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Funny anecdote, I installed Ubuntu on my own laptop to improve my minecraft FPS when I was 9 (~9 years ago).

I googled something like "how to get more fps in minecraft" and the first result was a minecraft forum post to which the only response was "install Ubuntu". At the time, Ubuntu had a .exe installer, so I thought it was just like any other program and installed it to my C: drive along with everything else. I think I did have the concept of other OS since I'd used both Windows and MacOS previously, so I figured it out after the reboot. It did increase my minecraft FPS from ~15 to ~30 on average, so I didn't have any complaints.

I stuck with that laptop until high school, when I got a new laptop and started dual-booting Windows for gaming and Linux for everything else, which is where I'm at now.

Indeed funny! What happened after you installed the .exe Ubuntu? You clicked the icon and then ..? I'm just past the 'stage' you're in now, I recently deleted my partition running Windows (kept it for GTA5). Only Ubuntu now.

I bet this was with Wubi which made a Windows file with whole install and booted into that.

Yep!

I don't remember much about the installation process. I think I just got to choose between automatic or manual partitioning, which is when I presumably went with automatic and chose the C: drive.

Are you able to play GTAV on linux? Or just given up on the ability to play it? That and a few racing sims are the only things keeping me on windows these days.

Not the person you're replying to (and I don't play GTAV), but you can look here to see if it works in Steam via Proton: https://www.protondb.com/app/271590

It's rated Gold, and appears to work out of the box for some people, others have had to add an option to the command line that Steams uses to run it, and some people have seen some problems running it.

If you do end up going this route and try it, please file a report on protondb letting others know how it went.

Apparently GTAV runs quite well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_69huFZSLA

You may also want to check out PlayOnLinux which eases the creation of sandboxed installations for different Windows software (not just games), in which each one could use its own Wine version, libraries, modules etc.

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/

Lutris is wonderful, the answer is yes. https://lutris.net/games/grand-theft-auto-v

I didn't do that, just a separate partition for Windows.

Windows just works. I can't remember the last time I had a driver issue with wifi or had an issue with new hardware working. Every game targets Windows first, so they all work without any extra work. My computer is a tool, and I don't want to spend any of my free time configuring things, like I have when running Linux in the past. I spent enough of my time at work doing that!

Every time I install windows, I spend easily half a day hunting down drivers. All of this is installed automatically with linux, and especially Ubuntu installs. The last time I installed windows, I got two black strips on either side of the display. No amount of GPU driver shenanigans would fix it. It worked first try on linux.

Anecdotal of course, but I've had the opposite experience. When I install Windows, the first thing I do is let Windows Update take care of everything. You could say it's "installed automatically". The only drivers I've needed to install in the past 5 years was Nvidia drivers for graphics cards or the odd printer driver. And downloading these drivers is super easy taking 5 minutes at most - the first search result for "nvidia download drivers" is the correct one.

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but every time I've installed Linux something with the drivers always breaks - video playback is choppy, wireless drops randomly, audio breaks, the fingerprint reader doesn't work. Using WSL2 or a VM is much easier when I want Linux.

We're all talking anecdotes, but all I have to do is install the NVIDIA driver updater and I'm good to go.

I had this same problem. Was it an old Radeon card? I don't remember the model, but Microsoft's website said it was too old, so it only has basic support from Windows 10. That means black bars. Drove an ultrawide monitor in Linux just fine.

Since was the last time that you try using Linux?. Sounds like you try it like 20 years ago. Actually Linux f works out the box

I agree with the sentiment of not wanting to waste time on your OS, but I disagree that Windows solves the problem. A computer that reboots without my permission is not usable.

Roblox. I had my kids on linux originally, but there's no linux version of Roblox, and the proposed workarounds I found were unreliable, out of date, or more work than I was willing to invest in.

Probably not overly helpful, but there was a post yesterday about Roblox working on Wine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651224

Oh no, I'm just going to have to hope they won't ask for it before Proton (or something) starts supporting it :)

But you are right, a time may come when they will want Windows. Although my wife's computer runs it (needs it as a teacher), so they may use that for Win only stuff. I'll deal with it when the time comes.

I could do a VM with GPU pass-through and Steam client... Although that may also turn out to be more than I'm willing to invest (and essentially you still run Windows). Or maybe I'll dual boot...

Won’t the Steam client also ask you for a phone number as soon as you want to buy anything? How do you decide where to draw the line?

I don't think Steam wants any more from me than any other payment processor. And for that matter, if you don't want to give them CC/address, you can use Steam gift cards, right?

I confess I'm not sure; I've trusted Valve with a very specific part of my life (buying games) for nearly 20 years now, and they've held up their end of the bargain the entire time. My trust in them has paid off (so far!)

Roblox works on Linux as of this week, there was a post here a few days ago.

Very well said. Fully agree with you. Both the personal desktops in my home, including the one used by my Sr Citizen non-techie Dad : are Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Thanks for sharing this constructive and helpful info.

Minecraft for kids is arguably safer on Bedrock servers and clients with the parental controls managed through the Microsoft account.

While Mojang made efforts, the premise of the Java version was unrestricted server community and that remains the dominant paradigm.

Not everything should be for kids, not saying “think of the children” and use Win10 or iOS, just commenting on a less known value-add of a Microsoft Account for Minecraft parents:

How does Minecraft keep my child safe?

With the Better Together update now out on Windows 10, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, and recently Playstation 4, any parent or guardian can rest comfortably knowing that there are a few systems in place to keep their child safe. [And able to cross play with friends on any of those.]

If your child is playing the Java Edition of Minecraft then they're still being protected by all the great features Mojang has baked into the legendary game. However, the Java Edition of Minecraft does not require Xbox Live integration since it does not support crossplay with other devices, and therefore loses out on many of the parental control features parents enjoy elsewhere.

If your child is playing Minecraft on PC, it might be worth getting them the Windows 10 version instead. It's always on-par with every other platform for new features and updates, supports crossplay between platforms so your child can play with more of their friends, and can be moderated by Xbox Live and Microsoft Account parental controls. That's a win-win-win.

https://www.windowscentral.com/minecraft-guide-how-keep-your...

// Note that summer camps tend to require the Bedrock version and Microsoft account for this reason. It’s possible to get interop, unofficially, e.g.:

BedrockConnect: https://github.com/Pugmatt/BedrockConnect

Geyser: https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser/wiki/Supported-Hosting-Pr...

I only ever saw my son make his own worlds locally and we play together on my own server [0], where I have 2 worlds currently. Sometimes Bedrock friends join, I installed GeyserMC for that (as you also mentioned) [1].

It was indeed a great pain to get the girls from next door to join with their Android tablets, it required multiple back and forths between me and their father... So that was why. To be honest it does annoy me that they had to give up so many private details to get the benefits of this "outsourced protection".

Well, my philosophy is to be there, check in on them, educate them about dangerous stuff but also to let them explore. I'll handle more difficult stuff through AdGuard when the time comes. The kid knows not to do weird things on their own. I regularly explain to them that the internet is like a jungle. Don't just wander off without me and my digital machete by your side, I tell them ;)

[0] https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server

[1] https://geysermc.org/

Still haven't found a way to digitally sign a pdf with a smart card on Linux, unfortunately. If anyone knows how, I'd love a tip. Last thing I absolutely can't do except on Windows, and it is required by a lot of DoD processes I have to follow.

Perhaps this[1] is a solution?

[1]: https://signer.digital/SignerDigitalBrowserExtensions

I unfortunately kept all my backups as NTFS and I maintained that for a while because "legacy" and I was lazy. Converting them all is gonna take a while. So I'm sort of waiting until it's inevitable.

> Converting them all is gonna take a while

What sort of backups?

(My experience is that) NTFS filesystems mount just fine on other OSes, particular Linux.

I have over 2TB's of data. While yes I can read them on linux, it it's always perfect and there are issues regarding permissions on occasion or an issue where it doesn't recognize the directory for some odd reason. No idea if it's a linux issue, the standard ntfs reader I have on my distro, or what. But, I figure if I'm going all out linux, might as well make it difficult to jump back out :)

2TB is not much at all. Tip from experience: Don't touch your important ntfs data with the linux drivers, instead get an ext/btrfs driver for windows. winbtrfs[1] is stable and works great for that purpose.

[1] https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs

Hey thanks! I'll have to look into this more but would you recommend ext4 or btrfs? I just want something that will last, not necessarily the latest and greatest.

Although I don't feel qualified to answer this, I'd recommend ext4. It just works. They are trying to achieve the one fs to rule them all with btrfs, but I'm not too sure how stable it is at the moment. It had a lot of issues in the past, and if you don't plan to use subvolumes, screenshots etc you're better off using ext4.

Fun story: I once had an issue where I couldn't do anything with my btrfs volume because it ran out of metadata space and I couldn't even tell it to allocate more. The solution wsa to grab a usb drive, format it with btrfs, make a volume group so more metadata space would be available to the filesystem, then make it allocate more space on the normal ssd. Everything was fine after removing the flashdrive from the volume group. It was a scary evening.

If you ask me, btrfs had issues in the past and it caused them some reputation damage but it's getting there. And many distros started using it as their default, as does Synology.

It's a safe pick if you ask me. Still, I would go for ext4 if you don't specifically want or need things like storage pools, snapshots and such advanced (ZFS-like) features.

> Do you really need Windows?

Probably not, unless you are a gamer.

You're probably not going to be able to use that bit for bit copy later.

I did something similar with my last linux laptop, and none of the workarounds to put the partitions back worked when I needed a quick windows test machine.

Actually I did the same with My wife's Asus, I dd-ed the whole drive, gzipped it and ran Linux for a year. Then I restored it. It worked fine. I guess I won't run into problems as long as the drive is the same drive, or perhaps a bigger one.

I think the problem would be the partitions, perhaps try the whole drive end to end next time?