As promised last week, I will be talking about the Linux Switchover Project. And that’s literally the first time I have used that phrase, but I guess it’s accurate. The past week has been full of trials, tribulations, cursing, depression, and few successes. Most importantly, the laptop *is still running Linux*, and is doing more things *now* than it was a week ago. In fact, it has been running the same distribution and flavor since…Monday, I think. I probably could have been running the distribution and flavor I started with if had known then what I know now. I think that’s where I will start; with what I have learned that affects some underlying assumptions and rules.
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 7000 2-in-1. More specifically, it is the thirteen-inch screen design. They haven’t made those for a few years, and this was one of the earlier ones. The chipset is an AMD Ryzen 7 2700U with Radeon RX Vega 10 integrated graphics. The sound chip implementation is a well-documented pile of ____. I keep the laptop on my desk, to my right. I started doing this when I removed my multi-monitor setup and returned to a single monitor to improve game performance and stop the regular system shutdowns I have was having trouble with. For the record, removing the multi-monitor solution did, in fact, stop the crashing. My main computer is back to a dual-Crossfire single monitor setup.

Anyway…I kept YouTube playing on my right-hand monitor, so when that went away, I played with various old laptops and tablets set to my right to do the same. This prompted some Linux experimentation several months ago. None of those attempts resulted in anything I was happy with, so I put my actual, newest laptop in place. It certainly fit the space better than the fourteen inch and fifteen inch older laptops I had tried. Back to the sound card…I have a pair of auxiliary speakers that fit unobtrusively in front of the monitor. I plug them into the headphone jack. Even under Windows, I had occasional dropouts, crackles, and *constant* volume changes. Always, as far as I could tell, just shifting between two volume levels. Not ramping up and down, like the volume control was being activated, just up:down:up:down:up:down. Usually for only a few seconds, but it was randomly timed and constant. Some research indicated this was normal and unsolvable…Dell had just done a crappy job with the sound chip hardware. And it was the hardware that was specifically mentioned. This chip in other computers worked just fine.
Well guess what? Under Linux, every distribution I tried, the headphone jack (when connected, obviously) will start outputting a droning buzz within 30 seconds of sound stopping. Say, like when you pause a video, or return to the main menu to find something else to play. A buzzing starts. Something in the open source drivers handles this bizarre implementation in a similar, yet more annoying way than Windows does. Still, I know the problem is hardware. This can be dealt with many different ways, from unplugging the speakers when I pause or stop a video, to plugging in a USB sound card to use. I have one…somewhere. In fact, I just had a memory triggered that I had to use it *with this laptop* when I was using it for streaming on Twitch years ago because the built-in audio hardware wouldn’t operate correctly.
The other big hardware issue that I finally learned is mostly unsolvable is the chipset. The AMD Ryzen 7 2700U has never been fully supported by any Linux kernel. They mostly work now, in 2024. From everything I have read, there is apparently a small fault in the chip in managing power states. Some people claim this can be addressed by adding certain kernel boot parameters to the boot configuration. I tried the first, simplest one and still encountered a system freeze. NOTE: technically the kernel is not freezing, but it definitely shuts down all input devices…so you can’t really do anything about it except hold the power button down. I have tried a modified set of instructions for the boot parameters and have not experienced a freeze since yesterday afternoon, but I haven’t been able to just run YouTube videos non-stop for several hours, yet. There has been…a lot of news…this weekend that tends to dominate my watch lists and I’m kind of tired of hearing about it.

This is a Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard. It was released in 2009. Windows Vista had been largely rejected as the replacement for Windows XP (I always liked it), so Windows XP was still being supported while Microsoft rushed Windows 7 to release later in the year. This was *the preeminent* MMORPG gameboard to have…and was honestly one of the *only* gameboards to have. However, the G13 was likely Logitech’s response to Belkin’s (yes, Belkin) updated Nostromo gamepad released in 2008. The G13 had more of everything than the Nostromo, including an actual mini-joystick instead of a thumb-controlled D-pad with a hat. Logitech belatedly, and sometimes poorly, updated the drivers of the G13 through Windows 10. In 2018, they announced the product would be discontinued and support would be ended, citing poor sales and no place for this kind of device in their product line. The last driver released does not work with Windows 11, at least not correctly. Meanwhile, Razer has produced two more gameboard devices (two versions of the latest are still in production), there are a handful of “premium” gameboards like the Azeron and the Hori Tactical, and a few “cheaper options,” although none of the cheaper options have either a D-pad or joystick. All the other offerings have opted for a thumb-controlled D-pad only in the mistaken belief that the point of these things is to replicate motion capture interfaces or the Nintendo Power Glove.
The thing is the Logitech G13 is getting rare (especially in good shape), expensive, and has no future in Windows anyway. There have been three attempts to create a Logitech G13 driver in Linux aside from a couple of more broad-use Logitech device control programs. Only one of the the G13 drivers is generally considered mostly usable at this point…except the person who created it stopped maintaining it in 2021 or 2022. The last confirmed install that worked (someone who posted the entire process on a web page or in a video) is from May of 2023. In November of 2023 the driver was marked as “out-of-date” by an archive contributor, and there are several accounts of people trying to get it to install on a current Linux distribution with no luck. Bottom line: the Logitech G13 will not be usable on Linux.

This is a Razer Orbweaver. I don’t have an Orbweaver; Razer doesn’t make them anymore. The current gameboard by Razer is the Tartarus, which is still available in two or three versions, I can’t remember which. The thing is, the Orbweaver is A) Mechanical, and B) has more buttons available on the main keypad, partly because it C) does not have a scroll wheel, which I don’t need. The Tartarus has a scroll wheel. The Nostromo (remember the Nostromo? That “updated” version was co-developed between Belkin and Razer, and Razer later bought it outright from Belkin) has a scroll wheel, too. I know it’s useless to my needs because I actually own a Nostromo. I bought a used one specifically to use with my laptop when I first bought it, and it’s been kicking around the house ever since. The G13 has 23 main board keys; the Nostromo has 14. The Tartarus has 19, the Orbweaver has 20. BUT, Razer seems to be fairly well supported through open source Linux drivers. In fact, I have already had *some* success getting the old Nostromo to work. I actually had World of Warcraft installing on my laptop to test when I started writing this, and was able to finish the installation (it worked, first try, although I did have to do a lot of googling to figure out what *specific* install procedure I needed to follow.) I was able to get one key bound properly, but attempts to bind a second were being rejected. There are several possible reasons for this; for the time being I exited the program as a successful first try and will attempt binding further keys later. I won’t be keeping WoW on the laptop. The Dell only has a single 256GB SSD, and WoW takes up 100GB of that. This was just to prove both WoW and the Razer input device worked.

I have read in a couple of places the Azeron gamepads are actually pretty straightforward to get working in Linux using a program called AntiMicro. AntiMicro is essentially a Linux version of Xpadder that lets you program a controller with keyboard functions. Plus the Azeron devices have an analogue stick, although it’s still situated for thumb control. They are also…not cheap. They make Razer devices look affordable, and I usually don’t play in that end of the pool if I can help it. The single best option would be the Hori Tactical Assault Command F14 (for Final Fantasy 14, the MMORPG.) Like the G13, it’s designed for MMORPG use and has a properly located analogue stick. It also has the appropriate number of buttons, although the layout is a bit strange. And it’s cheaper than an Azeron; about the same price as a Razer device. Unfortunately there has not been any discussion on getting this to work under Linux. It is still a new device, and Hori traditionally makes these for console use rather than PC…I am getting the impression they are still a bit buggy.
So let’s move on to distributions. Most of the distributions I worked through and abandoned were because of the freezing issue that I later learned was hardware-related. So, I won’t count that against anything right now.
My original intent, as this was meant to test a distribution that would work for my main desktop, was Garuda. This is based on Arch Linux which is apparently becoming one of the three big distributions, along with Debian and Fedora. I tried four installs, the only difference being the default desktop environment. Garuda itself comes with many of the fundamental gaming libraries and apps you will need included with the base installation. Following the initial install, an assistant opens to help configure a handful of options, but most importantly give you categorized lists of software you may want, like office apps, communications like Zoom and Discord, multimedia apps, etc. I have at least marginal familiarity with many of these, but I would point out that for a complete noob with no knowledge outside of Windows, there isn’t much detailed explanation of *every* app…only a few. You will be left wondering “well, do I need this? It sounds vaguely familiar…” *However*, I will note here this isn’t exclusive to Garuda. Linux installs in general are “noob friendly” to, I am assuming, people who already know what all of these options are and what they do. It is certainly much better than the last time I extensively tested Linux fifteen years ago (or so), but the overriding experience is that you will have to get on a search engine and try to find help for many, many things. As far as the desktop environments themselves are concerned, XFCE was the easiest to use. Garuda shoots themselves in the foot a bit with a pervasive customization in all environments that favors small icons, text, and cursors. Sure, it’s minimally invasive, but on a thirteen inch laptop screen this is practically unusable. This is also where I discovered that some implementations didn’t feature a usable desktop scaling function. Finally, Garuda’s preferred KDE Dragonized environment would not function properly. Something in that environment breaks the wifi on my laptop *only after the install is completed,* the install works fine.

At this point, I tried three Fedora-based installations. None would install. Only one would boot and run an install, then fail when the laptop rebooted. I have no idea why, but as the problems were consistent and boot-related, I didn’t research too much. I was looking forward to Fedora, as throughout my research concerning the freezing-while-playing-YouTube issue, none of the mentioned distributions was *ever* Fedora. I know it was boot-related because writing the bootable USB using Rufus I would receive a caution that something in Grub was a different version from what was needed, and Rufus would try to download the proper files. If I created the USB with Etcher (which was the recommended tool only for Fedora installations) it would create the USB successfully but one stick consistently reported it was missing boot information, once stick said the contents were corrupt, and the third did what I described earlier. The second two required manually editing the GRUB boot parameters before the install would run. I am *positive* all this is addressable, but considering how well other distributions were doing out-of-the-box, I gave up on Fedora.
I tried two installs based on Ubuntu: Kubuntu and Pop! OS. Pop! OS is meant to be a “it just works” installation, which is certainly true if you need a well-defined machine for general office or student work. You get all the tools you would expect and want from the default installation…no questions, no problems. It’s possible I would have stuck with Pop! OS if I wasn’t still trying to solve my freezing issue. Next up was Kubuntu, which I liked even better. Like Pop! OS, it comes with everything you need ready to go, plus a ton of gaming utilities installed or readily available. Kubuntu also uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment by default, which worked very well for me. As with Pop! OS, I likely would have stayed with Kubuntu if I wasn’t still working on the freezing issue. I wouldn’t rule out returning to it.
The final install was Manjaro, a flavor of of Arch Linux. Manjaro is designed to be an easy-to-use distribution with gaming-ready support, and that seems to be accurate. It was after installing Manjaro that I discovered my freezing was likely a hardware problem, which I am currently experimenting with. I also discovered at this point that Chromium is *slightly* faster than Firefox and at least is reputed to have fewer “problems.” If you are completely new to the Linux community, this is an appropriate time to bring up what a long-time Linux user apparently thinks is important in a browser (and they aren’t entirely wrong), versus what an average user is going to consider important. Just about everything a person like me values in a web browser…data sync across multiple platforms through a central location, password storage, shared bookmarks, availability of history…those are all security threats. The Linux users capable of answering your most specific, detailed questions *don’t like security threats.* I would not at all be shocked to find a new, perfect, designed-for-Linux browser popping up any day now; one that is so secure it won’t let you actually open any webpage.

So what is now keeping me from installing Linux on my main computer? Primarily the fear of losing data. I have actually made the “are you sure you are formatting the right hard drive?” mistake, many years ago. My system drive only has Windows and utility programs installed. All games are installed on an external drive. All my data is stored on external drives (I have several.) As far as I understand, the data, all on NTFS-formatted drives, should not be a problem. Linux can read data to and from NTFS drives, I have been told repeatedly. *But* Linux can not “install” programs to NTFS drives, nor can it *run* programs on NTFS drives. I have gathered that it is highly recommended that you backup your data and convert the drives to ext4 format. There apparently *is* a procedure to do that, but honestly the most recommended way is to recreate the partition and format it to an empty ext4 drive, then copy your data back over. I’m not thrilled about that, because we’re talking about *terabytes* of files.
I am considering two plans to get started. The first is to do the standard “shrink your partition then create a new partition out of the free space” to dual-boot Windows and Linux from one drive. My system SSD is only about half full (since I don’t keep much on it other than Windows) and this would keep Windows available while I got the Linux system up and going. However, as empty as the drive is comparatively, after I create a Linux partition, which I see recommendations for between 20GB and 80GB, Windows won’t have much swap file space left. The second plan is to obtain a second SSD to install Linux on, leaving the Windows installation alone in case I need it. This would cost more, of course. I also likely will need another external hard drive to copy files over while freeing up a drive to be converted to ext4. Probably the first plan is the most economical. Dual-drive dual-booting is something that I am finding surprisingly little information about. I would assume that you really have to have a primary drive to run the boot loader anyway, which defeats part of the purpose of the dual-drive plan.
Once again, we will see where we are next week! Thanks for reading!
The Game That Ruined Me

Be careful what you learn with your muscle-memory, because it will be very hard to un-learn it.
Marvel's Civil War

Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
Shamus Plays LOTRO

As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
PC Gaming Golden Age

It's not a legend. It was real. There was a time before DLC. Before DRM. Before crappy ports. It was glorious.
Grand Theft Auto Retrospective

This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
Most Linux distributions use “modprobe” to add other operating systems to the list of bootable options. This means that the primary drive you boot from will be the Linux drive, and then it will detect your Windows installation on a second drive automatically and it is added to the list of bootable options in GRUB. When you select it, GRUB just hands booting responsibilities over to the Windows boot loader, on its own drive. This is why there’s very little talk about it; it Just Works (and not the Todd Howard way). I’ve installed approximately 5 different distributions on one of my SSDs, and every time the Windows option was available on the list of bootable options. MX Linux has been the best distribution for this, as it provides a GUI configurator for GRUB that lets you set options like what the default operating system should be and how long GRUB should wait before just booting that default, without having to delve into configuration files.
Fedora by default doesn’t use ext4. It uses BTRFS (pronounced “better FS” according to itself, which I think is a little pretentious) which is a very flexible and overall good file system. Like most decisions Fedora makes, it is the “latest and greatest” option, unfortunately that also means it’s the least tested. This philosophy may be the culprit behind your installation woes for Fedora on old hardware. Debian (and by extension, many Debian-based distributions) are at the other end: Only very stable options are included.
Arch-based distributions are good, Arch itself is a bit of a moving target because it is a “rolling” distribution; it has no set releases of software that has been tested together and confirmed to work well together. It just releases updated packages when they are available and it’s the user’s responsibility to figure out why something broke. This means it’s excellent… at teaching troubleshooting. It does not make for a great daily driver.
I’ve been running Linux on and off since I was a young teenager and I was compiling Slackware distributions in my parents’ basement, so I’m among those that are super impressed at the newbie-friendliness of modern Linux distributions. I do have institutional knowledge of all the assumptions distributions make, though, so I’m a little bit blind to some of the problems new users face.
Well if you’re appointing yourself as first-post linux guru, one of the main questions I was stuck on:
-I can’t tell if there are problems with running Linux on SSDs or not. I tend to have my main drive nearly maxed out, which according to some means the journalized file formats will just leave them in place and burn out the drive (and even if they’re not maxed, not moving stuff around will still break those parts of the drive). Some of the stuff sounds like it’s old advice from early models that’s obsolete being carried forward, some sounds like it’s actually choice of file format that matters- people going on about journalized partitions, but apparently NTFS is already a journalized partition so shouldn’t that be a problem on windows too? I was under the impression the SSDs moved stuff around to keep the drive healthy themselves, outside of any OS or formatting.
I also heard that backup stuff on Linux is even more frustrating than Windows (which for me has been either one-touch easy or you’re not allowed to do that frustrating).
I’ve read that WINE only works with programs installed to the C drive, which seems ridiculous when games are so huge that you need a whole external drive just to have more than a few. And this can’t be a universal compatibility layer problem since Steam Deck will run stuff off flash cards just fine.
I ran into something that suggested dual-booting actually meant having some part of the other OS in sleep mode rather than just shutting down and rebooting entirely into something else, which seems bad if you’re trying to avoid windows malware crossover in any form.
And I think that’s all the questions my notes are implying, the rest (like boot drive encryption messing with some nvidia drivers) being mostly just try it and find out stuff.
Your first question really boils down to a question on SSDs in general. SSDs really don’t like being full. They do wear leveling, but in order to be allowed to do that, they have to have free space. If you can’t help yourself from filling up partitions, shrink them so there’s some unpartitioned space left. This will increase the life span of your SSDs quite a lot, regardless of which file system you are using. I have a separate SSD for swap, partitioned into two, with just the swap file for Windows on the NTFS partition, and the rest is a Linux swap partition. The more writes you perform to an SSD, the more free space you should have. Some SSDs have “invisible” extra space they use for wear leveling, but it’s difficult and kind of exhausting (you have to read spec sheets very carefully, and different manufacturers use different terms) to find out which SSDs have how much of this.
Backups: On Linux, backup is a little complicated – but only because you don’t typically need to backup the entire system; there are different programs that are meant for system backup and user data (/home) backup. Backing up user data should be sufficient for most people who do not run a rolling distro, since reinstalling a distro should bring all of the “system” back to working order. This is also why many people recommend using a separate partition or even drive for /home, so that you can reformat/reinstall the system partition without touching /home, should something cause your system to become unbootable. Steam games, desktop configuration files, and so on all live in /home. If you want to be super diligent also backup /etc, but unlike /home, /etc is not transferrable between distributions. Different distributions have different default-installed backup tools, once you decide on one check the distribution’s documentation on backup procedures, or try several and decide which you like.
More on backups: Most distributions leave one extra boot option to use a previous kernel (the “core” of the system), or documentation on how to tell GRUB to boot to a specific previous kernel, in case a kernel update breaks something.
I’ve only run games via WINE, and modern tools such as Steam and Heroic Games Launcher make that a breeze. You don’t need to install it to any lettered drive at all, the tool handles all of that for you and creates a virtual drive for your install with no input required on your part.
Dual Booting: That person was describing running Linux on a virtual machine inside Windows, which is not the same as dual booting. They are misinformed as to what dual booting means. It’s possible to run Linux inside of Windows, and some people use this method to try out distributions they think they might like, but it’s not “dual booting”.
I might actually try digging into the documentation since all my ssds are the same brand, mostly the same model (waiting to be installed for the big switch). Crystaldisk reports the power-on hours going down faster than the wear leveling the actual main drive in use, not any worse than I remember for my previous rig with spinning hd. Though the power-on count on the externals goes much faster, and apparently since the last time I checked (when writing that post), my steam game drive just hit its first “current pending sector count.” So might want to replace that soon.
I bought my first SSD when I built my current main computer, over ten years ago. At the time, I was super concerned about the permanent wear and inevitable known failure of the drive. Somehow, I was able to philosophically get over the worry, and have never bothered to track or check. It’s still running as my main system drive.
Between the simple calculations and the tests that showed them working long after the official limits, I had no concern over its current use- but who knows what sort of spooky problems could arise with the dread linux install. IIRC googling the question only found more (suspiciously extreme) comments of similar sentiment, and when things claiming they would stop working on X date kept working anyway, the project went back to the table. If I’ve got someone here saying the drives do handle it themselves regardless of the formatting, that’s good enough (I intend to leave the non-program drives in NTFS for compatibility anyway).
I’d actually rather put all my archives on ssds, because it’s spinning disks I don’t trust: I’ve seen those fail plenty, and who knows when an earthquake or poorly balanced something or just people stomping on the floor too hard could bonk a drive into losing stuff. But even with prices where they’ve got to, that’s still a few too many dollars just to replace the archives.
Definitely agree. The only thing keeping me using spinning platters is how cheap they are, relatively. Something on my experiment list is to plug in one of my external NTFS drives and try just reading and writing to it with my Linux laptop, to prove to myself the reliability and speed.
Good to know about dual-booting on dual-drives; that actually makes sense based on my own experiences. Right now I’m planning on getting a new >8TB external drive to backup all my data from NTFS to ext4 using my laptop. I found a sync program called freesync that I’ve used extensively in Windows that also runs on Linux (allegedly…I haven’t tried it) and a graphical partition manager that also runs on Linux. And before anyone says anything, yes I do know that I can perform all of that functionality from the command line…but I don’t want to. A bit part of moving to Linux for me, now; is replicating the Windows experience. I will happily use the command line when necessary, and probably more and more as time goes by because it *is* the best way to do many things. But I am a verified drag-and-drop aficionado.
How important is it for you to be able to change settings for your gamepad on your laptop? I have an Azeron (roughly…2 years old by now), and my model will save 2 layouts to the hardware itself, toggle-able with a little button on it.
For my own gaming life, I play a large variety of genres on a lot of different devices–I have my ‘main’ gaming desktop, plus a bunch of laptops, tablets, and semi-retired gaming desktops that I’ll move between for various reasons.
I only use the Azeron software on my main machine, and have two on-board profiles for the controller for everyone else: “properly supports joystick” and “fuck it, just bind everything to keyboard keys.” This covers me for 90% of the stuff I play, and I’ll just re-program it for the very rare other 1% intersection where it both doesn’t work to use my default profiles and I’m not gaming on my main PC.
This means I have to go through and change bindings in every game I play, but I prefer to do that anyway so in- game prompts match my muscle memory. Otherwise my brain explodes when the key mappings in the controller change every time I change games.
That’s my own experience at least, YMMV, obviously.
My G13 will save dozens of configurations to the gameboard’s memory , but it still won’t function without it’s Logitech driver. It will not recognize as an HID-compliant device. My understanding is the Azeron will recognize as HID under Linux, which is why all you need to use it is a generic keybind mapping utility. The only downside I’ve seen is the analogue stick can only be programmed with binary keybinds (WASD or UP-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT); the Antimicro program doesn’t support the analogue input.
I don’t know about the joystick hardware driver or it’s compatibility with Linux. I could try plugging it into my Steam Deck and report back if it would be helpful.
I’m sure the G13 has similar functionality, but the Azeron has pretty nuanced settings for the joystick mapping I’ve used in games, where you can bind different thresholds to key combinations. So for example, in a game with a ‘walk’ and/or ‘run’ key, I’ll set those to different thresholds from the neutral position if the joystick. That way (for example) 0-20% will hold “walk” plus the relevant key, 20-98% will just press the relevant key, and 98-100% will hold “run.”
It’s actually been a while since I’ve used that configuration so I could be remembering wrong, but IIRC I got it to feel very smooth between that and the overlap settings.
That would be fantastic if there was a way to support it in Linux. The G13 never supported that functionality that I remember…but TBF I primarily used it in situations where binding the WASD keys all I needed.
POST ADDENDUM: It appears I have found the solution to the regular freezing. So if anyone needs to know what to do to keep Ryzen 7 2700U laptops (or motherboards, I guess) from freezing when playing video, especially when playing YouTube (for some reason), I can give you the kernal parameters to add to the boot configuration. That worked for me, anyway.
I haven’t returned to Firefox yet to see if the problem still occurs in that program, but I have been running YouTube videos for hours at a time since Saturday afternoon without a freeze.
Thank you for documenting your experience with Linux! I have been interested for years, but not yet taken the plunge. This will be helpful when I eventually need to replace my current machine. Hopefully I can do it while the current one still functions, and can experiment with a new OS.
Nice post. If I remember correctly the ryzen 2000 series was AMD’s entry in the laptop space after being absent for a long time. It is unfortunate that you have been hit by the teething issues.
My experience with linux is that hardware issues are either fixable and the fix is documented (somewhere on the internet), if no fix is documented but you know the cause you might be able to fiddle a bit with the settings, or it is simply impossible. For that reason, I usually check linux support before I buy any hardware.
I’d generally recommend Ubuntu for beginning linux users. There are guides everywhere and the fact that every LTS distro is supported for five years gives quite some stability. (As wel as lots of guides for your particular version of Ubuntu.) Software developers, if they care to release on linux, usually target Ubuntu.
But whatever works best for you! Given the amount of effort required to switch, I hope you are at least enjoying the process!
One of my most fun moments with linux was when I needed to convert a svg to bmp, but inkscape kept crashing (it was very big). But I figured that maybe I could use the command line. It took 40 minutes, but it succeeded. I was so happy that I had an OS where the command line is a first class citizen, allowing me to overcome the resource limitations of my little old laptop.
Manjaro is nice but I wouldn’t be surprised if you end up on something Debian based again, they’re just better supported.
I’ve run linux on a VPS and tiny PC for a while, but they’re mostly terminal only. I’ve been experimenting with using linux on my laptop lately. I started out with Manjaro cause I liked they idea of “bleeding edge” software yet it didn’t come with drivers for my Razer laptop’s wifi… Had to use a USB wifi stick to install and update, that did include drivers though if I recall correctly.
Then I wanted a pair of apps to control the keyboard backlight (since without it the keyboard will continuously cycle colours) and allow login using the camera similar to Windows Hello. Both where only available through Arch User Repositories, mening you have to download a ton of stuff and compile the apps yourself, the process is mostly automated though.
Howdy (camera login) just would not compile. OpenRazer compiled but didn’t want to work despite use of their troubleshooter.
Thoroughly unimpressed with the above I went with something more familiar and Debian based Linux Mint. Everything worked out of the box. Proprietary drivers such as from Nvidia aren’t installed by default, but they have an app that does it and they suggest you do it so no issue. Both Howdy and OpenRazer could be installed though normal package manager, just type a command or use gui and click install. Downloading a .deb file from either projects site to install was an option to since Debian is widely supported. Both just worked too.
I’m on Debian 12. I’ve had multiple Logitech G13’s since… ~2010? I used it for years on Windows, and successfully used it on Linux until I switched to Debian 12 and a new system. Since then when using the joystick the G13 would disconnect from the USB and become unusable. Basically it was unusable because the joystick was one of the main reasons I loved the G13.
So now I am using a Tartarus V2, and it works well. The keys are mechanical and work better than the G13’s did, but I still prefer the G13. I miss the LCD and with https://github.com/ecraven/g13 it was a truly programmable device. The driver that comes with Debian for the Tartarus V2 maps the keys to keyboard keys, and at this point I have found no way to program combinations of keys. It will also become randomly unresponsive coming out of sleep, which sucks, but not badly enough to make the device unusable.
As for gaming on Linux? I’m a gamer, I will never go back to Windows, but Linux still isn’t ready to be a mainstream gaming platform. However, it is far closer to that than I ever thought it would be, and this year something happened that I never thought would happen. Linux video drivers, for the first time that I know of, surpassed Windows drivers in performance.
My prediction? Sometime within the next five years professional gamers will be making the move to some flavour of Linux.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/19ajk7l/current_state_of_linux_gaming_beginning_2024/
It’s an exciting time to be gaming on Linux, thanks to Google, Valve, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft has been supporting the development of wine), and thousands of developers. Two of the biggest performance advancements in the history of Linux have also come in the past few years courtesy of wayland and pipewire.