Hey everyone! I'm checking out either Fedora KDE or Linux Mint as my next distro, but I'm a bit hesitant about fully switching from Windows. I'm curious if I can boot from a USB and run a live version of these distros while trying to install Steam. Will there be enough space on the USB to test out some games? Here are my system specs: 2 TB SSD, NVIDIA RTX 2060, INTEL i9 9900k, and Corsair Liquid Cooling. Let me know if you need more details!
4 Answers
You can definitely make it work if you choose a distro that has Steam preinstalled and allows a live desktop environment from the USB. Just make sure your USB drive is big enough. After flashing the distro's image, you can create a persistent storage partition for Steam and any other applications. Just keep in mind that speed will depend on how fast your USB ports are. If you're feeling uneasy, you could also try it in a virtual machine first, although you won't get a full feel for how the hardware functions.
I've run Steam on both Mint and Fedora, and it works pretty well on most distros. Just be cautious about games that might have issues; it’s good that you’re checking beforehand! Usually, it’s just a few titles that can be problematic.
Yeah, I found out that some games are labeled as unplayable, but I'm lucky since most of my favorites are fine. Just a couple I want to check out.
You can definitely try out Linux Mint with a persistent USB. Tools like VENTOY or YUMI make it easy for you to set this up. Plus, you can even have both Fedora and Mint on the same USB stick, which is a cool feature!
That's awesome, thanks for the tip!
As long as your USB is large enough and you enable persistence, you should be good to go! Make sure to allocate enough space in the live environment for the Steam install. Keep in mind that performance might be slower than a hard drive setup.
Got it! How big of a USB should I get?
I tried running Mint and Fedora KDE in a VM, and it was fun! The downside was that Steam didn’t fit well in the partition, so I couldn't really test it properly. I'm mainly a gamer, so I want to see firsthand how it performs.