Will be installing either Mint or Pop_OS on a new laptop which has a 512gb SSD. Will keep Windows for gaming, at least for now, with the games installed on an external HD. But otherwise, this is to experiment with living in Linux.
I understand that I can unallocate HD space from Windows in order to make room for the LInux OS, leaving at least 25 or 30gb for the Linux OS itself.
Do I then extend that space further, so to speak, to allow for any other programs I might install as well as for data? Do I create a third partition for data that will be shared between the two OS?
What’s a reasonable breakdown?
e.g.
Windows 100gb; Linux 400gb or
Win 100gb; Linux 30gb; Data (NTFS) 370gb?
I just did this with my desktop pc when I added a second drive for additional storage. Instead of using it as additional storage for windows like I initially intended, I decided to dual boot with Mint on the second drive.
So far, I haven’t had any issue with gaming on Mint, either! Granted, most of the games I play are through Steam and either work with Proton or are native Linux to begin with. I did install a few games with Lutris, though, and works fine so far. Sea of Thieves, Astroneer, Slay the Spire, Deep Rock Galactic, are all working out of the box.
Only thing I haven’t attempted yet are multiplayer games with active anti-cheat, like LoL or CS:2. If those are the sorts of games you regularly play, you’ll probably be better off in the Windows partition/drive, but have fun experimenting in Linux!
Main game rn is BG3. And ofc want to get back into playing modded Skyrim. There are definitely other, pc only games that are on my list, coming from a Mac. But nothing like LoL or CS:2
Looks like there are a few issues with BG3, but will probably be smoothed with time.
At least according to ProtonDB
Definitely worth keeping access to a Windows machine if able, but doesn’t seem like it’s impossible without.
I plan to look into this ofc, but if the games are on an external hd, would Linux use the same files as Windows? I.e. you don’t need two copies of the game so long as it’s on a format like NTFS that both can read? Was wondering whether to partition the external HD to have a Windows side and then a Linux side, with the latter formatted to ext4
In theory you should be able to do that! I think Proton has some issues with NTFS, mostly when installing or updating, but with a little research and tweaking you should be able to get it to run smoothly. I opted to keep them fully separate and just installed certain games twice, but am also using this as a test run before diving into full daily driver Linux when I build a new system in the spring, so longevity of my storage drives wasn’t a concern.
I think that’s where I’m at, too, where I don’t mind have to re-do certain things down the road if I switch approaches or commit to a certain direction