Close to switching to a Linux distro full time.
Close to switching to a Linux distro full time.
With the advances in gaming on Linux in recent years, it is so tempting to switch full time. I would absolutely love to, but I am a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber and it is where I play a lot of my games on PC. I know you can use the cloud version, but I cannot stomach streaming games in their current state, so it is a no go. A large portion of my Steam library is compatible, but anytime I have done an install I end up giving in and going back to Windows for games.
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I'm in the same boat. I'm ready to move over to Linux Mint, but I don't want to have to download my entire game and program library again because NTFS won't play nice with Linux.
If you don't mind doing it one at a time, and you've got a different drive besides the NTFS one (i.e. you're not just looking to just reformat the NTFS volume), this currently works:
- Format the new drive with whatever, likely Ext4 or Btrfs
- Install Steam and make a fresh library on the new drive
- Copy the contents of the NTFS steamapps/common into the new steamapps/common (or copy the individual folders of whatever games you don't want to redownload).
- Go into Steam, and act like you want to do a fresh install of whatever games you just copied over. Steam will act like it's going to start from scratch, but you'll get "discovering local files" before any downloads start.
- Steam will either show the game as installed as-is or will update the delta to the current version.
I use this method also for restoring backups of games to an SSD that live on a mechanical drive.
If you choose Arch/Arch based, or choose to install one of its supported kernels, NTFS support is integrated into the mainline kernel since version 5.15
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NTFS
So you'd be able to use your already existing disk/partitions that have NTFS. Of course you'd still need to install the OS in another partition.
I tried to keep NTFS around when I switched, but ext4 is much better for spinning disks and support for whole disk encryption (LUKS) is also another pro that made me switch everything after a while
NTFS is fine in Linux. I have a dual-boot setup for when I need to run or test something in Windows, and I use my Windows install drive as a Steam library in both. When I swap back and forth Steam occasionally does a file integrity check, but I don't typically have to redownload anything as far as I can remember. The only caveat is that if a game has both a Windows version and a Linux version I have to set my Linux library to use Proton for the game instead of the native Linux version, otherwise, yeah it'll see the files are wrong when I switch and redownload.
NTFS is fine with Linux, but any new OS tends to need you to install things again. There used to be a way to zip all of your Steam downloads for a new install, but I can't seem to find any instructions that still work.
I think the option is under Steam > Backup and Restore Games. I successfully backed and restored some back ups I had made about a year ago with that method.
I think you're right. I've used this before as well, but I was thrown because my Linux Steam only has "Restore Game Backup" as an option in the menu. I wasn't sure whether something had changed, or if this is a Steam for Linux peculiarity.