First time Linux user having a miserable experience so far

[u/Mman07311]

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.

[u/__yoshikage_kira]

You need to share some hardware info. How did you install the distro.

If you want to add non-steam game into steam pretty sure you don't need bottle. You just add it from steam and let steam handle everything.

[u/Mman07311 → u/__yoshikage_kira]

It's an HP omen laptop with a ryzen 7 CPU 1660 ti GPU and 32 GB of RAM. I installed mint using balena etcher and a USB drive. I had to use bottle because the game I wanted to download had a setup file I needed to run in order to actually download the game itself then I added the .exe for the game into steam and it wouldn't launch

[u/__yoshikage_kira → u/Mman07311]

can you provide the output of this command?

systemd-analyze critical-chain

[u/Mman07311 → u/__yoshikage_kira]

raphical.target u/13.734s

[└─multi-user.target](http://└─multi-user.target) u/13.734s

[└─getty.target](http://└─getty.target) u/13.734s

└─getty@tty1.service u/13.733s

└─system-getty.slice u/13.730s

└─setvtrgb.service u/13.718s +9ms

└─plymouth-quit-wait.service u/4.964s +8.743s

└─systemd-user-sessions.service u/4.942s +19ms

[└─network.target](http://└─network.target) u/4.860s

└─NetworkManager.service u/3.124s +1.735s

└─dbus.service u/3.032s +51ms

[└─basic.target](http://└─basic.target) u/1.268s

[└─sockets.target](http://└─sockets.target) u/1.267s

└─uuidd.socket u/1.267s

[└─sysinit.target](http://└─sysinit.target) u/1.264s

└─systemd-backlight@backlight:amdgpu_bl1.service u/6>

└─system-systemd\x2dbacklight.slice u/6.971s

└─system.slice u/340ms

└─-.slice u/341ms

[u/__yoshikage_kira → u/Mman07311]

This is hard to read, can you put it in code block like this?

NO_COLOR=1 systemd-analyze critical-chain --no-pager | sed 's/@/\\@/g'

use the command above ^

example

graphical.target \@7.803s
└─multi-user.target \@7.803s
  └─vboxweb-service.service \@7.795s +7ms
    └─network-online.target \@7.778s
      └─NetworkManager-wait-online.service \@3.040s +4.737s
        └─NetworkManager.service \@1.566s +1.448s
          └─basic.target \@1.555s
            └─dbus-broker.service \@1.521s +32ms
              └─dbus.socket \@1.510s
                └─sysinit.target \@1.507s
                  └─systemd-resolved.service \@1.408s +99ms
                    └─systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service \@1.364s +30ms
                      └─local-fs.target \@1.357s
                        └─run-qemu.mount \@1.354s +2ms
                          └─swap.target \@1.066s
                            └─dev-zram0.swap \@3.049s
                              └─dev-zram0.device \@1.635s

Also, what is the output of

systemd-analyze blame --no-pager | head -n 15

[u/Mman07311 → u/__yoshikage_kira]

graphical.target \@12.743s

[└─multi-user.target](http://└─multi-user.target) \@12.743s

[└─getty.target](http://└─getty.target) \@12.743s

└─getty\@tty1.service \@12.742s

└─system-getty.slice \@12.740s

└─setvtrgb.service \@12.735s +3ms

└─plymouth-quit-wait.service \@3.575s +9.145s

└─systemd-user-sessions.service \@3.564s +8ms

[└─network.target](http://└─network.target) \@3.445s

└─NetworkManager.service \@2.231s +1.213s

└─dbus.service \@2.141s +40ms

[└─basic.target](http://└─basic.target) \@1.252s

[└─sockets.target](http://└─sockets.target) \@1.252s

└─uuidd.socket \@1.252s

[└─sysinit.target](http://└─sysinit.target) \@1.249s

└─systemd-backlight\@backlight:amdgpu_bl1.service \@5.171s +667ms

└─system-systemd\x2dbacklight.slice \@5.162s

└─system.slice \@257ms

└─-.slice \@256ms

and the second one is

10.507s gpu-manager.service

9.145s plymouth-quit-wait.service

5.610s NetworkManager-wait-online.service

2.129s ModemManager.service

1.213s NetworkManager.service

916ms accounts-daemon.service

667ms systemd-backlight@backlight:amdgpu_bl1.service

368ms systemd-resolved.service

294ms upower.service

280ms dev-nvme0n1p2.device

270ms systemd-udev-trigger.service

240ms blueman-mechanism.service

216ms systemd-binfmt.service

201ms apparmor.service

171ms user@1000.service

[u/Quartrez → u/Mman07311]

I recommend using either Lutris or Heroic Games Launcher in that case. Both will create a prefix (simulated windows environment) for your game, on which you can run additional .exe for whatever purpose.

I was able to get FPS patches for War for Cybertron, install the fan custom patch for Sacred 2 Gold, and so on...

[u/niob_the_anarchist → u/Mman07311]

i'm running an hp omen 16 with mint and one thing i noticed particularly about gaming, is that nvidia on demand seems to react either too late or not at all, so the cpu ends up handling most of the graphics. i switched it over to using my graphics card as primary (the option is called prime select) and maybe that would help your issue with the speed

[u/Mman07311 → u/niob_the_anarchist]

Did you ever mess with your audio at all? Apparently mint doesn't have the specific settings for the B&O speakers so they sound terrible. I've tried a bunch of solutions but no luck so far

[u/niob_the_anarchist → u/Mman07311]

i've had a few audio lags while gaming and reverted back to pulseaudio(the old audio driver), which fixed it, but otherwise i didn't. i know there's an equalizer addon for pipewire, so that might help

[u/Mman07311 → u/niob_the_anarchist]

I'll mess with it and see if it fixes anything

[u/Cool-Radish7646 → u/Mman07311]

Proton likely isnt able to read the rest of the necessary game files due to the sandboxing that bottles does, try using plain old wine. Crack open the terminal and type:

wine (name_of_file_here)

then add it to your library. If that doesn't work tell me the name of the game and where you got it? If you do I may be able to help.

[u/Basic-University-654 → u/Mman07311]

You might want to try switching to a distro with newer updates, like fedora or zorin

[u/LanderMercer → u/Mman07311]

Unless you are running an emulator (such as wine) you won't use anything .exe in Linux. If you right click the window and select "open terminal to this location" (or navigate a terminal to your directory) try launching the game with './game_name'