How limiting are live-sessions of Linux Distros? :: Hardware and Operating Systems

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pyton357ru 28 Jun @ 5:02am

How limiting are live-sessions of Linux Distros?

(Or "Naive switcher's questions, episode 2" :) )

I have a plan in mind to add a linux in dual-boot mode on my would-be new PC, and, perhaps, step by step switch to it from Windows.

So, to know better what am I getting myself into -- I decided to experiment with some live sessions and flash drives.

Things went pretty smooth (internet, opening and creating files, installing some smaller programms...) except when I tried to run come steam games.

(Sorry, it might get long-winded here, but devil is, usually, in details)

Plan was simple -- smaller flash drive to burn image on and run live sessions from, big one to put files on.

In Ubuntu I was not able to choose big flash drive as a place to install games. On the other hand -- my "main" HDDs were seen and Steam found games installed. I managed to install CrossCode to "Home" (IIRC) drive and run it from there. I tried to run Windows-installed Skullgirls. It downloadad some updates, then a window, saying "Processing Vulkan Shaders" appeared with no apparent progress (or maybe I was not patient enough). Still -- 1 out of 2 did not seem half-bad.

In Mint I was unable to install Steam from app store. It took a "sudo apt upgrade" to run the installation, then Steam started to update inself, and shut the process, saying that it needed a few hundred megabytes of extra space. I tried to clean things up uninstalled some programs I would not need in a testing session, but... It did not make things better. Still system said it was 200-something mb short of place to properly update and run.

"Ok", I thought, "16 GB is just not enough, perhaps. Time to put this big flash drive to good use."

The next experiment -- Pop!_OS on a 128 gb Flash drive.
Extra space does not seem to help, at all.
Steam installed and self-updated alright.

Skullgirls was found, stated to update for Linux run, then Steam said It "missed file priviliges", so things went nowhere.

Salt and Sanctuary installed, but when I tried to run it -- it just shut down after a few moments, not even showing a loading screen.

Fantasy Strike (had it installed in Windows) -- updated, showed a loading screen with progress bar, then shut down.

Windows-installed Pyre -- updated, launched, recognised gamepad inputs, and frozen when I quit it.

Kind of disappointing. Did not even got to testing Proton.

So the question is -- am I doing testing in wrong way? Are Live sessions just not suitable to try running games? Or -- am I missing some important step I should be doing?

Thank you!

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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments

Electric Cupcake 28 Jun @ 5:16am

With persistence enabled when setting it up, you're mostly limited by the size of the USB drive and the speed of the USB connection. And, I suppose the file system you're using makes a difference, too. ExFat vs ext vs BTRSF vs LogFS all have pros and cons.

Though I've heard live environments don't get along with Nvidia GPUs, but nobody likes Nvidia crap.

Last edited by Electric Cupcake; 28 Jun @ 5:33am

Blaagh 28 Jun @ 9:24am

Can't say much to help with your problems but say you could just get a (sata)ssd / 2nd drive and put linux on that.

with the new computer you can just switch it over and have linux ready. may need to update grub to update path to the new windows.

but Im new to linux

on my laptop where that was not possible I resized my hdd (with windows disk management) and installed manjaro-xfce to the free space.

Last edited by Blaagh; 28 Jun @ 9:31am

Çapgun 28 Jun @ 9:40am

Never recommend dual boot. Both os have issues at the past but never got info from eufi dual boot so dont answer question about eufi but mbr. So i repeet never ever dual boot.

Your linux guru loader cant agree on win ntoskernel. So page file cross may occurs. Only file level thou

AbedsBrother 28 Jun @ 9:42am

Originally posted by pyton357ru:
Are Live sessions just not suitable to try running games?

correct
Sometimes it's file permissions (like the "missed file privileges" error). The live-cd version of linux by default simply doesn't have all the permissions.

Steam on Linux also doesn't like running games from ntfs-formatted drives. There are (complex) work-arounds, but it's usually easiest to re-install the games on a drive formatted with ext4 or btrfs.

For linux newbies I do recommend Mint, it has a large user-base & forum and has some utilities to make certain things easier (like installing Nvidia drivers).

Originally posted by Blaagh:
Can't say much to help with your problems but say you could just get a (sata)ssd / 2nd drive and put linux on that.

probably the best option, 500gb ssds are ~$25 rn and are more than enough for linux and a game or two.

Omega 28 Jun @ 10:03am

A live system will write everything to the system memory, you are free to install programs, but only as long as you can store everything in RAM.

So no, a live system is no good to test games.

You can always just fully install Linux on to a flash drive. Do note that doing this will make the system quite slow. I recommend you do disconnect your HDDs when doing this, this is to prevent the distro from trying to take over the Windows bootloader partition.

Last edited by Omega; 28 Jun @ 10:03am