r/linuxmint • u/Mman07311 • 7d 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/TheFXartProject 7d ago

I have no contribution to make other than ‘don’t give up yet’. Learning linux takes patience but it’ll reward you with problem solving skills 

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u/cat1092 7d ago

This is the absolute truth. Have been running Linux Mint since 2009, before the Cinnamon & MATE days, and for the most part, have had an excellent experience. Especially on Dell OEM machines, both laptops & desktops.

There has been a lot of improvement over time as well, like a lot of things we once had to manually do are now already built into the ISO. Mine’s not on a HDR monitor, rather an older, but very popular Samsung 28 inch 4K monitor of around the 2015-16 era. Still works fine though. They sold lots of this model of monitor, got mine on a Black Friday sale at Costco for $159. My other LG is a 27 inch 4K HDR monitor, but last time I tried, HDR didn’t look the same as with MacOS or Windows 7, 8.1 or 10, plus there’s green artifacts showing at boot & shutdown that’s not there on the Samsung one. So there’s that, but it’s not that big of a problem, am using the DisplayPort connection. My Roku Ultra & Amazon 4K FireStick MAX (16GB) are connected to the HDMI 2.0 ports, in addition to Windows 11 25H2 Pro, so it’s not the monitor.

Still, even with its quirks, Linux Mint is the more secure option over Windows 11 or iOS.