Is Ubuntu something for me?

[1fallen]

Is this a good way for getting the gpu drivers?
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driv.../199656/en-us/

Not really the best way for Ubuntu, it will work but with kernel upgrades it will break your system:
Ubuntu has GUI for that in the additional drivers tab of your software manager, and please choose the correct driver for your card.
Apt has a search tool to help as well:

 apt search nvidia-driver

[TheFu]

Is this a good way for getting the gpu drivers?
https://www.nvidia.com/download/driv.../199656/en-us/

For people new to Linux, only get programs from the official repositories. That goes for all drivers too. Most of the time, drivers will be installed with the kernel and we don't need to do anything. nVidia is one of the least "Linux-friendly" vendors out there. AMD and Intel both have their GPU drivers distributed with the kernel. Intel has been doing that over a decade - probably over 15 yrs.

nvidia GPUs have caused me, a 30 yr Linux user, enough trouble that I specifically replaced a Ryzen CPU to have the onboard APU from AMD and removed a discrete nvideo 10xx series GPU from the system. It wasn't a high-end GPU. The APU included in the Ryzen is actually faster. If you are spending $1500 on a GPU, then perhaps nvideo makes sense, but for the mid-range GPU buyers of $600 and less GPUs, just stick with AMD to avoid hassles, assuming you don't get bleeding edge. Driver support comes with new kernels and typically it takes about a year for GPU drivers to be included with LTS kernel releases of LTS Ubuntu releases under the HWE driver update program. Really new kernels often come with bugs and downsides, which is one reason that I stick with older kernels when possible. But I don't have **any** bleeding edge hardware. I avoid it.

LTT (youtuber) did a series about gaming on Linux last summer. Perhaps you should check that out. Not all games will work, but many of the most popular ones, usually through steam, will. If you don't/refuse to use Steam, then things get a bit harder. When I say "get a bit harder", expect multiple hours of tweaking configurations and settings, before a known-supported game will work. Of course, many games (about 20% is the estimate) won't work under Linux.

I'm not a fan of dual booting for a number of reasons. But gaming is one of the reasons why I would dual boot, assuming I didn't have a 2nd gaming computer dedicated just for that purpose.

[truij]

OK, thanks for the reply. I'll watch the LTT serie that you mentioned, but I'm first gonna try to get Ubuntu installed properly

[MAFoElffen]

Since you have an NVidia GPU, please note that if you have video problems starting the LiveUSB, then put the Grub2 menu into an edit mode > Arrow-down to the line the starts with "linux. > Arrow -right to after where it says "quite splash" and add "nomodeset". > Boot via Control-X.

Then on one of the install options pages, look for where there is a checkbox to install third-party drivers. If you select that, it will install a graphics driver for your card during the installation process.

[truij]

OK, I got everything set up and running (do still have to install Steam), but how do I install programs (like Firefox) to a different drive?
Because now everything goes to the F: disk (slower HDD) (had to install Ubuntu there due to space limit), but how do I install/ move a program to my C: (faster SSD) drive?

[Sunil_Daswani]

Hi Truij it will automatically install on the drive that has the Ubuntu OS // (You can use terminal )
$ sudo snap install firefox //// or directly download from official Firefox website

If i understand correctly C:/ still has windows?

there is another way, you can mount /home to one drive and /root to another drive and have your programs on another drive than your OS (ubuntu) ... this is difficult and also has to be done on installation

[MAFoElffen]

But wait... You installed an Ubuntu Desktop Edition, right? Firefox "is" a default installed application. Isn't it already installed?

[TheFu]

OK, I got everything set up and running (do still have to install Steam), but how do I install programs (like Firefox) to a different drive?
Because now everything goes to the F: disk (slower HDD) (had to install Ubuntu there due to space limit), but how do I install/ move a program to my C: (faster SSD) drive?

So, in Unix systems, programs are made up of different parts. These different parts are placed into different directories based on the package installer. The Linux File System Hierarchy Standards explain what goes where. There's a formal, industry group that produces that document. There's also a wikipedia article with a good summary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesy...archy_Standard

In short, programs go into /usr/bin/
System-wide settings go into /etc/
Program Data that is shared with others go into /var/lib/
Personal Data that is per-userid goes into $HOME/ for that user.

There are ways to change there personal data goes, usually through environment variables, so it is possible to have 20 different personal versions of the same program just by changing 1 variable.

But since Unix and Linux were meant to be multi-user from the start, programs have always been installed in a central way.
Other OSes keep all those different parts in a single place, which makes for a mess when multiple users become involved.

With all that said, the OS and programs don't care specifically where the storage used for and directory is really located. There are a number of methods to redirect or just directly mount extra storage where it is needed. For example, I mount extra storage where it is required on 1 of my systems:

Filesystem                                  Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg00-var                        ext4   54G   33G   19G  64% /var
/dev/mapper/WDBLK_8T-jellyfin               ext4   20G  7.0G   12G  38% /var/lib/jellyfin

Forget drive letters. Those actually haven't existed in decades, even on MS-Windows. With Linux/Unix, we can mount a file system exactly where it is needed. See how I put 20G just for jellyfin? Usually, I'd have /var/ be about 4GB, but with LXD and snap packages, Ubuntu/Canonical has decided to place linux containers under /var/lib/ which can use lots of storage, so I decided to make that storage much larger than I'd normally need. Additionally, I created an area just for LXD managed LXC containers (50G) which are in an SSD inside a logical volume manager tool (LVM2). That storage isn't mounted. It is 100% managed through lxd for lxc container needs.

The easy way to redirect to different storage is to use symbolic links. The harder way (only slightly) is to setup the /etc/fstab to mount the extra storage where it is needed. An example line to mount that jellyfin storage:

/dev/WDBLK_8T/jellyfin /var/lib/jellyfin        ext4  nodev,nosuid 0 1

Yours **will** be different and the partition and file system have to be setup on the device BEFORE it can be mounted.

[Impavidus]

Drive letters (really partition letters) like C: and F: are a Windows thing. They don't get assigned to partitions that Windows doesn't understand, including native Linux partitions. So C: is always the main Windows partition and must have a native Windows filesystem, the root partition for Ubuntu must have a native Linux filesystem and won't get a drive letter.

I may be using partition and filesystem a bit loosely here. They're not the same, but closer to a 1:1 relation than drives and partitions. A drive may have multiple partitions, a partition normally has exactly one filesystem, sometimes none. We'll leave the complexities for some other time.

You can have your OS and applications on the SSD and your documents on the spinning drive. Best to set it up for that before you install the OS. You can create a root partition on the SSD, at least 30GB to be somewhat comfortable, and create other partitions on the spinner. Filesystems can be mounted on directories of other filesystems, so that the contents of the directory used as a mountpoint are stored on a different partition. Moving individual applications to a different drive will likely end in an unpleasant (although instructive) experience. The OS with all the core applications is only about 10GB, so that's pretty small compared to Windows, but you need some additional room for logs, temporary storage for updates, additional applications etc. And with the new packaging method that's now standard for some applications like Firefox (i.e., snap), storage requirements have gone up quite a bit.

[truij]

OK, I read through everything above, and excuse me that I constantly use driveletters. But the thing is: I DO want to install Ubuntu to the SSD, but given the fact that Windows and a lot of programs is installed on there (and that it is a 256 GB drive) I can't install Ubuntu beside it because that's going to use too much storage (best would be to delete Windows, but other user probably wont like that ).
So thats why I want to move certain programs to the SSD.
But I am going to look if I can make some space, and otherwise try the above mentioned things..