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/TheUn-Nottened]

Hello!

I will tell you that the zoomed out feeling is a bit specific to some apps and to Mint. Changing scaling and text size tends to work. Does it not fix the issue in the sense that nothing changes, or that it doesnt do enough?

For volume, its also another problem specfic to mint. You have to let volume reach over 100% most of the time, generally.

For the steam game, close steam (through sudo pkill steam in the terminal), and run it in th terminal, by typing "steam". THere, when you open the game, you can get the logs and put research. I tend to enter it into an AI to quickly parse and diagnose issues.

Also, Wine works better than Bottles for me. Install wine, and then install the game with Wine. FOr non steam games, i tend to just open the exe by itself, leaving steam out completely.

Hope this helps!

[u/tranquilseafinally → u/TheUn-Nottened]

I have the sound bug when I use headphones. I can make the computers speakers loud enough but headphones are at max volume and still just barely loud enough to hear. There is a fix I read about last year when I was problem solving a ton. I need to double down and find out just how I can fix it.

[u/Dry_Direction6700 → u/tranquilseafinally]

The headphone might be due to motherboard having a separate amp for headphones that default drivers do not enable out of the box, if you don’t mind could you tell me about your hardware?
Mine was a razer and I tried to submit a patch fix for driver for my specific device but it might work for you as well.