Believe me George I had to screw up my courage plenty before tackling Linux!

When you've made computing in one form or another an important part of your life it's no easy thing to give up all you know for something new.

Don't really matter that's it might be better for you!
The "New" is seldom beautiful!
It's fraught with hidden and unknown dangers...
and worst of all there's all that tedious new stuff you just have to learn, even with all the help in the world, largely on your own.

I never have any trouble being patient with others when it comes to adoption Mint.
It's a huge undertaking for the first time or inexperienced user.

We are not use to desktop destro's that actually cut though so much of the "Linuxese" and eliminate many of the more necessary yet harder tasks for the newbie. Can we all say :
Drivers!? LOL

What I'm trying to say is that to adopt a new OS is an act both of faith and of courage and seldom have these two things been so rewarding as as they are for the mint adopter.":O}
I see getting folks to try Mint as among the best things I've done on-line

Besides Boo was an excellent resource and I couldn't see any reason to waste him on Fedora!
I was done with Fedora and it was about time for Boo to be done with it to! ":O}

Since that time Boo has solved many a problem for me..I think of Boo as my Contribution to mint! ":O}

He he, still using Fedora on my home server.
I will always have a place in my heart for Fedora. Its not best for Gaming, but it does great for the server here and there. At least the experience has given me comfort in CentOS and Redhat

Once I have subverted a person and seduced them into a Mint suit,
I consider it a matter of honor to allow them to Taylor it to their own needs without interference from me.

Fedroa...sigh... we all have that one love that somehow never blossomed as we hoped it would...
But what can I really say...
Fedora chose purity and dedication to a ridiculous "Non-proprietary" standard...over me!

I say ridiculous because in this case I'm thinking...Drivers of course!
How else can a video card exist without proprietary software?
We've all see how well the open source drivers have done...not!
Why not refuse to use my main board's Bios?

It's just as proprietary as my Video cards Drivers and BIOS?

I buy the card, It's not up to Linux to decide if I can use it, that's not my OS's job!!

My OSs job is to make what ever hardware I choose run as it was meant to be run...
in windows of course! LOL

OK I'm asking a lot of Linux... but the world will not accept less! Why should it?

Mint will have to screw up something awful to shake me in my devotion.

I feel strongly about this as I believe that this refusal to accommodate a manufacturer's drivers as really slowing Linux's widespread adoption.

I have noticed that other destros have begun including driver installation in their destros...But as far as I know, Mint broke the ice.

Besides..Mint is just so pretty!":O}

I absolutely agree with the driver situation. Its still happening today. Some games that run in Windows and Linux, still run faster in Windows. Why would any gamer choose Linux for gaming if the games run better in Windows?
At least this is what I hear on reddit a lot

Thanks, I hope our guides have been helpful.
The goal is to always help the Windows gamer migrate to Linux without too much trouble. Some of the guides are quite long, but most of these game work perfectly.

I've heard a few hardcore guru's love Arch Linux because you have to setup everything. From desktop manager, services, windows manager, updates, dependencies... EVERYTHING!

I prefer Mint because Cinnamon does it all for you. This is great for the new gamer who wants a stable, simple windows-ish interface and decent performance.

Naturally I tried Suse and several other destros... I rarely mention anything before fedora as none of them really ever became workable for me. Fedora could be made workable with ton's of help from everyone every time Fedora updated.

I could use it, but if always felt a bit like I was using someone else's box, A box I didn't really understand and could only make changes under supervision or I risked every thing...others had built for me.

And come new drivers time I had to ask these generous folks to put aside their own projects to work on mine...You never said no!

Don't get me wrong I like getting help from my fellows!!

But I have such a slow learning curve that I was having to get help for the same things over and over with each new destro release of Fedora.

I never gained on things as time went on, I just wasn't assimilating Linux!

I wasn't getting "It" and I knew it!

As I like to say. Fedora gave me my freedom from MS

,
It was hard and frustrating, and indebted me to all my friends
But with endless help at every turn, I could use Fedora for most things.

Mint gave me freedom from Linux!

At times it seems that Mint took everything that was giving me endless trouble and threw it away, saying,

"Don't bother your friends with this, I'll take care of this for you.

Let's face it. A operating system should not be some great mystery.

Yes I know I'm only dealing with the interface, why would I want to deal with anything else?

I have Zero talent for such things! I just need a good OS. Thank you MINT!

Yeah, and Mint 18 (Sarah) has just been released
http://www.gamersonlinux.com/forum/threads/mint-18-sarah.1818/

What memories you guys have!
I tried all those destro's George, even paid for a few of them! But until someone reminds me they are completely out of mind. And that's all I get a vague memory of something I did very poorly indeed!

So this is how the world made all this progress! You guys don't forget stuff!
(I always wondered! ":O}

"booman, post: 13759, member: 56"]

And I can understand that!
I can't tell you how often I wished I had the talent for such OS/desktop constructions!

Let's face it, the world belongs to them who create it, they just let us live in it. ":O}

I know I know!!
But there's a rub...
You can DL and install now...or you can wait until next month and Mint 17.3 will upgrade itself and you need never install mint again...until you change hard drives of course!

I'm thinking about it as I look at my new mint 18 disk and contemplating everything I'd have to re-do... I even backed-up my Mint 17.3...old habit's die hard! ":O}

What to do, what to do!!?? ":O}

You had to go and tell hi m he should get breaks...and where is he now? ":O}

Ah...Tess...
You can resize your tool bar in three separate sections... Go big on the left midden at center and small on the rt, if you like.

That Tess flirts with our tool bars hardly makes her a loose woman!
It just shows us her willingness to accommodate us and see to our preferences.

More over, beginners will find
"Tess" very easy to spell!

Have a TessMint today!

If your running 17 or 18...19 should update you in a matter of minutes around 15 of them.

My advice is to update right away before they run out and all they have left is Mint from the past or future. A guy could get really confused in such a situation! (Some have been known to return to Windoze,, but only very briefly, Widoze tends to sober folks up rather quickly!!

You want me to do what!!???

So with slightly tarnished souls and disparaging thoughts
they come home and find Sara gone and Tess awaiting them without recriminations and with open source she receives them all without discrimination.
(Just don't call her Sara it really pisses Tess off when you call her Sara, almost had to do a reinstall!!)

It was half dozen updates before she stopped glaring at me,":O}

Your going to hate this answer George.":O}

Because it is arguably The safest mint to date.
Not to say earlier releases weren't save.
But the newest mint's contain the newest
security measures.

George do you need a back up drive? I have several I no longer use having gone SSD my last build.

Start doing back ups and you can quit worrying. Mint 18 came with a built-in backup and restore a are that's quite easy to use. But I'm sticking with "Clonezilla" for now.
To each his own.":O}