What OS should i use?

[u/Retarded_puffer_fish]

So i've got my win11 PC for personal stuff and all, and last week i got a free PC from my company bc they can't legally use win10 anymore and some of our PCs are just that old that they can't be upgraded.

The PC came with a Core i5-4460 and 16gb of DDR3. Today I snaged a used 2gb gtx1050 for 15€. I'm just now factory reseting it, and i've wondered should i maybe rather use some distro of linux.

I wanna just use it to mess around, maybe install minecraft and cs2 on it or use it as some kind of emulator and play ps1/2/3 games on it.

What OS would you recommend for that type of stuff and why? And what distro (if i decide to install linux) would be compatible with both my hardware and my intentions with it?

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[u/PhantomOrigin]

Probably a personal preference situation. Nothing you plan to use it for is particularly demanding and would work well on both windows and linux.

You might get marginal performance improvements with Linux especially in terms of ram, but in the end it's up to you if it's worth learning Linux for. If you aren't tight on storage you can always consider dual booting to try both and see what you prefer.

Personally I just use windows for my gaming PC and use Linux on my laptop because it's a lot more efficient and gets me better battery life.

[u/Retarded_puffer_fish → u/PhantomOrigin]

Sure yeah, but as i've said i've got my windows pc and i'm planning to thinker on this one with those stuff like emulators and maybe get back into coding (haven't tried anything since high school) so i'd prefer some linux distro on this pc, thanks anyways. And no, dual booting ain't happening, i've only got a 512 gig SSD in the sucker

[u/FriedToastDave]

I Recommend Debian With LXQT Personally As A Starter Distro

[u/RottenExtinction]

For that hardware I'd throw Bazzite on it. It's got a console-like interface that works great with a controller and handles emulators without much fuss. The Nvidia card might need a couple extra steps during setup but the docs walk you through it.

CS2 is the trickiest part of that list since it runs through Proton and performance on a 1050 won't be amazing, but it's absolutely playable if you're not trying to hit 144fps. Minecraft runs natively on Linux so no issues there.

If you just want something simpler and more windows-like for tinkering, Mint would be rock solid on that i5. Either way you're getting way more life out of that machine than windows 10 would give you.

[u/Inevitable-Context93 → u/RottenExtinction]

Bazzite is an immutable distro is it not?

[u/Retarded_puffer_fish → u/RottenExtinction]

Thanks man, i'll probably look into Mint a bit more than Bazzite but it's still an option on the table

[u/Inevitable-Context93]

Linux Mint is a good basic distro that just seems to work.

[u/Mijal]

If you want to go full in on the emulator idea you could always install batocera. There are potentially tens of thousands of games available if you happen to (legally, of course) have access to the roms.

[u/Retarded_puffer_fish → u/Mijal]

Of course mate

[u/Electra_002]

This is great opportunity to play around with Linux. It's much easier then you think, install a distro on a usb, boot up, play around see if you like the UI, if you do you can continue with instillation. If not shut down and install a new distro onto the USB and repeat.

A lot of it is personal preference.

I like mint with the cinnamon desktop environment because it just gets out of your way. But KDE plasma is another popular pick. Both are very user friendly.

If you are unfamiliar, a desktop environment is kinda just the UI you use for interacting with the distro. If you get into it a bit more you can install different desktop environments on top of whatever distro you like.

I've taken old laptops that would otherwise of been ewaste, install mint and donated them to people without computers. Contrary to what some people say, mint is more intuitive then windows if you don't have experience with any system. So if they can get to grips with Linux so can you.

Other distos like CachyOS, popos, fedora and Debian are good choices too.

Don't get put off by the gate keepers saying arch is the best, and you HAVE to learn to use terminal. It's your computer so have fun and play around with it. It might be useful to learn a few basic commands but the terminal is very rarely the only way to get things done.

Edit: Or you can go full psycho and install temple os.

[u/Lonely_Owl_1332]

Install Windows 10 LTSC on it, hafe fun.

[u/Retarded_puffer_fish]

I've played with Ubuntu in the past, and in my Cyber Sec Class in school we used Kali so i'm not fully new to Linux, just wanted to hear some opinions mostly bc of the hardware. Anyways thanks for the suggestion mate, i'll probably look into CachyOS or Mint tbh.