After toying with distros for a while I want to finally try Linux outside VirtualBox and I think I narrowed down the distros to:
>OpenSUSE (runs well even in a VM and is just short of Windows in terms of GUIs with YaST)
>Zorin (literally advertised as Linux if he Windows, to the point of suggesting using Wine when trying to launch .exe files, also has the most native software because it's based on Ubuntu)
>Garuda (runs like shit in a VM but seems to be the best and easiest to use out-of-the-box of them all, especially for gayming, and it's not like I give a shit about bloat as a guy sitting on a Win 8.1 installation from 2014 updated to 10 in 2015, scared shitless of losing AppData/registry/program settings in the event of a OS reinstall)
But there's just one catch stopping me from installing Linux in dual boot right now: I positively do not want to lose access to the other 3.9 TB of shit I have on NTFS partitions. I know there's a way to mount them but how feasible is it actually? Will games installed on said partitions work through Proton? What about performance? Won't Linux accidentally brick these partitions for Windows by dropping a file with a character forbidden in NTFS but allowed in BTRFS somewhere or something?
All I have to spare for Linux is an unallocated 100 GB on my old HDD previously used for Windows before I upgraded to SSD so no, I can't just reinstall what I want.
After toying with distros for a while I want to finally try Linux outside VirtualBox and I think I narrowed down the...
Zorin did no development besides the theming. You aren't paying for anything special aside from those themes they show on the site. It isn't good value.
I have no idea what Garuda is or does, sorry.
OpenSUSE would be fine.
Yes, be wary of partitioning mishaps and do your research. I'd recommend watching a few install videos to see what people recommend to preserve old data.
But honestly, you really should have a back up of those 4 terabytes regardless.
>You aren't paying
Exactly, I'm pirating it.
>Yes, be wary of partitioning mishaps and do your research.
I think I'm safe there so long as I tell the installer to use the unallocated 100 GB, that ain't really the issue. The issue is being able to use the other 3.9 TBs from either OS with good performance without bricking them.
>But honestly, you really should have a back up of those 4 terabytes regardless.
Too expensive and they change every day, none of the four drives are archive/filedump ones.
disable Fast Startup on windows and use a distro with a kernel newer than 5.15 since that's when NTFS driver was added. This means no Zorin, as Ubuntu only adopted this kernel by 22.04.
Personally I'd recommend Fedora, it moves fast enough to be good.
If you want a slower moving distro, I can recommend Oracle Linux with UEK7. It's a RHEL rebuild, but Oracle provides more up to date kernels, including a 5.15 one (dubbed UEK7)
>disable Fast Startup
Never enabled it, I need access to BIOS occasionally.
>use a distro with a kernel newer than 5.15 since that's when NTFS driver was added. This means no Zorin, as Ubuntu only adopted this kernel by 22.04.
Oh, alright, gotcha.
>Fedora
Not enough Windows-like. I want to NEVER touch the terminal, just like I never do in Windows. YaST and Garuda's pajeet bloat is a godsend for that.
>Oracle Linux
I positively need KDE as that's the DE that looks like Windows the most and I'm too much of a babby to be installing entire DEs by myself.
Anything besides Arch is not needed.
You can daily drive NTFS partitions under *nix.
Speeds can be pretty bad though, comparatively.
Yes games will work on whatever format you like with Wine/Proton/Lutris.
Some game mod utilities don't like EXT3/4 and so on but it doesn't matter.
Linux won't destroy partitions unless you do it on purpose.
DO NOT let Windows (((installer))) touch your "other os" ;);););) partitions. Or it WILL brick your Linux shit on purpose and then you get to fix it. It will fuck up EVERY partition you've touched under Linux.
Testdisk is godly.
Also ext3/4 are case sensitive by default, which can be a tedious fucking annoying cunt shitstain syphilitic camel spunk guzzling supreme court member to deal with when modding and so on Windows games. (e.g skyrim for example)
If for some reason you go Linux and have shit set up physically disconnect the drives before Win reinstall or so on, so Windows can't even fucking see them or they will get trashed even if you don't install to any partition on the drive or do anything with them during the installation.
>will it read the drive
Yes.
>will it brick it
No.
>performance
NTFS has worse read speeds than ext4. So loading times will be worse. At least according to some "Windows vs Linux" benchmarks I saw half a decade ago. So it's possible that load times will be even worse on Linux if you're using NTFS, since even Windows+NTFS itself falls behind Linux+ext4.
Other than that I don't think you'll have a bad performance on Linux. I own a Steam Deck and most games are playable (run on 60fps) on 3W-8W TDP. That's basically 10x weaker than an average CPU, plus the Deck doesn't even have a dedicated GPU.
>SUSE, Zorin or Garuda
I'd personality say all 3 are kinda shit options, but if they're really what you're stuck with then go with Garuda. While it's the most obscure and likely to die of the 3, not to mention the ugliest, at least it's Arch-based so you'll get the latest drivers and best compatibility for gaming.
Try to give Mint/Kubuntu, Manjaro or Fedora another look. Mint does what Zorin does but is more established and fixes more Ubuntu's shit while Zorin only makes a theme. Fedora is a less obscure openSUSE and Manjaro is a less obscure Garuda.
He can just use the ukuu script to fetch the latest kernel. He doesn't need out of the box NTFS kernel.
>NTFS has worse read speeds than ext4. So loading times will be worse. At least according to some "Windows vs Linux" benchmarks I saw half a decade ago. So it's possible that load times will be even worse on Linux if you're using NTFS, since even Windows+NTFS itself falls behind Linux+ext4.
>Other than that I don't think you'll have a bad performance on Linux. I own a Steam Deck and most games are playable (run on 60fps) on 3W-8W TDP. That's basically 10x weaker than an average CPU, plus the Deck doesn't even have a dedicated GPU.
See, what I'm worried about isn't so much the speed of the file system but how fast will NTFS be when used from Linux. From what I've gathered from Google so far, there are 2 Linux NTFS drivers: ntfs-3g, which is old and has terrible performance due to the way it works, and ntfs-3, which is new and supposedly faster (though I have no idea if it's at least as fast as NTFS on Windows) but lacks the 3g's windows_names parameter, which seems to be the failsafe against bricking a partition for Windows.
Bump. Also MX Linux seems to have a pretty comprehensive GUI suite and isn't too bad even without KDE so I might go with that. Fedora doesn't seem terrible either if completely unremarkable.
in my experience with windows linux dualbooting. please try to shutdown windows properly as often as possible. sometimes when i force toggled off my pc while windows was doing some weird shit on it's ntfs drives it write-lock on linux because of some faulty writings on the partition. then you have to boot into windows again for it to be fixed.
otherwise dualboot works like a charm unless microsoft decides to wipe your boot-partition happend tome twice in 6-7 years of using linux but its a quick fix.
you might also want to check out endeavousOS it's similar to garuda.
>He can just use the ukuu script to fetch the latest kernel. He doesn't need out of the box NTFS kernel.
aren't those unsigned and not bootable with the shim?
What makes it similar to Garuda?
>you might also want to check out endeavousOS it's similar to garuda.
Isn't it about as removed from Garuda as it gets without going full text install with plain Arch? It comes with next to no GUI apps, not even a package manager, whereas Garuda seems to have just about everything one could ask for in that regard.
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Linux Mint Cinnamon
Linux Mint Cinnamon
>I want to NEVER touch the terminal, just like I never do in Windows.
So just use fuckin windows if you don't have the spine to learn something. Linux on desktop at home is a hobbyist endeavor.
Also get a spare HDD to backup to and learn to reinstall winbloat once a year.
If you really want to go ahead with it though you might also try ElementaryOS or Ubuntu Mate
also
>timedatectl set-local-rtc 1
>Mint
>ElementaryOS
These are on pre-5.15 kernel according to distrowatch, meaning they lack ntfs3 support, so they're out. Garuda, OpenSUSE, MX Linux and Fedora all seem to have recent enough kernels to have it.
>>Mint
it's mint
OpenSUSE or Fedora. Both have the ability to open NTFS ootb if i recall correctly. And both are good for gayms.
Garuda is just eye candy and not "easy to use for noobs" because it comes with non-standard shit like Fish for a shell
But fish seems good? It even has autocomplete. But most importantly it has all the gaymer shit oob, though I wish the layout was more Windows and less *pple
Also is MX Linux supposed to have no ntfs, like, at all? Not even the old module? At least it's not in the same folder as other file system modules
>has systemd on his system
ngmi