Linux

I've played all sims games and all work on linux with wine. Sims 1 is the hardest to get to work because you need a CD crack to get it to run. Sims 2 and newer works great in my experience. I'd recommend using Bottles to install Sims 2. You can install it from CD and play it like normal. Need some tweaks to get widescreen though (but you have that issue on windows as well).

Sims 3 I've played in bottles through the EA app (I own a digital copy there). Worked out of the box (bottles has a way to install the ea store app easily). Sims 4 I've played on steam (using proton).

I've been using Bazzite for a good while. It just turns your PC into a fancy console. Boots right into Steam. Everything can be done with a controller. If you can use a console, you can use Bazzite.

Of course Chimera and Nobara are very similar in that way. Bazzite is just the new hotness.

Protondb will be your best friend here. If I were you I'd look up the games you want to play on there and check peoples comments on how they got them running. Almost everything out of box using steams proton tools but often it needs tweaking. Depending on how much you want to play a game it might not be worth the trouble to setup. For instance I stay away from every live service game now. You should also check out the os people are using on protondb to make sure it works for you I use arch (btw) so I won't take instructions from a Debian setup if I can find one with a similar os.

Worth pursuing and you sound experienced enough to get it set up. Idk about modding though that can be painful to get setup BC of how wine/proton work.

The Sims 4 is gold on ProtonDB, so it should run just fine. Check out some of the comments in ProtonDB about running the game, if not purchased through Steam.

Edit: Start out with Linux Mint. It’s very user friendly.

I have installed all of those Sims games at one point. It works fine. Mods work without any problems as well.

Lutris will help you for the most part.

I think for Sims 3, I specifically had to use Lutris 7.2 as the runner (IIRC, I have to check again). It didn't work with other versions. I will verify this when I'm home.

I did the most setup for Sims 3 (there is a whole guide for performance). I don't remember details too well, but it's still set up I think, so you can go ahaed and ask questions

Minecraft runs native, for Steam games you can see protondb.com

I'd be worried a bit about the Nvidia GPU. But since I have no experience with them, someone else should give you advice on this.

Check out Bazzite!

The easy path to getting storefronts like EA working is through Lutris. It does all the setup for you through guided wizards. I can't help much with deciding a distro tho, I've been using Fedora for years and that works well enough but is not exactly gaming focussed.

Linux mint cinnamon. I tested sims4 a few months ago. Ran fine. And surprisingly I didnt need to repurchase from steam, somehow I linked my ea account.

Sometimes games crash but not often for me. That's when I tweak the Proton version.

Idk about EA, but I'm running mint and steam works great with proton. Super duper user friendly.

Pop OS worked straight out of the box with the Nvidia driver build BUT it’s using an old version of Gnome desktop environment so doesn’t have support for HDR or VRR. Pop is based on Ubuntu so all the Debian and Ubuntu terminal commands will be familiar.

Fedora is leading edge and so long as you opt in for non-open source drivers works with Nvidia and runs HDR and VRR in KDE (haven’t used the Gnome version).

Haven’t tried any other distros but Bazzite seems well recommended.

Lutris is the recommended software for non-steam games. If you search for that and Sims/EA you should be able to find out if it’ll work for you.

I only use windows now for sim racing and Vr, but I also don’t play online games with anti-cheat. Linux seems pretty stable and I’ve found it easy to use.

Almost everyone here recommends Lutris, but I had a far better out-of-the-box-experience with Heroic.

@TDCN
Sims on steam are also logged into EA account so all the DLCs might (!) be available after installing and logging in.

I'd start with actually trying it. It's free 😀

You should just test run it from a bootable usb.

Install steam. Mount your NTFS drive which contains your windows games. If you have sims on steam use steam. If not take a look at lutris before doing any of the above.

Your experiment ends when you've tested all games you want to play.

Now: You cannot use NTFS (windows) drive for games, although you did it in the experiment long extended usage is discouraged.

So you will need to find a way to transfer your games to a different formatted drive. (ext4, btrfs for example)

If you don't need that advice you will eventually run into frustrating issues.

I suggest revisiting dual boot, despite your history. You want to have grub/Linux on it's own hard drive, in a Linux style filesystem (I think i used ext4) and default to it in bios. Then get the windows boot registered in grub.

Windows won't know about grub that way, no way to mess with it.

Windows 10 EOL doesn't mean it will stop working. If sims has trouble just use win.

Mint or a gaming focused distro. Not arch/endeavor/manjaro unless you're comfortable with Linux CLI already

I've used this config with win11 for a year now, zero issues. This way your partner can have less of a headache over your antics.

if you are comfortable enough with cli and Linux you should try arch for the desktop, it'll be probably easier in the long run because games are fussy and you can refer to the wiki and use the AUR

Not helpful, but oops, I had accidentally disliked this post😅

I removed the dislike:)

Mint has treated me just fine since I converted.

I'm not proficient with Linux whatsoever, but Mint has literally been the most newbie user-friendly OS I have tried to date. So Windows can suck it.

For gaming, Steam runs things great. And for other things like GOG, Battle.net, Lutris has server me well. Proton does a good job.