linuxmemes

it is kinda wild that people abandon Windows 7 because of Steam and not because Microsoft stopped patching it several years ago

Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

I don't think Steam actually recommends any distro since some time anymore

Lol 0.06% usage in November 2023

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

There are more linux users than windows7 users.

To be fair, steam reports less than 1% of users using windows 7. It's not as big as we think.

I'm pretty sure that this is because steam uses chromium as its backend and chromium new version doesn't run on windows 7. It's still not good because there are some games that won't run on newer systems and therefore 7 is required for preservation.

As many of you pointed out, yes I agree proton is the answer if possible. YMMV

Nah. It's more, year of the piracy comeback

There's a bit of controversy regarding Ubuntu that I don't need to get into but Fedora and Pop!_OS are also really good for Proton support. Ubuntu will work fine but I just prefer not to use it. Maybe you could let him try out the live environment for a couple distros to see what he might like in terms of UI.

RIP Windows 7, long live Linux Mint Xfce

my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7

You saint.

All these people saying "use this or use that distro instead" is why Windows users don't go into Linux. Ubuntu is a solid choice for beginners because that's a distro with a lot of tutorials online if not the most.

Kubuntu for that win7 similarity. (It's still official ubuntu)

Aha, just popping in here to suggest taking a look at PopOS!

Proton works extremely well on it, its compatible out of the box with everything Debian based (this includes Ubuntu) so it has a huge selection of free software, has great documentation for the PopOS! specific stuff and for all the debian/ubuntu stuff you can nearly always use older wikis on the internet if you run into a snag, and its got a custom DE that I personally find better than KDE and Ubuntu's latest rendition if GNOME.

Also, while Ubuntu is going hard into Snaps, which I hate, PopOS! is going into flatpaks, which are less bad than snaps, but still stupid imo.

If you care, its fairly easy to disable and/or remove flatpaks from PopOS. It doesnt come with any preloaded afaik, so all you have to do is go into the PopShop (the app store) settings and just remove the flatpak source.

Ive run Proton on Steam via debian sources on PopOS! for years, works fine.

Oh right! I am fairly sure that PopOS! nowadays just comes by default with graphics drivers pre-installed and preset to automatically update with the rest of your software when you run sudo apt update. All you have to do is pick the Nvidia ISO if youve got Nvidia, or the standard one if youve got AMD.

Proton works on any Linux distro, it comes with steam. As long as you can install steam, you should be golden.

I strongly reccomend Zorin OS. I was in his exact shoes when I decided to switch to Linux and for very similar reasons. It feels pretty similar to Windows 7 IMHO, and I like its default dynamic background that changes throughout the day. Steam games run great on it btw.

The other reason I reccomend Zorin is that it is aimed at windows users and Mac users. There's an "app store" that is in fact a software manager, most windows apps run pretty well (although I reccomend using Bottles for that) and the layout is designed to feel similar to Windows. All the fun Linux stuff is still right there for you to use, it's just slightly out of sight so it doesn't overwhelm you at the beginning.

Why not Linux mint? It is way more use friendly.

Also why on earth is anyone using windows 7 in 2023. I stopped using it to move to Linux back in 2016

I would recommend creating a Ventoy USB drive and download some live ISOs of your choice. Then boot them and let your BF try them. Because then he can choose a distro by his liking to the overall experience.

To be fair, he could simply pay 5 bucks for a key and switch to Windows 10 or 11. Linux should be something people choose to try firsthand for a while before moving on.

I highly recommend Linux Mint (cinnamon) as an entry level Linux distro. It looks and feels similar to Windows, and it's based on Ubuntu, so it has a lot of support and compatibility.

Noo please don't Ubuntu. Just plain debian or mint debian instead for the closest thing without canonical. Ubuntu is based on debian and all the actual reasons to use it over debian ended probably like a decade or so ago.

I don't think there are many distro specific proton issues, if they exist at all. I've switched from arch to tumbleweed to bazzite(ublue/fedora based) and the only issues were unrelated to gaming. Proton would work on a toaster if it had a display and a vulkan compatible GPU.