Switch to Linux Mint

[Harrison]

I've been playing around a bit more with Linux Mint. I use the Heroic Games Launcher on my Steam Deck to load my GOG library to run the games in Linux. You can also add your Epic and Amazon Luna accounts so it adds all your games from all 3 into a single library. It then uses Proton and Wine to run the PC games in Linux. Works really well for none Steam games. You can also manually add games to it, just as you can in Steam.

Anyway I was going through a load of old physical PC games I still have and want to downsize and sell all the ones I also have as online digital versions. I was sure I had quite a few in my old EA Origin library but I hadn't logged into that in years. I had a laptop running with Mint installed on it and wondered if it was possible to even access the EA Origin library on Linux. I looked but apparently the Origin app was ended last year and replaced with the EA App, which happens to be Windows only. Quick Google and you can use Heroic Games Launcher to run it and access your EA games library.

So I found a quick guide to getting it working and it wasn't too complicated. Basically similar to manually adding a game to Heroic. Download the Installer, open Heroic and select Add game. Give the new entry a name and then navigate to the installer and run it. This didn't quite work fully and produced an error after an update. But I continued to the end of the guide, tried to run the EA App and got an error. The next bit of the guide was to fix such issues. Just had to go into the settings for the Heroic game entry and rerun the installer. This time it installed without an issue and the login page appeared.

So now I'm running the EA App in Linux, logged into my EA account and looking through the games I own on there. Far more than I remembered which is nice. The whole C&C collection, all the Battlefield games, all the Deadspace, Dragon age and Crisis games. And loads more. About the only games I remembered being in there were Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2.

So anyway, thats good that it worked. Another day I'm going to see if I can get the actual games to run from the EA App.

Why bother? Why not just start up one of my Windows systems? It's fun getting such things working and knowing it wasn't in Windows. I really do hate it these days and anything I can do in Linux instead is a big bonus.

[Tiago]

Last time i try linux, was like 15 years ago, cant rebember what linux was but i try 3 or 4.
I remeber i was able to install applications, run any type of software without any command line.
Even windows office apps. Major downside was games, back then it qas difficult to run demanding games.
Buy today steam as example have a lot of games for linux.
The only reason i still use windows is because i always buy laptops and the hardware i want always came with windows. And once again games.

[Harrison]

Linux has come a long way in the last 15 years. The difference now is you don't need Linux specific version of games to play them. Nearly all Windows games in Steam will now work perfectly in Linux and for older games actually better. This is thanks to something called Proton. Based on the older Wine (which is used to run Windows software in Linux). Valve developed this into Proton for the Steam Deck. This allows Steam OS on the handheld to run a large percentage of the Steam library's games. The other Heroic Game Launcher I mentioned above also uses the same Proton to make games run.

You wouldn't even know you were not running a native Linux game or that you were not in Windows.

For older games on Steam a lot of them have trouble installing or running in Windows. Especially games made before 2010. But it seems because on Linux you are using Proton to make the games run this issue doesn't exist as much. On my Steam Deck and in Steam on Linux Mint I've tested quite a few older games in the last couple of years and nearly every game just works. So actually to play older more retro PC games that came out when Win98, 2000 or XP were around it is a far easier solution. Trying to get some of these older games to run on Windows 10/11 can sometimes be hard as you need fan community patches or updated files.

I've also been going though my physical games and a lot of the older ones rely on "Games for Windows". Remember that? That doesn't exist any more so trying to install from the original physical media and run them they look for GFW and fail. Instead using online versions in Linux bypasses this issue. I've just been testing an old Space game that's now that well known, called "Tachyon The Fringe". It's available on Steam at the moment for just ?1.74 so worth a look. And it worked perfectly installing it from Steam. Even automatically let me use an Xbox 360 controller I have joined to this Linux Mint PC.

Linux Mint is the best Linux distro to try if you are coming from Windows. You can setup a live USB stick and boot the PC from it to test out Mint without even needing to install it.

[Tiago]

Didnt know that game stuff was not an issue anymore. That is great. One less reason not to use linux.

[Harrison]

Obviously there will be some games that still don't work, just as there are quite a few that don't easily work in Windows 11. But I've only discovered a few I couldn't get working at all. The main ones that can't be played in Linux are current online multiplayer games that use Anti-cheat systems. This is because they directly access the Os's Kernel and this isn't allowed in Linux because it's a major security risk.

But expect some of those to alter how they are doing things when the Valve Steam Machine ships later this year.