I now had to get the Steam library from Windows to Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I mentioned, there is a simple way. I could have transferred the game files to the large storage drive in CSIRAC where I already had Fallout 76 and um, Bioshock Infinite?? Anyway I could have done that to Starfield and Skyrim and so on but I didn\u2019t realise that till afterwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, I moved Deepthought into the office where CSIRAC is and connected them to the network. I could have left Deepthought where it was and transferred files over WiFi but that would have been painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I booted CSIRAC into Windows and installed my games onto Deepthought, using the local file transfer option in Steam. Oh, there was no way I had the bandwidth, not to mention the download limit, to download the games from the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once I had installed games onto Deepthought, I booted CSIRAC into Linux and repeated the process, but in reverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stop laughing!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I got the games installed under the right OS. A couple of the games I installed on the new NVMe and a couple I installed on the old NVMe with the Windows partition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Except there was a problem. When I went to launch a game that I had installed on the Windows partition, it wouldn\u2019t run. So I transferred the game files to the new NVMe, formatted in Ext4, and the game ran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After doing a quick search I discovered there\u2019s a known problem with using NTFS with Steam under Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s where things came to a head. Did I already say \u201c{something} came to a head?\u201d I forget. Anyway, there was another head that things came to. The new drive was pretty full already and I didn\u2019t want to try running the games from the mechanical drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had to reformat the Windows partition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spent a few hours moving games, testing that they worked, checking that they worked reasonably well and, yes, I haven\u2019t had any problems with the games so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I fossicked around the Windows installation, deleting programs until my desktop was bare and nothing remained of my applications beyond orphaned registry entries and empty folders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having stripped my Windows installation for parts, I made a final backup of what was left, in case of cases. Honestly, it felt a bit like moving house after all the furniture has been taken away. I metaphorically locked the front door, put the keys under the metaphorical doormat and rebooted into Linux.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reformatting the drive was quick enough. I deleted the partitions using Disks, created a new Ext4 partition and the job was done. Windows was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Okay, I had a few more things to do. I discovered that the drive wasn\u2019t visible. I could get to it but it didn\u2019t show up in Nemo. A quick mountpoint and an entry in \/etc\/fstab later and a check in the options in Disks and now the drive mounted and showed at boot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I opened Steam and transferred a pile of game files from the new NVMe drive to the old one and repeated the process, moving files from the hard disk. So now I have two, probably two, Steam folders on CSIRAC with all the games I had installed on my Windows installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I say all. I didn\u2019t bother with Bioshock Infinite, because it has a native Linux version, so eventually I\u2019ll get around to installing that. I also discovered that the Skyrim Special Edition Creation Kit will need a fresh reinstall and I don\u2019t even know what happened to the Fallout 4 creation kit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thoughts?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not sure how I feel having to go into Steam to launch my games, instead of using an icon. I guess it\u2019s okay. I also haven\u2019t found a way to get SKSE to work in Skyrim, which means I can\u2019t use SkyUI and any mods that require it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apparently the options for mod managers under Linux are not stellar, so for now I am stuck with manually installing mods, which is how I always did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m impressed by the way Fallout 4, Starfield, Skyrim SE and BG3 seem to handle under Linux. My RTX3060 always did a good job at 1920\u00d71080 and I think the extra RAM gives the system a little more breathing room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gen 4 NVMe is super fast. Going between load zones in Skyrim is almost instantaneous. Loading checkpoints in SD is super fast. Overall, I think CSIRAC is pretty well set up at the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Final Thoughts.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft was already on its way to losing me as a user. I have 4 computers running Linux Mint, 3 of which at one point ran Windows 10 and none of which are compatible with Windows 11. I\u2019m not buying a new computer to run an OS that sets my teeth on edge and I\u2019m not going to risk running an OS that Microsoft won\u2019t support. And I\u2019m definitely not going to send my old computers to landfill like I\u2019m expected to. Screw that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was 1992 that I first encountered Windows. It was on a library computer in a little country town. The computer was set up to boot into DOS but alongside GORILLA.BAS, I discovered it had a copy of Windows installed that you could boot into by entering \u2018win\u2019 into the command line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, I have used Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows Me, Windows 2000,Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows 11 on I couldn\u2019t begin to count how many computers over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something about Windows 11, though, seems off. Is it the pernicious AI? Is it OneDrive stealing all my documents so that Microsoft can train their AI? Perhaps I could have got used to it if I had it installed on a computer of my own, instead of trying to navigate someone else\u2019s computer except no, incompatible, apparently, except not or maybe, who knows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, I\u2019ll use Linux Mint (BTW).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I now had to get the Steam library from Windows to Linux. As I mentioned, there is a simple way. I could have transferred the game files to the large storage drive in CSIRAC where I already had Fallout 76 and um, Bioshock Infinite?? Anyway I could have done that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blinkbonnie.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}