A few weeks ago, my Windows 11 gaming system got to the point where it would crash any time it felt like it (usually while playing a game.) I had already reinstalled the Radeon drivers since the crashes seemed video-related. It didn't help, so I figured it was time to reinstall Windows. It had crashed enough times that any problems it had were now worse, and we've been running on Windows for so long, we've accepted that crashing and reinstalling is just part of running Windows. If I had to reinstall my OS, maybe it's time to give Mint a try as a full-time OS. (I originally had it installed as a VM in VirtualBox and liked the feel of it.) So I wiped everything and installed Mint. Now, this is a gaming system, and that was my focus - can I run my games on Mint like all those others out there claim? Or will this be a painful failed experiment that causes my first migraine in years? All I really play are Steam games (which tend to work with a minimum of fuss*), World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, and Skyrim with a lot of mods. So I figured I would give it a shot. There wasn't anything on my system to back up - I don't put anything important on it, and Steam puts my saves in their cloud.
* at least they do according to various posts. My experience was not so smooth.
I installed Mint and spent a few days trying to make stuff work. First nice thing, no hunting down drivers in a sea of fake "Windows Drivers" sites. ("Install this app, which will install a keylogger along with a bunch of hardware drivers that don't work!") First problem, the surround sound would not work. Not the end of the world, but annoying, especially since there are a ton of sites saying it's a problem and offering solutions for older versions of Mint that don't work anymore (if they ever did.) I posted the problem to a Mint support forum, but no one replied. So I decided to stick with stereo and try installing stuff. I can always try again later.
Most of my actual work is cloud-based and will run on anything with a browser. As I said, this is a gaming system, so the ability to do work is secondary. I have in the past because there is a 44" display that makes running with multiple apps much easier. Plus, I now have a Zen Duo with two displays for actual work so I can keep the work and gaming worlds separate. (Mint does not support the Duo laptop hardware, but even if it did, I couldn't use it because my laptop runs Dragon Dictate.)
I installed Steam, which recognized my existing library (I keep the games on another drive). I then started looking up how to make them work. Despite the number of people on ProtonDB saying Skyrim worked out of the box, I could not make it work. I followed instructions that referred me to Lutris, Winetricks, Protontricks, and other stuff. Any game I tried would download additional (Proton) files, but would then not run. I kept getting games that would say they are running, but would then quit. After three days of this, I decided I would install Windows and Mint as dual-boot, but the Mint article said install Windows first, then Mint would modify the boot accordingly. That meant wipe again, so I reinstalled Windows and its relevant drivers, then tried to install Mint from the live key. (Could not find the key I used before, so I made a new one.) This is where Windows tried to take revenge ("Thou shalt have no other operating systems before me.")
The last time I did this, I had no trouble booting and installing Mint. This time, I kept having problems with UEFI - it either would not boot the USB key at all, or it would complain that it couldn't find a UEFI boot file and then it would shut my PC off. Fiddled with BIOS settings, disabled secure boot, none of which was needed last time. Finally got it booted (after changing nothing) and ran the installer. I tried so many different things to make it work that I can't even tell you what fixed it, but now I am afraid to look at it funny.
I got to the choice of "nuke and pave" (which would format the drive and I would lose everything) or set up Mint as a second OS. It recognized that I had Windows installed, but said I had Bitlocker enabled, so I could not install Mint as dual boot unless I disabled Bitlocker. So more Googling, go back into Windows, try to disable something I never put there to begin with (Bitlocker is default now?) and find out Control Panel for Windows Home might not have the settings to change it. Plus it does not say Bitlocker, it just says drive encryption. I ended up disabling it with a command-line utility.
Back into Mint, now it won't let me dual-boot because the installer said I have an undetectable operating system. Um, Windows still boots, so what the duck? It was fine before I disabled BitLocker. Then I started getting errors that it was unable to create a 1MB BIOS boot partition, so I said screw it, Windows has to go. (Again.) This had turned into a case where I am not wiping Windows because I love Mint that much ("I barely know her!"), but I really hated all the hoops Windows was putting in front of me. So I wiped the drive (again) and installed Mint as the primary OS (again).
Rebooted into the familiar Mint desktop, and on a whim, I checked the surround speakers. All of them work fine. No idea what changed, other than the last time I tried this, it didn't work, so I started installing recommended utilities to try to make it work. (Pulse Audio Volume Control comes to mind.) This time, the speakers worked with no tweaking. The only thing I can think of is the previous attempt was Mint 21, but this time I installed 22.1. Maybe the new version included a fix? Seems kinda specific that my problem just happened to be addressed, but I won't argue with success.
I installed Steam and tried installing a few games. Several places said to go into Steam settings and enable Steam Play for all games (it's under Compatibility now.) Mainly thanks to the SteamDeck and SteamOS, Steam can now attempt to play Windows games on Linux. I tried to get Skyrim to work, but nothing. Tried changing the Proton driver, tried it through Lutris, nothing. Bioshock Infinite ran with no tweaks. Ion Fury ran with no problems. That prompted me to try to make the XBox Wireless Controller work. Mint already recognized the USB Bluetooth adapter, so I just had to run the Bluetooth Manager and the controller connected. Tested it in Bioshock, worked fine.
Next I installed the Battle.net front end through Lutris. Worked fine, and it let me install WoW and Diablo 3. WoW worked fine, haven't tested Diablo yet but I also have that on my XBox, so no stress if it won't work on Mint.
One issue I have noticed (not sure if this happened before) is that my 2TB "D:" drive, where I installed all my Steam games, is showing up as an external drive. I had installed Skyrim on that drive, but after restarting Mint, Steam was only giving me Install as an option for it. Turns out Mint is not automatically mounting the games drive since it's formatted in NTFS. Another thing that was working fine before, but this time I have to go to the file manager and select the drive to mount it. I haven't decided whether to set the drive to auto mount or reformat it as a Linux drive. It's just game storage, so it probably doesn't matter. The only reason I kept it is so I didn't have to redownload all the Steam games currently installed on it. Based on a suggestion that said running games from an NTFS drive can cause problems, I reformatted it as EXT4.
So today, it's back to Skyrim. So far I have tried different Proton drivers (which is similar to an emulator like Wine that Steam uses to make Windows games work on the Steam Deck. I've tried updating the Mint kernel, but so far no joy. If this was Windows, all I would have to do is find the right hardware drivers to support the game, but since the game was not written to work natively on Linux, I need to find the right "drivers." It supposedly runs on the Deck for some, but others have said it doesn't. That's life with a computer, what works for some...
Update - I posted this to Reddit, and someone replied back to try a Proton driver written by someone named Glorious Eggroll. Well, I can't argue with that... last time I tried this, I am pretty sure I did try that driver. It was installed from a different source than what was suggested now, but the driver ended in -ge, which I remember seeing. So I tried it, held my breath, and SQUEEE! It worked. Skyrim started with the launcher that said Ultra Quality had been selected, then the game started with the familiar carriage ride where the guy says "You're finally awake." How appropriate. 😂 The controller was not quite right (it said push X but I had to push Y) but that's probably just a setting someplace.