zine-202409-movingtolinuxmint

## 24/09/20 - Mint installed

I decided to note down my journey of setting up new laptop (Framework 16) with Linux - please excuse me if this “article” starts bit chaotic - hopefully it gets better later on, and hope it helps you decide if moving to Linux is good thing for you or not!

I first tried ubuntu, but Deep Rock Galactic has been taking ages to load up single stage - I had no such problems on Linux Mint

Entire interface is pretty familiar for Windows user like me

I like Software Manager, I like how we can set system settings easily, its all super nice

I first tried Deep Rock Galactic and then Kenshi - both work absolutely fine

I installed Curseforge linux version from their site, and it was no problem to log into my Minecraft account and play modpacks without any issues!

I play with my siblings/friends using Hamachi, to simulate LAN between us, and my Hamaguchi solution didn't work out - maybe it's because I had enabled Firewall? Will have to continue testing tomorrow

Increasing User Interface scale to something like 125% has been glitching out some windows, so I opted for slightly decreased resolution in order to see everything at decent size

## 24/09/21

I woke up, turned on my new big laptop, and 2 realisations hit me:

1) ah, this is linux, this is beginning of new era

2) there's so much to be done yet

My bluetooth mouse is disconnecting and connecting like crazy every time I boot up my laptop - so far only solution to that is to disconnect it and reconnect it again, but I also have USB connector thingie so I might use that

I've set keyboard to Polish (british keyb) and it's working fine for my sometimes polish rants hahah

I've set up Emacs and it's working better than ever - no more messing with WSL!

I'm transferring things from Windows laptop using "Everything" - I 7zip things on my old laptop, then download them on new one, and check checksum if it's all alright

(On linux mint I do this by right clicking in empty space in folder where my file is, open terminal here and type in "sha256sum MyArchiveName.7z" and compare it between systems)

on my old windows I do this through right clicking on my file, then going to 7-zip dropdown menu -> CRC SHA -> SHA-256

I also should change the way I got organised my projects, currently its like:

-Music

--PS1

---Emulator

---Bios

---Disks,Saves,unique things

same with other platforms...

-Games

--PS1

---Emulator

---Bios

---Disks,Saves

same with other platforms...

now I plan to do some unification, and proper separation for easy backup process:

-Emulators

-Bioses

-Music

--PS1

---Disks

---Saves

---UniqueThings

-Games

--PS1

---Disks

---Saves

Today I only organised PS1 folder like this, but I plan to do so for all the apps

F3 in file browser opens dual panel - it's so comfy to use!

All INFU music stuff counts up to 52 gigs - I'm pretty sure that saves only won't even cross 100megs, and there's LOTS of redundant data, like multiple disk images/roms/samples of same things

Next on my chart is Arts folder, this one is pretty light though - only 8 gigs, and that's with compressed audio render files for Corroscope (video oscilloscope generator)

## Wine attempt 1

### First tries, BGB

inside Software Manager typing in "wine" brings up many results, even 2 same Wine apps - upon further inspection one is much more recent, so I tried installing this one

I double-clicked on my 64 bit BGB.exe - Gameboy emulator with separate channel audio recording, and nothing happened. I opened up terminal in that same folder and typed in "wine bgb.exe" and after couple seconds it worked just fine! I tested out recordings and they also sound great! It's just like on Windows!

But I wanted such .exe apps to open when I double-click them, so I right-clicked bgb.exe, clicked on "Open With"->"Other Application" and instead of choosing an app, I typed in "wine" in text box below app selection and pressed "Set as default" - now it works like a charm!

### Gearhead Garage

next app I tried was really old one that almost never works on Windows itself - Gearhead Garage, game where you play as mechanic, and you disassemble cars, fix parts and put them together again (I'm no car fan, but it's a comfy game)

I ran it while having exe assigned to wine, but nothing happened…

I searched online "gearhead garage wine" and found that someone ran it with that command:

wine ghg.exe -mustbehere -hardware

aaand still didn't work! reading more online, someone mentioned running updates first, so I downloaded official updater, ran it normally through wine, and then I used that command above to run gearhead garage, and it was working better than I've ever seen!

I've put together a little script and now whenever I want to run that app with that custom wine command, I just launch it through the script:

#!/usr/bin/sh

wine ghg.exe -mustbehere -hardware

that "#!/usr/bin/sh" line has to be above our command, so linux recognises this script properly!

### Other apps that run

I tried LGPT (Little Piggy Tracker) and it runs absolutely smoothly out of the box!

Then I tried Beepola, 1tracker, Caustic3, Sunvox, PSound

from games I tried on Steam Deep Rock Galactic, Kenshi, Gatekeeper, Chained Together, Dynasty Warriors 8: Extreme Legends, Tabletop Simulator and they all work flawlessly!

### some apps that don't run

Koala Sampler - fails, but seems like there's linux binary out there;

OrgMaker210 - throws "File not accessible" error when trying to load songs - Organya is open source, and someone compiled it on Linux, so it's definitely possible to make it work

EjayTechno2 - also has messed up text, but it plays back things good!

YY-CHR - displays "GetRuntimeHost Wine Mono is not installed" error, but I suppose it's easily fixable;

iamthemightyjungulatorpc - doesn't display text when launched through ordinary wine, but it’s very crusty and unstable music app even on Windows, so that’s not a big deal;

### Mashed:Fully Loaded

I tried running "Mashed: Fully Loaded", so I got myself a CD image of it, and mounted it using AcetoneISO, and ran installer through Wine

Then I tried to launch Mashed itself through terminal with `wine MFL.exe` (launcher causes problems), set up my resolution, and proceed with the popup, but nothing has been happening, I had just black screen

I tried to alt-tab and noticed how there's error window saying:

Could not render source output pin!

hr=0x80040218

I pressed OK button, and then entire Mashed window turned white

I didn't really understand what's happening, so I checked terminal to see if there's any error, and noticed this:

winegstreamer error: decodebin0: Your GStreamer installation is missing a plug-in.

winegstreamer error: decodebin0: ../gst/playback/gstdecodebin2.c(4736): gst_decode_bin_expose (): /GstBin:bin0/GstDecodeBin:decodebin0:

no suitable plugins found:

Missing decoder: MPEG-1 System Stream (video/mpeg, systemstream=(boolean)true, mpegversion=(int)1)

some searching online pointed me to reddit place for winetricks, but that's not been right

Then I stumbled on this wine forum post:

https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=35519

and person mentioned there how we need 32bit plugins, so I installed those:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-libav:i386

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad:i386

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-base:i386

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-good:i386

and ran `wine MFL.exe` in terminal once again - and it all worked smoothly!

what's pretty weird, is that even though I associated exe files with `wine` command, MFL.exe only worked if I started it through terminal with that command

DISCLAIMER: all following wine tests might be affected by me installing in 32bit plugins above, so keep that in mind

### More Wine Tests

Installing Music 2002 - Slinky Edition makes it run smoothly;

XOP, old obscure shmup also works nicely;

My friend asked me to run Superfighters Deluxe, as it had problems:

I tried running it through Steam, and Play button did show that app tried to start, but failed silently it seems

I looked up anything about running SFD on Linux, and found this guide:

https://www.mythologicinteractiveforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4142

I right-clicked Superfighters Deluxe on my steam library, went to Manage->Browse Local Files, and tried running Superfighters Deluxe.exe from terminal, like I ususally did, and error did show I don't have Mono installed

Looking up some answers on this, I found that this is currently best solution?

https://wiki.winehq.org/FrameworkMono

or

https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Wine-Mono

I downloaded msi version, and tried installing it through `wine uninstaller`, but nothing happened - then I tried through `wine` in terminal, and also nothing showing up? weird!

I tried running `wine uninstaller` again to see if it got installed, and it did!

I tried running SFD again, but some another error showed up, so I proceed with instructions and ran this command:

env WINEPREFIX=~/.steam/debian-installation/steamapps/compatdata/855860/pfx winetricks dotnet45

And game when launched through Steam, as noticed in the guide it starts with an error, and then the game launches, and is fully playable!

DISCLAIMER: all following wine tests might be further affected by me installing in dotnet45 and Mono above, so keep that in mind

## 24/09/22 - Finding other alternatives

Paint.net = Photopea (web-browser replacement) does decent job, but workflow is different so I need to get used to it - it's quite responsive, so that's a big plus!

Voidtools Everything = First I tried SearchMonkey but it's lil weird - I tried searching 'mp3', and it got bit unresponsive, and when I tried opening the folder of one of those files up, it threw an error saying I need to set default apps for such actions - silly!

Then I tried FSearch - it prompted me to first do a database, so yeah sure I selected entire /home/infu folder, and that's what I was looking for, it's instant, performs well and it all works straight out of the box!

ShareX = this one is bit of a difficult one:

GPU Screen Recorder seems to work really really well, but sometimes it doesn't capture my keys from behind an app, but I guess if I change it from Shift+CapsLock to something like Shift+F3 then it's gonna be alright - especially if I can prepare myself for those screen recording times,

For screenshotting, so far I'm pretty good with default screenshotting capabilities provided by Linux Mint, with one difference is when I'm taking a screenshot, screen moves

Foobar2000 = Audacious seems to work just fine, and supports many many different codecs/formats out of the box!

Whatsapp = it doesn't seem like there's native desktop app, but I settled for Zapzap - maybe I cannot pick up call from it, but I can record message just fine

Daemon Tools = I mentioned previously that for Mashed: Fully Loaded I used AcetoneISO as replacement

a lot of tools were so common that I had no problem finding linux alternative, like
HxD = ImHex;

SpaceSniffer = built-in Disk Usage Analyser;

Media Player Classic = mpv media player;

or most of them were FOSS and cross-platform anyway:(Duckstation, mgba, Emacs*, Audacity, Discord)

### from other Steam games:

Duck Game = works fine out of the box, but I tested only one stage in challenge mode

Samurai Gunn 2 = didn't work first time I turned it on? but when I opened it up again, it was fine, so I tested out few stages in single-player campaign mode

Madness = Project Nexus = works fine out of the box, tested only "Slaughter Time(tm)" in Arena mode on my existing save

Crawl = works fine out of the box, but I tested only 1st stage versus 3 bots

## 24/09/23 - Additional info, conclusions

This laptop I got is Framework 16, with extra GPU unit. Linux Mint is not officially supported OS on it, but it works exceptionally well, and when it shows something worrying, it usually goes away after a restart (once my touchpad stopped working, so I restarted my lappy and it was working again)

I received it on Friday evening, and spent almost whole 2 next days I had off to set it up to my likings (I was off work so it's fine, and most of that time was spent on happy explorations and experimenting rather than bashing my head into wall till things will work)

As previous longtime Windows user (From XP, to Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11), I have to say this OS switching experience was much much better than I could ever expect - there was almost none terminal tweaking I was worried about, all information I needed is perfectly findable online

Granted, I got some Linux experience from previously messing with Termux on my phones (first as a curiousity hobby project related to music), having WSL with various systems on it, learning bash for a while, made me very confident to try, but I didn't use much of those skills here except for creating a script to launch an app, and being confident to try out terminal (even though all terminal work was very simple and clearly instructed online

Would I recommend anyone to switch to Linux Mint? I want to say yes, especially if most of your apps are FOSS cross platform ones - Windows compatibility tends to be better than on Windows itself, but not without some research... but hey, ain't it tricky to sometimes get things to work on Windows?

I certainly feel better morality wise, being privacy-respected by my OS, not worrying about update-breaking things, having more control over my system regarding how I wanna personalise it!

*Please don't get into Emacs, try NeoVim instead (I heard that it works well with Kitty terminal) , launch it through terminal and live long happy life

I already got into Emacs during pandemic times, and took me over a month to really understand it, month to configure it to my obsessive likings, and another month to deal with it's crustiness, and I'm only staying with it because now I understand it (so basically sunk cost fallacy)