaps even Gnome 3). You can install all of them at once in Linux Mint / Ubuntu / Debian derivatives, and pick one at login time, but the application preferences and settings do not transfer seamlessly; so, I suggest using a "temporary" desktop user to test them, or even reinstalling the OS after you do pick which one you really want. It does not really affect the application selection –– other than KDE having many of its own applications ––, but it does affect the look and feel of the desktop and theme and themeing availability. In particular, Gnome developers believe the less the user is let tweak things, the better. Some like it, some hate it.
Now, there are a few installation-related things you should be aware of, that you cannot change later on without reinstalling the OS.
The main thing is whether you'll use disk encryption or not. I recommend it for laptops, but for a machine that is powered 24/7 and lives in a closet, it may not add much value. If you want disk snapshotting for the host OS, you might wish to use LVM2 and ext4 filesystems; that combo is much widely used (and thus less likely to have bugs bite you) than say ZFS. With LVM2, you want to leave some of the physical volume storage unused, so that you can use that for snapshots. I myself am old-fashioned, and still partition my drives (/, /boot, /home, /tmp) but really, you only need to consider whether you want /home (containing human users' home directories) separate from /, so you can easily reinstall the OS while keeping user home directories intact.
If you work with large files and have two identical PCIe SSD, I do suggest you consider using them in a striped (RAID-0) or mirrored (RAID-1) configuration; testing them like one tests desktop environments before choosing one would be best.
In any case, I cannot stress how important it is for you to think of it as switching to a different operating system, a semi-different "paradigm" into computing and computer programs, rather than just as "replacing Windows with Linux". The difference is in how you'll perceive the changes, and how annoying and frustrating you'll be when things that were obvious and efficient in Windows, work completely differently in Linux. I've seen that before with several colleagues having to do that switch (since you cannot really do computational materials physics on Windows only), and tried to help, but it was painful. Linux is different to Windows, so there is no denying the need of "un-learning" some hard-won knowledge before replacing it with a different approach; and since often the reason for the differences is simply "history" and "it makes this other stuff easier", the effort needed can seem a waste, and thus very, very aggravating.
The exception is when the OS user is simply looking for new tools, and new ways of doing things, and don't mind that their hard-won knowledge is not often directly applicable, and are aware that sometimes that hard-won automatic knowledge one does not even realize they have, will steer them wrong. They, too, will be frustrated sometimes, but for different reasons; and that frustration often leads to the development of a better tool (see e.g. git and its creation history).
metebalci:
--- Quote from: Berni on September 25, 2023, 06:25:07 am ---My trusty ol 4th Gen i7 is getting a bit dated so i am eying an upgrade.
I am still running on Windows 7 because i like it, but even that is getting dated. Trying to put it on a 2023 machine would likely be driver hell and support is disappearing fast. So i do need an OS upgrade.
I been using Windows 10 at work for most of its lifecycle. It was crap at the start, it is an okay OS now (Using it on my laptop). But we have Win 11 on the horizon, so Win 10 is likely not long for this world. But i once again hate where the new version of windows is going. Maybe it is time to finally step out of the Microsoft bubble.
So of course the obvious alternative is Linux. I been messing around with embeded linux before, I have a NAS running linux (Unraid), i run Ubuntu on VMs on it. I know enough about Linux to be dangerous. However it always felt more fiddly to get things working on it, unlike Windows where things 'just work'
What is a good path for a windows power user to move to Linux for a desktop OS? I am not after fully embracing open source, a lot of times commercial software just works better. I just want to decouple myself from Windows as the main OS.
I will certainly keep Windows around as a VM, and i still want to have DirectX 12, Cuda etc.. I do ocasonaly play games too and i want them to simply work out of the box. So i also want to try doing GPU passtrough for a Nvidia GPU. I know this is not technically supported for consumer RTX cards, but i see people doing it. I am fine with some decent amount of Linux dicking around to get it working, but how reliable is it once set up? Does everything 'just work' once it is set up?
--- End quote ---
If you have a reasonable powerful computer, I recommend to do the reverse. Have Windows 11 on bare metal and use both WSL and Linux on a VM (vmware etc.).
I am happily using Linux since 1997, and I find this setup (bare metal Windows, Linux as WSL and VM) the best for a mixed use desktop. There might be only a few cases (and particularly if the desktop is used for a particular purpose that works well on Linux) I would prefer having a bare metal Linux on desktop. However, keep in mind that you need a reasonable powerful computer to use what I said effectively (I have 16 CPU cores and 64GB RAM).
Berni:
Thanks for the suggestions.
Linux Mint does look pretty Windows-ish on the surface by default.
I have been using Linux for a number of years now, so i know things tend to need some dicking around to get working. Very rarely did i have things just work out of the box. However i never tried using Linux as a PC desktop, most of what i did in Linux ran purely in console windows, so most of my interaction with Linux was the painful setting up parts. But i have no idea what portion of actually using Linux is this when daily driving it as the main desktop OS. I am fine with putting in the setup work up front as long as things are mostly frictionless afterwards. Using Linux as a desktop OS just never even crossed my mind before, as i was more than happy with Windows 7 doing that job.
There are certain things in Linux that i already prefer over the way Windows does it. For example the way the filesystem works is clearly superior in Linux. The concept of devices being just files is also nice. Having choice in the filesystem format is nice (some of them can do pretty cool things). Seeing some log output when drivers break is nice (as opposed to Windows's, 'This driver failed to start, error 5564' god knows what that is). So i do welcome some of the paradigm changes.
This will be running on a powerful desktop PC, and i don't care about hard drive encryption (if my HDD ends up in someones hands then my house probably got broken into and i have bigger problems). I did consider dong both dual boot and VM booting windows by using passtrough on its boot drive. I never liked dual booting very much because the switch between them takes too long and requires closing down all apps (but is a good fallback when things break). Bringing a VM out of suspend is super quick, and you get to still use the host OS.
I would have been fine with using Windows 10 in is current state, but here comes Win 11 and it is the same sort of work in progress OS that keeps changing under me as i use it. I don't care about new features, I just want a reliable OS that still works the same way after 5 years. I have no idea if camping it out on Win10 for the next 10 years is viable.
I get the feeling that i will have to install Linux in a VM for now and force myself to use it as a desktop OS for a week or so, then see how much of my sanity it cost me when doing typical desktop things. I see some basic computer users get along with Linux just fine since all they really need is a working web browser and perhaps a way to write and print word documents.
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