I put Mint Cinnamon on an older laptop just this past weekend and had a lot of fun with it. Are there any migration tips for my main Windows machine? I was thinking of going with Bazzite since it's my gaming box. What about saved game data and whatnot? I was reading about Putty and SSH ing over to the laptop, but I'm not sure what a good strategy is for my desktop.
this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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i'd recommend getting a new SSD and installing Linux on that, then you can read your windows drive from Linux and copy over the files you need
Game files can be copied over the same way (obvs to different directories)
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I actually just moved my gaming PC from Win11 to Mint Cinnamon 2 weeks ago. There was some driver fuckery (I have an Nvidia card) that made things a bit wonky but everything worked out after some adjustments.
Do you mostly game through steam? Do you install your games on a separate drive?
Steam makes the transition the easiest. All of my games "just worked" with Steam. There were a few modifications required to ensure stability with the games settings but it was mostly smooth sailing for me.
I just used thumb drives to pull all my games save files to and an external drive to back up all my installed games so I wouldn't have to re download them. Save game files are usually pretty small so all of the ones I had backed up on a single thumb drive and Steam and Linux creates a faux Windows folder system for each game and you just reinsert the save games in those folder structures at the correct spot.
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I screwed up so bad. I bought a laptop to trial different Linux distros and also because my old one is 12yo now and has its own problems. However, the manufacturer ONLY provides Windows support drivers, so the keyboard won't work without a kernel level patch and I am not a kernel-patch level guy yet
wtf how does a laptop need drivers to use the keyboard? i thought they just used usb/ps2, that is truly fucked
Right? It's some firmware level issue, but I haven't looked deeper into it recently because I got frustrated with a couple failed patch attempts. I guess you have to include the laptop model explicitly or it doesn't know to look for it
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I really need to move my PC over to Mint, but change makes me deeply uncomfortable :(
lil bruh just move to mint already u gon be fine 💔
but osrs mint is widely regarded as best for transitioning to different OS. All the shit you did on win has alts on mint/ubuntu
I'm currently using Win10 IOT LTSC on my main gaming rig, and Mint on my laptop to get used to the environment (started 2 years ago). It's a great way to both get used to the new ecosystem, and have a fallback cushion if some software or scenario doesn't work properly.
Take it slow. Install a VM with Mint. Play around with it. Get familiar. Move your regular usage over to it gradually. Make the jump when you are ready. It's perfectly OK to have reservations about a big change like that. But you don't have to do it all in one go.
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Ubuntu in the corner, crying.
Linux users: "Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself!"
Ubuntu is a linux distro. I dont get the joke you're trying to make.
Ubuntu has been making quite a few missteps lately that have cost it a lot of popularity.
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