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

I'm sorry to tell you that you are also a nerd now that you've installed linux

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.

Gabba gabba we accept you, one of us! One of us!

Welcome to the club! One bit of advice: Be not afraid of the terminal. Learn to use it, it's a powerful tool and very useful. I recommend going to youtube and following along with a "bash basics" or "linux terminal basics" type video or two as if it were a class, it'll help familiarize you with some of the more commonly used tools to navigate your system and stuff.

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.

Congrats. I think Mint will treat you well.

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

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

I like your background looks good. I've been using Linux on my laptop for a long time, newer distros and softwares have come a long way since when I started, but I'm unfortunately still rocking Windows on my main art station until Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC runs out of security updates.

Maybe longer if I just unplug it from the internet.

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.

My display support HDR400, But I don't see much difference between Windows 10 and Arch 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?

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".

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