1d ago

Help me change my windows gaming pc to Linux

Now that windows 10 is end og life soon I want to update my gaming PC to Linux but I am very unsure on how to approach it, even though I'm pretty proficient in Linux. I daily drive Debian 12 on my laptop and have Ubuntu server and truenas on two other devices but those are all for very different use cases than gaming. I'm not afraid of the terminal (I actually often prefer it over GUI) but since this setup is for gaming for both me and my girlfriend I want this experience to be as easy and hands off low maintenance as possible.

My desktop is about 6 years old and consist of an MSI Tomahawk B450 motherboard with an Ryzen 5 2600X and an Asus Nvidia 1660ti and 16GB of RAM. I just recently installed 1TB nvme SSD so I have a decent amount of capacity available, but I'm generally not interested in dual boot since I have bad experience from the past with windows suddenly deciding to take over and ruin it all. For temporary testing it is of course an option but I really don't like it due to the maintenance of it.

Important games for me is Sims 2, 3 and 4 (with almost all expansions packs on Sims 4) and they are currently purchased through the EA game store. I also have a few steam games and Minecraft but I'm fairly sure they all work decently since I've tried on my laptop.

I use steam remote play to stream the desktop to a MacBook on the local network when Sims is played and it works quite well at the moment and it is important that it continues to work or an alternative remote play function to mac is easily available.

Sims is my biggest worry to get working since my girlfriend is playing it a lot and with a lot of custom content (mostly just assets) added along all the expansion packs. Rebying everything through steam is not an option (way too expensive) so I really hope there is a way to get EA GameStore to work without too much effort using wine or some other workaround.

I hope you guys have some ideas on how to approach this and keep the most important functions for me up and running.

46 comments

I've been using Bazzite for a good while. It just turns your PC into a fancy console. Boots right into Steam. Everything can be done with a controller. If you can use a console, you can use Bazzite.
Of course Chimera and Nobara are very similar in that way. Bazzite is just the new hotness.
- I agree. If you're a noob, and want the smoothest path, then Bazzite is the way.
  I however, started on Ubuntu originally and you will have to learn the apt repos and install all this on your own. I'm now on Arch which makes you learn more the inner workings of Linux.
  So if you want to progress, be sure to consider all the other distros out there too.
  
  Bazzite comes with Distrobox pre-installed, so you can literally try every other distro with it lol
  
  cachyos is easiest way to arch, I found the install to be easier than bazzite, its all graphical, very straightforward, just works, imo gnome with extensions is superior to plasma rnow if you want a clean modern look, plasma can get you one too, gnome just feels more crafted. Plasma feels more like an easily tinkerable windows ui, imo in a year itll be nice.
  Reason why I talk about gnome and plasma more than distros is that reslly decides your day to day a bit more, bazzite gnome vs plasma or if cachyos you can have both, requires some tinkering. I go back and forth but gnome is the one where I actually end up using my laptop more and feeling good about the look with minimal extensions/tinkering. Gnome without extensions is bottomtier tho imo, not much customization by default (to be fair extensions are built in and a default thing)
  I see no reason to switch rnow, but atomic blue distros like bazzite should be safer long term and in general. Backups, fixes issues on reboot, stable with tested updates, etc. You can change to another without losing your files/data. Can't easy effect settings, etc. Im a tinkerer tho, so cachy is superior, things that takes seconds would take minutes and workarounds on bazzite.
- +1 for Bazzite. Atomic distro + NVDIA drivers included 👌

Protondb will be your best friend here. If I were you I'd look up the games you want to play on there and check peoples comments on how they got them running. Almost everything out of box using steams proton tools but often it needs tweaking. Depending on how much you want to play a game it might not be worth the trouble to setup. For instance I stay away from every live service game now. You should also check out the os people are using on protondb to make sure it works for you I use arch (btw) so I won't take instructions from a Debian setup if I can find one with a similar os.
Worth pursuing and you sound experienced enough to get it set up. Idk about modding though that can be painful to get setup BC of how wine/proton work.

I have installed all of those Sims games at one point. It works fine. Mods work without any problems as well.
Lutris will help you for the most part.
I think for Sims 3, I specifically had to use Lutris 7.2 as the runner (IIRC, I have to check again). It didn't work with other versions. I will verify this when I'm home.
I did the most setup for Sims 3 (there is a whole guide for performance). I don't remember details too well, but it's still set up I think, so you can go ahaed and ask questions
Minecraft runs native, for Steam games you can see protondb.com
I'd be worried a bit about the Nvidia GPU. But since I have no experience with them, someone else should give you advice on this.
- Happy to hear a succes story and Sims 3 is the least interesting of the bunch. Sims 2 and 4 are most important for her.

The Sims 4 is gold on ProtonDB, so it should run just fine. Check out some of the comments in ProtonDB about running the game, if not purchased through Steam.
Edit: Start out with Linux Mint. It’s very user friendly.
- I got both Steam and EA App versions running on my Steam Deck and desktop (the latter runs Bluefin). For the EA app I used Lutris, it works like a charm.
  
  Does everything work on the EA app for you? I'm having issues with the friends list, so I'm not a to play some multiplayer games unfortunately :(

Check out Bazzite!
- I hate how good bazzite is at just being a game console. But then there’s lots of little Fedora ublue things in there that are useful. Like the fact that it has podman by default makes running silly things like ollama so easy.
- I second this, have been using this as a daily driver on my laptop and PC, and I'm really enjoying it. Seems very very stable.

if you are comfortable enough with cli and Linux you should try arch for the desktop, it'll be probably easier in the long run because games are fussy and you can refer to the wiki and use the AUR
- I've found CachyOS to be fairly uncomplicated and it's gaming tweaks make most things work out of the box through Lutris. I'd probably avoid the standard Arch install for a newbie
  
  they just said they're proficient with linux in their post, did you read it?

You should just test run it from a bootable usb.
Install steam. Mount your NTFS drive which contains your windows games. If you have sims on steam use steam. If not take a look at lutris before doing any of the above.
Your experiment ends when you've tested all games you want to play.
Now: You cannot use NTFS (windows) drive for games, although you did it in the experiment long extended usage is discouraged.
So you will need to find a way to transfer your games to a different formatted drive. (ext4, btrfs for example)
If you don't need that advice you will eventually run into frustrating issues.
- I actually don't like this advice for this particular use case. The live session is gonna be sluggish because of the USB bottleneck which will make it look like the games run a lot worse than they would with a proper install.
  Especially since this person also is already Linux proficient, I would say just jump into a dual boot setup or wipe the windows partition momentarily. Sure, it's gonna take a little longer and it's a bit tedious to have to reinstall windows if you change your mind but I'd prefer a bit tedium over a poor benchmark
  
  I specifically said this advice because dual booting windows with Linux is a terrible idea.
  Although you are right, if you USB read/write is slow it will be a sluggish experience.

Linux mint cinnamon. I tested sims4 a few months ago. Ran fine. And surprisingly I didnt need to repurchase from steam, somehow I linked my ea account.
Sometimes games crash but not often for me. That's when I tweak the Proton version.

The easy path to getting storefronts like EA working is through Lutris. It does all the setup for you through guided wizards. I can't help much with deciding a distro tho, I've been using Fedora for years and that works well enough but is not exactly gaming focussed.
- I I wrote to someone else here I don't really understand Lutris when I tried it about a year ago. I found it a bit confusing on how to use it and gave up rather quickly because steam ended up worked for my needs back then. But now I want remote play and Sims to work and I feel like I'm starting from scratch even though I very good with Linux. Gaming on Linux is a whole different ordeal with drivers and compatibility layers and I don't want my girlfriend (or myself for that matter) to be bothered by this when we just want to game.
  
  As someone that aggressively takes advantage of the prime gaming giveaways, heroic launcher has been nearly perfect for all the random games that I’ve received on epic/amazon/gog.
  
  There is also nonsteamlaunchers but I haven't tried it on desktop. Full disclosure, even on steam deck I swapped back to lutris because updating was clunky. Still, might be an option for you.

Not helpful, but oops, I had accidentally disliked this post😅
I removed the dislike:)

Idk about EA, but I'm running mint and steam works great with proton. Super duper user friendly.

Almost everyone here recommends Lutris, but I had a far better out-of-the-box-experience with Heroic.
- Seconding Heroic. Lutris confused me too but I was able to connect Epic and GOG to Heroic.
  Also, when you’re not using steam remote play Sunshine/Moonlight works wonders for remote streaming.
- I briefly tried to install lutris on my laptop about a year ago, but i found it really confusing to use. If I remember correctly it required a disk or iso to install and i have everything through either steam or EA or som older games just installs natively so I didn't really understand why or how I should use it.
  
  Mentioned elsewhere in the thread I think but not in a direct reply so making sure you see it, Lutris has the game specific scripts but also ones to set up environments for Origin/EA App. I've used those before with Sims 4 with both several expansion packs and some custom content.

Pop OS worked straight out of the box with the Nvidia driver build BUT it’s using an old version of Gnome desktop environment so doesn’t have support for HDR or VRR. Pop is based on Ubuntu so all the Debian and Ubuntu terminal commands will be familiar.
Fedora is leading edge and so long as you opt in for non-open source drivers works with Nvidia and runs HDR and VRR in KDE (haven’t used the Gnome version).
Haven’t tried any other distros but Bazzite seems well recommended.
Lutris is the recommended software for non-steam games. If you search for that and Sims/EA you should be able to find out if it’ll work for you.
I only use windows now for sim racing and Vr, but I also don’t play online games with anti-cheat. Linux seems pretty stable and I’ve found it easy to use.
- I second bazzite. I tried arch since I heard it was so customizable that you gained performance but after numerous headaches of tring to connect to the internet, downloading packages one by one without even knowing what I was doing since Im still not even that familiar with the linux ecosystem, i just downloaded bazzite, used rufus to put it on a key, and it worked first try no hassle. Im a bazzite boi now. Im actually impressed with how well nvdia is slowly becoming useable too on that distro, half a year ago you couldnt even use wayland and had to still use x11 but now it works (DISCLAIMER FIDDLING IS REQUIRED WITH NVDIA I HEARD THAT WITH AMD IT JUST WORKS)
- Does pop then use SNAP because then I don't really want to touch it. Imo. SNAP is so slow and bloated I don't want it on my system if I can avoid it.
  
  Usually deb or flatpak if you use the popshop

@TDCN
Sims on steam are also logged into EA account so all the DLCs might (!) be available after installing and logging in.
I'd start with actually trying it. It's free 😀

I suggest revisiting dual boot, despite your history. You want to have grub/Linux on it's own hard drive, in a Linux style filesystem (I think i used ext4) and default to it in bios. Then get the windows boot registered in grub.
Windows won't know about grub that way, no way to mess with it.
Windows 10 EOL doesn't mean it will stop working. If sims has trouble just use win.
Mint or a gaming focused distro. Not arch/endeavor/manjaro unless you're comfortable with Linux CLI already
I've used this config with win11 for a year now, zero issues. This way your partner can have less of a headache over your antics.
- Yep sounds like OP's dual boot issues are due to installing windows last. It only overwrites boot each startup if it doesn't have its own boot partition.
  Also try btrfs on your linux partition for better interop. Somehow, windows btrfs drivers are much more mature than windows ext4 or linux ntfs drivers.
- " Windows 10 EOL doesn't mean it will stop working. If sims has trouble just use win. "
  This, just continue win 10 (or win11 even though they said not run blah blah). I have my whole house with about 4 PC/server all running Debian but I still keep one gaming PC run windows.

Mint has treated me just fine since I converted.
I'm not proficient with Linux whatsoever, but Mint has literally been the most newbie user-friendly OS I have tried to date. So Windows can suck it.
For gaming, Steam runs things great. And for other things like GOG, Battle.net, Lutris has server me well. Proton does a good job.

All games which u mentioned works well,in case not to have problem with ea app itself which can broke from time to time find just pirated versions of Sims with all dlcs and install it will work without being broken lately

Really I think a temporary dual boot to test everything would be the sanest option, and then when you're ready to commit, back up your home folder and repartition your drive accordingly. If you end up never ready to commit, well, second-gen Ryzen is officially supported on Windows 11 as long as you enable fTPM and Secure Boot in your BIOS.
Here's a few pointers based on what I've found out:
The desktop environment or WM is important. Given your need for Steam Link to work I'd suggest using one with X11, as last I checked Steam Link just gives you a black screen and audio under Wayland. Linux Mint would carry over your knowledge of apt while maintaining an interface that's pretty familiar to Windows users and is I believe still an X11 distro for now.
I got the EA app working using Bottles but it constantly feels like a cat-and-mouse game fixing it whenever it has an update. I basically stopped using it altogether for that reason. Not trying to scare you off — it's just not a great experience.
Play with drivers for your GPU. The situation with Nvidia is, I'm told, not as dire as it once was on Linux but still needs more work than AMD or Intel graphics to work well. The proprietary driver may still give the best experience on games, though Nouveau seems to be doing very well. This is admittedly something I need to come back to in order to confirm (I have one machine with Nvidia graphics and it's in storage specifically because Nvidia graphics under Linux were such a pain).

I think you should be able to do a USB drive boot of the distro you are interested in and check whether you can get all these things working? It'll run slow though so don't be scared of performance is less than you were hoping for. It'll be much better in the install.

46 comments