How It's Going With Linux

So this update has been LOOOONG overdue, for I meant to post an update on how Linux has been doing for me back in September, but I got so busy with school, then had some unexpected things happen to my computer, then forgot to post the update. So, here's my update on my Linux journey!

So far, I haven't felt the need to go back to Windows. Pretty much everything I want to do on my PC works just fine on Linux (although I haven't made much art due to my insane art block). In fact, gaming-wise, Linux has been doing far better than I expected. Practically all of my games (with very few exceptions) on Steam run perfectly, even under Proton. I know Proton's been getting better over the years, but WOW it's an absolute BEAST now! Also, it's not just my Steam games. I tested some of my games from my Epic Games library, and holy crap they work flawlessly with Heroic Games!

However, If there's one thing that's been giving me trouble on Linux that hasn't on Windows, It's actually Firefox. To my surprise, Firefox has been very buggy and glitchy on Linux Mint, where I frequently deal with stuttering and sometimes even screen tearing on videos (which do not occur in my games). Though I will note that updating my system and programs does help alleviate some of these issues temporarily before I need to update again.

But... Here's where things get a bit crazy, and is part of the reason why this post was so delayed. In late September, my hard drive went kaput. I think I was experiencing some symptoms of hard drive failure earlier when some of my games would stop being able to launch and I had to re-install them, meaning I could've been facing file corruption. However, one night, I'm watching the gameplay of Class of 09 the Flipside when my computer completely froze, the audio kept playing, then sped up, then stopped. After a while of trying to get my PC to respond to ANYTHING, I shut it down and turned it on again. When I tried to mount my hard drive, I got an "bad filetype" error, and I knew the thing was toast. This was not completely unexpected, for I knew my hard drive was quite old and has been through multiple wipes and partitioning, but it was the sudden failure that caught me off-guard.

Luckily, I backed up EVERYTHING on that hard drive onto an external one before I installed Linux, and I haven't done too much between that time, so I didn't lose too many important files. Plus, my Linux installation was all on my SSD while the hard drive was just a data drive, meaning my OS was completely fine.

I ordered a new HDD, an even bigger one too, and the data transfer from the backup to the new HDD was pretty quick (especially cause the new hard drive has MUCH faster read/write speeds than my old one).

Since then, nothing super noteworthy has happened with my PC. Everything I need works just fine, and I've been much happier on Linux than with Windows. I'm so glad I can control when my computer updates cause that was one thing that made me so uneasy on Windows.

So tl;dr, I've been having a pretty good time with Linux but Class of 09 the Flipside was so bad it killed my hard drive, but I got another one so everythings working just fine again.