Linux is still for nerds but I hate windows 11 more than I hate being uncool so I’m just going to have to step down my rizz and learn more computer stuff.

  1. My 3 concerns are, in order, gaming (mostly through steam or fitgirl), playing TTRPGs through Foundry Virtual Tabletop and Discord, and image editing (but really simple image editing. more paint.net than GIMP). What distro would be best for this? What are the actual differences in distros beyond appearances? Is it worth installing the Steam OS, or is that still really only useable with handhelds?

  2. Can I just shove all the data I want to save on an external drive, install my chosen distro, and transfer stuff back on? Will the external drive need to be formatted in a specific way first? can I just slot stuff like program settings back in the new system or will I have to convert them to a different file format?

  3. Do I have to buy the thigh highs or do they just appear? Will it still work if I don’t wear them? I don’t like wearing socks so I’d prefer a distro without them if possible.

If it helps I’m running a Ryzen 5 2600 and RX 7600, and my favourite colour is purple.

Edit: Thanks for the answers everyone, I’m going to do a bit more reading on distros before choosing one, but I have a better idea what I’m looking at now.

  • TauZero@mander.xyzEnglish
    7·
    9 days ago

    can I just slot stuff like program settings back

    There isn’t really much software that is A) cross-platform, B) popular enough on Windows that you would have been using it, and C) the best choice for the task on Linux. Maybe Firefox the only one? Firefox profiles actually can be copied over without change, I believe. A torrent client - you’d probably want a new one and configure the destination directory, re-import the torrent files, and re-verify local files. Photoshop would get replaced with Gimp. For software that runs under wine, you can and should copy over stuff like game profiles and savegames - wine creates a “fake” drive_c directory so they’ll go into there. You just need to track each of them down in your Windows %APPDATA% directory or wherever it is Windows hides them in before you erase the drive.

    Will the external drive need to be formatted in a specific way first?

    No. It’s easier to let Windows format the backup drive how it wants (NTFS) and let Linux read it later than to teach Windows how to read/write Linux preferred filesystem format. Most Linux distros already come with ntfs driver pre-installed, or it is a single install command away.