The answer: Yes!
The why: Why not?
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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yes
Yes
You've already got plenty of comments explaining why you should switch. You obviously should ideally. Check Protondb.com to see if your games runs on Linux.
As long as you back up your data, experiment to find what you want. If you have an empty spare drive, try out the different options there. It's been a month since I moved to Bazzite. My plan was to try Mint and Bazzite while also keeping a Windows 10 ISO in my boot drive (Ventoy will allow you to have as many ISO in your USB stick). If things get too difficult, I could always go back to Windows 10. But using Bazzite has been a breeze, I decided I didn't even need Mint. Every time I think I need to open up the terminal for any issues, I find that the solution doesn't require it.
Other people have given you good responses about switching so I'll give some distro recommendations:
- Bazzite. This is what I use on fairly similar hardware. Looks like you've got a v1 or v2 chip as it's still DDR3, I'm on an E5-2680v2 and it works great under Linux while Windows 10 just caused it to freeze up so much by the end. All the background updates and indexing and whatever else were such resource hogs. The NVIDIA Bazzite iso also includes the official drivers out of the box, which many other distros don't (looking at you Linux Mint!!). It's designed to be super easy for gamers newly switching from Windows, with Steam pre-installed and everything just ready to go.
- CachyOS. I don't have personal experience with it, but I know it also includes the official NVIDIA drivers out of the box, and it's designed as a gaming distro first and foremost as well.
- Nobara. Another gaming distro, it also includes the NVIDIA drivers and is ready to go. It's made by a dev known as Glorious Eggroll who is well respected in the linux gaming community.
The reason I recommend distros that have the official NVIDIA drivers OOTB is that they work much, much better than the Noveau open source driver that most traditional distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora) include. The offical drivers also have a steep learning curve for a new Linux user to install themselves, it's nowhere near as simple as installing them on Windows.
I like bazzite but the immutable aspect makes downloading some thing even more complicated for a newb. Truly can never go wrong with zorinos or mint
That's exactly why I'm recommending it. For a user that just wants to game, it has the guardrails in place to stop them from bricking their install. Think about how comparatively hard it is to severely mess up a Windows install.
There are plenty of other ways to install software, Bazzite highly recommends Flatpak and AppImage. As well, if you do really need anything else, it can be run in a Distrobox and there are plenty of people on the forums who can help with that.
Recommending Mint to users that just want to game, that don't want to learn technical stuff, needs to die. Sure, if someone comes in and says they're happy to learn tech stuff, Mint is a great option. But for everyone else, something like Bazzite is just so much closer to "it just works". Hell, I have technical skills, headless Debian over SSH is my happy place, but I have Bazzite on my desktop and handheld because I can't mess with it. It's always ready to game when I am!
True true, still modern linux doesn't break as easily as u frame it. And is user friendly enough for even non tech ppl. A user would have to go out of their way todo something weird in cli. As long as they are just installing games then not a whole lot can go wrong.
On bazzite if u want to install something that isn't virtualized like flats, than u would have to dive more into cli. That instead of simply typing sudo apt install.
I mean, I've bricked plenty of installs before I knew what I was doing more. I still regularly see, in certain places, people give purposefully destructive commands. rm -rf / doesn't work directly anymore, but it'll work on your home folder for example. You also don't need CLI to install games, I would say literally never.
If a good third-party launcher that needed to be run as a system package showed up, Bazzite would just add that. Games that just ship a Linux executable like a lot of itch.io stuff generally works regardless and doesn't need the CLI. Can you give an example of a gaming usecase that requires sudo apt?
You can also install packages to the system on Bazzite by the way. It's atomic, not actually immutable. It's just frowned upon because it makes things less stable, and increases the length of updates. You use sudo rpm-ostree install in the same way, and it layers the package on top of the current version. It's treated as an absolute last resort, but it is way easier to reset to the base image if anything goes wrong.
No not a lot. Was just distro hopping and tried bazzite. When I tried to install something that wans't in the software centrum it indeed said to try sudo rpm-ostree install. But monkey brain already found it too much. So yeah... My bazzite views probaly aren't the best lol. Have to give it a better try some day.
I mean, Bazzite is Fedora so even if it wasn't atomic, you'd be using dnf instead of apt. Subbing out rpm-ostree isn't much different :P
I've been using Linux for 25 years and I kinda hate how clunky immutable Fedora is.
Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
Wrong, I'm running a sandy bridge on cachyos right now
If you look at recommended requirements on that page, it suggests the x86_v3 but minimum doesn't. It's a little confusing but the following section seems to just be explaining that term for the recommended level? If I'm wrong though I'll gladly cross it out.
Nvidia is a bit of a risk under Linux. It might work.
There’s hardly any risk anymore. The drivers themselves are mostly fine, with a couple exceptions.
The only two risk factors are either using an immature distro with no properly packaged drivers, or an outdated one
Mint won't properly display games with my RTX 3080 unless I reboot for some reason. There can still be issues but they might be fixable.
Yep, for example Ubuntu took like 4 extra months to get a late enough driver to fix the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth texture issue. Completely unplayable until I believe driver 570.123. I had the updated driver pretty early on Arch, but wouldn't ever suggest that to someone casually considering switching.
Lots of mention of dual booting- I recommend getting an e-waste tier 256gb SATA SSD for your first Linux install if you just want to try it out.
No one wants those old drives because they are small but they are plenty quick and you only need 15 to 30 gigs for most distros.
Can you use the existing Windows partition for the games though (without it fucking them up)? Because while Linux fits in that easily, games do not.
Linux has NTFS drivers. Should work fine.
Probably not, just trying to save the guy a few bucks. Try some games one at a time that do fit, and rely on protondb for the ones that don't. Then decide to move over and wipe windows.
I picked up a Samsung m.2 280 or 260 gb guy on eBay for like ten bucks. I don't remember the size exactly, just that it wasn't the normal binary 256gb.
They sell 250 on 256 and 500 on 512, holding back the 6/12 gigs for wear leveling and other NAND management functions. At least that's what I understand.
Just looked it up and it was 240gb, and made by pny. My b.
I second this. Chances are high that OP ends up reinstalling multiple times (either to check out multiple distros or after they accidentally nuked the system). Doing so on a separate SSD so they don't accidentally wipe their data during reinstall and so they don't have to constantly migrate data is a good plan.
Third this move. Nvme are under $20 cheap way to experiment
Everyone manages to format the wrong partition at least once when starting out with installing different Linux distros.
I haven't. That wasn't one of the mistakes I made!
Lucky you!
~~CachyOS might get you some modest performance gains on that hardware~~
*edit, see reply
I have a similar usecase w/ games and ollama, good support for that on linux
Sandy Bridge is too old for CachyOS. Cachy compiles the kernel with optimizations for newer CPUs
thanks good catch
Note how the 3060 already had 12GB VRAM, and they still try to push 8 today
Your choices:
- buy a new PC with Windows 11
- move to linux with your current PC
- stay with Windows 10 on your current PC, and take the risk of using an insecure system.
You missed one:
- build/buy a new PC and put Linux on it
Could be the same as option 1 using dual boot.
Linux probably wouldn't make your games any faster, but it could make the OS feel snappier.
Reasons to switch:
- you hate Windows
- you like to customize stuff
- you're curious about Linux
- you don't play many MP games
- you tend to leave a ton of stuff open, which makes things run slowly
- saving 40GB or so of space means the world to you (Linux is pretty lean)
Reasons not to switch:
- you need Windows-specific software, like Adobe stuff or games w/ anti-cheat
- you're not interested in tinkering at all, and having any minor issue would frustrate you
- you want the best possible performance for games
Linux is better at memory and task management, generally speaking, but performance in specific apps depends a ton on the specific app, from being slightly better to being noticeable worse.
As for which Linux distro to go with, I hear good things about Linux Mint, though I don't use it myself. But honestly, look at the most popular distros and find one that looks cool to you, they're all pretty good. Ones to check out are:
- Debian (or Linux Mint Debian Edition) - ol' reliable, may have some issues on newer games
- Fedora - tries to be close to bleeding edge, without as many sharp edges
- Bazzite - gaming focus, tries to imitate Steam OS
- openSUSE Tumbleweed - my personal daily driver, though I generally don't recommend it for new users since there's not a huge community to find help
There are tons more great ones. If you list your must-have apps/games, maybe someone can give a better recommendation, though honestly most distros are similar enough that if it works on one, it'll work anywhere.
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Given that Windows 11 won't support your device, Linux may be your only option for a supported OS.
You can use Microsoft Activation Scripts (MAS) to activate Extended Security Updates for extra 3 years of support or upgrade to IoT LTSC for 6 years
Meh. That assumes that games and applications bother still supporting it when EoL for most people has passed. Good option, though.
Linux will continue to support their hardware for easily another decade.
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