Life without windows

Mint is a great Distro especially for former Windows users. Been using it occasionally for what seems like forever. Got away from it in the last few years once I picked up a new Chromebook. I can all but guarantee I pickup the old laptop that’s been sitting for a couple of years, plug it in, power it up and Mint will be there waiting for some updates and I’m off and running. (I should do that once I get a few more things done in the room.)

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So I’ve always had a dual boot setup. Windows/Linux. Windows 7/10/11 and Arch Linux got me through the last decades. Anything Wine related was always a hassle, so I always gave up quickly and used Windows for gaming.

Until now. I installed Bazzite (Gnome edition) and it’s surprisingly easy.

Three main issues I had to solve:

  1. My fans would not ramp up so the PC switched off under load. Installed out-of-the-box fan curve software, configured it — solved
  2. Games unstable. Switched Steam from experimental Proton to stable Proton — solved
  3. Microphone on Sound BalsterX G6 would need manual activation after every reboot for some unclear reason. The device doesn’t show up in Gnome Settings so I can’t make it the default. Scripted this with a shellscript and a systemd service in user space — solved

All but one Game running on Linux now. Need to add a couple of productivity things and I am ready to switch.

What i love about Bazzite:

  • OS updates painless (so far)
  • It comes with a convenient helper tool to solve common tasks. Named “ujust”. Wow, every distro should have this!
  • Slick looks, good performance
  • Supports Secure Boot. In fact, for the first time ever, I have it enabled.
  • Flatpak and brew cover a lot of apps.

Let’s see how it goes. So far I am very impressed!

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The Arch Wiki says that Arch does too, but man that article is a handful. If I could get it running, I’d seriously consider switching from Fedora.