gog2002x: I have this installed on Windows 7 Pro and it runs perfectly fine, even using a controller (XBox 360).
From my experience this game (Demonicon GOG version) runs great on Windows 10 and Windows 11 before the 24H2 update, but with the 24H2 Win11 update it totally dies, it will just not run anymore, no matter what.
It is not clear to me yet why that is. Earlier there were suggestions that 24H2 auto-HDR causes these kinds of problems to many games and the solution is to disable it, but that doesn't apply to Demonicon. I don't even have a HDR capable monitor or HDR enabled in one Windows 11 24H2 laptop where Demonicon doesn't run either.
Hopefully someone figures it out at some point so people know what they should be trying to be fixing, but maybe this game is too old and unknown that knowledgeable people would try to find a solution... I don't know if there are lots of other games with the very same problem.
gog2002x: How hard is it to learn to setup Linux Mint?
Installing Linux Mint (and most other Linux distros) to an empty PC, or even a PC where Windows is already installed but you have a free partition or drive there for Linux, is just as easy as installing Windows.
In some cases I'd argue it is even easier because you don't have to care whether you are "eligible" to run certain version of Linux, no need to "activate" your copy of Linux, no need to create an online account, no need to repeatedly decline Microsoft's offers to gather all kinds of data from you and give you personalized ads and accept a free two week period of MS Office etc. etc. etc..
Oh and Linux doesn't have similar restrictions like Windows 11, what kind of CPU or TPM or SecureBoot/UEFI you must have before you can install it. (I've been thinking of buying a bunch of older laptops that can't run Windows 11, and turn them into spare Linux laptops.).
Also, daily usage of Linux is not that different from Windows, meaning running your browser or other applications etc. Even your mother could use a Linux PC for her daily chores.
Configuring Linux is quite a different experience from Windows, in some cases it can feel harder or more complicated, in some cases much easier because you are in control and there is no MS trying to force or preventing you from doing stuff, like not creating an online account or not running updates without your consent etc. So don't be looking for a Control Panel in Linux and thinking you will find the very same options there as in Windows, like Disk Management or Device Manager etc.
Maybe the biggest change is that lots of stuff, configuring or even installing new applications, is done in a command line in Linux. Most of them can be done with the graphical user interface as well, but if you google for some instructions online how to do this and that in Linux, people tend to explain them with the command line commands because those are more universal and easier to explain, just type this and this and this command and you are done, instead of "try to find this menu and that tab and click on that checkbox, or go to regedit and find this and that..." etc., especially since Linux has lots of different graphical user interfaces (called "Desktop Environments" in Linux; e.g. I tend to use XFCE but I've used also Gnome and lots of others...).
Don't be afraid of the command line, you'll notice quite soon it is actually much easier and faster to follow command line instructions where you can mostly just copy and paste commands from the instructions to your command-line, instead of trying to follow some Youtube video how to configure something in Windows. You'll learn to appreciate it, or die trying.
Running Windows games (and other apps) with Linux WINE is a varied experience, like the other thread suggests. Sometimes it is easy peasy, not much different from running the same game on Windows, sometimes there are quirks you have to overcome (like in this case, maybe I was missing some libraries so Lutris refused to install the game at first, I have to look into it more...).
And depending on the game and your system, running the game in Linux WINE may have some performance penalty, which is kinda expected. That's why I am trying to set up a FPS counter for both Linux and Windows so that I can more clearly estimate what kind of, if any, performance penalty there is to run Demonicon on that ancient Dell XPS laptop where I am testing this, Linux Mint 22.1 vs. Windows 10 Pro on the same laptop.
Judging by just playing, the Windows version feels more consistently buttersmooth, but it isn't like the Linux WINE version is overly jerky or anything. Maybe a few more hiccups here and there which are amplified by the fact I am running the game on an old non-gaming laptop apparently released back in 2016 (8GB RAM, 4-core CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M etc...). With my newer Lenovo Legion laptop with a 8-core CPU, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA RTX 3080 I am not expecting to see any performance penalty running this 11 years old 3D game in Linux WINE vs. Windows 10.
