Seconding Heroic. Lutris confused me too but I was able to connect Epic and GOG to Heroic.

Also, when you’re not using steam remote play Sunshine/Moonlight works wonders for remote streaming.

So awesome to read a happy story!

The biggest thing about Linux, and the main hurdle for most users, is trial and error with different OSes.

It’s as personal as clothing taste; from size to material and color. What will fit on your body, what materials you can tolerate and what you like style wise are akin to what kernel you pick, your drivers and your desktop environment.

For some, a classic T-shirt and jeans work great out-of-box and some may need hypoallergenic materials and a different cut. And that’s all okay! It’s also the beauty of Unix/FOSS.

I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at here.

EndeavourOS represent! 🪐🚀 Much easier install plus some pretty sick wallpapers, all without being hostile to users like Windows is some proprietary operating systems.

Arch

I had to look that up to fully understand it.

It didn’t even occur to me that the recursive naming was a math or logic thing. I’m just happy to have freeware/copyleft/etc licensing because fuck corporations ¯\(ツ)/¯

The anarchist in me wants to agree with you but my brain is having a hard time parsing what you’re saying.

If you’re a “well acktchually” type of nerd who adores exceedingly granular control over things like choosing from twelve different versions of a driver via a command text box, then Arch is for you.

I say this as a user of an Arch-based OS; EndeavourOS is probably the closest to user-friendly as Arch gets but it still requires some nitty-gritty. Don’t worry too much about which choices you pick during installation though since it doesn’t really matter as much as it pretends to.

KDE Plasma is a desktop style close to that of windows that Arch usually defaults to, where Ubuntu’s typical desktop style is closer to Mac.

That said, once you get past the pain in the ass hurdle of figuring out your big basics in the command line, installing packages (programs/apps) is pretty easy. You can also use something called Flatpak which is like an App Store and usually easier for installing stuff.

This started out as a joke but turned into an essay. Thanks for bearing with me.

Oh god I’m so sorry. I haven’t willingly touched my Win11 boot in probably close to a year so I didn’t realize things were that bad.

I totally forgot about explorer just s****ing the bed randomly in 7 lmao.

XP was bloated to hell and back, and yeah 10 was okay overall but the “kiddie gloves” hostility towards users sucked, especially hiding away control panel and trying to get rid of it altogether in 11 is what pushed me to Linux.

I’m sorry to hear you’ve had so much trouble with Linux. I understand the frustration that comes with Unix based OSes especially after being a heavy Windows user for years.

I did a bit of searching on your profile and saw you’re dual-booting with Windows on the same hard drive. I personally had issues with trying to set that up myself (Windows is a finicky, jealous b****). My own solution was installing my distro of choice onto a separate hard drive - if you can eventually do that I recommend it.

I know you’re getting a lot of flak for your post but it’s good to see honest opinions from people who genuinely want to try Linux but aren’t necessarily the same level of hyper-nerd as the typical demographic here.

Having information from a wider opinion pool will help in understanding how to get Linux to more of the population - but that’s a side tangent.

It’s encouraging to see that you are still open to trying in the future and taking a break from it can help you clear your head and come back with fresher eyes.

Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with NVIDIA drivers, and probably a similar amount of troubleshooting as Mint but I’ve found EndeavourOS to be friendlier to a middle-upper tech/gamer use case. Mint, for me, seemed cold and “office”-y and didn’t work well for me as I don’t only use my browser and word processor.

That said, distros are an almost ridiculously personal choice and part of that is trial and error. If you haven’t gotten the chance I recommend test driving a couple other distros in an Oracle VM (for user-friendliness) so you can decide what you like the feel of before committing to an install again, if and when you feel ready.

Good luck and godspeed until then.

I don’t have any advice for this exact problem but if it’s any consolation Firefox has randomly gotten offended at my video drivers and bricked my build. Multiple times. I use Librewolf when I can now.

That is hilarious though, sending frustrated IT vibes your way in both empathy and hopes it’ll help you reach the critical mass of superstition for the problem to fix itself before you have to threaten to take a hammer to it.

As an EndeavourOS user I say yes. Make it like a fun custom name tag!