I converted my husband’s computer to Linux
And you can too!
Over about the last year, my husband has been getting increasingly frustrated with Microsoft. Unlike me he isn’t a power-user who uses all the advanced features, wants to configure absolutely everything. He’s probably a bit more technically proficient than the average person, but his eyes start glazing over when I start using terms like “desktop environments”, “forks”, and “Github”.
Recently even he has noticed worse performance, unwanted AI features being shoved in his face, useful features disappearing, and being expected to pay for all of this. So he finally accepted my repeated offer to install Linux on his machine.
I’ve described the process I went through below, including some of the decisions I made and why. This is not a How To guide. If anything, it’s probably a How Not To guide. Learn from my mistakes.
I considered leaving my stuff-ups out of this blog, but one of the reasons I wanted to write about my adventures in FOSS is to show people that it’s OK to make mistakes, and you don’t need a degree in Computer Science to use FOSS software or install Linux.
Use Case
Husband mainly uses his computer for playing offline, single-player games, listening to podcasts, and browsing the web. I recommened Nobara Linux because:
It’s very beginner-friendly.
It’s set up for gamers and comes with a bunch of nifty apps and features preinstalled, including GE Proton and NVIDIA drivers.
Nobara uses a modified version of the KDE desktop environment, which Husband is somewhat familiar with because I installed it on the Raspberry Pi that we use to stream videos on our TV.
It’s what I use on my own PC.
I like purple.
I also considered Pop! OS, another gamer-friendly distribution that I have previously used, but ultimately I just decided to go with that I was using, because it would make it easer to help Husband through his learning curve. Plus obviously I use it because I like it.
Husband agreed because, in his words “I don’t care so long I can play my games”.
Nobara Linux?
Nobara Linux is a Linux distribution (distro) based on Fedora and developed by Thomas Crinder (AKA “GloriousEggroll”), the same developer who created GE-Proton, a fork of Valve’s Proton compatibility tool. Long story short, Proton is what allows you to play Steam games on Linux. Nobara’s target audience is basically people like Husband who just want a distro to run their games and do basic computer stuff.
Like most modern Linux distributions, Nobara uses a user friendly GUI that would look fairly familiar to most Windows users.
Installation
The process of installing Nobara Linux was fairly straighforward. There’s a nice little guide on Nobara’s website that provides installation instruction, but here’s what I did.
1. Download Nobara
First, download the latest version of Nobara from Nobara’s website.
The website offers the choice between Standard images and NVIDIA images. The only difference is that the NVIDIA image comes packaged with the latest NVIDIA drivers. This is very useful because manually installing NVIDIA drivers on Linux is notoriously a colossal pain in the arse. Since Husband has an old graphics card that is no longer supported, I used a Standard image.
You can also choose between a few different desktop enviroments. I’m not going to get into that here, except to say that I picked the Official variant. I’d recommend this option for most people who don’t have strong opinions about desktop environments.
2. Burn an ISO image
I already have Linux installed on my own PC so I used Fedora Media Writer. If you’re on Windows, the nice people at Nobara recommend an app called Rufus.
It is very important that the USB drive has at least 3 GB of space and does not have anything that you to keep want on it. The process of burning the ISO image will completely wipe it and replace it with the installation file for Nobara.
3. Disable Secure Boot
This is IMO the most fiddly bit of installing Linux for non-techinchal people, because you’re going to need to mess around with the BIOS, which most people never even think about. The process varies depending on what type of motherboard your computer has. Ideally, the process goes something like this:
Restart your PC.
Frantically mash the F2 button (or F12 or DEL, depending on your setup) until the BIOS user interface appears.
Go to Boot section of the BIOS. There should be a setting setting called Secure Boot. Change it from** Enabled **to *Disabled*.
Press Escape and select Save changes and reset. This will restart your computer.
The process did not go like this for me, because I hadn’t had to do this in many years, and I foolishly assumed that because I couldn’t see the Secure Boot setting, I didn’t need to take any further action. This caused a bunch of weird bugs in the operating system which I spent hours trying to fix, before ultimately realizing my mistake.
Because, as I mentioned, Husband’s computer is pretty old, the Secure Boot option was hidden. What I needed to do was go into the Advanced Tab > Windows OS configuration > BIOS CSM/UEFI, disable that feature, and then go back and turn off Secure Boot. Thanks to this random Redditor who has a different type of motherboard but whose post helped me figure this out.
4. Boot from the USB drive
Having sucessfully disabled Secure Boot, the next step was to go into BIOS again and boot from the USB prepared in Step 2.
5. Install the Nobara Linux
This is actually the easy bit. Nobara has a nice, user-friendly GUI for installation. Like most people, I just picked the default options for things like language, time zone, and keyboard configuration.
Complications
The only real complication (that wasn’t caused by my own incompetence) that I encountered was the graphics card. Husband’s PC is still rocking a NVIDIA 1080 GTX Ti. Unfortunately Nvidia recently stopped supporting the 10 series recently and Nobara Linux does not
Fortunately, I found an excellent guide on on if-not-true-then-false.com that made installing the driver directly from Nvidia’s website fairly straighforward.
OK it wasn’t entirely straighforward because I am a walking layer 8 issue, and I didn’t understand how to append things to the configuration file, but I eventually figured it out.
Additional apps and tweaks
Having gotten Nobara up and running, I installed a few additional apps and made a few tweaks to the settings. I installed:
Elisa, a simple audio player for KDE.
VLC, the beloved OG video player.
Kasts, a podcast player and manager for KDE.
Thunderbird, Mozilla’s email client.
I also:
Set up the two additional hard drives that Husband has installed to store his Home and Games folders respectively. Moved the default storage location in Steam.
Installed the Tela icon theme, because it’s what Husband is used to and I just think it looks nicer than the default theme.
Imported Husband’s saved passwords from a CSV file he had exported earlier.
Downloaded his backed-up files.
Turned off the feature that peaks at the desktop when you mouse over the top-right corner of the screen, because I just find it unspeakably annoying and suspect that Husband would too.
Used Proton Plus to install GE Proton Latest and configured the compatibility settings on Steam to use it to run Windows games.
And then Husband’s computer was ready for him to use. So far he seems pretty happy with it. I’ll update on how it’s going when he’s had more time to get used to it.
#Linux #Nobara #Proton #LinuxGaming #VideoGames #KDE #FOSS #Microsoft #Steam #Blog
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