I’ve been a Windows user all my life and had dabbled in the Apple ecosystem for a bit. With the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in Oct 2025, I figured I’d put myself through a huge challenge of cutting over completely to LInux without a secondary backup drive with Win 10 on it. If I could survive the struggles for a few months, I’d be golden, and if I couldn’t, then I could switch to Windows 10 LTSC and be good until 2029. The intention was to completely force myself in without a backup plan - the only way out would be to install a new Windows OS. I chose Linux Mint after careful consideration, especially considering that there’s tons of resources and help with this distro, and it’s a great onboarding ramp for Windows users. I need the familiarity since I’m in tech full time and just don’t have the energy to hassle with my PC after a long stressful day at work.
I also used this as a good excuse to upgrade my PC a bit, too. 😀
After switching in mid December, I’m happy to report that I’m still alive after 30 days. My computer hasn’t killed me. And I’ve been able to do work and game on my PC without too many hiccups. Marvel Rivals still crashes ever since the Season 1 update. Overwatch works perfect. My other games, on both Steam and GOG, work perfectly fine. But I haven’t been able to test every game out there, but I know I can use Proton DB if needed.
I even edited this screenshot in GIMP after being forged in the fires of Macromedia Fireworks and Photoshop all my life! I even stripped exif data using command line tools! I even installed this cool neofetch thing that I always saw in people screenshots of their PC or whatever, every time I saw someone’s Linux build with their thigh high socks and neofetch on the terminal!
But so far, switching to Linux Mint has been great! I’m excited to deep dive more!
Note:
- I backed up all my data from Windows into a USB drive. I’m slowly bringing all that stuff over to my Linux Mint computer and rebuilding my music, video, photos, etc. Lot of work, but it’s so cool feeling so liberated!
- I may also want help from you Linux nerds from time to time. I’ll make posts/memes begging for help when I get desperate. But so far, almost every issue I’ve had has been resolved via an internet search!
- I pray that I won’t come crawling back to Windows. I don’t expect that to happen with how great my experience has been thus far.
Specs:
- Linux Mint 22
- Ryzen 7 9800x3d
- Thermalright Phantom Spirit
- MSI X670e Carbon WiFi
- Sapphire Nitro+ RX7900 XTX
- Corsair Vegeance 64 GB DDR5-7200
- Gen 5 Crucial T700 (?) M.2 x 2
- Corsair 5000d
- Noctua case fans (Lian Li too problematic on Linux based on all the research I did in advance)
- Seasonic Focus Gold 1000W
Old Specs Everything the same as above apart from:
- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel i7-12700k
- Noctua NH-U12A
- MSI Pro Z690-A
- MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Z Trio
- Samsung Gen 3/4 M.2
- Corsair Vengeance Pro 32 GB DDR4-3600
- Lian Li AL120 case fans
Welcome and good luck. The community is large and we generally like to help each other.
Welcome aboard! I did same like a year before, and it’s been a blast!
If you were me from the past, I would’ve definitely recommended you to try out tiling WMs (Guess AwesomeWM is a good start) ASAP! I can’t stress enough how good they’re, especially if you prefer using keyboard shorcuts over mouse navigation.
Also, if you’ll find linux mint problematic, I want to suggest you to try out EndeavourOS (i wish i would’ve done it sooner myself). It’s installation is as simple, but it’s based on arch, and arch has one of the most comprehensive wikis, which allows you to troubleshoot basically any problem. Also. newer software versions get there faster, and finally AURs, that will allow you to forget about manual software installation at all.
If you want to game on Linux check out protondb.com/ you can find what games work and even fixes. Also proton-ge works well, MangoHud for stats but it requires some config but you can use Goverlay to configure it a lot easier. Also of course read documentationarch wiki is the best but keep in mind it’s for a different distro so paths might be different
Thanks bud, saving some links for reference. I’ve heard about proton-ge, and from some quick high-level reading, it appears to be some kind of fork of steam’s proton, but has some other fixes that I believe are community oriented or address things that Steam cannot. I’m gonna doing some reading into that to understand more about it and see how it can help me in other games.
The others are helpful! I remember MangoHud from Steam Deck, but only at a surface level. Didn’t even think about putting that onto my new system as I’ve just been using System Profiler to see some metrics when I play! I come from the MSI Afterburner crowd, so I’m hoping MangoHud will meet my performance monitoring needs!
GNU/Linux thank you very much
Go away, Richard
omg you chose the wrong distro aaahahhhh~~~
Seriously, though, I’m glad you’re enjoying the switch, hope you also enjoy the mandatory thigh-highs!
It’s the one I recommend, but honestly have never actually used. I’ve gotten a few people to successfully switch with it and got a few others away from Ubuntu (my first distro), hence why I keep recommending it.
Isn’t Mint a fork of Ubuntu anyway?
Either way it’s what I’m running on my Thinkpad and it’s been fine for me.
Yes and no. The main version is forked from ubuntu, but there is also LMDE which is debian based.
Honestly this is the big thing I’ve found handy about using Mint. If there’s something wrong and I can’t find it a Mint answer, nine times out of ten I can fix it by searching for the Ubuntu solution. There’s so much Ubuntu troubleshooting going on.
One of us
ONE OF US!
One of us!
one of us!
My condolences, and welcome!
Hey I just wanted to share how I was able to get Marvel Rivals running, although I’m on a different distro it should work for you:
In the Launch options (right click game > properties > general tab) enter this:
SteamDeck=1 %command%
Then, it tricks the game into believing you are on steam deck, and it should run. If you want to disable the performance metrics, just press right shift+f12.
I’m a recent lifetime windows user to Linux but loving it! I’ve dual booted so I can still play stuff like fortnite/call of duty but surely those will come around as the user count climbs :)
Edit to add: I found this fix on protondb.com - you can usually find others posting helpful stuff there relating to any Linux game!
Thank you for this! I jotted down your launch options along with what some of the other persons here were posting. Hoping of course NetEase can get this addressed in a coming update so we don’t have to use this workaround.
Congrats on the cutover! I don’t play Fortnite any more but my spouse wants to give it a go some time. If I play with them, I may have to install a Windows drive as a secondary device after all. Totally forgot about this game because I don’t think I currently play any games that can’t work on Linux.
If you are a gamer you should really just make the switch to bazzite though.
Before you do, check https://lemm.ee/post/52533824 and the responses
This also skips the launcher, which is nice
Your striped thigh-highs will be delivered in the mail within a month.
I must have missed that promotion, any chance I could order some?
Protip.once you have it setup make a snapshot or backup. You will be trying stupid shit out and breaking the system as you explore.
My first month was finding out how to unbreak that thing I shouldn’t have touched, knew I shouldn’t have touched, but touched it anyways. Step 1 is snapshots.
Always great advice. I set up Time Shift to take daily and weekly snapshots. Is that all I need or is there a “backup” thing I need to engage.
My history of this in Windows was System Restore, but that was always hit or miss for me back in the Windows XP days. Although I was a teen so I probably didn’t know fully well what I was doing.
You probably already know this, but just to be clear; Timeshift (by default) only backs up your system, but not your data, documents photos etc . Basically everything outside your Home directory.
You can probably tell Timeshift to also backup your home directory, or install a separate backup app for that.
I would also set it up to make a new timeshift anytime you add or remove apps. That’s when things tend to break.
Use anything but not Linux mint. You will face outdated software, memory leaks, slowness.
Bullshit. Mint is my main for years now. Its an almost perfect linux experience.
DE written in javascript with memory leaks would be awesome experience, but yeah they implemented auto restart feature (instead of fixing the leaks).
A bit of unsolicited advice now you’re in to tinkering. Set up some kind of NAS.
Having everything available wherever and whenever you need it is so much better than messing about with thumb drives.
That’s how they getcha. First you install Linux because it looked fun, then you buy a small NAS to protect your most important data, next thing you know you have a server rack in your basement and a half petabyte of storage. Don’t listen to him, OP! This is the path to many financial woes. Run while you still can!
It hasn’t been a year and I already overfilled my fist cabinet.
Appreciate the advice. I’ll be looking into something like that for sure to have some kind of on-prem storage solution. NAS might be the best way to go so I’ll be looking into that this year as I get more comfortable.
Edit: I realise I said USB drive in my post lol. I meant I’m using a large external hard drive for all my media rather than thumb drives! :) My external HDD is a “USB drive” I guess, it’s just a big one.
You don’t have to have anything particularly special. I just have nextcloud via yunohost on a raspberry pi. It’s apparently possible to just plug the harddrive in and use it as external storage, but I’ve mounted it in place of my home folder.
Have fun with it! This is how it starts. :)
But seriously, whether you stick with it in the long run or not, toying with Linux from time to time is a great experience for any computer nerd and now is really a great time to do it.
Feel free to ask questions!
Also save yourself some hassle by using the right terms when you search for things, for example, searching for “How to X in Linux Mint” or “How to Y in Cinnamon Desktop”. A lot of people do searches for “Linux” and end up frustrated when the bulk of the results are terminal commands, but familiarizing yourself with the different pieces that make up your system is I think a big part of learning “Linux”.
Even though I was aware of it, this was one of my challenges. I was using Bazzite, which is obviously so niche that few tutorials would be specific. So, I tried to understand which distro was the base layer for it, and based my searches around that. Even then, a lot of things felt inapplicable, or needed to go through its containerized compatibility structure.
For Bazzite , I search for “how to do X in Silverblue”, or “how to do X in KDE”
Bazzite is built on the same technologies as Fedora Silverblue (immutable base, ostree, btrfs etc).
I’m working on learning all the terminology, which I’ll figure out over time as I immerse myself.
Things that catch my attention are distro hopping. As a hopefully former Windows user, the idea of being able to switch your OS to another distro just baffles me. Without having any understanding of this, I would imagine it’s possible switching from a Debian to a different Debian distro. But if I switched from an entirely new “framework” (no idea what to call original Linux distros), such as Fedora to Debian or something, that baffles me. I don’t expect to distro hop but who knows!
And then I learned you can switch things out like KDE, Gnome, and even learned that Gnome is not pronounced like the traditional word, but like “Guh-Nome” as a play on the acronym “GNU”. LOL
I’m very much a novice with this system. In the past I tried to roll Pop_OS! and also Ubuntu, but they were so glitchy and didn’t work great for me. After having my Steam Deck and seeing just how stable Linux is, I felt much more confident going all in on Linux Mint (appreciating Steam Deck is Arch).
Anyway, the point of my rambling is unknown. If you made it this far, I’m proud of you.
Though I had a negative experience on my last go of it, and a “root”-based filesystem still confuses me, this was one of the big solid advantages last time I checked a few distros. I followed some advice of putting the system-level directories on one partition, and my user content on a different one. When I got fed up with one distribution, I cleaned and reinstalled things onto the system-level partition, leaving the user directory alone; I just had to inform it where those directory mappings would go.
Also important to know is, us that Mint is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian. The majority of Stuff that works on Linux Mint should work the sane way on Debian and Ubuntu(except UI solutions OFC). So if you’re stuck try exchanging “how to do XYZ in Linux Mint” to “how to do XYZ in Ubuntu/Debian”
You are a certified penguin now
Thank you! Now I’m ready to kill the Batman and torrent more Linux ISOs. It will make a fine piece to my collection
Another nail in the Windows coffin.
Another lost potential customer for Linux hostile gaming publishers.
Hell yeah! I’m proud of you nerd! Trust me i know it can be overwhelming but you’re doing amazing figuring all these things out! :)
Thank you! I only wish I discovered all this back when I was a teenager and had much more free time! I could have been a wizard like all these other nerds posting here!
Ah well, I’m never late or early, as I understand the lore. Picard or Dumbledore said that, it’s true.
