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You should switch to Firefox with ublock origin.

Brave is a mess of a browser and a dumpster fire of an organization, even compared to the famously dysfuctional Mozilla.

You can look up your games on ProtonDB and see which will and won't work. Pirated games are no different from retail compatibility-wise but there might be one or two extra steps

i suggest waterfox or librewolf instead of normal firefox because they are just better. Waterfox also has the bonus of having an android app and allowing to download all addons (but some will not properly work because phone)

Firefox allows all addons now on mobile but for a while it was only a few selected addons (ublock origin being one of them)

I am currently using 19 extensions on mobile

oh nice :D

Firefox is unlikely to ever sell your data or redirect websites or participate in a cryptoscam or show you advertisements with an adblocker on. Brave has done, at one point or another, all of that.

Plus firefox is not manifest v3, so you can actually have a safe browsing experience whereas all chromium based browsers are now inherently more vulnerable to malware thanks to google.

all chromium based browsers are now inherently more vulnerable to malware thanks to google.

Could you explain why? While at it, would you be so kind to mention why security-focused projects like GrapheneOS and secureblue stick to Chromium-based browsers despite that?

https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

Chromium and their particular fork have much better exploit hardening via sandboxing.

My understanding is Firefox has better anti-fingerprinting and uBlock origin via manifest v2 support (or v2 features ported to v3).

The argument often used is malicious ads. Sandboxing and hardening largely mitigates ads that contain exploits, but it doesn't protect against social engineering, crypto mining, tracking, etc.

So I guess it comes down to your threat model and desired experience.

I personally prefer the uBlock origin experience, but an ad free experience and escape from targeted advertising was my target opsec when venturing into privacy.

Thanks! Your comment prompted me to check out this entry in uBlock Origin's documentation that also underlines why Firefox(-based browsers) work better for the purposes of content-blocking.

So I guess it comes down to your threat model and desired experience.

Can't agree more.

Past behavior can be a pretty good indicator of future behavior. Brave has done several shady things, and they will do more shady things in the future. It's just stupid to ignore that.

Edit:

Oh hey, look at that, not even a day has gone by and... https://www.xda-developers.com/brave-is-charging-60-to-remove-features-it-added-in-the-first-place/

Brave is a bad product as of now.

Firefox with ublock is at least acceptably performant on desktop and mobile without all the crypto/tracking downsides of Brave or the open unpatched vulnerabilities (as of this posting) of Chrome/chromium (that also affect Brave)

You could click the link already provided above. Just the Table of Contents at the top gives you a good overview about issues with Brave without reading anything else...

Not OP, but I'm not switching to Firefox until they get their heads out of their asses and add tab groups to mobile. The fact they've gone this long without the feature is shameful.

They did add tab groups to desktop, but that's stupid because there was already something that did the same thing: opening a new window

Unfortunately, no.

Due to the year of the linux desktop, new user applications have been closed. The overwhelming positive response has just completely bypassed the available seats.

I’m sorry, but we’re full.

On lemmy u will always get a yes for that question lol.

Checkout distrosea.com, u can test different linux distros through your browser. This saves u alot of time in testing distros.

U will want to install steam either way. Their proton layer works great to run acquired booty. If u have questions on how, lemmy know.

If you ask in a Linux community on Lemmy, Reddit or anywhere you'll get a yes.

yea true, but let's not pretend as if lemmy isn't a linux echo-chamber lol. 2 things are certain on lemmy. Linux and politics

You don't need Steam to run games with Proton. Something like Faugus Launcher is much more light weight if you're not interested in using Steam's other features (though many of them are very good, like Steam Input)

Haven't heard of Faugus before, I will check it out. I found both Lutris and Heroic less hassle-free than Steam. Thanks for sharing, love me some linux goodies

It's like getting children. You only know afterwards how it really feels and even if it's a hassle sometimes you wouldn't ever change back.

debian is not that up to date, so it might cause problems for gaming

neither are ubuntu-based debian-based distros (mint, pop_os)

debian cycle is 2 years, ubuntu cycle is 6 months

opensuse tumbleweed is similar to debian but is very up to date (and less unstable than other rolling release distros), it updates packages in the repo every 6 hours i think

If you're going easy but need something more up to date, Fedora based is a good middle ground. Nobara more gaming oriented.

If you like gaming and aren't fussed about the other stuff, Bazzite and CatchyOS are gaming tailored distros that are probably worth a look.

What about Nobara?

First I've heard of it, there's so many distros.

Fair enough, I'm still trying to figure out most of them myself. It's just the first first distro I used that my son set up for me. It's a gaming oriented Fedora with KDE and comes preloaded with stuff for playing games. It did seem like it was working pretty well for a lot of stuff, but I went against my son's advice and started trying to learn the terminal and borked some stuff, so he switched me to vanilla Fedora and now I'm missing stuff I need to run some of the games. I don't know if anybody else has used it much it that has had any experience. Like I said I'm only on my second distro myself.

CatchyOS is Arch based. Bazzite is Debian I believe.

They all seem a much of a muchness as long as it runs the games.

Mint or ubuntu are classics, you won't make a mistake choosing either.

yeah you should

you should definitely try it out and see if you like it; try various distros and desktops

the distros id recommend are fedora (simply good), opensuse tubleweed (versatile and unobtrusive), cachyos (designed for gaming), bazzite (fedora-based steamOS clone, designed for gaming), or mint (very easy), and the de id recommend is kde plasma

can keep windows on a separate drive to boot for the games that dont work (and in case u want to switch back)

but if ur pirating, those wont be kernel anticheat games, which are the main offenders

And ntfs does not work with proton so if you keep your Windows games that don't work on a separate drive, they won't work on linux. Make sure all of your games played on the Linux install are downloaded separately onto a Linux file system like ext4

NTFS works with proton as long as you set up your /etc/fstab properly to make sure it's mounted as writeable, but I believe you also need proprietary drivers.. I can't remember now, but up until a couple weeks ago I had my storage drive with all my games mounted in Fedora and it was NTFS from my previous win11 install.

NTFS has gotten better on Linux but it's still not there. It is still highly prone to corruption, especially for a task like proton requiring constant read, write. You might get by for a little bit, but it is highly prone to failure

Source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

Fortunately the only issue I've had with mine is one time it decided it didn't want to mount properly. I got it fixed, but then pulled everything I wanted to keep off it and switched to BTRFS. I imagine people with dual-boot are more likely to see issues though.

People with dual boot are more likely to have games on NTFS and think that they can use them under Linux and not realize that just because some people get lucky with it for a while does not override the fact that the proton GitHub itself says do not use NTFS for the previously stated reasons

good to know

im pretty sure that this statement is not true tho.

source: used a ntfs-drive 4 yeara ago before i switched completely. windows fast boot has to be diseabled because otherwise the drive will not be writeable or something. also the disk needs to get mounted correctly in linux.

i don't use steam

notices username

Use something else instead of Brave

Personally I still use Brave because Firefox still doesn't have tab groups on mobile and it's more private than Chrome

Firefox did add tab groups to desktop, which is dumb because they already existed. They're called windows. And they've been stringing the community along regarding mobile tab groups for years.

Until Firefox get their heads out of their asses, they're a non-starter as far as I'm concerned

Every time Firefox groups my tabs on desktop I get pissed off and say I'm going to disable it... Then immediately forget because I was in the middle of something.

They can take the tab groups from me and give them to you, no charge.

Tab groups are easier to handle than windows though

Also:

I am on nightly tho, maybe standard firefox doesn't have them yet

it totally does have tab groups, it had them for a long time edit: what i meant is collections, and i think thats something different from tab groups

Collections are mainly a weird alternative to bookmarks

I would also recommend against using Brave, but it's available on Linux if you want to use it.

Pirated games work just fine with Heroic, Lutris or Bottles.I personally like Heroic and I've not had many issues with steamrip releases (they don't need to be installed).

In case you dont already know, use protondb to find if you games will work.

Grab a few usb sticks and put different images on them to try some different OS's. Get a feel for how easy they are to install / config / use.

Then put your favorite on your internal drive, and maybe keep a couple of specialized sticks for whatever: troubleshooting, browsing, streaming, gaming, office...

or use ventoy which allows to boot from as many images as the space on the usb allows

Seconding ventoy for installation media. It's awesome

Does Ventoy still use blobs in its distribution?

Should perhaps add that you can generally run Linux distributions off of a USB stick for that first impression.

Just follow a tutorial for how to install Linux and when you see the actual installer on screen, you can just close the installer without installing and then click around in the UI.

It will be slow, because it's running off that slow USB connection, but otherwise this is pretty much the operating system as it is when fully installed.

should i switch to linux?

So, as this is a Linux community, do you expect anything but an astounding "Yes!"?

Going through the rest of your post, you'd have to be cautious with the Nvidia GPU. It can go anywhere from working almost seamlessly without any tinkering to causing nigh-unsolvable problems you (regretfully) might have to work around.

But, aside from that, you should be pretty much good to go.

Absolutely. Just replaced my 3080 with an AMD 9060 on opensuse and everything is smooth as butter. The AMD drivers are part of the linux kernel itself.

That's like asking, "Hey, guys! Should I eat a hamburger?" -- you want to use linux because you find it useful, or because "everyone is doing it" and you want to feel included? If it's the former... then by all means, do it. The learning curve may be confusing at first (considering most windows users have a "duck syndrome" -- expecting linux to behave the same as windows), but it's totally worth it.

Yes

Sure you can, but gtx 1650 is not cutting it if you wanna play modern "AAA" games even on low settings 1080p unless you sacrifice resolution, as for everything else you should be fine

Just try and see how it goes - it's not like you can't go back

...or OP could buy another PC and use it solely to run Windows whilst s/he gets the hang of Linux on his/her main PC.

Go for it. Give it a fair time, its a new system, some things may feel weird, but If you are willing to learn you will soon find it to be fine. Personally I would recommend some basic distro like fedora or linux mint. I would stay away from immutable systems like bazzite because I feel like with these systems people are limiting themselves too much (especially if you want to run a bunch of pirated content and stuff). The best course of action, try a few distros with live cd (i mean flash drive) to see what catches your eyes and if basic things work and only after that install your first system.

I did not read the content of your post - and the answer is YES!

The switch or dual boot is up to you. I can lay out some general steps in case you want to have an overview. Please do not be scared off by it. Depending on the distro, most things work out of the box or with very little effort.

  1. familiarize
    • look up some distros, I personally like to go Arch-based, but feel free to use whatever seems good and popular enough (please no Ubuntu)
    • try virtual machine and then live ISO
  2. verify compatibility
    • this one is a bit more work, basically try all functionality in the live ISO, or at least things like display, mouse, keyboard, touchpad, Wi-Fi, storage
  3. install
    • you probably won't need to look into this super deep, default installers handle this pretty well
    • formatting and partitioning (look into ArchWiki guide, you probably don't need swap partition)
    • if you are going to be reinstalling look into using efibootmgr to possibly clear up old and fix existing boot entries (i had to enable boot flag after setting up dualboot, because macOS installer overwrote the previous settings, thanks Apple :-) )
  4. configure missing/not working OS stuff
    • look for missing drivers and system management software for either your specific hardware or some more general ones
    • best sources are wikis like ArchWiki (even if you don't use Arch), forums and some software search sites like AlternativeTo
    • in some cases the software does not meet the requirements for a wiki page to be up (Xlibre being notable example - feel free to look up the whole story)
    • you may have to put some time into getting GPU fully working, since nvidia has several driver options depending on the GPU
    • I personally had to fix USB autosuspend config, only look into it if devices plugged in after boot are not being detected
  5. use
    • installs and updates are done using package manager (windows has winget, btw)
    • for windows games use Wine or rather some of its forks
    • most people here already shared their recommendations for this part

edited

From what I read across this thread, you don't seem to have any real incentive to switch to linux. But you can always install it and see how it goes. You can later go back to windows if you want.

Yes.

If you are going to try Linux from a USB drive as suggested by others here try and get a USB3 drive. Most of the cheap USB drives are USB2 which is really too slow to be of use.

if it meets your software needs and hardware compatibility, go for it

It sounds like you would enjoy Linux though you should at least know that running your games will need additional hoops comparing to Windows since they're Windows games, nothing something wild and will be mostly about changing the default WINE to Proton if you use Lutris or Heroic for them. However sometimes you will probably need to troubleshoot for some game time to time, but you'll get used to that once you learn the idea.

Linux Mint is likely the safest choice here. Zorin is also fine for newbies.

Also note that, a lot of things will be different than Windows, though you can always search for an equivalent for something you used. At least the structure is much more beautiful on Linux, unlike Windows' chaotic nature.

i saw the negative vote count and had to assume that you've spammed this post, but i don't see any. so something else must be going on.

Yes. Keep the old box for games on Windows only and try out stuff on Linux.

Be sure the laptop hardware is fully compatible. It is not worth thetime to work around crappy hardware. If it isn't, buy a refurbished Thinkpad.

Give it a go, playing your pirated games is more effort to setup a wine container for them but if you don't like it then you can go back.

Use Proton, not wine. Just run them through a launcher like Faugus Launcher

Proton is wine with a Steam dependency.

Proton definitely does not require Steam, if that's what you're suggesting.

I'm aware that it originally stemmed from wine, but it has come a very long way and is specifically made to work with games.

If you're trying to play Windows games on Linux in 2026, you don't use wine

Heroic launcher works as well

I mean I think everyone should. But it requires a lot more mental energy to use. Anything commercial or niche will likely be unsupported or require significant research and effort to get working.

On the other hand, no one is spying on you, blatantly stealing your information, and relentlessly shoving office, cloud and AI products down your throat, and installing security holes in the process.

Gaming is fine and very easy if you use Steam. Using anything else will again require more research and energy.

Hey OP, I did not read your post but the answer is "hell yes"

Yes switch to garuda Linux now!!

Playing pirated games is going to require some thinkering. If you buy them on Steam is a much better experience.

Anyways, you should try Heroic Games launcher, there are other options but it's the best one to me

Why not give it a try and see for yourself? When I did it, I got surprised by how the sluggish pc I had became much more performant. I had a few issues here and there, with the transition, but with time, I started getting much fewer issues and stress than with windows

As for pirated games, most will run fine with wine. You can use plain wine, bottles or lutris to run them. If you look for it, you will also find some good source of pirated games for linux ;)

Beware the nvidia GPU. Nvidia are bastards. It’s worth a try though.

Facing an issue is an exception not a default. I've been using the same GPU for 7 years now and it never had any problems.

I meant if you are new to Linux, NVIDIA is a challenge you might not appreciate

if u game, you're going to have a (possibly) hard time in Linux. a lot of games work on Linux, but some don't and you're gonna maybe want to switch back. IMO: just dual boot or install Linux on another device (desktop vs laptop?). sounds like you're ready for it. I've been using Linux for 2 decades but still use windows for gaming, though mostly due to the childhood trauma of trying to get wine to work.

This hasn't been true for literal years

what if you want to play halo?

If you have to ask then no.

no it doesn't sound like you'd be able to handle switching OS, sorry

No spaces after commas in lists