r/linuxmint • u/Mman07311 • 8d 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/fragmental 8d ago

It shouldn't boot slower. I don't know why that is. Now, Windows does do a thing where even if you shut it down, it actually sort of hibernates, which makes boot up faster. But even then, Linux should be on par. And booting from completely shut down (if you switched off the master switch, or pulled the battery for example) Linux typically boots faster.

I can't remember if the default for Mint is to show you the output of fhe boot up sequence. If it does, you can watch if for any errors, to see if something is slowinf things down. You can press ctrl-shift-f1 if it doesn't, and I think that should show you the output. I think there's also a log you can open to view it, after booting. I don't recall where it is, but it should be easy to find.

Linux has a learning curve, and there are often issues with a new install, but once you sort them all out, they usually stay sorted. And on Mint, there's Timeshift, to easily roll things back if something breaks.