Unfortunately you chose the wrong distro for your friend - Linux Mint isn't good for gaming - it uses an outdated kernel/drivers/other packages, which means you'll be missing out on all the performance improvements (and fixes) found in more up-to-date distros. Gaming on Linux is a very fast moving target, the landscape is changing at a rapid pace thanks to the development efforts of Valve and the community. So for gaming, you'd generally want to be on the latest kernel+mesa+wine stack.

Also, as you've experienced, on Mint you'd have to manually install things like Waydroid and other gaming software, which can be a PITA for newbies.

So instead, I'd highly recommend a gaming-oriented distro such as Nobara or Bazzite. Personally, I'm a big fan of Bazzite - it has everything you'd need for gaming out-of-the-box, and you can even get a console/Steam Deck-like experience, if you install the -deck variant. Also, because it's an immutable distro with atomic updates, it has a very low chance of breaking, and in the rare ocassion that an update has some issues - you can just select the previous image from the boot menu. So this would be pretty ideal for someone who's new to Linux, likes to game, and just wants stuff to work.

In saying that, getting games to run in Linux can be tricky sometimes, depending on the game. The general rule of thumb is: try running the game using Proton-GE, and if that fails, check Proton DB for any fixes/tweaks needed for that game - with this, you would never again have to spend hours on troubleshooting, unless you're playing some niche game that no one has tested before.

Sounds like your friend is absolutely not the target audience for a linux-based operating system. If he wants to play Windows games and use software designed for Windows, then he should be using a Windows OS. Anything else would be providing a suboptimal experience for him.

Personally, I've been using various Linux-based systems since 2004, as a software developer I use a lot of command-line utilities, and many tools and applications designed for Linux. If I were using predominantly tools and applications designed for Windows, then I would be using Windows. No need to make life more difficult for yourself and others.

I have been using Linux for years, but I don't insist anyone to use it, because when they encounter a problem, they blame you.

Let them drown in their filth.

Your friend plays only the games that are a pain to make work on Linux, or straight up don't work. What else does he want to play, fortnite? Maybe some destiny? Lol Let them be. Windows is for them, Linux isn't, and that's ok.

What should I do?

Let them do what they want.

You skipped a few steps. Before you install Linux for your friend, you should first ask him what he uses the PC for, and if he plays games, what games does he play.

What should I do?

Install Windows on his laptop, or better yet let him do it and sit besides him for guidance, so that he can learn to reinstall in case something breaks badly.

It's nice to showcase your favourite OS and make people curious but don't abuse your friends with your Linux preference by forcing it onto them.

(Also, if you fix everything for them all the time, how will they learn?)

Maybe you should have considered the stuff he wanted to do before convincing him to use linux. I could have told you he'd have problems with that stuff. If he said he mainly plays steam games then sure, but not literally the most finicky, cumbersome games to get going in existence. Also out of curiosity because I haven't even thought about Roblox in like 8 years. I thought that was a browser game?

He obviously wants to use only proprietary Windows Software.

There is little reason to force him to use Linux. Of course Linux may have less overall tracking, annoying behaviors, better performance etc.

Win10 will be EOL veeery soon. Win11 is really bad on old hardware.

I second uBlue Bazzite and ProtonDB, check what you run first.

Respect that you even came that far lol.

Well you get an a for effort. But if your friend wants to play windows games it’s better for them to just have windows on the machine. I give it to you and your friend for going all out on a new laptop and putting Linux on it right away.

A more convenient way for a new user to experience Linux is to do a live usb for them. That way they can boot into Linux easily but boot into windows just by removing the usb drive.

I would say unless you always want to do troubleshooting for this friend just stick him with windows. At some point it is up to the individual to be able to troubleshoot these issues using the Internet as the resource, but a lot of people just don't want to mess with that. My own time is too limited to be on call for people.

First of all you should have asked what he wanted to do with the laptop, the moment he replied playing games that are not on Steam you should have let him use Windows. Secondly, a laptop with 256GB of disk is likely going to have very low amounts of RAM and an onboard GPU, performance is going to be shit on Windows as well, you should have let him use that before, I think it's highly likely that Windows itself would run like shit on it, so after a year or two putting Linux on that laptop would have blown his socks off. But the problem is that he didn't get to experience any of that before you touched the computer, now he will claim it's your fault that games don't run or Windows is slow. I've been there, a friend had issues with the laptop, I said I didn't understand Windows and would only help if I could put Linux, at first everything worked great, but then the friend needed special software that wasn't available so I had to reinstall Windows for them (and btw, you OBVIOUSLY should reinstall Windows for your friend), and then everything on that laptop was my fault, even the problems the person was having before were somewhat my fault because I had put Linux there.

Minecraft runs natively on Linux. What was the issue?

Do your friend a favor and install Windows back on his laptop for him.

Roblox not runnimg is more like a feature. /s

Let him go back to Windows. You already planted the idea of using Linux in his head. Next time he gets tired of windows for any reason, he knows there is an alternative and he'll consider switching to Linux on his own.

Sounds like he doesn't want to spend his time tinkering, but playing.

Can't blame him.

If he wants Windows, why are you questioning what he wants to do with his computer? He's had enough of playing fuck-fuck with Linux. (Mind, I work with Linux all day, every day, it's the cat's meow for dedicated services like Proxmox, TrueNAS, containers, etc).

Go get Win10 LTSC. It gets updates 2x/year, has very minimal bloat.

Then get O&O Shutup to reduce bloat even more.

And you can permanently license it using Microsoft's own scripts.

Scripts on Gituub.

You have a nice friendship :) That's more important than Linux.

Why were you trying to install the Android version of Roblox instead of using Vinegar?

The problem is mate is that not all games have native Linux versions, If FIFA 17 were on steam, you could use proton on it but I believe it isn't.

It just comes with the territory of Linux that some games are windows only and can be finicky.

Minecraft however, should run fine on potato machines and with Linux, should have a native port you can install from say Flatpak.

When moving to the penguin train, he needs to write down what software and games he wants to use, and what might be omitted due to compatibility issues.

If the man wants to use Windows, let him be, he might reconsider in future about trying Mint again or another distro like Kubuntu.

Just bail out, it wasn't meant to be. I tried a similar thing with family a few times and they always went back to Windows.

Linux is unfortunately not for people that aren't at least a bit tech savvy. If you insist on them using Linux you're gonna be on call to fix their shit all the time.

You have to be doing something seriously wrong to make Minecraft run poorly. It has native support for Linux.

With Minecraft, it wasn't any better.

Minecraft runs natively on Linux, though. It's not FOSS so it's not available through apt, but you can install it from a .deb from their website

Download page
The installation file

I've had better performance with Minecraft on Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.3 (albeit with kernel 6.1) than on Windows 10 personally.

Sadly, I can't easily fix FIFA or Roblox for you

Roblox in particular has been super hostile to the Linux community, they've two or three times now intentionally changed their application to make it so it won't run under wine. If Roblox is something that is a hard requirement for him, I would highly recommend against any of the non-windows derivatives. The lead development team on Roblox seems to have the ideology that anything that isn't Windows is a hacker platform and therefore they attempt to remove access from those platforms wherever possible. I don't personally agree with it but, it is what it is.

I also wish people would stop blindly recommending Unix platforms as a drop-in replacement for gaming on Windows. I have yet to see anyone who has been able to just install any of the flavors and have it "just work". I fully agree that we are ages better in terms of compatibility than it was even 5 years ago, but at 100% should be going into it as a "you will have issues prepare to have to troubleshoot" and if this was his first time using anything not windows, I would have hard recommended against nuking the windows install, at the very least shrink the C partition on Windows which can be done via GParted, which thankfully is already pre-installed on the Linux Mint installation media.

It's disappointing that he is looking to go back, but I can fully understand his frustration, as someone who's recently retaking the plunge after 6 or 7 years of being on windows again, I find myself getting aggravated at times trying to make hack scripts to make things work as well.

That being said, if he is wanting to go back you shouldn't force using it, that's only going to remove the possibility of him switching back in the future(like when MS makes w10 a subscription model either end of this year or the year after which will force w11)

If they want to game, can't commit to only playing steam games, and can't learn how to use lutris, have them stay on windows. Linux will never live up to their expectations.

Just tell him, "Give Linux another shot when you are bored.".

t. Used to be a Windows tryhard w/ baby duck syndrome, told myself exactly this. Took me a while, but I became a penguin a couple years after.

With only 256GB it might be even hard for him to use windows, to be honest.

My wife and I gave a Linux computer to a friend's kid. I think I used something called Grapejuice to install Roblox, which ran perfectly for about a year. Then it broke because they wrote a new game client or something, but the kid just said "it's ok, I'll play other games instead." Best Linux gamer attitude :)

Install Windows. He gave it a shot, and that’s better than most. Hopefully Linux will fit his needs soon, and he can try again.

FIFA and Roblox, those gotta be one of the worst games to run on linux..