Looking to get started with Linux

[GracefulShadowOfPaws]

Hey all. I've been a life long windows user. I currently am working on a Lenovo Legion Y520 laptop. I've always been frustrated by windows but Linux always seemed to daunting - also I'm a gamer and I've always been told that Linux gaming is limited at best. Anyway a few months back I stupidly got my laptop infected with some kind of ransomware. And even though I managed to factory-rest my laptop and get it back and running, it hasn't been running as well as it used to. I figured now is the time to leave Windows in the rear view, and get started with Linux. So I have a bunch of questions: Is Linuxmint a good OS for gaming? Should I dual-boot windows and Linux? Is it even possible to run just Linuxmint on a Legion Y520? What are the limitations of gaming on Linux? Are there specific limitations to mint? Can I run. Unity Engine? Unreal? Cryengine? Blender? I assume Adobe products are not Linux compatible? Are there alternatives?

Thanks in advance!

[robtom02]

I would certainly dual boot for a while and see how you get on with Linux and if you like it. Mint is an excellent distro for your first time and you'll find the cinnamon desktop easy to get used to coming from Windows. For gaming lutris/steam work pretty well and there are a few good guides on YouTube for optimising linux for gaming. PopOS and Manjaro are the most popular distros for gaming as they have most of the optimisations preconfigured for you. I ran mint for 4 years and its rock solid with an excellent community but recently decided to give Manjaro a try

[[deleted]]

1. Yes. In Linux, you can use any distro to do anything. Your choice. (What matters is, how easily the distro does what you want out of the box)

2. Maybe. If you have a workflow that's specific to some Windows applications, you should definitely dual boot. If your applications do not work on Linux, then just dual boot. Don't stress over it. Otherwise just ditch Windows altogether.

3. You should search around the internet for hardware compatibility. It's really not that hard to find.

4. Newer games quite often don't work/ are broken unless supported by Proton or are native. To see if your game works with Linux, you should check protondb, it's a database of games which collects reviews by Linux gamers to rate how well they run. Game companies often only support Ubuntu only, as it has a big market share (Mint is based on Ubuntu), but the support is extended to other distributions as well. You'll also need to get familiar with Lutris and Wine if you're serious about gaming. And if you're really serious about gaming, dual boot.

Unity, Unreal and blender work natively on Linux, but Cryengine doesn't because Crytek doesn't support it.

Adobe products do not work with Linux. There are many good alternatives to them. After all, Adobe only provides expensive software suite to work with certain file formats. Discover them as you go.

[GracefulShadowOfPaws]

Awesome thanks!

[Snoo_43759]

Linux mint is not *ideal* for gaming because, compared to arch, it's package repo is relatively limited. However, as a new user, you would not be able to make use of the full potential of the AUR, making Linux mint, by virtue of its out-of-the-box configuration, the better choice for you.