I recently posted where I attempted to use Linux as a daily driver with some great success. Ultimately I returned to Windows. There were numerous reasons for my decision, albeit, I’m certain I made the jump back a bit too hastily.
I thought there were some slight performance issues with one of my favorite games, Outward Definitive Edition. What I found after I returned to Windows, was I was incorrect and it seems the performance might even be a bit worse. Now, most people probably wouldn’t note these issues, as it seems to be related to Split Screen Co Op. When my wife and/or I open our crafting menus, inventory, etc… it can cause the other player to stutter a bit in terms of performance. In most cases, it’s more so just an annoyance than anything game breaking. I can see where it would be problematic during combat though.
Another major reason, I went crawling back to Windows was I kept seeing all these posts about certain games not working with the built in Anti-Cheat Valve developed for Proton (simply…because…the…game…publishers…refuse…to…enable…it). All the games I tried worked initially, but I knew changes in GTA V were preventing people from playing on the Linux platform.
My plan at this point, is to shrink my Windows 11 installation down to a single 500 GB SSD drive. The remaining drives: 500 GB SSD and 2 TB nvme, I’ll use for Linux Mint. Thus I can use Linux as my daily driver, with the ability to fall back to Windows on the other ssd if it is ever really needed. This should allow me the opportunity I want to use Linux Mint while curbing the worry that I will eventually run into something I won’t be able to get operational in Linux. I’ll have enough space to cover the Windows installation, Windows updates, the applications I need to use it for gaming, and a few games. I won’t be able to go ham on loading games like I normally do, but given I only use it for the rare games I need to play in Windows, it should be just enough. This option also allows me to avoid boot loaders, and other issues that can crop up from their use, since I’ll just use my bios to boot to the drive I want or need too.
Turns out I had a laptop with a fairly new 500 GB SSD in it, that I decided to retire (mostly due to the fact that I was using it for Linux and it’s really starting to show its age), but it didn’t leave anyone with out a device they needed at this point. I’m going to use that drive to perform the fore mentioned operations above.
I’ve done some research concerning Linux distros, as initially, I was pondering attempting something like Debian or some other distro with a desktop environment that suited me. After all that was said and done, I just decided I should stick with Linux Mint. I had some very nice success with the transition to Linux with Mint, and while it might be labeled as a good distro for beginners, there isn’t really a ‘Beginner Distro’ per se, only distros that are ‘better’ for beginners over all. I like the stability of Linux Mint combined with some features they upgrade faster. Things such as the Linux Kernel, updates, etc… While it might not be as bleeding edge as Arch, it’s still faster than Debian tends to do so. I don’t want the trouble of having to manually upgrade the Linux kernel at this time. I want to focus on the things I want to focus on, and as such, I believe Linux Mint is the better fit for ‘me’. 🙂
