My plan is to buy an NVMe today, install linux as a dual boot, but use linux as a daily driver, to see if it meets my needs before committing to it.
My main needs are gaming, local AI (stable diffusion and oobabooga), and browser stuff.
I have experience with Mint (recently) and Ubuntu (long ago). Any problems with my plan? Will my OS choice meet my needs?
Thanks!
This is the way.
Unfortunately, if you don’t already know the answers it’s more a question of experience before you’ll understand them.
When I started with Ubuntu I couldn’t do dualboot, so it was hard. It got better with each update, but my beloved Gnome2 desktop was threatened and Ubuntu went on to Unity - KDE sucked, so I jumped over to Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop.
Whilst it was great, I had terrible issues getting software - PPA’s are often suited to Ubuntu and not Mint… so in the end I tried installing Arch, failed twice, then got a Manjaro (Cinnamon) ISO and tried that for a few days, got some snapshots (rsync to my HDD) and then figured it’s not a big deal to install KDE, as it’s easy enough to go back.
KDE was so much better by then (about 5 years back) that I’m stuck with Manjaro KDE - having access to the AUR to install stuff is awesome, and flatpaks work at the flick of a settings switch too.
Dual-booting gives you the luxury of (if you wanna play Genshin Impact) having the option to boot into your game OS but also the ability to install games on your Linux OS and decide which one runs best on your hardware.
Everyone has such varied ‘needs’ that your question is impossible to answer - you must just suck it and see.