uninstall grub

You might want to google a complete guide. “how to remove grub”, “restore windows bootmanager” or something like this. Things are a bit different depending on your setup (uefi, do you want do clean the efi partition, do you need help deleting the other partitions…)

i have used the old way before:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

but google it yourself. it isn’t difficult and my windows knowledge is a bit rusty.

Linux, Mint at least, feels incomplete, sort of like a tech demo

I can tell you, this feeling won’t go away. I have the same feeling with windows or macos. You just had one glimpse at something that looked strange to your eyes and you then chose to believe in your prejudices. This is not Mint’s fault. Like I use windows and ask myself how people work with that. Well, gaming and updating my old TomTom gps is kind of okay, that’s what i use windows for. But how do you for example rename 350 photos from your camera after you found out you forgot to set the date and now all filenames are off (or from 1970)? How do you develop stuff? Do you really download gigabytes of some colourful IDE from the internet just to execute a simple ‘make’ command? How do you set up a webserver for your aunt’s etsy shop and install php and a database?

You’re alright not wanting to try linux or not liking it. But to give it a chance, you need to open up the package manager and see it has like 10.000s of packages of different software waiting for you. After first installation it’s kind of bare. You’re right. Thats intentional to make it slim, fast and customizable.

HDDs are slow

Put your system on SSD together with things you need available, and your other data that won’t fit gets stored on the HDD. That way your computer is fast and the data that isn’t accessed that often (or gets cached anyways) is stored on the cheap additional storage.

concept of having to compile something // simply download an installer

I’m sorry. You’re applying windows concepts to something where they do not apply, and this is making you fail. People from the linux community dedicate their time to make most of the software available in the package manager. Tailor it to work well with the rest of Mint etc… 99% of everyday software is available like this. This is your installer! If you chose to circumvent this, download random stuff from the internet and try to compile it yourself… You’re allowed to do it, but you’re on your own. It’s not an iPhone where there’s no alternative to the store. But… You actively chose to do something difficult, that beginners aren’t supposed to do and it’s not how it’s supposed to work. I use linux exclusively every day and also develop stuff with it. I rarely compile or download something myself.

future once Windows has devolved to the point of being garbage

There won’t be such a point in time. They feed you the changes in very small steps that are barely noticable. It’s like with that mean story with the frog and the boiling water.

(With that said… We’re all aware you’re posting this on the linux community and opinions might be a bit … biased … )

Why do you need to uninstall it? You can boot Windows through Grub, so you could just set GRUB to have a short timeout and have Windows be the default option. Then if you ever want to go back to Linux it’ll be really easy.

As for your issues with finding programs:

Most stuff for Linux Mint is available to download as a .deb file, which is just an installer, btw, so the exact same thing you’re used to on Windows with a .msi file or .exe that installs the program. Much of the time you can add a PPA for any software you want and Mint will keep it updated just like the apps from the built-in app store. You can also install Flatpak apps from flathub.org or from various projects’ Github pages or you can download and run AppImage apps which don’t need to be installed at all.

Generally if it seems like you need to compile something on Mint, you should see if there’s a version for Ubuntu or a Flatpak. Mint 21 is based on Ubuntu 22.04 and can run stuff built for it. Flatpaks work on any Linux distro because they kinda run in their own little sandbox.

The concept of having to compile something yourself is basically foreign to me

There’s no need to, what software do you need that you can’t find on Mint repositories?

having to basically rely on a built-in app database/store to easily install apps… Kinda stinks to me, and not being able to simply download an installer from a website and having the program, whatever program, up and running reliably within a minute, the concept seems ridiculous

Having an app repository is way more secure than downloading software from random websites, it’s also way faster.

But it’s fine if you don’t like it, each person has its own preferences.

As the Linux slogan used to be a few years back, “it’s about choice”. I get very much the same feeling you decribe when I have to do anything in windows. Having to hunt for software on the web, shady sites posing as legitimate download sources… Having a “built-in app database” is great, as long as you’re free to add software from other places, or extend the database itself if you feel like it. Many of the software we take for granted in Linux is hard to find, expensive and/or shady in Windows. It’s really up to what you’re used to, and there’s no shame in trying an alternate system and not liking it.

Anyway, to answer your question.

You say “I can’t boot from it directly anymore, but only by going through GRUB first”. I’m assuming that simply means GRUB appears when booting, and you simply haven’t tried booting windows standalone.

I’m assuming your computer is reasonably recent and uses EFI as a boot system.

• In EFI, there is a special partition at the beginning of the drive, which contains the bootloaders for all systems.
• Since you have Linux and Windows installed, you should have 2 bootloaders there: GRUB and the Windows bootloader
• The BIOS in your system must have a menu somewhere to choose which one to boot.
• Go into the BIOS on system startup, look for the boot order, and you should see both bootloaders, change the priority so the Windows bootloader goes first, reboot and you’re done.
• Now you can remove the Linux partitions using your favourite partition management software.

I haven’t been dual booting for some time now but I think this should help you put Windows on the menu in GRUB.

Linux, Mint at least, feels incomplete, sort of like a tech demo, with extremely limited support for anything that wasn’t directly intended by the developers. The concept of having to compile something yourself is basically foreign to me

Usually Linux installation is only the the base system (in case of Mint much more than that, since it installs X/Wayland and a DM by default) because there’s no point in installing everything. Packages of a distro offer much more than Windows. The idea is that after you have your system up, you can install the software you want.
In Mint and being new, I think you shouldn’t need to compile anything.
Package manager is the support you are looking for

having to basically rely on a built-in app database/store to easily install apps… Kinda stinks to me, and not being able to simply download an installer from a website

Thing is, this is not a store. This is not a place that random people put stuff. Distro package manager is the place where people that maintain the distribution (compile things for you in a way that will work with libraries from the other packages in the repo) put the packages and define what needs what.
Interesting part is that I feel exactly the other way round. If package comes from the repo, then this is something official. If I’m looking for ssh client, I type a package manager search for ssh and I know that packages downloaded this way should just work. While in Windows I always have a small panic attack that I’m downloading something shady when putty page has an address like it has