Hello, Windows 10 user of about a year now. I would like to switch to Linux (Ubuntu or Debian), but have a couple of questions.
- Is there a way to play steam games designed for Windows on Linux?/What are the drawbacks of doing this?
- Is there a way to transfer files from my old OS to the new one without using external drives (i dont have one ;-;)
- Is there a distro more suited to a Windows user going into linux rehab?
- Is there anything else I should be aware of?
TIA as always comrades and good day.
1 - No my field of expertise, I'm not much of a gamer anymore. Sorry I can't help. I've heard that Steam has something called Proton that helps on this front.
2 - If you can upload to some sort of cloud storage, yes. But that'll be slow. Aside from that, an external drive is the only way.
3 - Any distro with KDE Plasma, which is most of them, is a good choice. KDE doesn't look exactly like Windows out of the box, but it's got a look and feel that's a lot closer to Windows than other interfaces. Taskbar, tray, start menu, control panel, Explorer-like file manager, etc. It'll take you no time at all to start navigating. It's also very fast and resource-efficient. The other popular interface choice, GNOME, is extremely not like Windows. It skews kinda-sorta closer-ish to MacOS. There's another interface called Cinnamon that I'm not as familiar with, but has the same reputation for ease-of-use for Windows users.
4 - I'd avoid any distro based on Ubuntu. It's managed by a company called Canonical with controversial habits. For example, the Firefox version they package is a weird non-standard version that has... issues. (The short version is that Canonical is trying to push a proprietary app store that they control into Ubuntu.) Over the past decade or so they've made repeated attempts at controlling the future of the Linux desktop through proprietary means for their own financial benefit.
A good one to start with might be Linux Mint. It's got a good reputation. It's reliable, fairly easy to troubleshoot, used by a lot of people (so searching for help on it brings up a lot of guides), is managed by people who don't pull proprietary shenanigans, etc. Mint by default comes with that Cinnamon interface I'd mentioned above.
Also, you can usually test-drive distros without changing your Windows installation by using "live" flashdrive. This is a great way to test if your hardware is supported under that distro, or to test out an interface like KDE to see if it's to your liking, etc. It's normal for a live flashdrive to take several minutes to boot up. When installed directly to a harddrive or SSD it's a lot faster.
Feel free to DM me, now or down the road! I can't help much on the gaming front but I can certainly help on other questions.