If you are trying to switch, a virtual machine is a bad way to start and it’s the hard way. What you really want is to use Rufus or something (easy Google) to make you a bootable USB and you just boot in and play around. It MAY require you to change boot order in BIOS if you plug it in and reboot and nothing happens, but that’s an easy fix
You want to ask for help. You only get “beat up” if it looks like you did nothing first and you are asking people to do it for you. Pretty much every place you go if you can say, “I want to do X, it doesn’t work so I tried Y and Z.” Nobody will say shit to you. Also, on Lemmy if you say you’re new, people like me and the other guy who replied will probably offer to just DM us directly (which for me you can).
You can also just search game name + distro name. Highly recommend looking at the newest results possible because A LOT of games now work on Linux thanks to steam and proton
Going to second dream_weasel’s suggestion. Don’t try to game in a VM. That is going the ultra-hard route while you are still unfamiliar with the OS.
My suggestion is to take a side/old computer you don’t use every day, format it, and install Linux on it. Completely blow away Windows on that machine. Then use it regularly until you get comfortable with it. You still have your main computer to lean on.
Once you are comfortable enough with it, flip the script. Put Linux on the main machine and Windows on the side/old machine. You will find yourself turning on the side/old machine less and less.
I think that will require you to do some passthrough for drives and hardware which may not be trivial. If you’re close to something working, stick to it. Otherwise I think that VM road is mostly pain. Caveat: I have not tried to do VM stuff in probably 10 years so it could be easier now.
You’ve got two things going on:
Might try the boot USB route. I wanted to do a virtual box so I could easily test to see if my current games/programs work
You can also just search game name + distro name. Highly recommend looking at the newest results possible because A LOT of games now work on Linux thanks to steam and proton
Going to second dream_weasel’s suggestion. Don’t try to game in a VM. That is going the ultra-hard route while you are still unfamiliar with the OS.
My suggestion is to take a side/old computer you don’t use every day, format it, and install Linux on it. Completely blow away Windows on that machine. Then use it regularly until you get comfortable with it. You still have your main computer to lean on.
Once you are comfortable enough with it, flip the script. Put Linux on the main machine and Windows on the side/old machine. You will find yourself turning on the side/old machine less and less.
So I don’t really have an unused side/old computer that is operational. I’m an engineer, but not the computer kind.
Goodwill is your friend
I think that will require you to do some passthrough for drives and hardware which may not be trivial. If you’re close to something working, stick to it. Otherwise I think that VM road is mostly pain. Caveat: I have not tried to do VM stuff in probably 10 years so it could be easier now.