What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

I recommend using defaults unless you do disk-level backups, or plan on switching disks/partitions between systems (you can put your whole /home dir on a NAS, but should you?)

I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions?

Yes*. Many such cases.

*there’s always a reason why it was preventable (as the top comment on that post explains), but c’mon… Really?

Do I need separate partitions for data and OS?

Probably not, for reasons I explained above

Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?

It’s straight-forward-ish. It will require deviating from installer defaults, and depends on how interconnected you want the OSes to be.

This is actually a good reason to get into partitioning shenanigans, if you’ll use all the distros regularly, and you want them to have shared access to certain folders (e.g. /root, /var, /home, /tmp, /etc, etc). I recommend turning everything (except windows, /boot and /boot/efi) into logical volumes with LVS to avoid space issues when you can’t extend a partition sandwiched in between two others.

By default, /boot and /boot/efi should be their own partitions–/boot should be created for Linux, and Linux will use the EFI partition created by micro$oft–and I’d recommend giving /boot N times the default amount of space (N being the number of distros you plan on keeping in rotation at any given time); this shouldn’t eat up too much space, Debian gave me 500 MB for /boot. The reason being /boot carries the kernel images for each and every OS, and often duplicates thereof for rescue backups.

Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?

Yes it’s easy with LUKS. Full disk encryption encrypts everything, and that will likely upset windows, idk haven’t tried on my dual-boot.

Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?

Yes, if you use a DE with it integrated. Otherwise, it’s up to you to choose the right software, rclone looks like a good choice to me, but I have not used it

Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate?

synaptic is no longer used iirc. It’s just called “Software Manager,” but yes, I believe it’s just a GUI for apt. I personally prefer doing as much as I can with the command line. Not only is it the simplest, most straightforward way of achieving whatever I’m trying to do, it’s usually also the quickest and best documented. YMMV

Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?

My experience has been to avoid non-defaults as much as possible. If there’s a software you can only get as a flatpak and you need that and can’t make do with an alternative, then do it. Otherwise, just see what you can do with the apt repositories

Any other pearls of wisdom? … Any warnings about what not to do?

I could spend a few hours digging up every mistake I made and telling you what not to do, but I’d rather focus on giving you the tools to clean up after yourself when you make your own. The one best piece of advice I can give is “keep at it.” There will be times when you shoot yourself in the foot and your options are to give up and lose the foot or do foot surgery right then on your own (with the help of the online community ofc). Don’t be afraid to ask questions everywhere or anywhere, don’t let assholes dissuade you from enjoying your Linux your way or seeking help doing so, and do read the docs. But most importantly, do keep trying; it’s such a rewarding feeling.

Another would be to change as little as possible from a known working configuration at a time. Go with installer defaults as much as you can, change the stuff later. Want to try out new software? Try one new thing and get it working and looking how you envision before moving on. Read the docs so you don’t take any settings for granted, that way you’re not left with something that’s passable instead of exactly what you want.

Make backups. Get a second SSD or an external drive and backup your system. Things like /usr, /etc, /root, and /home at the very minimum. Backups are the best way to unfuck your foot when you inevitably shoot it.

Learn the coreutils. You might not use them daily, but you’ll be glad you know they’re there when you need them and don’t have to install extraneous software that isn’t well maintained because it’s a redundancy of the most common pieces of linux software.

How do I keep everything tidy?

Learn the FHS. As with most documentation, it’s a bit dry, but very enlightening and will automatically put you in the top 10% of linux users with your newfound special knowledge.

There are some automatic file organizers, but you can recreate them yourself to suit your exact needs at 1/10th the resource cost using bash scripts.

Sidebar: another good piece of advice, learn to script in Bash. It basically immediately qualifies you to be a *nix sysadmin, and it makes everything automatable. It’s so much easier than downloading new software or compiling a git repo for each individual task you want to automate. Additionally, it helps to learn to use cron, to run the scripts automatically, and to learn a command-line text editor (no, nano does not count)–but those’re mostly just for efficiency boost, the big timesaves are in learning to script first and foremost.

As with any skill, the common wisdom is to “choose a project you want to make, then learn the skill by making it.” So it’s not a bad idea to learn scripting by, say, writing a script that detects files of a certain format in a directory tree and moving them elsewhere. E.g. check ~/Downloads and all of its subfolders for files ending in .jpg, then move them to ~/Pictures/JPGs (and make the directory if it’s not already there). This should give you a good chance to practice file operations and string manipulation/parsing. After that, learn how to have cron run it once a week or something.

Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?

This just falls under my “probably best to stick with defaults and branch out later” advice, but:

I use terminator, purely because it has a logger plugin (which saves all input and output, including stderr, into a file if I’m doing something that needs that much documenting). I’d say learn to use tmux at some point as well, but that’s just because I like moving my hand between keyboard and mouse as little as possible.

As for firefox, vanilla has always worked for me. It’s not private enough for some people, so they will recommend something like LibreWolf or even Tor. On my laptop (which is completely keyboard driven so I can avoid using a touchpad) I use qutebrowser; it’s not as full-featured (i wouldn’t use it for video streaming), but it avoids using a mouse.

1. I believe there is still an issue with Windows deleting Linux bootloaders during some updates. You’ll be fine if you install Linux on a separate disk, and even if you dual-boot on one disk and the bootloader gets deleted, there are ways to recover it. You don’t strictly need to have separate data and OS partitions, and I’ve gone back and forth on whether I prefer it - it makes distro hopping and disk encryption easier, at the cost of potentially inefficient use of space and serious consequences if your OS partition fills up.
2. Disk encryption is very straightforward if you use separate OS and data partitions. You literally just tick a box during the install and enter an extra password. It won’t upset Windows any more than a normal install does (i.e. Windows might think it’s corrupted, but won’t do anything without your input). With one partition for everything, it’s still possible, but the encryption will be much weaker and handled by the bootloader in a somewhat clunkier way, and I’m not sure if Mint even supports that setup.
3. I don’t have much experience with this myself, and certainly not on Linux Mint, so I’ll leave this one to other commenters.
4. Synaptic is just a fancy frontend to APT, and I think Mint also has something called mintInstall, which was just an apt frontend back when I used it, but I think it also supports Flatpak now. It’s entirely up to personal preference as to which UI you prefer. I do recommend you set up Flathub if it’s not there by default, as it gives you access to a ton of useful apps that can’t be packaged by Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint for various reasons.
5. Don’t download software from random websites unless it’s absolutely necessary. Chances are, their version either won’t work well, if at all, or will break your system. Try APT first, Flatpak second, everything else is a last resort option. If a program you used on Windows doesn’t have a (working, native) Linux version, try finding and learning to use an alternative that is in the APT repositories before downloading the Windows version and using it on Wine. Back up your most important files from Windows before installing Linux in dual boot, just in case you make a mistake somewhere. To answer the last question, stick to the default terminal emulator and Firefox installation unless there’s a feature you really want in another one; the distro’s developers picked them for a reason, after all.

Use the software manager to install flatpaks. Flatpaks will be newer and run in there own environments.

I would personally run Windows in KVM (virtualization) as it will run with good performance and be isolated so it can’t blowup your system.

1. Just shrink windows and install Linux.

Use either BTRFS (no idea if Mint supports that) or LVM with EXT4 or F2FS. F2FS is used in Android, stable, fast, simple, flash optimized. Ext4 is also based.

Dont separate / from /home if you dont use the above setup. If you do, partitions can resize dynamically so no problems here.

Installing multiple OSses is messy, avoid it.

Windows Updates may remove GRUB and eat the partition. If the partition is still there, you could reflash GRUB with dd.

2. Disk encryption is a single checkbox in every installer I tried. It doesnt use the TPM so it works everywhere, while not as fancy as Android on a Google Pixel.

Absolutely do it.

Most often you only encrypt the / partition and not the boot. And no you dont touch Windows so no issues.

3. Tons of people use GDrive and Dropbox. It supposedly works.

4. On a traditional Distro I would leave the system as it is and install everything from Flathub. It is preinstalled and configured on Linux.

Traditional Distros are extremely messy and build up Entropy, i.e. randomness. You just do random shit everywhere and after a few months or years you have issues that nobody can reproduce and you need to reinstall.

That is why I am happily on Fedora Atomic Desktops (Kinoite, KDE). OSTree is heaven.

If you stick to Flatpaks you will not change the system at all, the apps are separated. So it will likely not break at all.

Ironically, while the “immutable” (managed) systems are used with Flatpak a lot, it is the traditional ones that should use it, as they dont have mechanisms like rpm-ostree reset.

So yes, absolutely.

Have a look at my list of recommended apps (which I planned on updating today and a damn browser crash destroyed 2 hours of work…)

5. Use an atomic system. Use Flatpaks. Change as little crazy stuff as possible (if you are on KDE, lol).

I recommend Librewolf, great project with good usability.

Meanwhile I will some day fix up my arkenfox automation which makes any Firefox version as secure and private.

Mint do have software center preinstalled, which supporta flatpaks. Synaptic is a wrapper around apt afaik and it is useful for people who want to use apt without knowing the commands.

To make life easier for yourself, I’d highly recommend running Linux on a separate drive. The Linux distribution installers I’ve used will install the bootloader on whatever drive you choose to install on, but the windows installer will use the storage controller’s port ordering to choose which drive to install on.

Your best bet is to simply disconnect the Windows drive when installing Linux and to disconnect the Linux drive when installing Windows, then just use the BIOS boot selection screen to choose which OS to boot into.

You can add your Windows drive to Grub and you might be able to add your Linux distro to your Windows bootloader, but keeping them entirely separate is probably best.

What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

I recommend separate EFI partitions while dual booting, I haven’t seem issues with my separate EFI partition setup yet.

If Mint provides Btrfs filesystem I personally recommend looking into timeshift (snapshot software that can be setup to automatically snapshot your computer).

Is disk encryption straightforward?

According to Linux Mint forum, you need to choose an option in “Advanced features” while going through installer, that seems straight forward

Is cloud storage sync straightforward?

Don’t have experience with this but I can tell you: While rclone supports bi-directional sync, you need some setup for make it run periodically.

Should I just use apt to install software?

In the end you have to give trust to someone, I think it’s fair to say if you already choose Mint you probably trust whatever options comes with Mint more than 3rd party options (but is it theoretically possible that backdoored program exists in Mint repository? of course yes).

1. Use a separate bootloader partition for every OS. Windows is known for destroying non-windows bootloaders. It rarely, if ever, touches anything else. Many distros have a /boot partition with initramfs since grub might not support booting from the root partition’s filesystem. Integrity is ensured with secure boot, /boot encryption is optional.

2. LUKS is straightforward, and most non-DIY distros have encrypted root support built-in.

3. Gnome has Google drive support in the file manager itself, although it’s not exposed to CLI yet.

4. If you’re not short on storage, I personally highly recommend Flatpaks as they are containerised whilst also come with a sandbox solution. Avoid non-default frontends when using system packages.

5. Check out immutable/image-based distros like Fedora Silverblue. They are proved to be extremely reliable and need little to no manual maintenance since all changes are atomic and generate a brand new OS.

6. Avoid Nvidia GPUs. Their proprietary drivers are compatibility nightmares.

For dual booting with windows, I find this guide from System76 to be pretty good. https://support.system76.com/articles/windows/

Speaking from my experience with fedora and windows 10 and 11 within the same system.

1. As others have stated here, If you can, please keep each operating system on it’s own physical disk. Disconnect others if you perform a new Windows install on any, as it’ll attempt to store its bootloader on disk 0 regardless of the OS destination drive.

2. LUKS2 is part of the fedora workstation setup, I imagine it will be presented to you upon install with Mint. If you’re on separate physical disks, you shouldn’t have much to worry about, but as far as I’m aware, you’re okay to use disk encryption on drives partitioned with two systems.

3. There’s a Dropbox .deb and .rpm for linux as far as I can tell, but I cannot attest to its quality or how well it integrates with a given file manager. Cloud accounts are generally well supported amongst the key desktop environments, for which I’d consider Cinnamon to be a part of.

4. Modern, mainstream distributions are pretty GUI friendly. I fully expect you to be able to get by on Mint without needing to touch the command line much if at all. That said, I grab CLI oriented tools from the terminal and graphical apps from the app store. Enabling flathub will give you access to a broad selection of graphical software so by all means, go for it.

5. I’m not wise so I’ll hold back here. I will say that Fedora has allowed me to approach linux as an absolute casual for nearly 6 years now.

3. Cryptomator has native Linux port. They distribute AppImage, but there’s also a Flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/org.cryptomator.Cryptomator Dropbox itself also has native Linux app: https://flathub.org/pl/apps/com.dropbox.Client

I personally use Nextcloud with self-hosted storage and highly recommend it - again, with native Linux app.

You won’t get official support for OneDrive, Google or iCloud, but there are always some 3rd party clients you can try. I’d advise migrating out of those solutions in favor of something more FOSS friendly if you want to get good reliable experience and privacy.

1. What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

The basic is /home split from / that way you don’t lose your data should you need to reinstall.

I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions?

Not asuch as before, but I think it still sometimes it does. I think the recommendation is to use UEFI and have a /boot sp ok it from the Windows EFI one, but I haven’t used Windows in a long time so better check this

Do I need separate partitions for data and OS?

You don’t need to, but it’s better for you if you do, since that allows you to not lose data should you want to switch distros or reinstall the system.

Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?

Only time I tried that (many years ago) I fucked up everything, but in theory it should be doable.

2. Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?

It’s straightforward (a checkbox on most distros installer) and Windows won’t care about it.

3. Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?

Drive doesn’t provide Linux client, Dropbox does. Like you mentioned there are other tools, such as rclone, for accessing drive if you want to.

4. Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate? Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?

The GUI (like usually on Linux) just uses the CLI tools, so yeah, the graphical package manager just uses apt under the hood. However it also uses snap/flathub as well. Should you care about those? Maybe, some software is only available there because the devs don’t want to maintain multiple distro packages. But I wouldn’t use snap/flathub as my default (especially not at the beginning) even if they are theoretically more secure (especially because they are more secure, meaning they need control access to other stuff, e.g. zoom unable to detect you have a camera, or Firefox not able to download things to the download folder because of bad permission configurations)

5. Any other pearls of wisdom? How do I keep everything tidy? Any warnings about what not to do? Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?

Just a note on hardware compatibility, some cards are not very compatible. If you like to game (you did mention a steam deck) and you have an Nvidia you MUST use the proprietary driver. However the proprietary driver SUCKS on Wayland, so you’re stuck on X11 for the time being.

Besides that some wireless cards are not properly recognized, you will realize this quickly when you boot the live iso if that’s your case.

Finally I would recommend Mint instead of Ubuntu, they’re still on X11 and are not forcing Snaps down everyone’s throats.

I’ve recently been working on this kind of migration as well (but to Fedora instead), so I can speak from my own experiences:

• Cloud storage: I’ve heard fewer issues with Google Drive and Dropbox, but I had tried syncing OneDrive and ran into some issues. I ended up purchasing a license to Insync a while back, which was a bit overkill for what I needed it to do. I’m still working on weaning myself off OneDrive entirely and instead going to self-hosted cloud sync.
• Software installs: there are a ton of different methods to do software installs on Linux these days. I think Synaptic only does apt (it’s in the name!), but a lot of apps are distributed through flatpak, AppImage, or even Snaps.
  • Native packages tend to work better with your desktop environment in terms of theming but any library dependencies will get installed with them, while the others are easier to distribute and include the dependencies with them.
• Other advice:
  • Play around with different distros and desktop environments until you find something you’re really comfortable in.
  • Make a list of your required apps and verify which distro’s native capabilities may or may not meet your needs.
  • It took me a few tries before settling on Fedora KDE spin, particularly because KDE had a feature I really wanted: per monitor wallpaper settings without having to install a separate app. I’ve found that many other KDE apps are really nice too, so I’m sticking with it. KDE also puts me in a familiar desktop environment coming from Windows as well.
  • One irritation I’ve experienced: gaming-centric hardware is designed for Windows and if you have stuff designed around that, it’s going to become very obvious. Yes, there’s open source projects that help adapt them for Linux. But they are nowhere near equivalent and generally they lack maintainers to keep them going.
    • I have a Stream Deck that on Windows, I used it for monitoring hardware temps. On Linux, you get app launcher buttons at best.
    • My mouse is a Logitech G604 Lightspeed. Piper + libratbag does a pretty good job at trying to support it, but it’s middling at best and unfortunately looking at the repo, they’re in pretty desperate need of maintainers.

This is my own personal (and recent) experiences and I’m pretty new to using a Linux DE for a main OS too, so anything I say could be incorrect and I welcome suggestions/corrections.

Welcome! I was actually in the same boat a year or two ago–every time I tried before that, there was a lot of finagling to get everything working. When I upgraded to Win11, and was having a rough time getting drivers going, I ended up trying Mint. Everything worked out of the box and I haven’t looked back.

1. I find it helpful to have a separate data partition (though I don’t actually use it for /home because I find that gets messy quickly). Separate data is nice in case you’re concerned about something getting messed up, or if you like to try another distros (I ended up switching to Manjaro a while ago). Not necessary, but whatever you do, I recommend keeping it relatively simple.

2. Can’t comment, haven’t tried.

3. Last I checked, there was no client for Google Drive or Proton Drive. Not sure about Dropbox. I’ve heard of rclone but haven’t tried it.

4. I usually try apt first, then check the GUI for a flatpak if needed. I personally prefer native apps/deb packages, but that’s a subjective thing.

5. I use the default terminal and Firefox install. I ended up moving my actual personal data out of /home and it’s been easier to keep it all tidy (there’s even a way to point the file manager shortcuts to an alternate location). Tip: if you happen to have an Nvidia card, there’s a GUI utility to switch to a non-free driver, which improved things for me. My other tip: especially if you have a separate data partition, give yourself permission to not get everything perfect, and that you might want a clean install somewhere down the road. Mint isn’t quite as easy to reinstall as something like SilverBlue, but it’s not that hard I’ve found.

Have fun!

What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

I usually put the OS on a separate partition from /home/user, so if I want to reinstall I can do it without losing my home stuff. Once you’ve settled into a distro you may want to keep /var separate too, in case it ever gets filled up it won’t affect your root.

A desktop distro will take up more disk space than a server one, where you can typically fit a server into 20 GB you might want to set aside at least 50-60 GB for a desktop. And that’s just software and package caches, not counting games and such. If you split root and /var then 30/30GB would do.

Yes Windows can occasionally mess with your bootloaders if it’s installed on the same drive.

Linux distros will typically recognize each other and add each other to the grub boot menu. Also typically you get a choice of whether you want them to do this during install so you should be able to refuse this from secondary distros and re-generate the menu on your main distro to pick up the others.

Is cloud storage sync straightforward?

I think Dropbox is the only one that has an actively maintained desktop client. But rclone will deal with almost anything else.

Should I just use apt to install software?

No, but be careful what you use, and about apt too. The dependency tree can develop issues if you add 3rd party .deb repos that overwrite native packages. Some repos are curteous (Docker is one of them) and publish packages under distinct names, most are not.

Debian native packages can grow long in the tooth because Debian only releases stuff once every two years (next one in 2025). This is where something like Flatpak comes in; the Flathub offer is tiny (under 3k packages) but it’s chock-full of useful desktop apps, in case you need a more recent version of anything. Steam or Firefox will be a strong candidates for Flatpak installation, for example.

I use the normal Firefox btw. Never saw a compelling enough argument for the clones and all kinds of downsides.

If you want a package manager learn to use aptitude on the CLI. It has a menu and everything, just takes a bit getting used to. It’s the best there is.

Any other pearls of wisdom?

If you want to keep things tidy I would strongly recommend sticking to native packages for all important stuff like system things, desktop environments, drivers. Avoid 3rd party repos if not well-behaved. For anything you’re missing or not new enough try Flatpak first. For CLI, programming languages, servers etc. I would strongly recommend installing Docker from their official repo (it’s well-behaved) and installing stuff in Docker containers.

You need a swap but it doesn’t have to be a partition. You can make it a file on /. You can also use zram and make it a compressed, dynamically sized piece of RAM and then forget about it. Check out the package systemd-zram-generator.