I used to keep my games on a secondary hard drive while using Windows to keep my OS drive clean. Now that I'm switching to Linux, I'm wondering if I can run the games I already have installed directly. I have Steam, Wine, Proton, and Lutris set up. Will I need to reinstall my games, or can I just run them from the hard drive?
4 Answers
If those games were in your Steam library, you might have some luck! Just a heads up, though—if your games are on an NTFS drive, you could run into some issues with Proton on that format. Many users end up reformatting to a Linux filesystem to avoid permission problems. On the other hand, regular installed apps won’t carry over easily.
Honestly, you might need to reinstall them. Steam does have a way of emulating a Windows folder structure for each game, so that could be an issue.
Check out the migration page on the wiki! There are migration tips that might help. Just a reminder from Smokey: only use root when necessary and always double-check your ISOs after download!
It’s a bit hit or miss. Some of my games worked fine after migration, while others didn’t. If your games are on NTFS, try to move them to a different partition, as that’s where problems can crop up.
If I set up the Steam folder structure first and then transfer the games over, do you think that would work?