This is just to share my experience with everyone, especially the people still undecided.
I was planning the switch for months, and finally had a couple hours undisturbed from the wife and the kids :)
It was a slightly rocky start, as my USB wifi receiver did not have native drivers, but with wired internet and the official Mint tutorial the rest of the transition was super smooth.
The OS install went flawlessly and within an hour I had all the basic programs, browser and utilities up and running. I love that I just download the app from the dedicated place, no pointless web surfing for the latest versions.
I backed up my steam folder (with the rest of my files of course), so after installing the steam client and some quick synchronization I had my installed games library back in minutes. I did some testing and everything works great. As I own a steam deck I already had some experience with games not running natively on Linux, but a saw many great tutorials for beginners. I cant wait to test out some more games!
Edit: thank you for all the positivity and great feedback! I know Lemmy users love Linux and I have to admit I feel a little bit more included :D
Who knows, maybe I will start warching Star Trek next…
Just to be clear, watching Star Trek, or Sci-Fi in general, isn’t a requirement of being a lemming. It just helps parse the memes
No, it is a requirement 😡
Love sci-fi, cannot stand anything Star Trek with the exception of newest Star Trek movies.
Well now you have something to post to unpopular opinions too!
What don’t you like about it?
Classic Trek is pretty preachy about things that are mostly popular opinions now.
Yes, Kirk, I agree about everything, didn’t you have a third act asspull to grab?
On the other hand the new movies didn’t have a point at all, just pew pew pew which is timeless AND brainless.
They weren’t popular back then.
And I can think of a few people who worship the Constitution without understanding anything in it.That’s true, but isn’t an argument for a modern viewer to get interested.
It’s too cheesy for me. I really enjoy darker, more gritty shows like BSG and The Expanse.
Give Deep Space Nine a go if you haven’t it’s the slightly darker side of trek.
I started with The Next Generation and loved it. On Deep Space Nine now, I think it’s ok but I think I love TNG more.
Well shit
Welcome to the club! I did the same thing earlier this year, although I ended up moving from Mint to openSUSE Tumbleweed after a couple weeks due to needing support for some bleeding edge hardware.
Thanks to Steam / Proton it’s been relatively painless!
Welcome to the club! You might need to enable proton in the steam settings, I think it’s under compatibility?
Thank you! Yes, it needs to be enabled there. Its basically just 3 extra clicks and the game is good to go :)
You may know this already from the Steam Deck, but I highly recommend installing protonup-qt which will enable you to install the glorious eggroll versions of Proton. A lot of game cutscenes don’t work with vanilla proton but will with ProtonGE.
I’m surprised this still isn’t enabled by default
I think it is technically still counted as a beta.
I’m proud of you. Linux Mint was my first daily-driver distro and it’s still one I’d recommend to newcomers. I hope you have a great time with it!
I dont know you but it means a lot :)
Good times! Thanks for sharing your experience!
Having a Linux PC and a SteamDeck, as well, I’ve been quite pleased with the various ways they compliment - streaming, install from peer, etc.
That is for later, but definetly will do some experimenting with the deck.
Reverse defenestration (throwing Windows out of your computer)! Congrats!
Welcome brother.
Yea I switched from Windows to Fedora and aside from issues with music production, I have been happy with the switch. Its a weight off my mind knowing i dont have to worry about Windows stealing my data anymore.
I’m probably going to be switching to Ubuntu or something Ubuntu based since it seems it will be a bit easier to work with for making music. Not that Fedora hasnt been great in general but i think my specific needs like having yabridge for Windows vsts is making me consider switching.
Take a look at AV Linux and Fedora Jam.
Highly recommend Reaper fwiw.
I have looked at Fedora jam, my issue with it is the same issue I currently have with no way to use yabridge that I could find though this may have chnaged since i last looked.
AV linux does look promising, just haven’t deep dived on it yet. My concern was that its done by a single dev iirc but again i haven’t done a deep dive quite yet.
And also a huge fan of reaper. Been using it for years now and I love it so very solid recommendations. I appreciate it. :)
For Fedora, it’s three commands:
sudo dnf copr enable patrickl/yabridge
sudo dnf install yabridge --refresh
After a wine update, run:
yabridgectl sync
And AV Linux is one dev yeah, but it doesn’t much matter. It’s just a tweaked build, it’s based on MX so you’re still getting all the updates needed, just with some config changes more or less.
Fwiw I use straight Debian, but I’ve also been using Debian for so long that it’s graduated college, met a partner, got married and is considering kids.
Ubuntu I avoid these days because I think Canonical is running it into the toilet, with so many bad decisions (snaps, pro subscription, etc) that I just won’t touch it.
That said, AV Linux is essentially deb based anyway (MX is based on Debian), so it’s a nice setup if you don’t want to have to think about your kernel.
Fedora I also like, I’m just less of a yum/dnd guy than an apt guy (which I have literally typed into RHEL machines before remembering I was being an idiot).
I will have to give this a go then on Fedora because i would rather not reinstall for a third time since switching lol. I appreciate the advice.
When i last checked, the copr for yabridge was out of date but i was looking at this months ago and its also entirely possible i was looking in the wrong place or was reading information that was out of date.
Again, very much appreciate the help. Linux is still a new thing for me so any help is always welcome.
Welcome to the world of Linux gaming (minus your Deck, of course)! Hope you have fun.
That’s great to hear! I am still dual booting mint and windows but I am slowly moving towards being fully on mint. I recommend checking out Lutris if you have games on other stores, it also works well with running windows games.
Thank you. I have a relatively big GoG library, so lutris is already installed :)
Thank you for this inspiration. I’ve also been things about a switch to Mint but the only thing holding me back is my Steam library. I’m going to dig into it a little more and look at the compatibility of my games. It’s encouraging to hear others making the leap.
Unless you want to play recent multiplayer AAA titles your steam library will work with little to no tinkering.
There is a website Check My Deck, which is originally designed for steam deck users, but linking your steam library you can check how many of your games will run out of the box, and how many require some additional steps on Linux/Proton.
For the ones not on the list you can check ProtonDB for guides and opinions from other Linux users.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m looking like 73% compatibility with the deck, so I’d assume slightly higher for the computer. I mostly play single player anyways so I’m probably overall looking good.
One thing that stopped me from switching was the lack of the Nvidia Control Panel. The alternative “X Server” app is missing several must-have features, most importantly being the 3D Settings page (where all the extra graphics settings that aren’t available in-game are) and the Video settings page where you can toggle AI upscaling and SDR to HDR conversion on and off.
Did you by any chance figure out how to get the Nvidia Control Panel working in Linux? I tried for weeks before giving up and going back to windows.
Link your Steam profile to ProtonDB and make sure it is public and you can see the ratings of your library in their dashboard. Of course it isn’t a 100% accurate thing since they’re user based reviews but it might give you a surprising insight on how much is actually playable with little to no effort.
Even games without their own native compatibility for Linux Steam provides support for. I was able to run Doom Eternal from Steam without any issues, just had to find and turn on “enable Steam Linux support”.
Yay! Glad you’re enjoying it so far :)
I can also say the past month or two rocking Mint have been a breath of fresh air, everything feels fast and I’ve only had one GOG game not run (think I could with some effort) :)
Even the Unity game engine works, and debugs, it’s lightyears ahead of my previous goes at Mint over the years (and they only “ended” because of needing music software for college and uni!)
Hope it continues to treat you well! Also you may wish to indulge in the greatest Linux feature I know, which is Wobbly Windows - it makes your windows wobbly when dragged, which is very enjoyable for reasons I am not sure of! :)
Just commenting to acknowledge the mint/breath of fresh air line. Solid work.
I had absolutely unplanned that pun, but I’m thrilled it’s there!😅 Thank you!
Congrats! As a Linux user of nearly 6 years, I hope you feel welcome here.
Happy ascension brother!
Kick ass, Good job
