I’m a regular user of Linux systems but apart from a couple of test Ubuntu installs many years ago they’ve always been containers or VMs with no DE which I can throw away when I break them. The Steam Deck showcasing how far Wine/Proton has come combined with Windows being Windows has given me the push; I’ve made a Mint live USB and it’s running beautifully on my desktop. I come to you, the masters, with questions before I hit install:
- What do you recommend I do about disk partitions? I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions? Do I need separate partitions for data and OS? Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?
- Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?
- Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?
- Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate? Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?
- Any other pearls of wisdom? How do I keep everything tidy? Any warnings about what not to do? Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?
I recommend separate EFI partitions while dual booting, I haven’t seem issues with my separate EFI partition setup yet.
If Mint provides Btrfs filesystem I personally recommend looking into timeshift (snapshot software that can be setup to automatically snapshot your computer).
According to Linux Mint forum, you need to choose an option in “Advanced features” while going through installer, that seems straight forward
Don’t have experience with this but I can tell you: While rclone supports bi-directional sync, you need some setup for make it run periodically.
In the end you have to give trust to someone, I think it’s fair to say if you already choose Mint you probably trust whatever options comes with Mint more than 3rd party options (but is it theoretically possible that backdoored program exists in Mint repository? of course yes).
Important things about dual booting:
Configure your Windows to use UTC time https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_time#UTC_in_Microsoft_Windows
Disable “Fast startup” in Windows (can possibly cause hardware issues if not disabled and it really doesn’t improve things in computers with SSD)
Very key points! Some distros will also accommodate window’s default timekeeping if a win install is detected, and also need to be changed retroactively to prevent wonky behaviour with DST