I have been daily driving Linux for over two years now and I have switched distros many times. So, when my friend bought a new laptop, I convinced him to install Linux Mint on it. I asked him if he wanted to dual boot, he said no because it would fill up all his storage. We installed Linux Mint. The other day, he wanted to play FIFA 17 on his computer. After 5 whole hours of troubleshooting we were able to get FIFA running smoothly with some issues. Next, he wanted to play Roblox. I guided him through the process of installing Waydroid and libhoudini, only to discover that Roblox would run at 10 FPS. With Minecraft, it wasn’t any better. It took us 1 hour to get it working (not skill issue, he wanted to play cracked through Prism Launcher). Now, he wants to go back to Windows 10. I have already told him about dual boot, but he has only 256GB of storage and he wants to play a lot of games. What should I do? Install Windows to his laptop, install some other Linux distro, or try to convince him more about dual boot? Thanks in advance and sorry for the essay.
UPDATE: Of course I will help him install Windows on his computer if he wants so, I don’t want to force him to use Linux after all. I just wanted him to give it a try, and maybe daily drive it, if he can.
EDIT: Because for some reason it was misunderstood, let me clarify it here. Roblox ran with poor performance on Waydroid, not Minecraft. I just said that the installation of Prism Launcher cracked was difficult. After that, Minecraft ran smoothly without any problems.
Unfortunately you chose the wrong distro for your friend - Linux Mint isn’t good for gaming - it uses an outdated kernel/drivers/other packages, which means you’ll be missing out on all the performance improvements (and fixes) found in more up-to-date distros. Gaming on Linux is a very fast moving target, the landscape is changing at a rapid pace thanks to the development efforts of Valve and the community. So for gaming, you’d generally want to be on the latest kernel+mesa+wine stack.
Also, as you’ve experienced, on Mint you’d have to manually install things like Waydroid and other gaming software, which can be a PITA for newbies.
So instead, I’d highly recommend a gaming-oriented distro such as Nobara or Bazzite. Personally, I’m a big fan of Bazzite - it has everything you’d need for gaming out-of-the-box, and you can even get a console/Steam Deck-like experience, if you install the -deck variant. Also, because it’s an immutable distro with atomic updates, it has a very low chance of breaking, and in the rare ocassion that an update has some issues - you can just select the previous image from the boot menu. So this would be pretty ideal for someone who’s new to Linux, likes to game, and just wants stuff to work.
In saying that, getting games to run in Linux can be tricky sometimes, depending on the game. The general rule of thumb is: try running the game using Proton-GE, and if that fails, check Proton DB for any fixes/tweaks needed for that game - with this, you would never again have to spend hours on troubleshooting, unless you’re playing some niche game that no one has tested before.
I really wish people stopped recommending mint for any purpose other than reviving a 20 Yr old laptop into a chromebook.
The problem is not that games don’t run smoothly. The problem is that games don’t run at all or require major effort to run without issues. Will installing that distro fix the complicated installation of Prism Launcher cracked? I don’t think so. But I agree with you for the fact that I chose the wrong distro. I wanted something easy for beginners.
The problem is that games don’t run at all or require major effort to run without issues.
A major cause for that is the distro - when it comes to gaming, the distro makes a huge difference as I outlined previously. The second major cause is the flavor of Wine you chose (Proton-GE is the best, not sure what you used). The third major cause is checking whether or not the games are even compatible in the first place (via ProtonDB, Reddit etc) - you should do this BEFORE you recommend Linux to a gamer.
In saying all that, I’ve no idea about pirated stuff though, you’re on your own on that one - Valve and the Wine developers obviously don’t test against pirated copies, and you won’t get much support from the community either.
Bazzite also solves this, sometimes.
But you cant change if Roblox etc actively block Linux compatibility
In the case that mint is the problem perhaps a different distro that is still stable and has a large user base would be good as it makes it easier to get support. I think that’s also why those distros aren’t recommended to newbies. I started with Ubuntu which worked fine. I think I could’ve started with most gnome/KDE distros though if they were similarly stable (preferably more). I think having the settings available in a gui was important for my first time.
