It just works.
I’m kind of shocked how easy it was to set up. I used ventoy to make a bootable iso of Linux Mint Cinnamon on my Mini PC (Ser5 Pro), and I had zero issues with anything. Ventoy even plays nice with secure boot.
Where’s the setup?
There really wasn’t any. I booted into Mint, synced my keyboard/trackpad combo and my earbuds then was off to the races. It detected all my hardware including my Elgato HD60 X without any steps. The only thing I had to work around was downloading the deb build of Discord Canary to enable audio output in Discord streams since it was only recently added to Discord’s dev/beta build (Canary).
Speaking of which Elgato’s capture software doesn’t support Linux (shocker), so I simply installed OBS, pointed the audio/video to the capture card, and it worked. Easy.
My Use Case
I have the aforementioned mini PC mainly to be jockied by a capture card for streaming Nintendo Switch to Discord. Aside from that I use it as a productivity machine in my living room for internet browsing (omg webtv!) and Kodi. The Ser5 uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5850u with integrated graphics, 16GB DDR4, and a 500gb M.2. All of the ports, HDMI audio out, etc were automatically detected by Mint.
Conclusion
Linux Mint feels premium compared to Windows 11. It’s snappier, more modular, and offers a Linux GUI that’s familiar/easy to use. Plus now I have the benefit of no preinstalled spyware or bloatware. Feels good to actually own my computer.
Thanks for reading!
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Cool! Out of curiosity, what was the trigger and/or motivation to make the switch?
Microsoft locked me out of my Microsoft account which has a large collection of games, an active game pass subscription, and ms365. They unlocked it after I appealed and claimed it was for “potential spam” from my outlook account which I hardly ever use.
Ridiculous. Just locked me out of all my purchases on a whim from some horrible AI moderating glitch. Done with them.
You maybe got hacked and spam got sent. Anyways congratulations for the switch.
I did not get hacked. My account credentials were intact. 2FA was instated. No emails were sent.
I started on Mint, then went to Arch Linux with Gnome. Now, I spend hours a day every day editing the dozens of config files for my Arch + Hyprland setup. I discovered NVIM plugins and decided to figure that out on my own instead of using one of the pre-made plugin packs. Now 90% of the software I use is cli. You can do anything from a terminal, and once you start it’s hard to justify using bloated GUI applications instead. Especially once you make your TE and prompt pretty.
Welcome to the team.
I hope you brought your bouncing shoes because as soon as you’ll get comfortable, you’ll start hopping a lotThe sense of ownership and control the Linux experience offers is something I’ve never felt with Windows.
This is why Mint is what I always recommend to people who are switching over for the first time. Congrats and welcome.
I got 35+ years into Windows. I’m the guy they get to “fix” stuff in PROD. I fight Windows all day. I’m not doing that at home anymore.
Linux Mint is terrific, also recommend it to new Linux users. I just want things easy, clean, and fast. Also, fuck Microsoft.
Debian + KDE
I bounced around to all sorts of systems and DEs and came to this same conclusion. Debian + KDE is where it all ended up after try easily over 20 different systems throughout the years.
It’s the most “we trust you, but also respect your time” combo I’ve found.
Plus now I have the benefit of no preinstalled spyware or bloatware
Now you get to choose the bloatware and spyware yourself! /s
Real shit tho
My brother recently texted me asking for advice about installing Mint on an old laptop. He is the one that got me into computers as a kid, and he has worked at Microsoft for maybe 25 years. It made me so happy lol.
Microsoft has a whole Linux division now. They’re fully in the “extend” portion of their plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
welcome home! <3
You’ll probably be installing programs and changing a lot of settings over the next few weeks. Make sure you use TimeShift (pre-installed on Mint) to make system snapshots. (It works like System Restore on Windows. You can even run it from your Linux Live flash drive if you mess up something so badly that you can’t boot from the hard drive).
LibreOffice comes pre-installed and you can use Thunderbird for email. And if you used Steam to play games on Windows, you’re in for a nice surprise. Steam has a native Linux client and it uses Proton / Wine to let you play your Windows games on Linux. It’s handled everything I’ve thrown at except for a couple of older games.
Welcome to the club :D I did the same thing last summer and also switched to Mint and never looked back. So basically Im a fellow newbie. It was the best decision as everything just works minus the windows shenanigans.
Even gaming is almost perfect (apart from the occasional tinkering here and there) its more than great. All my games work great, some better than under win.
Im even in the middle of building my new gaming PC exclusively for Linux in mind.
As I have to use win 11 for work (work laptop) I can see switching was the right decision as every update makes it more annoying and bloated.
Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies
Having said that, just as a suggestion, take a look at KDE. It feels a bit more windows like, is extremely customizable and as such can be made to work exactly how you want it
Linux works great generally. My wife and I have been using for 20 years since we dumped windows.
The deal is that Linux is great for FOSS but limited for commercial apps. One generally needs to deside based on apps they run. Hardware is similar.
Welcome to stability. You are in control.
sudoresponsibly.
