Hello, everyone. I made this post earlier, but it didn't seem to push through.
Forum controls say I have 0 posts or threads, so I'm posting this "again", and I apologize if it the previous post suddenly pops up and doubles with this one.

Moving on, I'm currently making the slow transition into Linux in preparation for Windows 7 end-of-life. Nothing urgent or in a hurry. Since a lot (maybe all) of the stuff I have on Steam and Blizzard do not have Linux ports, I'm hoping I could use Wine in the future. Does distro choice matter to Wine? Is there such thing as "Distro A is more compatible with Wine" or "Wine is not officially supported on Distro B"? I've tried to use Wine once with the smallest standalone exe I have on disk (InSpectre from grc.com), but all I got was some segmentation fault or something. I forget which distro it was, and it probably failed because I haven't configured Wine correctly yet, but I just want to make sure I'm starting on the right foot while I'm not settled on a distro yet.

Speaking of distros, I'd also like to hear some input from experienced users on making the choice. I tried an online distro picker I found somewhere here, and it suggested CentOS, RHEL, or Scientific (because they keep bundled apps at a minimum), but I also read here that using server distros for personal use is not advised, so I'm confused. The default plan is to still have Windows on another partition to keep a compatible platform for my stuff regardless of Wine, which means I'd have to pick a distro that installs on gpt (to a non-technical average Joe like me, the EFI boot menu is much easier than daisy chaining bootloaders). Which distro/s hits closest to the following ballpark:

• installs on gpt
• minimum number of bundled apps
• allows proprietary drivers (nvidia, realtek, canon or hp printers)
• compatible with Wine
• likely to be around in the foreseeable future
• ships with Cinnamon, MATE, or Lxqt (so I don't have to switch DE's after installation). I want to avoid KDE because my hardware is dated and can't load it fast

Thank you for reading. At this point, I'll list my experiences getting my feet wet with various distros for whatever it's worth. I started some time early this year, and my methods are by no means efficient or systematic.

1. Ubuntu - too "smartphone".
2. Debian (+Cinnamon) - uses Firefox ESR (I prefer the non ESR version). Audio did not work for twitch.tv, but it worked on another site (forgot what site but it wasn't youtube). Tried installing other DE's from the repository, but some utilities had redundant software installed.
3. Devuan - this was before the current ASCII release. I think I had to add -nomodeset to boot properly into desktop. Repository seemed more dated than Debian. I probably won't end up with Xfce, it's definitely not for me out-of-the-box, but it was customizable to an extent that I haven't fully explored.
4. PCLinux - Audio worked for twitch.tv. I think the default login created from installation can't use sudo (not in list or something). "Doesn't shut down properly"; there's a system message on the screen that says everything is closed, but it doesn't cut power until I hold the button on my tower.
5. Mint - It has a utility/gui for the firewall which I don't remember seeing on previous distros. I had to "manually" add google to Firefox's search options, which gives an impression that it's not using a "vanilla" Firefox. It didn't do a gpt install, no Mint entry on the EFI boot menu, and the EFI system partition was empty, but that's probably something I botched during installation.
6. Manjaro (+Budgie) - No right-click for context menu on the desktop. It seems like it uses a separate gui for updating the kernel, which is probably a good thing in case updating breaks compatibility with something else. The installer scares me because it might wipe data on the EFI system partition before writing its stuff.

Welcome to the forum!

As far as Wine goes, it doesn't have much in the way of requirements and will install on any distro. The real trick is finding the version of Wine and that of the software you want to run what play nicely together! The website https://www.winehq.org/ will often tell you what programs have been tested on Wine and with what results.

I wouldn't worry about how much is installed. Linux programs are smaller than Windows ones (shared libraries) and the number of programs on the hard drive has no effect on the computer's speed (no registry). CentOS often requires a lot of work to get the software you need from various sources and the installer is very confusing.

Drivers are not usually a problem, unless your hardware is newer than the distro. Debian and Devuan can be a problem there: sometimes you need a driver on a USB stick so that the installer can install it or the installation won't work.

I usually recommend getting a distro with its default desktop: that's the one most people are using and it's the one the developers chose, so there are less likely to be problems. Mate is good and Xfce you can get used to, but LXQT is only good as long as you don't need to customise it; the documentation is confusing and the configuration files worse.

You can't go far wrong with Mint and the documentation is very good. On the subject of the firewall, all distros derived from Debian (as far as I know) have the firewall switched off — don't ask why! Mint at least draws you attention to that by including a graphical tool to switch it on.

PCLinuxOS is pretty good. Were you running live or in a virtual machine? That might give problems that wouldn't show up when it was actually installed. It's rolling release, but the most cautious of the rolling-release distros, since the target audence is the home user rather than the computer enthusiast.

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As far as I see, CentOS/OpenSUSE ticks all boxes, though they are not primarily made for desktop, you can tweak and use them. I should mention that it'd require enabling additional repositories, installing new GUIs, compiling a few drivers etc. So, not exactly newbie friendly, but if you know what you need to do, it's fun.

Since, mint has already been recommended (and it's hard to top that), I would suggest trying out L/Xubuntu too (LXDE/XFCE on ubuntu, so not too 'smartphone-y').

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My worry is less so about performance and more on clutter. From the previous experience installing other DE's, I had like multiple terminals (interfaces?), text editors, and I think file managers (I think I remember Thunar and Nemo).

My experience here is that the Nouveau thingy (not sure if it falls under driver) is significantly slower than Nvidia drivers on my end, probably because my hardware is old. I have to cross off my list any distros whose policy is anything tighter than "add <thirdpartyrepository> to your configuration" for proprietary drivers, and I don't know which distros fall under that category, if any such exist even.

Thanks. I tried Lxqt and I thought it looked okay to me, but I'll take the advice and cross it off my list to avoid the problems you mentioned. I'll try to stick to something that ships with Cinnamon or MATE.

Is Mint's firewall GUI (or some reasonable equivalent) not available on other distros? Maybe that's why I couldn't find firewall settings on the other distros to begin with. There's no way in hell I'm configuring the firewall on a terminal or text editor.

I run all my distro tests on a spare HDD that I borrowed. Emphasis on borrowed, because at some point, I'll have to do the "final" install on my own HDD, which means I can't have these installers do anything that lays a finger on partitions with stuff I already use.

Speaking of stable vs rolling release models, does intervals between stable versions mean some degree of incompatibility with each other? Is it incompatible as in "back to full install" every new version, or just "old packages that haven't been updated yet might break"? Does the rolling model mean there's no interval of incompatibility as long as I don't stray too far from the current updates?

The part I can deal with is finding and installing apps I use if it's not provided, but for anything under the hood, I might be too new to handle by myself.

I would second the recommendation for Mint. Just use a lightweight DE. As far as wine, it lacks sufficient developers and resources. With virtualization software like virtualbox, most people who run Linux will use a Windows virtual machine.

But that might not work for you if your hardware won't support it. As drivers go, Windows drivers don't work in Linux. But every Linux driver will work in every distro as long as it has the minimum kernel version the driver requires.

Some hardware (very rare instance) is not supported at all, and it never will be, either because it's obsolete, or it isn't in common enough use. I have one such item, and I maintain a Windows 7 VM for it. It isn't so much that a certain distro works better with certain hardware, because that's all in the kernel, and the kernel is the same for each distro.

The versions are slightly different, but recent distros should support the same hardware. I advise you choose your distro, commit to it, and if something doesn't work right away, come here and ask about it.

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The graphical firewall package, gufw, is available in the Ubuntu and Debian repositories, and hence all those distros based on them that use those repositories. It may well be available elsewhere too.

Why the firewall is not turned on by default in many distros, I have no idea. The first thing I do after installing a distro is to install gufw, if not already present in the default install, and turn the firewall on.

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FWIW, I do agree with a lot of the advice already offered to you, and I think for the very most part it's somewhat spot on.

I think you have to remember as far as Wine is concerned, that even if it's developers had more resources available to them, short of maybe official support from Microsoft themselves; it's always going to be an up-hill battle trying to support software intended for a completely different operating system and not Linux.

Because, I think you should remember that any major change in things like DirectX and other library's, as well as the Windows apps themselves likely means that it's going to cause some kind of incompatibly with Wine. So IMHO, it's never going to be a perfect solution (or even close to that). I think as far as games are concerned; the far better option would be the Steam client, given that games made available for it, have developer support behind them - from those games developers that develop said games - AFAIK.

It's also the question of how much time you think it's worth putting into trying to make said games work with Wine. I've had games that worked and run even faster under Wine than Windows itself (Doom 3 was a perfect example of that - with little to no tweaking), but I've also had games that flatly refused to work with Wine - no matter what I tried.

For me personally (and each to their own), I just don't have the time or patience to sit there for quite possibility hours on end, trying all sorts of tweaks to get something to finally work as I want - regardless of what kind of software it is. My motto is that: "if it's that hard, it means it's probably not worth doing to begin with". Yes, sometimes if it's the only option, it may be worth the time and hassle, but usually in my experience there's probably an easier solution out there than going though all of that hassle. Call me lazy, call me what you like, that's fine, go right ahead, no worries.

I actually just had a look at Wine's "Application Database" and more than just the few I looked at had no "maintainers" and/or where rated as "Garbage". The bottom line: it may work, it may work but with a lot of problems or it maybe total garbage running under Wine. So it's always going to be hit and miss trying to run games under Wine. Personally, that's why I bought a PS4 instead. It's a shame that that's the state of gaming under Linux, but it's not Linux's fault and to some extent Mac OS has a very similar problem, and even worst under the UNIX BSD's, like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.

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Thanks. That's very useful to know. Btw, I want to try CentOS, if anything because I haven't tried it yet as I have the other suggestions, but does anyone know if using a server-focused distro has virtual "doors" open by default? I'm speaking figuratively because I don't know the technical terms, but a server by definition is waiting for visitors, and I think it would have "doors" that are open by default that the user is expected to configure. To a personal user like me, it would want the opposite- nothing goes in and out without my permission.

@jsbjsb001

I agree with your statement, especially if it's just video games. I just put the question out there to not extinguish any hopes for Wine by getting off on the wrong foot. The default plan is still to have Windows on the other partition, but once EOL hits, I'd have to block a lot of stuff on the firewall (mainly the browser, which at that point, I would have on Linux already).

A lot of people do that for PC games (have Windows on a separate partition for their gaming needs). Personally, I don't even have Windows full stop anymore.

To expand on my point about Wine I made before; unfortunately, it's all about the $$$ for most game developers, Windows is where the $$$ are because of it's desktop market share. It still sucks tho.

If anything, all virtual doors are closed and sentries are in place on a default installation of CentOS. Firewall is enabled by default and allows only dhcpv6 and ssh. SELinux is also enforced by default.

BTW, make sure to read through the installation guidelines before you attempt.

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There's a graphical firewall configuration tool where you can just pick which ports to open or close.

One problem with CentOS is that it really does like Gnome, as I think I said. Many people think that if you want Mate, it's best to install the basic Gnome version and add the Mate desktop. If course, that does leave you with two of everything, which you said you disliked. I'm still using CentOS 6 with Gnome 2, so I haven't crossed that bridge yet!

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Mate is gnome 2. So, I think installing gnome shell would just muck it up.

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I use the Fedora 28 Cinnamon spin and it works very well. All of my hardware (running it on a Dell Precision M4800 lappy and a custom built machine I built myself) was supported out of the box, save for my Nvidia cards (one Quadro K2100M and one Quadro 600) which I had to install the Nvidia drivers for over the Noveau driver, but that was easy to do with the RPMFusion nonfree repositories installed. This tell you how to do it. I havent run anything with Wine on it yet, I use VMware player to run a Windows 10 VM for any Windows software I need. SO I cant tell you how Wine works with it, but everything else has worked flawlessly.

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That actually sounds great. If the installation doesn't get too technical for me, I should be able to try it in a few days, since I won't be around the target computer for awhile.

Is it the gufw tool mentioned earlier or a different one?

In the end, I'll go with whichever distro takes the least amount of trouble to get it where I want it. If I like everything else about it besides Gnome, I'll just have to find out how to switch the DE cleanly and uninstall the duplicates, I guess.

If I haven't picked between PCLOS, Mint, CentOS, and Manjaro yet, I'll try Fedora.

BTW, I mentioned earlier that one of the distros out-of-the-box did not have audio for twitch.tv, despite the audio working on a different site. Is that a driver thing or a codec thing or maybe something else?

Just to add... I've installed CentOS with kde4 in a friend's very basic dell desktop (I think it's an old vostro, like 2011, i5, 4GB RAM). If effects are turned off, kde is quite light. It runs windows virtual machine fine but it must be windows7, which is much lighter than w10.
I didn't install GNOME, just picked kde from the dvd and had no problem. The login manager is gdm (gnome's) as kdm isn't available, but works just as fine. KDE, from what I can tell works pretty well and is very stable as it's version 4.14 or something like that (maybe the LTS version for kde4).

The only issue he got into was that those who used it were quite careless and kept accidentally pulling the power chord from the plug. I think this is what made the KDE settings return to default. When I would go there I would restore ~/.kde from a backup to fix it. I suspect this happened because centOS uses the XFS file system by default and it has (or had) this issue of losing temporary data in an unexpected poweroff. I'm not knowledgeable in these things but now for a desktop I would use a more common file system like ext4.

He's using windows now, but recently I recovered it for him due to a borked w10 update. He went back to CentOS for a while because of that and he's more careful nowadays. I think there's a high probability that w10 will break again, maybe soon. If it happens, I'm thinking in installing the next Mint and wipe windows. From what I recall Mint is easier for non technical people to manage updates and understand how to keep their OS.

Anyway, what interests regarding this topic is that KDE is fine with CentOS 7, is quite light on resources and that *I* would use something else other than XFS if installing in a desktop system.