As others have been saying Mint can be used for gaming. Older packages may make playing online more difficult though for sure. Using the Steam Flatpak will probably resolve this but older kernel versions likely leave performance on the table as well.

However, I do think we should look at Mint a bit differently. Mint and the Cinnamon desktop isn’t really a replacement for Windows 10. It should be viewed as more of a replacement for Windows 7. Keep in mind I am not nearly as familiar with Mint/Cinnamon as I am with GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and even Pantheon.

I installed Linux Mint for my grandfather on an old Lenovo laptop where the Win7 install on his HDD was corrupted. Instead of bothering to get a Win7 installer I just put Mint on there to see how it would do. Immediately it felt reminiscent to me of XP and 7. For users with more Windows experience, but don’t want to deal with Microsoft, I think Mint should be their go to. I was impressed with the GUI tools available. It was the first time in years where I didn’t feel the need to open the terminal.

Edit: punctuation

My assumption isn’t that Proton/WINE is perfect, though it is pretty good. I say lie within reason because you could reasonably guess what bugs are reproducible in Windows. In my situation I could tell it was a bug in Windows as well before I had it confirmed later on simply due to the error message in-game. If you run the game via terminal a WINE bug should appear as such.

What was the issue? Was it related to anti-cheat or something?

I would recommend in the future to people here that if they are not dealing with an anti-cheat problem they should just lie about playing on Steam Deck or Linux in general.

From what I understand the whole point of Proton/WINE is that they translate Windows syscalls to Linux ones. It translates the program being run with Proton/WINE into stuff that the Linux system understands. There is a good chance that issues that pop up when running a game in WINE are also popping up on Windows itself.

Example: I had an issue with the Halo Master Chief Collection. After an update there was some problem with a Win64.exe preventing EAC from working. I tried looking up the error message, didn’t get anywhere. I submit a ticket and say that I am using the Steam Deck. Support tells me they don’t officially support the Steam Deck and closes the ticket.

I ended up refining my search more and found that this Win64.exe issue also happens on Windows and that a full reinstall is the solution. I did that and everything started working again.

Just lie to them. Lie within reason but just lie. Say you are running Windows 10 (Proton/WINE creates a Windows filesystem for each prefix), and say you are running some variety of Ryzen mini-PC.

I thought I would hate the Touch Bar when I bought the M1 MacBook Pro but I have ended up kinda liking it. I wouldn’t say I love it. I think function keys are better for certain tasks, but the Touch Bar has some utility for sure.

Since applications can include the Touch Bar they can move some functionality down there. Things like switch tabs in Safari, turning on and off hidden files in Finder, and of course scrubbing through audio/video. I especially like how IINA uses the Touch Bar pulling frames from the video file makes the scrubbing area into a colourful representation of the video. I wish the Touch Bar was used a bit more actually. I find it weird that, and maybe this can be changed in Settings, you can’t get granular control of volume or screen brightness with the Touch Bar. I think if you hold Option or Control, or both, you can get more fine tuned changes. I just think that should be the default for using the Touch Bar.

I’m pretty sure that they are not doing the 27" iMac anymore so that if people want a bigger screen, and want to stick with Apple products, they have to shell out for the Studio Display. If they get the Studio Display then they have to get a Mac Mini or a MacBook instead of just the iMac.