this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Consumer grade Linux Mint is impossible to differentiate from Windows/MacOS.
Install Firefox. Install Chrome. Install Steam.
Test it out on an old laptop or computer. It's trivial. Your life will improve.
Never install Chrome
Linux definitely has a learning curve but its night and day when you actually own your device and get to decide on what software is allowed to run on your computer.
On top of the privacy, the speed of most linux distros is a huge step up from windows. Windows imo is gradually becoming obsolete in the gaming sphere. the amount of work required to properly configure and debloat a system for gaming was zero in my distro. Install gfx driver, gamemode, steam, proton GE, GOverlay, done. I play popular games such as marvel rivals and warframe at decent framerates. (my system is older).
With windows there was so much nonsense to disable that would hugely impact FPS. Sometimes disabling these things would break other features of the OS. And most of the debloat scripts to automate the process are rife with viruses and issues.
Im convinced that by enshitifying the OS it will fool users into thinking their hardware is obsolete and "cant keep up" but im running a 1070ti and a i7 from like 2018 and its still a decent system that does everything i need. until something breaks im not upgrading.
Modern Linux doesn't have a learning curve for 99% of people. My wife's 90 year old grandma picked it up with no trouble.
If anything, I think it's people used to Windows or macOS that don't want anything to change that tend to hate Linux systems; it's not exactly Windows/macOS (and doesn't run exactly the MS Office and Adobe suits) so they hate it.
Adobe's been starting to get some pushback and people ditching them for FOSS alternatives lately, though. One of the more notable examples is James Lee as he details in his 'How I Broke up with Adobe' vid.
oh yeah? well my grandma's 212 year old great grandpa picked it up within seconds.
If all you do is browser the web, the learning curve is a solid 0. The issue is when you want to install specific programs.
Anyone who is savvy enough to install an OS won't have any issues installing specific programs, especially since most products that people would be using have a direct download for the deb/rpm.
And if you're not tech savvy enough to install an OS, you're probably already getting someone who is savvy to do computer work for you.
But, this isn't the 2000s. Everyone knows the concept of an app store, and most mainstream distros have one featured prominently.
The "specific program" I have trouble with is Autodesk Fusion (formerly Fusion 360). There are projects that try to run it through Wine, but there's a specific function that isn't implemented in Wine right now that Fusion relies on as part of its authentication service, so it won't log you in correctly, at least on the default Mint install. I think at least one of the relevant functions is currently in the Wine beta, so it may work again in a bit--I did manage to get it working briefly at one point, but I somehow screwed it up again subsequently. (I may just have forgotten how I launched it...I think I have two versions installed at this point, the Flatpak and the Snap install.) But even when it worked it was slow and janky in a much more severe way than when it runs natively on Windows.
The "specific program" my dad is interested in is Hesuvi, a piece of headphone virtualization software that also does equalization and crossover. At some point I identified a program I though would work on Linux as an alternative, but I would want to test that before committing to switching his computer over from Windows, and I haven't got around to that yet. Other than that he mostly uses Zoom, and I think I tested that and it worked okay in Mint, though my memory is a little weak on that too.
I dunno. Basically everyone has their own little patterns they use with their computers, and switching to Linux requires changes to those patterns. It's an adaptation. That's not to say it's not worth it--for a ton of people it probably is. But I'm not sure my aging parents can do it, and thanks to Fusion, I'm not sure I can do it either, because I just don't have a good replacement.
The other option I'm looking into is Windows IoT LTSC. That omits a LOT of the problematic bullshit.
I'll figure something out before the end of support, anyway.
I'd like to interject here a bit.
For a "normal" user (read non-tech, perhaps even a bit lower on the "tech literacy" scale) any change requires a learning curve. While we Linux people don't have too big of a problem switching distros and UI setups, someone "non-techy" finds the switch from Win7 to Win10 challenging, as well as from Win10 to Win11. We're not in the 95/98 era when a "name" upgrade meant you don't have to install USB drivers off a floppy - the UI stad the same. (which just means Greg won't need to bother with that while he sets up your new computer)
Nowadays, the move from 10 to 11 is anything but "painless" to me - and for me it's just annoyances. For people less tech-savvy it's an enigma at times.
So, my point is - the switch from Win10 to Win11 will probably be worse than Win10 to Mint for old people (mostly). Those deeply rooted into varous ecosystems aren't the focus of this comment.
Also enable Proton for everything. I thought that was the default, but I recently reinstalled Linux on my laptop (wanted to try out openSUSE Aeon) and was surprised that at least on the
flatpak, Proton isn't enabled by default.That covers like 90% of Steam games, and 95% of what a typical SP-only gamer would need. However, MP games w/ anti-cheat are still an issue, but the more people that switch to Linux, the more likely devs are to support anti-cheat games on Linux.
That sure is easy to say.
In practice, I tried to use mint for the os on a family computer and just couldn't make it work. I've been an IT guy for years and have tons of experience with both Windows and MacOS, but virtually none with Linux. Long story short, trying to make that machine work with Linux mint was just taking up way too much of my time. I just needed to get a few simple features out of it (and maybe 1 hard feature, parental controls). But having very little Linux experience, it just wasn't going to happen in a reasonable time frame. I eventually had to give up and put the Mac OS back on it (an iMac).
Anyway, mint actually has a lot in common with the Mac OS, it makes a very small set of controls very easy to use. And technically, you can do just about anything else you need to with the terminal, but that can be challenging to navigate.
Try to play games, learn how to set up wine/proton, discover that none of your games work because you have an old GPU driver, discover that you can't update it because any time you install a newer driver it hard-locks the system and reboots it in super low-res mode with no driver at all, also your sound dies randomly for no reason that you can discover and trawling reddit for 4 hours comes up with lots of solutions, half of which don't work and the other half don't even apply, get frustrated, disable dual-boot and go back to windows.
That's how my last experience with linux (admittedly that was PopOS not Mint, but) went ~6 months ago. I'm currently building up my frustration-tolerance to give it another try at some point probably with main-line Ubuntu because at least then when I go hunting for solutions to obscure problems the suggested solutions are for that distro. I'm honestly not sure what the difference between Ubuntu and Mint is tho.
This was my experience with it too. Until I realized that the issue everything boils down to is having an old gfx. In particular an old nvidia gfx that has old, closed source driver compatibility only and can't initialize vulkan. I've still stuck to it, it's arch running on my desktop, because I'll upgrade hw components eventually. 12 years with a gtx 670 has been quite enough.
I've installed fedora workstation 41 on a decommissioned work laptop last week, a 2021 model with an 5700U, and everything just works out of the box. Some obscure game that I've been trying to play on my desktop, not even platinum rated on protondb, launched on first attempt without any shenanigans using heroic launcher.
Nvidia, especially older models, are probably just simply not the way to go for gaming on linux.
Try the open source nouveau driver for your older gfx card ive heard compatability is better for older cards
That sucks. My GPU is only a couple years old though, it's an RTX3070, and I tried using both open and closed source drivers to no avail. The one driver I finally found that worked, for whatever reason, was the v555 (still several versions back from current) server-version closed driver, but I still couldn't play games.
I moved to Linux on my gaming rid (this last time around, as I've had it as dual boot on and off since the 90s, but this time I moved to it for good after confirming that gaming works way better in it than ever before) when I had a GTX1050 Ti, and I had no problems ^1^
Updated it to an RTX3050 and still no problems ^2^
Then again I went with Pop!OS because it's a gaming oriented distro with a version that already comes with NVIDIA drivers so they sort out whatever needs sorting out on that front, plus I'm sticking with X and staying the hell away from Wayland on NVIDIA hardware since there are a lot more problems for NVIDIA hardware with Wayland than X.
Currently on driver 565.77
I reckon a lot of people with NVIDIA driver problems in Linux are trying to run it with Wayland rather than X or going for the Open Source drivers rather than the binary ones.
^1^ Actually I do have a single problem: when graphics mode starts, often all I get is a black screen and I have to switch my monitor OFF and back ON again to solve it. I guess it's something to do with the HDMI side of things.
^2^ I have exactly the same problem with the new graphics board.
That wasn't my experience at all with 22.04 LTS. It did have an nvidia driver already installed, but as previously mentioned It was old and I had to try probably 15 different drivers (each, again, requiring a hard system lock, reboot, and tinkering to attempt to use). I wasn't running Wayland, when the choice came up I went and did some investigation and found out that Wayland wasn't fully supported and I didn't want to mess with that, I wanted reliable.
I've had similar issues with Arch Linux for years. The front panel outright refuses to work on Linux, even after modifying a whole bunch of things.
Your average person is more likely to get frustrated that stuff is broken/doesn't work, and switch back rather than having to alter module configuration files and things like that to fix it.
Dont use freaking Arch if your goal is to get everything to work out of the box?
Fair, though in my experience, Debian and Ubuntu weren't that much better in that regard.
I just went with Arch, because some of the stuff I wanted to use was much newer on it.
trick question firefox is already installed :p
What’s installing Nvidia drivers like?
This has killed my install and interest in Linux every time I’ve tried it.
Simple in most distros. For me i can legit just go to my gui package manager type nvidia click install. My package manager detects that nvidia-utils and nvidia-settings are required/optional and prompts me to install those aswell. Done. For info on your specific distro lmk ill find it for you
Dope. Looks like I’ll have to give Linux a shot once again. Worked fine on an old ultra book I had, but every time I tried on my desktop I’d fail at the GPU drivers step.
I've done two PC builds with Nvidia and it's actually easier than Windows because my distros (popOS and bazzite) installed the drivers for me. Had to do it manually with Windows
I made a new computer in November, and while I didn't try Mint (I don't think) I installed 3 or 4 different versions if Linux. In them, I installed steam and Nvidia drivers, but most of my game library said they weren't playable. If I didn't have kids I could have spent more time and gotten it working, but is Mint different? Would they have been playable on it?
It's probably because you need to go to Steam settings and enable Proton for all games. I don't understand why this is still not turned on by default...
This. Also be sure to go to the compatibility section and select 'Enable Steam Play for all other titles.' Otherwise you're borked.
Just for completeness, I like Bazzite for gaming over Linux Mint, but Linux Mint should still work fine.
You have to change your steam settings to attempt to use proton. Once you do this, steam will allow the games to play. Practically everything will work once you do this.
...shiiiiiiit, I had so much fucking trouble getting games to work (most steam games just wouldn't even launch) and never discovered this. This is why linux is still unsuitable for the non-technical consumer; I'm a former unix sysadmin, I've hand-edited SysV runlevels and bootstrapped gcc and shit, but I've been out of it so long that a lot of shit has changed and I don't even know where to look for solutions other than just googling 'reddit XYZ doesn't work' and hoping I find solutions that are even relevant to the distro I'm running.
Quick question, I've seen split opinions on this - I have an SSD that just has my games installed (mostly steam games) under windows, is it reasonable to try to mount that under linux and try to run games that way, or should I just reinstall them onto the linux drive?
I had quite a lot of the same frustration because, although I was never a sysadmin (more like a senior dev who has done a lot of software systems development and design for software systems where the back and middle tier are running on Linux servers, which involved amongst other things managing development servers), I was used to the Linux structure of a decade and more ago (i.e. runtime levels and the old style commands for things like network info) and the whole SystemD stuff and this whole raft of new fashionable command line info and admin tools that replaced the old (and perfectly fine) ones was quite frustrating to get to grips with.
That said, I've persevered and have by now been using Linux on my gaming rig for 8 months with very few problems and a pretty high success rate at running games (most of which require no tweaking) not just Steam games but also GOG games using Lutris as launcher.
That said, I only figured out the "magical" Steam config settings to get most games to run on Linux when I was desperately googling how to do it.
Oh, and by the way, Pop!OS is a branch of Ubuntu, so at least when it comes to command line tools and locations of files in the filesystem, most help for Ubuntu out there also works with Pop!OS.
Yeah, that's my main issue is just all the stuff I'm familiar with has changed. And that's not a problem for the OS, it's been 15+ years since I've messed with it so that stuff should've changed. It's more frustration with how much of a pain it is to relearn it all, especially as I'm older and have other stuff I would rather be spending my time with than poking around 40 pages into a man page to try to make basic shit work.
Re:games - if you happen to have a link to that magical steam config that would be immensely helpful, cause I'm gonna try again at some point, and the more resources I can sock away toward making that less painful the more likely I am to stick with it, and being able to play games is my #1 requirement to do that.
You would think so, but they use different packages (they swap pulseaudio with pipewire or vice versa, etc) and put things in different locations, so I was often frustrated by solutions tailored to Ubuntu that required editing files that just didn't exist in PopOS.
Well, the "magical" Steam config was that stuff others pointed out that you need to in Steam actually under Settings -> Compatibility enable use of Steam Play with Proton for all titles since that's not enabled by default.
Oh, I thought you were saying there was some additional config. Cool, thanks.
I'm getting so sick of Microsoft and Apples bullshit that I'm about to switch personally, but from the research i did it sounds like the biggest problem with Linux on the desktop is that there still aren't standard, unified, unchanging APIs that can be relied upon, so finding third party software and utilities is still a crap shoot compared to something like Windows that can still run binaries that targets it's 1995 era APIs.
Any software that requires me to compile it from source just to run it on my machine is fine for me, a software developer, and probably fine for my mum that just does word processing and browsing since she won't be installing things, but seems a little too friction filled for your average enthusiast?