Windows Registry

I had recurring issues with registering Bluetooth devices, where they would pair initially but refuse to connect again after a reboot. I couldn’t remove the device from saved connections, and registry edits wouldn’t save or persist. I’d have to completely uninstall the driver, change the registry, and reinstall the drivers, with restarts between each step, to get it to work for 1-2 days.

Now, having to troubleshoot isn’t what turned me away from Windows to Linux. I knew I would run into that plenty on Linux as well, but I came to hate the registry. If I was going to have to go through all this trouble to get things to work, I might as well do it on a system I had more control over. I had worked with different distros on VMs and dual booting before, so when I built a new system, I just skipped Windows entirely.

Ominous blimp noises approaching from the distance

Dude, just have to say, your comments are so informative, helpful, and tailored to the individual’s question or situation. Thank you for being a part of this community! Your example makes the place better for everyone.

It wouldn’t be the most ideal, but you can dual-boot with an external drive. There are external SSDs that are meant for running programs/games off of them, and would look into those for best performance.

Alternatively, if you have plenty of unused storage on the laptop you can partition some of that for use, but a second drive is usually preferred.

Get a cheap 1-2 tb drive and start dual-booting with whatever system you’re running now. This way you can play around with different distros while retaining your current settup to fall back on!

In theory you should be able to do that! I think Proton has some issues with NTFS, mostly when installing or updating, but with a little research and tweaking you should be able to get it to run smoothly. I opted to keep them fully separate and just installed certain games twice, but am also using this as a test run before diving into full daily driver Linux when I build a new system in the spring, so longevity of my storage drives wasn’t a concern.

Looks like there are a few issues with BG3, but will probably be smoothed with time.

At least according to ProtonDB

Definitely worth keeping access to a Windows machine if able, but doesn’t seem like it’s impossible without.

I just did this with my desktop pc when I added a second drive for additional storage. Instead of using it as additional storage for windows like I initially intended, I decided to dual boot with Mint on the second drive.

So far, I haven’t had any issue with gaming on Mint, either! Granted, most of the games I play are through Steam and either work with Proton or are native Linux to begin with. I did install a few games with Lutris, though, and works fine so far. Sea of Thieves, Astroneer, Slay the Spire, Deep Rock Galactic, are all working out of the box.

Only thing I haven’t attempted yet are multiplayer games with active anti-cheat, like LoL or CS:2. If those are the sorts of games you regularly play, you’ll probably be better off in the Windows partition/drive, but have fun experimenting in Linux!