Is booting linux from a drive a good way to start with linux if I'm not too sure I should make it my main os? The only thing keeping me back at this point is gaming since it's my gaming rig but idk I have 2 distros I want to use/decide between that I've loved on vms in the past but it's just me actually going through with doing it

there was a time my laptop was being repaired(for two months :( ) and I needed to do some work badly. installed linux in a 32gb usb stick, yes installed, fully installed, not a live version with reserved space for persistence.

In that period I used the stick with two different laptops borrowed from friends, and they were far from good condition, but I had no problem with running linux on them.

You can test the distros a little, either by the way I describe above or a VM. when you decide, make your pc dual boot, I had linux my main os for quite a time until I got a more decent laptop that can handle a few games I like, it's my only reasong to keep windows. So if that's your gaming rig you are talking about, there is more reason to dual boot

If you care about gaming then switching completely might not be the best idea. Even with Wine, Proton etc. it's still not comparable with Windows unfortunately.

@deadlyRants yeaahh, not worth at all in doing so. I wanted to play FFXIV on linux and found that doing it was a total pain in the arse, I did not even tried, for the guides I read there was too much installing libs, modifying config files and more more stuff. to just running the game with not-soo-good performance(advised by commenters) and with the chance that some work needs to be done after each update of the game/client, which updates like every 2 days(fuck SE!). just dual boot and lived happy after that

@JhonDoe I switched completely to Linux in December, and while I don't care about most games that don't run on Linux it's still a very different world when it comes to reliability.

Even games that were released for Linux won't necessarily work(which is why you can now force Proton in Steam for all titles), and just because something has Platinum-rating on winehq or protondb that doesn't mean it will run on your hardware/distro combination. Hell, even installing and running Steam on Lubuntu isn't something you should take for granted.

Although on the other hand some games work amazingly well. For example Witcher 3 runs perfectly out of the box as if it was developed for Linux, and Dark Souls 1 starts faster on Linux than it did on Windows 10.

@deadlyRants cool! did not know about the witcher, that's a good advance.

just out of curiosity, which distro did you install? can I talk you a minute about the word of our lord linux mint(opens bible)?

@JhonDoe okay so I'm new to the idea of dual booting. So would I be able to boot from this USB drive, and essentially treat it as a portable physical virtual machine or is it bounded to one computers hardware

@Bubbles totally portable. not bounded to any machine.

@JhonDoe so as long as I have access to the bios I can access it and everythings on there how I left it

@Bubbles yup, you sure do. btw we are discussing some compatibility issues with linux mint and gtx 1050. not sure if the other 10xx or even 20xx too. (stay away from those, at least with mint)

@JhonDoe I was planning to use Manjaro or Ubuntu cause those are my favs currently from the experiences I've had with them

@theKarlisK mmm, did not know about that, used mine per daily basis(5 hours a day) for two months. that was like 2 years ago, the stick still lives to this day.

but there seems to be a recommendation of using a not wearied drive

https://makeuseof.com/tag/...

@Bubbles great! manjaro is a good one. will give it a try again later.

I used to like ubuntu back in the day, but I always kept breaking it installing shady packages.

@JhonDoe I'm using Antergos right now. I used it once in a VM and it ran well, so I decided to try it on real hardware.

So far I'm pretty satisfied with it.

@JhonDoe ah I see. Yeah I'm always gonna have this nostalgia factor for it because it was the first linux distro I ever installed and tried out. And manjaro is the first that I completely fell in love with

@deadlyRants that name always makes me think about abstergo. maybe I should try that too

@Bubbles oh man, me too! for my case was kubuntu, back in the day when they gifted cds

@JhonDoe it's a strong feeling to not consider

Dual booting is always an option. Will be faster and give you the full experience. However, Win10 may randomly wipe out the linux partitions, though, because Win10 is evil. A separate drive you can unplug during windows updates will mitigate that risk.

Having a bootable USB works, but you'll run into bottlenecking because USB is slow.

A VM doesn't have either of these issues: win10 won't randomly kill it, and it won't bottleneck. It'll be a nice experience, even if it won't feel quite the same as native. You may run into gpu issues, though, since VMs don't always see the hardware correctly, but that has been getting less common.

I recommend either a separate drive you can unplug, or running inside a VM.

Is there a guide I can use to get it all set up on a single flash drive

now I remember you need to have the destination usb drive clean and boot the installation from another usb or a dvd

this one seems good.

https://tecmint.com/install-linux-o...

@Bubbles oh well, from a virtual machine to the usb seems possible too.

https://computersnyou.com/85/...

haven't test that. with mine I had two usb sticks lying around. so...

Keep windows for gaming, use vm for linux or a live usb that can remember (persistance)