mate-optimus VS lutris

when I started out, I used red hat, Suse linux, and then finally I jumped to Ubuntu, when they killed gnome and rolled out their new GUI later, I switched to Ubuntu Mate, with xfce alternatively installed. And then later came MINT. which is based on ubuntu anyway.

Prepare a blank USB stick with a copy of Ubuntu (write the ISO to the USB stick with Rufus)

Ubuntu MATE (simple, well maintained, has the Ubuntu ecosystem support and should work well)

Linux Mint has its advantages, but your title doesn't make sense when there's Ubuntu MATE.

(btw: since the PC is older I would reccommend Ubuntu Mate or Xubuntu as those come with a lighter Desktop)

You can always change desktops later to Cinnamon or MATE or XFCE. If you want to try those desktops on your USB drive, you can download Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu and try them on USB, just like you're currently doing.

My experience has been that Ubuntu's Gnome DE is somewhat less suitable to older computers than Ubuntu "official flavors" with lighter DE's -- Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Kubuntu (KDE Plasma DE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE), and Xubuntu (XFCE DE) -- all of which use somewhat less resources than the Gnome DE.

Consider looking at several of the Ubuntu official flavors -- Kubuntu (Plasma DE), Ubuntu Budgie (Budgie DE), Xubuntu (XFCE), Ubuntu MATE (MATE DE). I wouldn't bother with Lubuntu (LXQT DE) unless you need a lightweight distro, because the LXQT DE is not as mainstream or well-supported as the others.

Based on recent experience helping a handful of friends move from Windows to Linux, I suggest starting with an official Ubuntu flavor (Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu, Xbuntu, Ubuntu Mate) 22.04 LTS release, picking which ever desktop environment appeals to you. Official Ubuntu flavors are the Ubuntu OS layer with standard but different desktop environments.

You can get Lutris: It's an open source launcher that you login into with GOG account and it will download the games and wrap them with Wine, similar to Steam.

https://lutris.net/

For "normal" games you could look yourself using ProtonDB regarding every game released on Steam and AreWeAntiCheatYet for most multiplayer games. If a game isn't available on Steam you have three possibilities. First if it's available on GOG, Epic Games or Amazon Gaming, you could use the Heroic Games Launcher. Second you could try to run the launchers through Steam itself using once again Proton. Third you could try installing it with a script or tutorial in Lutris or Bottles.

Can I suggest you head over to the lutris.net site and follow the link the lutris discord - with what you are describing, it would take me 20 minutes to get the base battle.net working so you can see what is causing your issue or 3 days back and forwards here. As a hint, your wine version has known issues, and unless you manually installed the lutris 0.5.14 from the git page in Mint, or are running flatpak, you have other issues related to that

Hmmm I remember there was some confusion in Lutris around this, like https://github.com/lutris/lutris/issues/4237 , and I had to do some workaround. But I can't check what exactly right now...

As a data point, you can run a fair number of Windows games under Proton by using Lutris instead of Steam:

* https://lutris.net

* https://github.com/lutris/lutris

It's an OSS game launcher that takes the place of Steam, and you can set things up to run locally so you don't even need an account on their system (lutris.net).

Lutris

[Resources] * Ventoy (for EZ bootable USB sticks) ==> https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html * How to use Ventoy ==> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64sT0pQc-0 * Rufus (alternative bootable USB stick creator in Windows) ==> https://rufus.ie/en/ * MD5 & SHA Checksum Utility (for validating your ISO downloads) ==> https://download.cnet.com/md5-sha-checksum-utility/3000-2092_4-10911445.html * Steam will be in the repositories (repos) and Proton is apart of Steam * www.protondb.com (lookup Steam game info... see how well it works or if it is in a FUBAR state on Linux) * WINE will be in the repos and can be acquired via WINE HQ. I recommend using the repos, but WINE HQ if you need it ( https://www.winehq.org/ ) * Lutris is a front-end to WINE which makes installing and running non-Steam games easy. It can be found in the repos ( https://lutris.net/ ) * How-To videos for setting up various distros for gaming ( https://www.youtube.com/@IntelligentGaming2020/videos ). I have no affiliation with this channel. He is a Linux user/gamer sharing info. Search his channel for your distro to find the specific how-to videos. * r/linux4noobs (a newbie focused Linux subreddit) * most if not all of the distros will have their own subreddits (ex: r/pop_OS, r/linuxmint, r/fedora, r/manjaro, r/EndeavourOS)

ProtonDB is a community list of Steam games rating their playability. Heroic launcher runs GOG and Epic games. Lutris and Bottles can be used to run everything else.