For those making the switch to Linux for the first time, especially Mint, one of my favorite YouTube hosts is currently filming/releasing a series where he does the same.

Check it out: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXHMZDvOn5sU4nw1wdWGXQf5-Fj0k2N7n

Congrats. I made the switch to Ubuntu in 2016, you are spoiled these days with Proton. I want to concur with the advice to learn the terminal. You dont need it yet, but you will eventually. It'd be wise to do some research on your package manager too. You're on Mint, so it should be apt.

Also, word of advice for future OS swapping if you- say- wanna try a new distro someday. Find yourself an external drive for your files like music and documents. Its better to not need to rebuild your library in the first place if you can, and its safelyoff the OS drive if something goes wrong. I got a cheap Mybook backup drive, 4TB for 90 bucks, and formatted it.

Nice hope to do the same when windows 10 goes end of life.

You love to see it. I also switched my home machines cold turkey from win10 to Linux Mint last month!

I have been using it at work for a long time, but just didn’t do enough on my home desktop PCs for it to be worth fiddling with them and setting servers and stuff back up. But now that I made the switch, I am actually using my PC more at home because it’s smoother and more fun to use now!

The main one is an i7-9700k (8c/8t) with 32 gigs of ram and a GTX 1080. It has such a long life left ahead of it. Heck the other machine is a 2500k (4c/4t) with 16GB from like 2011 and it’s excellent for desktop use or non-demanding games.

I see myself sticking with Mint with Debian & Ubuntu upstream for the foreseeable future. But I do wonder several years from now SteamOS will push many of us to use something with Arch upstream if not just SteamOS itself.

"You" nerds? It's "we" nerds now, nerd.

Congrats. I think Mint will treat you well.

Bro thank you from the bottom of my heart for the type up. I've been contemplating this for months and this very may well be the final tipping point for me to make the plunge. I'm in pretty much the same boat, tech savvy but don't want to deal with shit I dont have to which has been my main reason for not diving in yet. I've thought of doing exactly what you described as I do love a little challenge, which I get contradicts what I just typed. Anyway, yeah, thanks again for the post! Will be doing my own switch here in the near future.

Your striped thigh-highs will be delivered in the mail within a month.

One of us

Pro tip, if you’ve not found it already - there’s a package for gimp called “photogimp” that makes it use the photoshop interface instead of- it makes it so much easier to use! Highly recommend.

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!

You are a certified penguin now

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!

Today Valve published a Proton Experimental update that fixed the Marvel Rivals crash for me. Be sure to set it up in game properties / compatibility.

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".

I'm thinking of doing the jump this weekend but I'm scurred. I don't want to spend hours debugging an OS like I did over a decade ago. Any reassuring words?

GNU/Linux thank you very much

Y'all really choose hard mode for switching over. Having Windows on a partition sure is nice when a software requires it and wine doesn't support it.

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! :)

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.

Linux gaming and selecting a non wayland distro seems an unusual choice. If gaming is your main usage, something with wayland and especially gamescope would be better. Beside that, welcome to the other side!

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.

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.

Welcome and good luck. The community is large and we generally like to help each other.

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.

Exactly how I did it coming up on a year ago. Still going strong!

It might not be a feature you're interested in re: your music (or photo) collection, but one thing I missed when switching from Windows was the folder previews showing album cover art. I've been using Cover Thumbnailer (on Linux Mint 21.3) and it's been working great.