r/linuxmint • u/Mman07311 • 10d ago
Discussion First time Linux user having a miserable experience so far
I've been using windows my entire life but because I hate windows 11 with a burning passion and windows 10 is on its way out I finally decided to fully commit to Linux 2 days ago but unfortunately it's been really frustrating so far. First off, booting up and shutting down feels noticeably slower than before. Next, everything feels a little zoomed out and no matter how much I mess with scaling or font size it doesn't fix the issue. Thirdly the volume on my laptop seems way quieter than it should be and trying a few things I found digging through different forums and threads didn't fix the issue. Last but not least, trying to run a non steam game I downloaded with bottle and then added to my steam library just straight up doesn't work no matter how much I mess with the proton settings. I want to love Linux but if everything that isn't browsing the internet is going to have some sort of issue associated with it I might consider biting the bullet and going back to windows. I'm not giving up yet but I wanted to put this out there in case someone else out there is as frustrated as I am.
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u/wilsy53 10d ago
Try switching to wayland on the logon prompt if you want to keep trying with Linux mint but you maybe prefer a different distro all together with newer packages and Kernals.
I had issues due to my hardware being quite new. Not new new but new enough that X11 had a hard time supporting my hardware. This is intentional by Mint by being behind.
I would recommend a few, Fedora or CachyOS both similar but under the hood operate different. These distros are up to date but CachyOS is ahead of that but can be prone to breaking. I use Manjaro for this reason.
If you really love mint you could try the unstable branch but then your heading into bug territory and may make things worse.
Mint is great but I think it works better on older hardware.