• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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    1. yes you do. A good distro I recommend newbies is Linux Mint, because it’s visually similar to windows. Another great option for beginners is Pop!OS, because the developers take more care to automate things that you might encounter when first starting to use Linux. Overall, it doesn’t really matter that much what distribution you choose in terms of what software is available, it all comes down to design choices that change how hard things are to do (but reward you with more customization, of course)

    2. you will not be able to play some games that have an anticheat that forbids linux. The main culprit is EasyAntiCheat (while it does support linux, enabling that support is a choice by the game’s developer). The main games I have noticed can’t work are Fortnite (EAC), Hunt: showdown (EAC), league of legends & Valorant (Vanguard), R6 Siege (EAC) and PUBG (EAC). You can use protondb to learn what games in your steam library are known to simply not work.

    Don’t expect games that you own on the windows store to work at all (this includes Xbox game pass). Most of them are available on steam, but that requires buying them again.

    Most of the other stuff works, generally. Valve’s Proton supports a very large part of most games today, and unless the game you want to launch is very old or specifically doesn’t want you to use Linux, chances are the game will work first try, especially indies. Protondb is a great help to see what parameters one needs to use to make it work if it doesn’t first try. Make sure to “enable proton compatibility for all games” in steam’s main options, otherwise it won’t let you download game.

    For tools that aren’t on steam but target steam games (for example mod managers), you should use protontricks (it’s most likely in your distro’s package manager, you don’t need to download it from GitHub) to launch the tool’s exe inside of the proton context of that game (steam maintains a separate pseudo-windows install (a “wine prefix”) for each game that uses proton). From there, the tool will behave as if you launched it on windows.

    For tools that stand alone, you can add them to steam as a non-steam game and in it’s properties, force it to use proton, which allows you to launch e.g. cracked games. I also recommend using Bottles to manage your third-party launchers.

    1. most likely you’ll be fine. You’re unlikely to encounter any issues that haven’t been encountered by anyone before, so don’t hesitate to Google and to ask for help on various forums. You don’t need to know how to program to use Linux, though it does unlock some pretty nice things (it also does on windows for that matter)

    2. windows 10 LTSC will continue being available for a few years. If you need a windows partition (imo you only do need it if you want to play games that have restrictive anticheat), I suggest installing it on a separate disk altogether, because windows tends to not play nice with other partitions on the same disk, and will create headaches you could have avoided.

    3. welcome! I hope you’ll enjoy your time away from ads in the start menu.









  • All existing PSU cables should fit the new main board (unless you’re using a psu from a dell pc, in which case it will fit with nothing), however depending on the age of it may not have a CPU power cable, which are now pretty much always required. Refer to this link to learn about PSU cables.

    In a similar vein (and I have had precisely this exact issue), your PSU may not have the cables for a new GPU down the line, because GPUs now consume ungodly amounts of power. If that’s the case, you’ll need to replace it then, don’t try to use adapters beyond the ones in the GPU box.

    Overall i’m not sure this is a great upgrade. You’d be upgrading from a admittedly pretty tired CPU to an ok-to-good one, but you’d be buying into a platform that is already EOL. The advantage, of course, is that you’re not spending the money on RAM and older hardware is less expensive. Then, once you’re done with this upgrade, you’d still be limited by the now ancient rx480, so your CPU will be running laps around it while it struggles to ouput 30 fps in modern games. The speed of the ram isn’t great, but since the GPU is so slow, I don’t think it’ll really matter.

    I’d recommend the following upgrade path:

    • first, upgrade th GPU to a 6000-series AMD card. They’re about the best bang for buck right now and you will be able to keep it for a while. You’ll probably need to upgrade your PSU when you do this.
    • then, upgrade the rest of the system to an AM5 CPU, with basic ddr5 RAM (no need to splurge on faster), which also includes a motherboard upgrade.
    • finally, upgrade your storage to an nvme drive and take the opportunity to reinstall your os cleanly, because I don’t think your install is much less ancient than your gear ;)

    This is, unfortunately more expensive, and in the time between the GPU and CPU upgrade, you’ll really feel the CPU bottleneck (you’ll feel the reverse with your plan anyway). The advantages are that you’re buying into a platform that already offers great upgrade paths now, and promises greater ones in the future, as opposed to spending money just to get to the top end on your current platform.